From Classroom to War Room: Future Leaders on the Russia-Ukraine War

This episode of “At the Boundary” dives deep into the Russia-Ukraine war with students from the Future Strategist Program (FSP) at the University of South Florida. This roundtable discussion unpacks the impact of unmanned drones, the shifting global order, and Ukraine’s unexpected resilience. The conversation explores Putin’s miscalculations, NATO’s evolving role, and the broader implications for international relations. 

What can the U.S. and its allies learn about global intervention the balance, the role of emerging technologies in modern warfare? How is technology going to affect future conflicts?

We conclude the episode with Dr. Jeff Rogg, GNSI Senior Research Fellow, talking with May Birch, the president of FSP about the group's upcoming conference on cybersecurity. While our team at GNSI is providing support for the conference, it's being driven primarily by the students of FSP. It's infectious to listen to the excitement of these future leaders and national security practitioners as they take on the ambitious task of organizing and producing a full academic conference. Mark it on your calendars: April 15.

Links from the episode:
• GNSI Tampa Summit 5: “The Russia-Ukraine War: Lessons for Future Conflicts” Registration 

• “What’s Really Happening?” Podcast with General (Ret) Frank McKenzie on “"Starship Troopers" and "The Forever War."

At the Boundary from the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida, features global and national security issues we’ve found to be insightful, intriguing, fascinating, maybe controversial, but overall just worth talking about.

A "boundary" is a place, either literal or figurative, where two forces exist in close proximity to each other. Sometimes that boundary is in a state of harmony. More often than not, that boundary has a bit of chaos baked in. The Global and National Security Institute will live on the boundary of security policy and technology and that's where this podcast will focus.

The mission of GNSI is to provide actionable solutions to 21st-century security challenges for decision-makers at the local, state, national and global levels. We hope you enjoy At the Boundary.

Look for our other publications and products on our website publications page.

Transcript

Glenn Beckmann: 0:12

Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of at the boundary, the podcast from the global and national security Institute at the University of South Florida. I'm Glenn Beckman, communications manager at GNSI, your guest host today for at the boundary. On the show today, we have a discussion that our entire team has been looking forward to for quite some time. We're bringing in a few of the students from our FSP student organization, future strategist program, and we're going to have them in for a round table discussion on the topic of their choosing before we turn things over to them, though, I just want to give you one final reminder for GNSI, Tampa summit five, the Russia, Ukraine war lessons for future conflicts. The heat on this topic has certainly been turned up over the last week or so as discussions continue between the Trump administration and the Russians in the search for a resolution to the war. Our conference begins tomorrow, and there's still time to reserve your seat at the Marshall Student Center, or you can also watch virtually, we put together an amazing lineup of speakers and experts surrounding our keynote speakers who are John Kirby, former senior White House National Security communications advisor under the Biden administration. And he's also a proud USF alum go Bulls, class of 85 and GNSI Executive Director, retired Marine Corps General Frank McKenzie. He's also the former commander of US Central Command. We're looking forward to sharing their insights and experiences with all of the attendees at GNSI Tampa summit five. Look for registration information in the show notes. Speaking of our executive director, we want you to be on the lookout for the next episode of his video podcast. What's really happening. You may or may not know this, and you probably wouldn't be surprised, but general Mackenzie is a voracious reader. He's a military historian. He loves writing and talking about books. And his next episode, he's talking about a couple of fictional military novels that had an outsized influence on his career, Starship Troopers and The Forever War that dropped on our YouTube channel this week, so go check it out. Okay, let's bring into the studio now a few of our students from the future strategist program, our team at GNSI has long believed that a program focused on students interested in national security would be a welcome and highly successful addition to the University of South Florida. FSP was created a little less than a year ago, and man, we couldn't be happier with its success. Over 40 students are now involved. It's a full fledged student organization, and they're even planning on organizing their own conference on cybersecurity. We're going to tell you more about that at the end of the episode today. In the meantime, I'm going to turn things over now to Dr Tad schnaufer, the strategy and research manager at GNSI. He's an ideal person to speak with them about their topic of choice, which is the Russia Ukraine war. He's an adjunct instructor at USF. He's been part of the Florida National Guard and Reserves for nearly 20 years, and, in fact, has spent a significant amount of time in Ukraine, both on his own and deployed with the Florida National Guard. In fact, the last time he was in Ukraine in 2022 his deployment ended just a couple of weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine. Students have a unique perspective and insight into events of global consequence, but because they're students, those insights can sometimes be minimalized and overlooked, and that's the reason for today's roundtable. We want to hear what's on their minds. Tad over to you. Hi.

Tad Schnaufer: 4:00

Welcome to another edition of at the boundary Podcast. I'm here with four amazing students from the University of South Florida. I'm going to discuss the war in Ukraine and some of its implications on future conflicts, especially leading up to our conference, the GNSI Tampa summit conference next week. So why don't we have our students introduce themselves first? Nico, would you like to kick us off?

Nichola Lavaud: 4:21

Thank you. A pleasure to be here. My name is Nico Laveau. I am a sophomore in the Judy Gants honors college, studying political science with a minor in sociology, and I'm also a student analyst here at the GNSI. Glad to be here,

Garett Donohew: 4:33

awesome. I'm also very thankful to be here. My name is Garrett donhe. I'm an Information Science major, minoring in geographic information systems. I'm very excited for the conference that's going to take place next week. Very happy to be here. Thank you. Hi

May Burch: 4:46

everyone. My name is May Burch. I'm a second year International Studies major with a legal studies minor. I'm within the future strategist program under GNSI. I'm the president of that and I'm excited to be here. All

Alex Vu: 4:58

right. Good morning everyone. My name is Alex Vu, I'm also with May at the future strategies program. I'm the treasurer, and I'm also we presenting next week at the GNSI Tampa summit on the war in Ukraine. So I'm looking forward

Tad Schnaufer: 5:10

to that excellent well, to get us started today, why don't we go around and from each of you, get your perspective on the war, simply from this question, what's the most interesting or puzzling thing about the war you've seen over the last three years, something that you're really interested in, but you really can't pin down an answer of why it happened or why it took place. We'll go back with Nika. What I

Nichola Lavaud: 5:30

found interesting recently, in the past couple days, is what the Europeans plan on doing with the frozen Russian assets, whether or not they will be using it to fund Ukraine in the face of negotiated peace deals, or the US pulling out.

Garett Donohew: 5:44

For me, I think definitely one of the most interesting parts of the war that's happened so far is the use of unmanned drones and its implications, and how it has affected a lot of policy, and obviously a lot of the troops on the ground, and how it's being utilized, where it's going to go, where it came from, and all the other implications that come from it economically as well. It's just insane to see how it has been playing out, out in the front and the lack of air force as well. I think that's also just an extremely interesting point, the fact that we put such an emphasis on it here, but yet, in Ukraine and Russia, it's kind of, it's very slow process, and it's actually not really as utilized as I thought it would be. So that's those are two things that very interesting to

May Burch: 6:33

me. I find it interesting. I think that it kind of shook up the global international order. I think that everyone had a much larger fear of Russia's manpower behind this. But I think when watching the war with Ukraine, it's interesting to see the differences between expectation and reality, and I think that will also be interesting to see how that plays out in Europe, and especially Eastern Europe later, even after the war.

Alex Vu: 7:08

Yeah, coming off from May, I am really interested in the difference between the expectation and realities of the war. I feel like the Russian definitely underestimate the Ukrainian respond as all the Western respond to their invasion, and I'm very interesting to see why was the Russian calculation that way, as well as how the war impact Russia's position in the world, their economic and military standing, as well as their relation and their grand strategy as well. So definitely a once in a millennia event, I'll say that can change Russia position on the world stage.

Tad Schnaufer: 7:44

Well, with that focus, why don't we go back to May's point. May, could you formulate a question based off of that reality versus expectation, maybe looking at the beginning of the

May Burch: 7:51

conflict? Oh, yes, I wanted to ask. So everyone expected this war to be short, decisive and concise, especially Putin what went wrong? What was Putin shortcoming in his original strategy? I think, truthfully, I think there, there are two parts to it. I think he overestimated Russia's ability. Because I think that once again, we all had this expectation that Russia is a global superpower and that they would be able to easily crush any country around them, but I think in overestimating Russia's abilities, he also underestimated Ukraine's abilities and their willpower to fight against Russia. I think he assumed this would be simple, because I think he assumed that the Ukrainians would also simply submit after enough time at war, which I think has easily been debunked. So I think, truthfully, he did not get, I think, a good grasp of the situation before fully diving into it. And I think that is why he expected the war to be so short when it when it did not actually turn out to be right?

Tad Schnaufer: 9:06

Well, I mean, obviously, Russia borders Ukraine. Russia has intelligence assets. There's a lot of Russian speakers in Ukraine. Why do you what kept Putin from understanding the situation on the ground better? Going to your point of why we think again, obviously, we're speculating. Putin hasn't told us exactly what he was thinking. So we're speculating on why Putin and maybe his inner circle decided to invade. But what kept them from having the information you're talking about? In your opinion?

May Burch: 9:29

In my opinion, I think sometimes, when you are surrounded by your inner circle and they're supporting your decisions, it's not always as easy to open up to the idea of you simply being wrong. So while they do border each other, and I'm sure intelligence was telling a different story than Putin's original thought, I would argue that his inner circle has kind of supported this war. And when you and your inner circle have the same concepts, i. Ideas, despite what the rest of the country says, it can lead to pretty disastrous outcomes, and I think it has led to disastrous outcomes in the past, with leadership unwilling to listen to like the entirety of the society. So I think truthfully, while he may have, well, no, not me. He likely was receiving that information about Ukraine beforehand. I think that it likely did not faze him as much as it should have, and it didn't factor into his decision as much as it should have, because he had already made up his mind. To some degree, I

Garett Donohew: 10:37

think it deals with a lot of ego as well. Branching off what may said. I think everything was kind of spot on what she said. But a lot of ego, a lot of betrayal. I think we saw that roughly at the beginning, when, you know, a lot of generals and such would just take what they wanted and leave. So, yeah, no, I think may nailed the nail on the hammer with that one. And in

Tad Schnaufer: 10:59

the literature, and we see this often with wars, is that decisions, decision makers that start wars typically are working off of what's called imperfect information. They don't have all the information at hand, either because it's denied to them. They simply just don't have the resources to gather it, or they're going to, Mays point in an echo chamber, right? The information's out there, their their defense forces or their intelligence sources have it, but it doesn't filter its way up to the top where the decisions are being made, because, again, it's being kept from the boss and, you know, quote, unquote, additionally, expectations and you know, and bias of from what you want to happen, you tend to look at information and try to create a path to The goal you're looking to achieve, in this case, cherry pick information that best suits your strategy. So what's possible going to this point with Putin's decision making is that they expected the Ukrainians wouldn't fight as well. They might not have had the will to resist across the board. They might have speculated that it's particularly in the East, where it's more Russian speaking. In Ukraine, they might have the Russian forces might have met less resistance, or even been supported in some ways by the population, and more that imperfect information. They weren't sure how much support Ukraine would get from the west, so they knew that Western powers would likely sanction them, but that's not a very good deterrent. Sanctions are not going to deter country from invading, but they didn't. They might not have anticipated such a robust response in financial and military aid from the west. So those all come come into some of the issues that Putin likely did not anticipate, at least to the degree that we have seen, because that would show why the wars lasted longer. Even Western analysts thought the war would only last a week or so, or at least, at least the Russians would be in Kyiv in a week. Maybe the war would go on longer. So at that beginning point, those are some of the issues that might have been at play. In addition the Russian buildup in May of 2021 Putin's famous article in the summer of 2021 declaring, declaring the Ukrainians, the Russian people, it was kind of a build up, and seeing what the international reaction would be, and the reaction from the Ukrainians to that matter, and it would seem that the reactions were not robust enough to deter or change the thinking of the small leadership node in Russia that made the decision to go to war. Some of the points to look at is also the number of forces that the Russians had on the border at the time, as relatively small number of forces to invade a country as large as Ukraine, when it comes to territory size, as well as population, you need a lot of forces to be able to go into the country then occupy it. And you even need those rear guard forces, those Garrison forces, to maintain control. So a lot of those numbers don't point to the Russians expecting a large scale conventional conflict is what we see today. Well, you know, with with that thought process, but why don't we go back to Garrett, you had a question on on the conflict? Yeah,

Garett Donohew: 13:47

no, my question had to do with the reshaped, reshaping of the balance of power within the world, whether that be between just Russia and Ukraine, where they lie, NATO and its allies, and how they view the conflict and how, how this balance is shifting, or has shifted, and where do you think it's going

Tad Schnaufer: 14:06

to focusing more on now, or when the war started, or just kind of talk about,

Garett Donohew: 14:10

I think as as the war has progressed from when it started to where it is now, well,

Alex Vu: 14:15

I think the war definitely changed everybody's perception in Russia's themselves, their own perception on their own position and power in the world right now. You know, back in the day, people used to think that Russia is the second military power in the world, that China is still number three, and the US, of course, the number one. But now we can see how Russia cannot been fight a war right next to their border.

Nichola Lavaud: 14:34

Yeah, I kind of have to agree with Alex here. The war has reshaped what we see, how we perceive Russia to be a strong military power, or are they really a strong military power losing around? What was it around? I believe 300,000 of their soldiers the past three years in Ukraine, the Ukrainians. We also see them as we know they're not a strong military power because we are the ones that are funding them. But we see there's a strong willed people there. Are that do want to fight back, that do want to come control their homeland and take these aggressors out of their homeland. And I think we also see that the Europeans are now starting to wake up and also realize their own potential, in their sense of the world, of not being second to America, but also maybe taking a stronger charge of their own lands and their own borders with the Polish people finally waking up and saying, you know, as a European Union, we need to become stronger. We need to become tougher towards Russia and more unified together. So I think by the time the war ends, however it ends, whether Russia wins or Ukraine wins or it ends in a stalemate with Russia having the lands that they still control, I think in the broader sense of things that the world will be shaped for the coming decades,

Tad Schnaufer: 15:49

but it's still not appropriate in this I write off the Russian military. The Russian has. Russia still has a lot of latent power, has a large population, has a lot of natural resources, and has the capabilities as their industry becomes more war oriented, to rebuild their military forces over the next couple of years, but they certainly have suffered significant losses in Ukraine and weren't we're likely not anticipating, as we just spoke about, a long, long scale war we've already, you know, been going for over three years with this conflict and is likely going to drag on for at least a Few few more months, if not longer as negotiations continue. So with the global balance of power, it's actually relatively unchanged in many ways. From my opinion, it looks like the US is still the strongest power in the world. The US still has the only large scale expeditionary military force. The US is only one that can reach out across the world and actually put troops anywhere it really wants to China and Russia can't do that. Russia is obviously having a problem even doing it just on its own border regions, so that type of balance of power perspective has not changed. Now, the Chinese have probably gained a couple rungs on the ladder, as Russia, in a sense, has been knocked back, but it's not clear that once this is over, the Russians wouldn't be able to rebuild relatively quickly. And going to the point on the Europeans, of course, they're going to have to step up. They've This is a age old tale of the Americans asking their European allies to do more. The European allies say they're going to do more, and then they don't, and then they start to cycle over again. The difference here is that there's a lot more pressure from the Americans than we've seen in the past, with the current administration really pushing the Europeans to do more, and the threats very, very evident, because even during the Cold War, the Soviet Union did not have any aggressive military actions in the European theater. So obviously, they had had advisors around the world and fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s but we did not see Soviet aggression after the formation of NATO, other than suppressing some revolt in Hungary in 56 for example. But we did not see any large scale Russian military operations during the Cold War. So this is different. So the European allies, particularly those in the east, are looking at it differently, and they have a historical memory of being oppressed by the Russians, you know, particularly the poles. They take this threat very seriously. This is not a new concept to them. The Polish nation was subsumed by three other empires for over 120 years. So they're very well aware of what can happen if you leave your military arm to atrophy. You better want to keep that strong arm of government. So why don't we turn it over to Alex, you had a point on policy makers, right? Yeah.

Alex Vu: 18:30

So I'm very curious, from your observation of the war in Ukraine, if you had to advise policymakers on one major security blind spot that they should be paying more attention to what do you think it would be

Tad Schnaufer: 18:43

American policymakers or Yes, from the American policymaker point of view, one of the big points that they have to look at is, what type of Europe do you want, and what type of peace do you want? Now, obviously the peace negotiations are going on, and from an American policy standpoint, you have to say, okay, so we need to create a lasting peace. But unfortunately, in conflicts like this we've seen in the past, whether you're looking at the Korean Peninsula or even in Cyprus, right, you see that you have a frozen conflict. You get, typically a demilitarized zone of some sort or some sort of line of contact where the conflict freezes, and then you have a bunch of peacekeepers there. Now the US discussion has pointed to the Europeans would be the peacekeepers in this case, but the long, long term projection would be that those peacekeepers would have to be there for years, if not decades. I mean, look at the Cold War. The US maintained hundreds of 1000s of troops in Europe, just for deterrence, not to mention on the Korean peninsula. The US has maintained 10s of 1000s of forces for over 70 years. So to maintain these types of peace, if the peace deal is not done completely, and you end up getting a frozen conflict, could be just putting the issue off for a later date. Now, in the Cold War worked out because the Soviet Union collapsed because of economic struggles, but as we see in Korea and again on Cyprus, you still have a frozen conflict with. Peacekeepers being able to maintain there. So the spot to really look at is, how do we maintain we need to achieve a peace either that doesn't require that many peacekeepers and has a short term off ramp, if you will, or if there are going to be peacekeepers, how does either NATO or the Europeans step up and are able to do that, maybe even through the UN it's a very difficult long term we're talking again you this might be 70 years. This might be an a date indeterminate to end. So it's a very long term progression. And we see that with other conflicts as well. If you look at the conflict with Israel and Gaza, right? This is just this current conflict starting back in 2023 that was just the latest spot of violence between in this in this region, and the form of peace deals did not hold. If you're trying to create a lasting peace, it's very difficult. It typically takes a lot of force, it takes a lot of money and a lot of dedication, and it doesn't have a clear end. And so it's hard to sell, um, to taxpayers. Why are we funding, you know, peacekeepers 70 years after the end of a conflict. So that's part, that's part of the issue that policymakers deal with. But what, what do you think policymakers, European, Russian, Ukrainian are going to deal with otherwise? How

May Burch: 21:11

involved are we allowed to be? And I think it's something that America has been faced with. It's something that the NATO is faced with. It's something that I know the countries surrounding Ukraine, the ones that are holding their breath, hoping that Ukraine wins, because they're hoping that Russia doesn't invade them next, they've all kind of been dealing with this because there have been incidents in the past with other countries in other regions of the world, where outside countries will get too involved, and it could lead To disastrous outcomes, maybe potentially worse than what was initially intended, what the initial outcome would have been. So I know this has been kind of something on everyone's mind is, how far are we allowed to see this progress before we truly get involved? Because we are assisting Ukraine, and we are sending money, and we are sending military supplies and we and we are helping. But once again, the question just always goes back to how far into this war, and how far into all the casualties and all in all of the issues before a country is truly allowed to get involved, and they're truly allowed to to to be in that war and fight that war. And it's an interesting debate, because I know, and I think one of the reasons that the US has taken a farther step back is because of past failures, as we saw in the war on terror. And then also, I would argue there, there's a lot of sentiment that the US was acting as a global police force, and I know that there's a lot of discontent within the world because of that, and I think that made it so that in this war, specifically, while we have been of assistance, we have not involved ourselves in the way I think past policy makers would encourage us to do so. I think it's very interesting, because it gets to a point where the debate is is completely surrounded around the fact of how much are we going to see and watch all of these atrocities occur, and when? When do we step in? When is the appropriate time to step in? Because I think that's an ongoing debate, and I think it always will be an ongoing debate of what moment is the right moment.

Nichola Lavaud: 23:25

I think that's a good point. May I think that we'll see an aspect of that after, well, let's say the negotiations end and boom, we have a demarcation line. I think we'll see an aspect of that in the sense of who gets to rebuild Ukraine. Is it the West, or is it Russia who gets to rebuild and influence a country? And if it's like the West, right now, the Europeans are speculating about using the frozen assets that they have from Russia for building Ukraine, for funding Ukraine. Do they get to use that, or does that go back to Russia? Or do we have some sort of Marshall Plan for Ukraine, who gets to influence Ukraine, and then whoever gets influenced Ukraine, how will that affect as you were talking about Dr schnaufer, the piece down the line, because if the West influences Ukraine, then let's say 2030, years from now, they're more inclined to join NATO again. They're more inclined to join the EU. But if Russia influences Ukraine, then maybe they could change the country, and they could influence the country into or to become a much more auxiliary nation towards Russia. Just has Belarus. So I think we'll see an aspect of that, especially after negotiations end.

Alex Vu: 24:31

Oh yeah, for me, I would say the war definitely has a big impact on policymakers in small states. We don't, we don't get to talk much about the small states in this case, and I'm saying small states, as in many different neighboring European countries and small states across the world. Since I'm from one of them, we have a lot of country from all the way from Latin America to Africa to Asia. They look at this war and they see a former world order that was based on negotiation. And international law to prevent conflicts and prevent this sort of interstate war got shattered, and they were fearing that if the next day, if a superpower, let's say China, for example, wants to get something of their own, they will not rely on the way we used to do for the last couple of decades, which was through negotiation and international law, but rather they would use force, hard force, like the way the Russian did in Ukraine. And that raised a lot of concerns for small states policy makers around the world. And I definitely can see that, you know, there's been a lot of attention raising and you know, people have been focusing more on rearming themselves and preparing themselves for a possibility of a future conflict in many

Nichola Lavaud: 25:40

different parts of the world, in case they can't rely on the United States and

Alex Vu: 25:43

many other of their allies as well, not just the United States. Yeah,

Tad Schnaufer: 25:48

well, going back to May's original point of states being allowed to do something, what do you mean? Allowed? We'll use

May Burch: 25:53

the United States in this instance. United States, realistically, can do what it wants in this war, because there's no really allowing the United States military outside of the President, obviously. So by allow, I mean what point do other countries agree with and contribute to you stepping in. So there have been incidents in the past. What do you mean by stepping in, like troops on the ground, troops on the ground, type like intervention, actual direct intervention, in this war. And so my main question just was always a lot of smaller countries, especially smaller countries surrounding Ukraine, those that were initially part of the USS. Are they? They have had these debates as well, just because, if Ukraine is overtaken and absorbed back into Russia, who's to say they're safe from Russia as well? If it seems that Ukraine is losing, and Russia is continuing to push in, and they're starting to invade the territory, do we step in? Do we stop it? Do we do we protect Ukraine sovereignty, or do we simply watch it happen, and we watch Russia invade Ukraine, and we watch them overtake Ukraine? I know that

Nichola Lavaud: 27:10

was, that's what the French floated. The French floated about boots on the ground, which obviously ruffled some feathers here stateside. But they were floating the idea of, you know, if, say, Ukraine loses the tide, and we may just have to step in. We'll see if that actually happens. I don't believe it would, but the fact that they floated that shows a change in the demeanor, and even the Western Europeans, who usually are not as hawkish as the Eastern Europeans are, yeah, towards Russia.

Alex Vu: 27:34

And I think that's a great point as well, because, and you mentioned the peacekeeping, it's a really difficult thing to do, and I think it's even going to be harder, as you said, to have a peacekeeping force without the presence of the United

May Burch: 27:46

States. I think they are waiting on the US. They're seeing what the US will do. The US has kind of always been this leading force of intervention in wars and outside wars, and so I think a lot of countries have been waiting to see, okay, is the US going to intervene? And once the US intervenes, that kind of opens a path for others to to step in and stop this. But until then, I think it's just been a constant debate on the world stage, really, of how far are we going to let this go? I think,

Nichola Lavaud: 28:13

I think we're we're using, we're seeing that a lot right now. Since here stateside, no one is talking about using the frozen Russian assets in support of Ukraine. But in Europe, the leaders haven't said it themselves, but around political parties, commentators, it's been going around now for the past couple days. Now that we need to use these funds, we need to show our strength, and the Europeans understand that this is really their only card up their sleeve, since they do not have the manpower that the US has, and if the US decides to do a negotiated peace deal with Russia that the Ukrainians don't like and that the Europeans don't like as well, that this will be their only trump card that they could use to continue supporting Ukraine in the face of any deal made as well.

Garett Donohew: 28:55

Lot of questions of what policymakers will be doing inside of Russia and how they're going to take a step back after Ukraine and realize, you know, certain assets, or, you know, when, when they invaded Ukraine, it was this concept of, you know, that they claimed that the Ukrainians were being genocided, or the Russians in Ukraine were being genocided. And, you know, we saw how that turned out, and how it was proven to be, you know, still up in the air, but not, not entirely true. But what's stopping Russia from doing something like that again, you know, making some bold face claim and invading another country on its on its former USSR block to gain control?

Tad Schnaufer: 29:36

Well, it's a difficult question, because, of course, there is this idea that the, you know, the US could be everywhere all the time, trying to help every country but countries you know, looking at IR theory, international relations theory and a realist perspective is simply countries are going to act in their national interests, and they're not going to just willy nilly put forces on the ground around the world unless they have a direct national interest in it. Now that. Interest is typically defined by the ruling party or the leaders of that country at the time, along with the domestic audience, if they're putting pressure one way or the other, these topics are difficult to discuss. But you know, power is the currency of international relations. The more powerful you are, you can do what you want. You know, quoting the History of the Peloponnesian War, the strong will do what they will, and the weak will suffer what they must. So you always want to be in a position of strength. You want to have that power and the ability to do what you'd like. Because when you have power on the international stage, historically, you don't, you're it's not a question, are you allowed, as if you want to or not? And going to the small state perspective that Alex brought up, if you're a small state, you don't have the power to be able to do a lot what you would like, typically. So that's that's issues that states have to deal with in their foreign policy making. The decision makers can only use the tools they have, the instruments and national power that they have, and however strong those are. Before we turn it over to Nico, what do you have a question you were thinking about? Ryan,

Nichola Lavaud: 31:02

my question is regarding the peace negotiations currently happening in Riyadh that the Ukrainians don't seem to have a strong role in. When do you negotiate? If the negotiations were to end with a peace deal made, how would the Ukrainians react, and do we see them accepting this deal made without their consultation and capitulating, or do we still see them trying to find a way to fight back? Obviously, if they lose us support, then they don't have the financial and physical means to fight back. But how do I wonder how it'll play out in the end, once the deal is made? Well,

Tad Schnaufer: 31:37

I'm sure we're all wondering how it's going to play out, and there's a million different avenues that the peace negotiations can go but you know, you see a lot of people comparing it to 1938 in Munich, with the British selling this, selling out the Czechs, the czechoslovakians, with the Sudetenland. There are some differences here that need to be pointed out. One that the checks were left out in the negotiations through that entire process. So we're not sure how this entire process is going to go. So just because the negotiations have started between the US and Russia does not mean that Ukraine will not have a seat at the table later on. So we'll have to see how those play out until the entire process is over. So that will answer a lot of your questions of what the Ukrainians do. It depends on the peace negotiations. Peace Negotiations typically take a long time. The difference in 1938 was that was not a peace negotiation. That was a negotiation of balance of power between the major powers, while the Czech official SAT in another room and pretty much just got handed in. Notice. The other big difference between 1938 and today with these negotiations is the Ukrainians fought. Ukrainians are fighting as an act of conflict. So this is a peace negotiations or a cease fire negotiations. Anyway. Again, it's not about just handing over land in a act of appeasement, as we saw with Chamberlain in 38 it's this is an actual discussion to end the war, and hopefully going back to our earlier conversation about peace, making an enduring peace, ensuring that peace can actually be maintained. Which peace being maintained is costly. Deterrence is costly, as we mentioned in the Cold War. And the big problem with the deterrence is it's you can't measure success very well, right? If you're measuring a war, or if you're fighting a war, you can measure the battles you've won. Oh, we've won four battles. We've gained this much territory. There's all these metrics you can use to see if you're winning or losing. But or losing, right? But when you're deterring a conflict, all you can measure is the fact that nothing happened. Trying to maintain the status quo is very difficult, and maintaining the peace because it's hard to sell. It's hard to sell the taxpayers, particularly as time goes on, whether they're European, Russian or American taxpayers, you can see this across the board. So it's difficult for the peace negotiations. We're going to have to see how it plans out. But just because it has started in Riyadh between the US and Russia, does not mean the Ukrainians won't have to see the table some point. And again, it's not a like case to 1938 in many ways. So it would be, it's hard to make that that comparison so quickly. It's just, it's just, simply, there's too many things that are different. So, uh, with that in mind, what do you think the future might hold, uh, for the NATO alliance, for for NATO as a whole. So let's say, obviously we had, we, let's imagine the conflict continues to go on. Where do you guys see NATO going?

May Burch: 34:20

Honestly, it'll be interesting how NATO comes to play out, because the there's really only two avenues I see it going either the president steps down and Ukraine joins NATO, and then, in doing so, I think that would be a deterrent for Russia, and likely would lead to peace negotiations that would favor both sides, simply just because with Na with Ukraine being a member of NATO, that would mean that NATO then has the ability to get more involved, directly involved in this war, because they would have a reasoning behind it, and that would lead to a lot of member nations of NATO wanting to get involved as well. The second way I see. This going as NATO continues to have their hands off of this. They they don't admit Ukraine until after these talks and after there's enduring peace. And I think that that would lead to the peace negotiations leaning heavily in Russia's favor, simply because Russia is the stronger force out of the two. And I think there was a quote you said, the strong take what they will in the weak, endure what they must this. Russia is unfortunate, not unfortunately, but Russia is the strong in this situation. And without NATO's backing, I think that makes it so that Ukraine is quite easily going to be within the weak category. I

Nichola Lavaud: 35:41

think that the future of NATO, in my opinion, is a strong one, but it also relies upon what our European partners intend to do. Right now, Poland pays their most per cap per GDP rate. I believe by the end of this year, they'll be paying almost 5% or by next year, they'll be paying 5% of their GDP into NATO. Right now they're in charge of the EU. They're want, they're trying to motivate their partners in the EU that they need to pay more, that they need to pay more attention to Russia, so that in the long term, that this doesn't happen again, or that Russia doesn't find another way to infiltrate and hurt the European nations. So I believe that NATO now has seen that wake up call with the war in Ukraine, and no matter how it ends, whether it ends with Russia keeping control of the 20% of land that they have, or somehow Ukraine takes back all their land, I think that no matter how it ends, that NATO will still play a strong role, most possibly in peacekeeping forces, if there are peacekeeping forces and in keeping control and security of Europe as a whole. Since, I do believe that long term for now, that the European powers will start to put more of their fair share and will start to input more into NATO, since they saw what exactly can happen when Russia takes over Ukraine, and they also, they also see what happens when they have an administration in the US that is pushing putting pressure on them, and that's threatening to become more isolationist if they don't play their if they don't pay their fair share. So I think now they're being forced from both sides to start to pay their fair share in the Western European powers, once they start doing it, then everyone else in Europe will start doing it as

Garett Donohew: 37:18

well. Nico, I agree with your point that NATO's I think goals at the end of the day is going to be a lot on prevention, but I think it's also very important to realize that one of the big reasons why Russia Ukraine invaded Ukraine was because of the heavy NATO presence in Europe.

Nichola Lavaud: 37:35

He also grew NATO in the end we, we accepted. Was it Sweden? Yes, we Sweden, Finland. So he, if he is, if he invaded Ukraine due to the stronger NATO presence in the eastern part, through Poland, Latvia and the Baltic states, it backfired on him, because we ended up having even more NATO presence next to Russia due to the war in Ukraine. Yes,

Garett Donohew: 37:57

it most definitely did. But I think, I think for a lot of policymakers in NATO, though, I think it's still definitely something to look into in terms of directly, like Ukraine or some of the Baltic states, even though, like Estonia, because, I mean, they are building up their defenses, as we talked about before. But it's just, I think it's just an important factor to consider that, if it was one of the reasons why, if it was, hypothetically, one of the reasons why Russia was to invade Ukraine, I think it's something that will be definitely on policy makers minds in NATO, about them doing it again, and a fear of that.

Nichola Lavaud: 38:32

I think that fear will lead to them not accepting Ukraine anytime soon. I don't foresee Ukraine being accepted into NATO, but that fear will lead to the existing members of NATO, especially those right next to Russia, building up their defenses towards the Russian border. Absolutely

Tad Schnaufer: 38:48

agree. The question would really be, is, how much did it drive this particular conflict? Now, it certainly could have played a role, as with most foreign policy decisions. It's really a pie chart. There's a there's a number of factors that come into play. We like to pinpoint one thing. It was NATO expansion that did this. It was the Russian Black Sea fleets being stationed in Crimea. That's a strategic point. That's why they took the province of Crimea in 2014 but there's a lot of other factors that go that come into play. NATO expansion is probably one of them, and particularly, again, if you're an international relations realist, and you read of foreign affairs and you see John Mearsheimer is a famous realist. He often says, you know, the war in Ukraine is the West's fault, right? Because the West expanded. But we have to only speculate that. How do we know what would have happened if NATO did not expand with the Russians had just been aggressive earlier? We don't know. But what we do know is that no one's attacked a NATO country yet. So that's that's part of that deterrence kind of leading from the Cold War time frame, it would be difficult for NATO to accept Ukraine at this time or any time in the near future. Just doesn't just just very difficult, particularly with contested borders, and certainly in an act of conflict that's. Not going to happen, or even if it's a ceasefire instead of a long term peace. So NATO expansion likely played a role. The question would be, how much? And that's how we'd have to, you know, you'd have to ask Putin, because remember this conflict, although the large scale conventional conflict, started in 2022 there were Russian troops, obviously, with annexation of Crimea in 2014 and then there was the simmering conflict in eastern Ukraine, in the dumb boss, from 2014 all the way to 2022 which included Russian, Russian soldiers and included rebel back, rebel groups backed by Russia. So that conflict didn't end, and that's why it just expanded in 2022 with, with a full scale invasion. So with all those points in mind, to wrap up from your perspective, as we look at our conference next week on the lessons learned from the war in Ukraine for future conflicts, whether that's a China Taiwan scenario, whether that's a larger conflict in the Middle East, or even possibly conflicts in Africa, we still have the Civil War, or the conflict in Sudan, as well as conflict areas in the DRC and otherwise. So what lessons for future conflicts have we learned from Ukraine? Ukraine, the Ukrainian Russian conflict as your closing statement? So we'll start with you, Alex.

Alex Vu: 41:19

Well, this is, in my opinion, at the same time. But also want to put this out because we Garrett mentioned why the expansion of NATO might be one of the reasons leading to the war. Why have a opposite direction for that? I think there's a sort of this under balancing from the United States and Western countries in the build up of the war in Ukraine that contributed to Putin's decision of going to war. I mean, we the events of 2014, happened, and we didn't have a good balancing actions against Russian aggression in Ukraine. We let them take Crimea and launch a war in the Donbas region, and the only thing we did was sanctioning them, which didn't really affect them that much. So I can argue that this sort of under balancing, not the rather, not the expansion of NATO or both, but this under balancing plays a bigger role in Putin's determination of going to war. So there are definitely a lot of reasons, as Dr Sinha mentioned, but for me personally, I would say is we need to think about balancing under balancing and effective balancing, especially in future conflicts. If tomorrow, China launch a sort of blockade around Taiwan, what's our balancing strategy for them? Are we just sanctioning them? Of course, that's going to hurt a lot of people. Would that be effective? So yeah, definitely a lot of lessons on that one. But

Tad Schnaufer: 42:37

with the NATO expansion piece, it really is a chicken in the egg type scenario, because was it the NATO expansion in 1999 that started pushing the Russians to look at the West as an aggressive stance. So there's multiple correlations, right? You know that difference between causation and correlation, we can see a number of factors increasing. NATO is expanding, but Russia is also getting more powerful throughout the 2000s leading up, particularly to the 2008 invasion of Georgia. So it's, it's hard to pinpoint what's that causation and likely, as as noted, it's, it's a multi, multiple factors play a role in decision makers, including, it seems, with the with the Russians. One of the big, big points is opportunity. There's just an opportunity, there's an opening, and they seize that opportunity, as we saw with the Maidan protests, Maidan resolution revolution, rather, in 2014 there was an opportunity, and the Russians took it. So one thing for leaders, just like we saw with the lead up to World War Two or World War One for that matter, is you want to close that window of opportunity in the leader's mind. You want to make it crystal clear that if they're going to do something that you don't use, you absolutely do not want them to. Do you make it clear that it's going to be too costly, maybe. What do you think for future conflicts? What would we learn from the current war in Ukraine? I think

May Burch: 43:48

that, and to bring this back to like the shift of the global international structure, I think that we learned these smaller countries can push back, and they will push back. And I think in this is very much so an assumption, but I think China was watching this invasion. And I think truthfully, if Russia had successfully done it in the time period they initially thought they would, I think that China would have invaded Taiwan. And I think that this has kind of pushed China to not invade Taiwan, and even to bring it back to the African Peninsula, as you said. I mean, I was in South Africa just last summer, and it's interesting to see, because I think it gave a lot of pause to to these big these big countries with a lot of power, these these hegemonic powers that we have in the system. I think it made them realize that they may have a lot of power, and they may have a lot of influence, but that does not always necessitate that wars like this will be an easy win for them. And. What I would hope is that it leads to more balance, listening to outside of your inner circle, listening to the intelligence and listening to informants and listening to people within that country, like, as you were saying, how there's Russian speakers in Ukraine, listening to those that have been to Ukraine. But I also think for the international order as a whole. This kind of gives us more of an idea of how to manage these situations in the future, because we watched this go on. And I know there are other talks of how to do this, how to do that, but I think back to China, like if China were to invade Taiwan today, I think that we would much more sufficiently handle that situation. Having the experience of Russia versus Ukraine, Russia is a big name in the world, and I think for Russia to struggle with Ukraine, it kind of gives hope to smaller countries that maybe were holding their breath in this, especially Taiwan, but also it gives maybe discouragement to larger countries from doing such invasions, because not only will the other countries kind of stand against this, but I think also the people of the country won't easily back down, as we have always kind of easily assumed them to do.

Tad Schnaufer: 46:19

Garrett, what do you think future lessons learned from this war?

Garett Donohew: 46:22

Yeah, no, I think there's a lot of emphasis on a global intervention. A lot of you know, as we've seen with NATO and all that, it's a it's a heavy factor, and I think it's going to continue to play every factor in certain policies, like we talked about with China and Taiwan, what would happen if that was to take go down. I think, I think globally, there's a lot of thought that will go around it. And another, another huge aspect, I think, is technology. I think we should definitely look at Ukraine and Russia and the conflict as a whole with this kind of bigger lens, and also understand that not every single conflict is going to be like this.

Nichola Lavaud: 47:01

I think this is a lesson for mainly our adversaries, but even for us right now, in these times, do not underestimate the US and its allies. We have built these partnerships for decades, and I don't think even myself or Americans completely realized how there would be such a strong rally around the flag effect around the US, telling the Europeans we have to fight. We have to well, that fight. We have to make sure that Ukraine stands and fights for themselves. And I think the Chinese have seen that in the sense of, if they were to take over Taiwan and the US were to take charge, how would the allies in the Southeast Asia area, the Koreans, the Japanese the Filipinos, the Australians. How would they play in, in rallying around the US, around the flag being Taiwan and Russia and China don't have those same relationships with many other countries that the US does. And in times of peace, and in times of, you know, good times, usually people like to look at the allies and say, Oh, we don't really need them. Or why do we have these allies? Why do we have these partnerships? But it's really when the times are tough, 911, right now, that our allies come to our aid when we need when we call them up, they come to us. And it shows the world that we have friends, and we will use our friends to get what we want. And so right now, we need to realize that it was through our friends that we're able to continue to support Ukraine and for future conflicts, we will be using these allies to support whomever we need to support, whether it's us or a country that we find strategic to our interest. Although

Tad Schnaufer: 48:31

I think perhaps the verbiage you might want to say, cooperate with the Allies instead of using them, but cooperate

Nichola Lavaud: 48:37

with our friends, sometimes we need to use them excellent Well,

Tad Schnaufer: 48:41

those are some interesting points, and obviously we'll explore a lot of these points much more in depth next week at the March Tampa Summit, as we bring in experts from around the world to discuss the lessons learned from the war in Ukraine and how they could apply to future conflicts. So thank you all for your time today. It was very interesting getting that student perspective, and we'll see you around on campus. Thank you. Thank you.

May Burch: 49:03

Thanks for having us.

Glenn Beckmann: 49:13

That's Dr Tad Schnaufer, our strategy and research manager at GNSI, thanks for a great conversation with some terrific members of our future strategist program, those students have, as the saying goes around these parts, taken the bull by the horns. Go Bulls. What started with about a dozen volunteers has blossomed into a full fledged student organization with over 40 members. And as we told you at the beginning of the show today, they are already planning and organizing their own cybersecurity conference for next month here on the Tampa campus at USF may Burch is the president of FSP, and she's here to tell us more about that conference, and for that we thought it would be a great idea to bring in Dr Jeff rogg, senior research fellow at GNSI, and the coordinator for FSP. He's done much of the behind the scenes work to help launch FSP. Take it away. Jeff,

Jeff Rogg: 50:06

thanks, Glenn, and I'm very excited to talk about this conference. Lily Shores is the student who's done a remarkable job organizing it and working with FSP the future strategist program. She couldn't be here today, but I'm very glad to be joined by May Burch and May, can you tell us what the status of the conference is

May Burch: 50:24

so so far, we actually have almost all of our panelists, but one confirmed for the upcoming conference. It is a cyber security conference for those that don't know. It has four panels and one special speaker, which will be general Mackenzie. Think thanks to Lily. And so far we have, honestly, we have almost all the details planned out. It's planned to be in april 15 at the Marshall Student Center. We are hoping to bring in a lot of students. That's what it's mainly meant to be. It's a student ran conference so the moderators sitting on the panels, those will be students, the people proposing policies before each panel, those will be students. We will have students presenting research on posters throughout the event, and then even the volunteers we are hoping to mainly be a base of students. Lily came to us with this idea, and is truly a wonderfully thought out conference. We did not have much time to enact this conference, unfortunately, but Lily has done her hardest work. Lily has put in the lily has put in a lot of effort to to bring this conference to life. And I'm glad as FSP president that we have been able to help her in this, and I we're all very excited to see where this goes. Because, truthfully, we are hoping to make this an inaugural conference. We are hoping to repeat this every year, and to kind of help it grow with the help of GNSI and other partners that we have on this, such as Emory riddle, and even potentially a partnership with the Judy gnshaf Honors College. And so I would, I would just like to say that we're very we're all very excited for this conference, and that as we get farther into the conference and the planning, and we're coming to the final stages of development right before the conference. I think that the turnout of the conference will be quite, quite good, and I think that also the messages talked about on the conference are going to be very important. If anything, I would like to just kind of bring up the panel topics just for one second, so the first panel will be on a AI and Cyber Security Operations, enhancing defense and navigating emerging threats. The second one is zero trust architecture for critical infrastructure. The third one is quantum ready, protecting data in a post quantum world. The force. Fourth one is securing the digital economy, the future of trust and transactions, and then the one with general McKenzie as our highlighted speaker, is digital defense, the intersection of cyber policy strategy in Modern Warfare. I think that all five of these topics are very relevant to today, since cybersecurity has grown to be one of the largest facets of national international security. And I think also that each each panel will just have very immersive, very important themes and messages within them. That I think that not only should the students take away, but I think that policy makers should take away from it. And I also think that I hope that the experts walk away feeling the experts on the panels. I hope that they walk away feeling that not only were they able to share their knowledge to these students, but also that they're able to learn from it, and they're able to learn from these debates with the other side, the other panelists on these panels. So

Jeff Rogg: 53:57

thanks May. And I think I want to highlight some things for the listeners, coming from an academic and subject matter expert perspective, that Lily did a fantastic job, not only organizing conference, but choosing the topics. Again, I have to emphasize that this is a student designed conference, meaning even the topics. Now, you know, I spoke to Lily a little bit, and you know, we discuss some of the organization and design of it, but as far as the topics, the themes and the and the structure of it, that's all student impelled, and that's innovative. That's a different approach than what we see with most academic conferences today, or even industry conferences, where it's done by people who are already established in those fields. To me, the value in this is, when you study something so much or you spend so much time working in a particular area. So what I'm talking about here really are academics and practitioners or industry leaders. You sort of fall into patterns of thought and behavior regarding what you're already in. Hurston, and what's different is now students have the opportunity to present original ideas. And one of the real key innovations that I see in this conference is the students are going to put forward proposals. Students are going to moderate, then subject matter experts, who can, perhaps, on the basis of their experience, assess those proposals with what is realistic today. But that's not to say in other words, if a subject matter expert sees challenges in a student proposal, it's still not to say that there's a future there or something that the subject matter experts have to consider. And what I mean by that is, is having students bring forth new ideas shows you where their mindset is, where the you know, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, Men aren't prisoners of faith, they're prisoners of their own mind. So this helps us break out of mindsets that we all have. And so again, I'm just extraordinarily pleased that students are organizing, designing and engaging with the practitioners, including who they're inviting to the conference, Truly, truly, I think, an innovative design that, as you mentioned, GNSI and FSB hope to repeat in the future.

May Burch: 56:14

I just want to thank Dr Jeff frog for being here and for talking about this conference with us, and for giving us the platform, really, to speak more on this conference. And I would also like to thank our audience for listening in and and I would also like to encourage all to please come to the conference if you can, and if not, I know that it will be recorded. So I would just highly encourage that you also just listen to the conference as well if you can't come in. Thank you. That's

Glenn Beckmann: 56:44

Dr Jeff rogg, Senior Research Fellow with GNSI, talking with may Burch, a student here at USF, and the President of the future strategist program, student organization here at the University of South Florida. What a great show today. We're glad we had the chance to share with you some of these amazing students and their forward leaning ideas. Look for more great ideas from them in the future. If you're interested in FSP or know someone who should be check out our website for more information, and there'll be more details online about their upcoming cybersecurity conference in the near future as well, next week on at the boundary, one of our favorite guest returns with more about the crazier and getting crazier world of artificial intelligence. USF Professor John locado has spoken to us before about AI, and he's an integral part of the brand new college created last year here at USF, the College of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and computing. He's going to talk about that, and he's also going to talk with us about things like deep seek Lucy and a few other developments in that sphere. Now that's next week. If you don't want to miss it or any of our future episodes, be sure to subscribe to the podcast going to wrap up this episode of at the boundary. Each new that's episode will feature global and national security issues we found to be worthy of attention and discussion. I'm Glenn Beckman, thanks for listening today. We'll see you next week at the boundary.