On March 18, Emma Ashford joined NPR’s Open Source to discuss the Ukraine war’s broader lessons for US foreign policy.
“The fact is that this is not a change from the historical norm, even in the last 30 years. We’ve seen leaders do the exact same thing: we saw Slobodan Milošević do this to Albania and Kosovo in the Balkans in the 90’s, we saw Bashar al-Assad in Syria do this to his own population with Vladimir Putin’s help. I think for me, what I see in this conflict is in some ways a surprise that it has taken a conflict of this magnitude on the European continent to bring home to people the limits of US foreign policy in dealing with this unfortunate ark of history. Things like this do happen, leaders are often brutal, wars happen, people get hurt. US foreign policy can’t necessarily solve all of these problems.”
More about our expert
