David Greenberg On John Lewis And Civil Rights

The historian has a compelling new book on the heroic figure.

David is a historian, a journalist, and an old friend. He was managing editor and acting editor of The New Republic, a history columnist in the early days of Slate, and a contributing editor to Politico Magazine. He’s currently a professor of History and of Journalism & Media Studies at Rutgers. The author of many books, including Republic of Spin and Nixon’s Shadow, his new one is John Lewis: A Life.

For two clips of our convo — on Lewis defending MLK from a sucker-punch by a white thug, and Lewis getting into an ugly political race against a friend — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: David and me in the old TNR days; Rick Hertzberg; Freud’s theories on homosexuality; conversion therapy and Bill Kristol’s conference on it; how David’s new book isn’t a hagiography; Lewis’ poor upbringing in rural Alabama; his boyhood obsession with books and religion; preaching to chickens; inspired by a radio sermon by MLK; experiencing Jim Crow up-close; respectability politics; the CRA of 1964; Lewis as head of SNCC; getting to know JFK, RFK, and LBJ at a young age; non-violence as a core value; the voting rights campaign in Selma; the violent clash with cops at the bridge; the Voting Rights Act of 1965; the Black Power movement; BLM and George Floyd; Lewis’ wife giving him the confidence to run for office; Marion Barry; Julian Bond and his cocaine habit; colorism; how Lewis was “shockingly early” to support gay rights; his bond with Bayard Rustin; staying vigilant on voting rights in the 1990s; their evolving nature in the 21st Century; his campaign for the African-American History Museum; skepticism toward the Congressional Black Caucus; the flawed documentary Good Trouble; AOC and Ayanna Pressley; Lewis the Big Tent Democrat; switching his ‘08 support from Hillary to Barack; his viral moments of dancing and crowd-surfing; and keeping his integrity over a long career in politics.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Christine Rosen on humanness in a digital world, Brianna Wu on trans lives and politics, Mary Matalin on anything but politics, Nick Denton, Adam Kirsch on his book On Settler Colonialism, and John Gray on the state of liberal democracy. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

On our latest episode, with Reihan Salam, a listener writes:

Wonderful conversation. The musical themes I hear beneath your words, gents, is what American cultural philosopher Albert Murray called “Omni-American.” Our nation’s motto sums it up beautifully: E Pluribus Unum — “Out of Many, One.” The “many” are the bountiful tributaries of peoples who comprise our pluralistic mosaic and melting pot. The “one” is the superordinate American-ness to which we aspire — grounded in what Ralph Ellison called our sacred founding documents.

Another melody line I hear in your conversation is what philosophers Anthony Appiah and Danielle Allen called “rooted cosmopolitanism.” Omni-Americans have the capacity to be grounded in particular identities — ethnic, religious, political — while also being citizens of the world, as it were, embracing the universal through the particular, as well as the global and local. Thanks for playing the chords that need to be heard in these times of confusion and deep polarization.

Always happy to bring Albert Murray into the convo. Another fan writes, “I enjoyed your conversation with Reihan Salam, and I can see why you liked him as a young blogger.” On another recent episode, with Musa al-Gharbi, a listener writes:

I’d taken a holiday from listening to your podcast because I simply couldn’t bring myself to listen to guests like Michelle Goldberg. I’d never heard of Musa al-Gharbi, so I figured I’d listen to him — and I’m glad I did. He was particularly good on the fallacy of assuming that simply by putting minority people in power, you are going to get a more compassionate order. I was struck by his arguing that you might wind up with the opposite.

Also, he was good on minority voting preferences. Why minorities are supposed to vote for other minority people when they don’t agree with them is a bit of a mystery. Yet that is precisely what the Obamas were banging on about. That worked out well!

Musa also acknowledged something I’ve noticed: that a really large percentage of Black leaders and spokespeople are multi-racial or children of immigrants. They are not descended exclusively from the American ex-slave class. That’s interesting.

Lastly, you bought into something that you should have realized was not true. Musa comes from a military family and his twin was killed in Afghanistan. At one point you chimed in something along the lines of, “Well that proves you’re not some kind of anti-American Islamist.” But his background and family history are not proof of anything. His brother’s death could have had a radicalizing effect on him. Military experience at times turns certain vets into anti-institutional radicals. It happened with Vietnam. Thankfully it didn’t happen to him, but background is no guarantee.

Fair. I was referring rather to ways in which others could try to dismiss his arguments. Another listener has a question “prompted by the terrific episode with Musa al-Gharbi”:

You said at one point that you wished you could be an atheist, but you don’t know how not to believe. I feel the opposite; I’m an atheist who wishes I could believe. So I’m curious: what made you say that? (I believe you have the better end of the bargain!)

That’s a very long answer. I’m going to try and explore it in the book I’m working on. I can’t begin to summarize it here.

From an old subscriber who just returned:

I tried to take a bit of a break from politics towards the end of this election season. But I just listened to your episode with Anderson Cooper, so I’m back. That was a beautiful, difficult conversation. Thank you.

Another who appreciated the episode:

I just wanted to send a thank you for sharing the heart-wrenching story about your grief at losing so many friends in the early 1990s. I am currently going through a difficult time with my mother, who has been showing signs of dementia for the past couple of years, and has just recently taken a turn for the (way) worse.

The Mary and Martha story — and your interpretation of to be an affirmation of the commandment to love one another, and more specifically, to be together — has really helped me to transition into this new phase of life. I was grieving the loss of all that my mother was to our family — lamenting all of the family gatherings that would likely never happen again. But your story was a reminder to me that my mom is still here, beneath the cobwebs of delirium, and she still shines through with lucidity from time to time — and the time we have together is a gift that was always meant to be temporary.

You and Anderson have positively changed my life this week. Thank you.

Can’t ask for more than that. Here’s a large portion of our convo on the AIDS days:

Another listener wrote from 35,000 feet:

I listened to your conversation with Anderson at the beginning of a long airplane flight. I listened to it straight through, except for one moment early on when my seat neighbor tapped me to ask if I was alright because I kept making little pathetic gulping noises, and my shirt was getting damp from tears. I mumbled something, and she handed me a Kleenex. Kind soul.

I don’t know how to write to you about this without getting maudlin and ponderous. You made me remember my years as a med student and resident in San Francisco starting in 1992. I feel sheepish at still feeling so wrecked about AIDS before protease inhibitors, because I didn’t suffer anything in my personal life near what you and so many others did. But it fucking wrecks me.

All of the medical stuff was awful, of course. And we had such agonizingly crude treatments. But what my brain reels from — what I still haven’t processed — is the emotions. It feels like a cliche to write this, but so many of the young gay guys I met had escaped from their families and hometowns to live in an exciting place where there was an actual community for them … and now they were dying.

Their parents would visit — or a sister and mom but not the dad, or whatever — and it had been a couple of years since they’d spoken because things were horribly strained and everyone was still mad and hurt … but now there was this horrible beast of death looming over everything. A couple of times I got to witness reconciliations — what fucking miracles those were — but most of these families didn’t have the grace or the tools to get to that. And sometimes the lover — or a couple of supportive friends who had actually been there during the hard times — would be staying at the bedside, and the charge of resentment that passed back and forth between them and the family was palpable.

A couple of the parents still visit my mind at night, one in particular. We had a young mentally ill guy who behaved like a total asshole all the time. He’d clearly been an extremely difficult son, and the mom had had enough and wouldn’t visit. He had no local support network. But the dad drove an RV out from Idaho and lived in it for weeks in the hospital parking lot helping oversee the care of his son. When I spoke to him the morning after his son died, he just looked tired. I’d expected sadness, or relief, or probably both. But instead he was just a shell.

I wrote to you a few months ago asking if you were playing the role in public discourse that you want to be playing. Well, this talk with Anderson Cooper was a wonderful example of what I’d hoped for. I mean, yes, please continue pissing me off on a weekly basis about political crap and culture-war chum, because it’s good for me. But please also keep touching on things that matter in a deeper sense.

My plane’s about to land. Thanks for making this flight pass so quickly.

P.S. I remember picking up copies of what must have been Diseased Pariah News! Wow, blast from the past.

Many of us who went through the plague have buried feelings for years. I guess I do believe that, over all, getting the grief out there, expressing it in words, either in speech or writing, helps. It’s how I cope with things. I put them into words and they scare me less.

Another listener can relate to that episode from a much different vantage point:

I was also oddly comforted by the universality of the grief experience. In particular, listening to you and Anderson talk about walking down the aisles of a grocery store in America and feeling like you’re in some kind of fantasy-land: this is EXACTLY what I felt the morning after my twins and I arrived in America, leaving my husband behind in Israel, a week-and-a-half after October 7.

The babies and I were sick, completely jet-lagged, and I was on my own and unsure when or even whether I would ever see my husband again. At 7 in the morning in Utah, walking down the cookies and crackers aisle, I really felt like I had been shaken upside down off planet Earth and landed on another alien world. It felt like there was a hazy, impassable wall between me and everything and everyone I looked at.

I couldn’t talk about it because it felt like any words I used not only didn’t capture the scope of the horror and grief, but my words actually betrayed the awfulness by how poorly I described it. I try to talk about it more now, but still only with people I trust. (I learned my lesson once, after I spoke about it with someone I went to college with, who then publicly announced to his thousands and thousands of followers that I was an infant killer and and genocidal maniac.)

So thank you. That was a terrific episode to listen to — not because it was pleasant, but because it felt good to be seen and understood by someone whose experiences, while so very different, were in other ways so very similar.

Here’s a guest rec for the pod:

I’m just now listening to your conversation with Walter Kirn, where you talk about coastal condescension. It made me think you could invite Jim and Deb Fallows on to discuss their excellent book, Our Towns. It’s part travel memoir and part argument that, despite the craziness in federal government, local communities all across the US (in red states and blue) are contending with a lot of the same problems and are generating solutions in inspiring ways — both relative to their context but also showing a surprising amount of continuity across settings.

There is a deep pragmatism in these localized approaches that betrays the performativity of what we see in federal governing right now. While Jim and Deb tend towards the left in their own politics, I could see someone like Patrick Deneen finding a lot of wisdom in them looking to local communities to resolve problems in ways that are contextually responsive, rooted in local values and customs, etc. It could be an interesting bookend for your conversation with Deneen, where I know you were struggling with the immediate political relevance of his thinking.

On the big SCOTUS news of the week, an attorney writes:

I confess: When you start writing about trans issues, I tend to zone out. You’ve aired many reader dissents that are similar to my thoughts. I won’t rehash. But earlier today, because I’m a complete nerd with lots of time on my hands right now, I listened to the oral arguments in United States v. Skrmetti that challenged Tennessee’s SB1. All I could think about was, “Man, I hope Andrew writes about this on Friday.”

The United States presented what I thought was the correct legal position and a sensible middle ground that I would think you’d appreciate. In essence, the US argues that SB1, on its face, discriminates on the basis of sex: a natal boy takes testosterone to conform to their biological sex (e.g., testosterone to balance a hormone deficiency)? Legal. But a natal girl takes testosterone to conform to their gender contrary to their biological sex (e.g., testosterone to produce secondary sexual characteristics)? Illegal. By its very terms, SB1 treats one gender different than another. (If you think that this sounds similar to the Bostock reasoning, you’re not wrong.)

From there, the United States didn’t argue that SB1 was therefore unconstitutional and bigoted and transphobic. It just argued that the courts should apply “intermediate scrutiny” when considering such laws. (I won’t bore you with the differing legal standards for Equal Protection challenges, though I bet you know them. If you or readers are interested, read the Wikipedia pages for strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, and rational basis review.)

By way of the solicitor general, the United States (1) specifically acknowledged that there are biological differences between sexes, (2) admitted that sex-segregated sports and locker rooms are different cases that have stronger arguments in favor than SB1, (3) conceded that states have a lot of legitimate grounds to regulate in this space, (4) stated that there were those who detransitioned after childhood treatment, and (5) even pointed to another Red State minor-trans-care regime that she said is probably constitutional. West Virginia has a system that requires the sign-off of two physicians, one with a mental health specialty, among other procedures to hinder your (probably imagined) scenario of a kid waltzing into a Planned Parenthood and skipping out with puberty blockers. The United States wasn’t even arguing that SB1 itself had to be struck down, but rather needed to be subjected to more scrutiny — scrutiny that it might well pass.

All in all, it was pure Sully bait. (No reference to loss of orgasm, though. Alas, I was really looking forward to that word making it into the record.)

Aside from wanting to hear your thoughts on this in a future column, I also would like you to keep that measured, methodical, and individualized position of the United States in mind next time you think that mainstream Dems have gone ‘round the gender bend. The official position of the Biden administration via its solicitor general is that there can be legitimate, reasonable restrictions on minor trans care to be sure that it is appropriate and necessary; that there can be commonsense consensus on handling sex and gender in school sports and other settings; and that there are indeed inescapable differences between sexes. When the rubber meets the road and the Biden Justice Department had to stake out a position on these issues, their position was a hell of a lot closer to yours than it is to the imagined position you’ve been ascribing to them for the past several years.

I address this today in the column. My own view is that the model for a human being — a sexless one — that’s required to argue for sex discrimination is a false one, which is why no discrimination is taking place. A boy’s body and a girl’s body are fundamentally different when it comes to the impact of testosterone, and so what might be appropriate for one is not appropriate for the other: a simple, empirical biological point. It has nothing to do with equal protection and everything to do with biology.

I notice that you start your argument by saying that the issue is that the US “discriminates on the basis of sex” but finish it by saying “SB1 treats one gender different than another.” This linguistic confusion has done so much damage. Gender is not the same as sex. Where biological factors are concerned, sex matters, not gender.

Next up, a reader writes, “I couldn’t disagree more with your assessment of Nancy Mace”:

With her refreshing plain-speaking, she’s the voice of women across the political spectrum who’ve had enough and would like our single-sex spaces back, thank you very much. Bathroom rules worked fine until a minute ago. They were enforced by strong social norms. Queer theorists and trans rights activists have been attacking these norms with glee, aided and abetted by interest groups aligned with the Democratic Party. No one has benefitted from this — not women, not transwomen, and certainly not the Democratic Party. It’s time for a re-think.

You wrote about a transwoman’s “right to be seen as a woman.” I’m genuinely surprised that a conservative such as yourself doesn’t see the immediate problem: no one has the right to control how they are seen by others. In a free and pluralistic society; believe what you want, but don’t expect me to share your beliefs. Maybe it’s reasonable for transwomen to ask that family and friends see them as women, but it’s definitely unreasonable to ask this of complete strangers in enclosed spaces. Can you really not see how public policies based on a pretence could be abused by nefarious people? It’s already happening.

We tried being kind. We were told that opening up our bathrooms to a few people of the male sex was a compassionate concession for a harmless and marginalised minority. What did we get? Among many outcomes previously unimaginable: convicted male rapists assaulting female inmates in women’s prisons. I have lost faith in countless institutions. Hopefully, we’re at the beginning of the end of this disastrous experiment in pretending that some men are actually women. It will take years to undo the damage.

What we need now is clarity and choice. Some women don’t mind having transwomen in their spaces, but not all women feel that way, not by a long shot. Yes, transwomen should be treated with dignity and respect. As should women. If women are coerced by the state or bullied by society into accepting people of the male sex in their spaces, then consent and bodily autonomy are meaningless. Women fear sexual assaults, voyeurism, and exhibitionism, which are crimes committed overwhelmingly by people of the male sex. Transwomen are people of the male sex. It’s illiberal (and Orwellian) to force women to pretend this isn’t true. Have you seen the videos of teenage girls pleading with school boards to reinstate single-sex spaces? People’s indifference to them baffles me.

When it comes to public spaces, we need to consider everyone’s needs and re-establish norms. We need to have single-sex spaces (including bathrooms) because women want them, and create new spaces to accommodate gender diversity. Most of all, we need to stop demonizing women for wanting something we had and valued — single-sex spaces — which was taken away with limited consultation. We’re done with being called bigots or “ill-mannered” for wanting privacy and safety, and for resisting attempts to compel our beliefs.

I share your admiration for Sarah McBride’s grace, though perhaps for different reasons. What I admire is that a woman said no, and McBride respected her boundaries.

I’m more than happy to air this point of view. I get it. I do think, however, that a bathroom with stalls solves the core issue. Showers, locker-rooms, etc — where public nudity is common — are a whole other thing.

Another responds to this reader — “the dissenter from Houston whose child is a 23-year-old transman”:

The dissenter, I think, inadvertently proves the point you’ve been making: that fast-tracked and irreversible transitions to minors are inappropriate. He and his wife are both “career mental health professionals” who have ready access to world-class medicine and who spent years with numerous patient and ethical practitioners, who guided their child through the process, with surgery taking place only once the child turned 18. So this story includes every conceivable advantage to an optimal outcome.

Nothing that you’ve written — that I’ve read at least — would object to any of that. What you’ve objected to is the opposite: the bullying of vulnerable parents through unethical shock techniques (“dead boy or live girl,” etc.) to get young children who could not possibly give informed consent to undergo permanent treatment on an expedited basis. Your dissenter is well-spoken and clearly caring, but he made your point for you.

Yes. I have no problem whatever with grown adults identifying and living as they wish. This issue is not about transgender people. It’s about the rights of children, gay, trans and straight.

Another writes:

Reading your work was what persuaded me to support marriage equality, so I wanted to mention some data that got lost in the election coverage. Basically, both the left and the right seem to have proven wrong by the first decade post-Obergefell.

First, on the right. Gays getting married did not, in fact, ruin heterosexual marriages. It’s been quite the opposite. The divorce rate between men and women has fallen since Obergefell:

More surprisingly to me was the gap between gays and lesbians in their respective divorce rates. Most gay men appear to be happily married whereas lesbians are not. Gay men divorce at half the rate of heterosexuals, and lesbians divorce 1.5 times more often. I was shocked, although my wife was not. (The obvious joke is that straight women should act more like gay men.)

More seriously, it put in mind of the Paradox Of Female Happiness. Despite Second Wave feminism being the most successful political movement in American history, with its core tactical achievements enshrined for decades, women have become steadily less happy.

Yes: the greater longevity of gay male, compared with lesbian, marriages is a shocker, given that rates of sexual promiscuity are stratospherically higher among gay men than among lesbians. The reason is almost certainly that these marriages tolerate “monogamish” arrangements where infidelity is not a dealbreaker.

Men are always going to be more open to semi-open relationships than women, because we’re wired a little differently. With two women, the emotional demands for fidelity can become too much, and the marriage thereby becomes brittle and more easily broken. With two men, they can just carry on after indiscretions with much milder repercussions and feelings. For men, sex is not often about love! Once you plug in how testosterone and estrogen affect humans differently, it all makes sense.

Next up, more dissents over Ukraine. The first:

You wrote that President Biden is “suddenly changing course.” Um, no. Yes, the current administration made an adjustment. No, it was not sudden, nor was it a course correction. It was not even unpredicted. The incoming administration has an oft-repeated campaign promise to bring the conflict between Ukraine and Russia to an end immediately. This has shifted strategy for both sides. The end game has changed.

Previously, both Ukraine and Russia fought as if this were a long game. The goal was to keep going, tire the opponent, and eventually come to the bargaining table with the best position attainable. Now, both sides may be pushed to the negotiating table in a few weeks. Pressure has mounted to reach the best bargaining position by 20 January 2025.

Since 2022, Ukraine’s allies have repeatedly changed their minds from, “No, you may not have this/do this,” to “Yes, go ahead.” The escalation has been slow and consistent. The latest move was a foreseeable consequence of the American election. If I, the art history major, knew this when I cast my ballot four weeks ago, surely other people did, too.

I think you may misread the British Storm Shadow missile attack in Kursk. It hit a military facility during a time of war. Judging by the presence of North Korean officers — including one of high value — this was a carefully chosen target based on reliable intelligence. North Korea sent troops and weapons to assist Russia. This missile attack was a demonstration of military and intelligence strength designed both to weaken Russia and to make North Korea reconsider.

Your assertion that the Biden administration fails to take nuclear conflict seriously is undermined by Bob Woodward’s book War. In chapter 35, pages 150-165, Woodward describes behind-the-scenes negotiations to prevent Russia from using a tactical nuclear weapon in the autumn of 2022. Additionally, when Russia fired its hypersonic medium-range missile at Ukraine recently, it informed the US first, so the missile would not be misread as a nuclear strike.

Both sides recognize this is a proxy fight. Both sides are being careful not to “break the seal.”

At the end of your essay, you blame both the current US administration and leadership in Russia for making the world unstable and dangerous by permitting this conflict to continue. Huh? There’s no big red “Stop War” button on the Resolute desk. Negotiations will occur when both Ukraine and Russia are ready to do so. That is the way of these things. The United States may be able to influence the conflict, but it cannot control it.

Ukrainians have a right to self-governance and security, as do all human beings. That right is not abridged by other people’s fear of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. The post-1945 world order is built on the rule that nobody is allowed to march into a neighboring country to change a border. This applies to all countries — including ones with nuclear weapons.

Do you really want to change the rule to, “You can’t invade your neighbors, unless you have nuclear weapons”? Not only would that give the usual suspects a green light to destabilize, it would further incentivize non-nuclear powers with expansion ambitions to develop nukes.

Another writes:

I’m not sure that my thoughts should register as a dissent, but the subtitle of your piece (“NATO has just attacked Russia with long-range missiles. What could go wrong?”) caught my eye. I’m a former foreign-affairs reporter, and your piece brought to mind some context that you might want to consider.

You mentioned that Russia is changing their official nuclear doctrine. I won’t argue that this revision has no signaling value, but its significance will be affected by the fact that NATO has maintained for several years that Russia’s official nuclear doctrine is a lie — that Putin has been planning for the possibility of elective, offensive nuclear conflict for a long time. In 2020, a senior Latvian defense official told me on the record that Russia routinely conducts military exercises that train for the use of nuclear weapons against NATO.

By many accounts, Putin came very close to using nuclear weapons in 2022, when Ukrainian forces had the temerity to recover some of their recently-occupied land. He decided not to do so, for a number of reasons — which probably included Western threats of retaliation, and also pressure from China and India. At least some of the reasons for not doing so in 2022 remain true today.

It’s always been very striking to me that the nearby countries most likely to suffer in the event of conventional or nuclear conflict between NATO and Russia tend to favor a much more “confrontational” policy than the one that seems most popular in places like Berlin and Washington. They might not be right, but they have a lot to lose if they are wrong, and they are serious enough to know that they need to think hard about how to manage downside risk. They think they perceive an inner logic of Putin’s decision-making, which leads them to believe that the approach that some Western leaders suppose is “risk-averse” actually drives risk.

A former Latvian national security adviser, for instance, argued to me that the world is losing control of nuclear proliferation precisely because Putin — by launching an unnecessary war under the cover of his own nuclear umbrella — has made nukes so much more attractive. And Zaluzhny, if I understand him correctly, didn’t suggest that Biden’s decision is spurring WWIII. He argued that WWIII is underway insofar as Russia has brought Iran and North Korea to the Ukrainian battlefield. And he suggested that the conflict might be contained to Ukraine if the West provides Ukraine with more technology. I don’t think he intended to be interpreted as blaming Biden for the risk of WWIII.

None of the above is to suggest that you should not be worried, but it is to make the point that there is not one course of action that clearly diminishes the risk, even of nuclear war, and another course of action — that Western leaders, inexplicably, favor — that increases the risk. In the early 2000s, it was possible for Western leaders to save everyone a lot of trouble by declining to project power in various ways. We saw how that went. If anything, the job of a leader has gotten harder.

Thanks for that overview. Another expert weighs in:

I am a longtime subscriber who works in the national security field, and I have written to you before on Ukraine. I felt compelled to respond to your most recent piece because I did not find that your analysis accurately captures the risk dynamics of this conflict. The main thrust of your argument is permitting the use of ATACMs more directly implicates NATO in fighting against the Russians and thus unduly raises the possibility of Putin using a nuke. I appreciate you acknowledging counterarguments — that Putin is bluffing, and this strengthens Ukraine’s bargaining position — but I think you too quickly downplay them.

Regardless of Putin’s signaling with the IRBM launch into Ukraine, it remains unlikely that he is threatening NATO with nuclear retaliation. This is because the fundamental factors constraining Russian use of nukes remain unchanged. In fact, they have only worsened as the Russian economy and military get battered. Russia is now so reliant on non-European markets to buttress its ailing economy that it does not want to risk alienating them through the use of a nuclear weapon. China has warned explicitly not to use nukes. If Russia did, NATO would use their conventional military overmatch to crush Russia in Ukraine, which would be counterproductive to Putin’s war aims.

Historical precedence is a good indicator as well. NATO has successfully “salami sliced” each red line that Putin has drawn with his similar threats and weapon demonstrations. Regarding your analogy of the US getting hit by a missile constructed in Russia, the critical context you are not including is if we were the actual malign aggressor to a conflict. That compromised moral standing makes nuclear retaliation much less likely in this hypothetical scenario per the reputational costs I noted above.

Biden has the prerogative as commander-in-chief to respond to an active conflict with US interests so long as he is not committing US troops nor requesting new funds (which I agree would be a political and normative breach as a lame duck). This policy announcement is also less dramatic than at first blush, since we already delivered these ATACMs and have already allowed for HIMARs to be shot into Russia. Any awkwardness between Trump’s stated desire for a negotiated settlement and this ramp-up in support is the normal course of administration transitions.

Let me provide the positive case for Biden’s decision. At this juncture, neither side is willing to negotiate because Ukraine cannot — rightly — trust Russia to abide by a settlement, and Russia believes they can further attrite Ukraine. So it’s prudent to strengthen Ukraine’s ability to resist attrition through providing long-range missiles that can disrupt Russia’s logistics so they have greater leverage in potential negotiations.

On Real Time recently, you minimized Ukraine’s concerns of Russia reneging on a deal by saying that since Russia was already devastated, they will not be much of a threat. However, that misses the geopolitical opportunity for the US — without committing combat troops — to further degrade Russia’s position and neuter them as a significant adversary for the next decade. This would allow the US to shift the bulk of their strategic and military focus onto the more critical concern of China in the Asia Pacific.

Speaking of which, you state the brinkmanship over Ukraine will set a precedent for Taiwan. I agree, but in a different manner. American support for Ukraine, including this recent decision to permit long-range missiles, helps to strengthen deterrence against other revisionist powers like China. By demonstrating US commitment to the sovereignty principle, and our capacity for long-term military support for a partner, this support can continue to sow doubt in Xi Jinping about invading Taiwan.

Biden’s foreign policy legacy is messy, but on this question of permitting Ukrainian use of ATACMs on military targets in Russia, it is sound and should be built upon in the next Trump administration.

All I will add to this is that it includes the goal of weakening Russia, period. That’s rarely articulated publicly in the usual list of war aims.

One more reader on Ukraine:

The US and NATO are risking increased hostilities with Russia — potentially dramatically increased. What for? There seem to be two interests in play: 1) the inviolability of UN-sanctioned borders; and 2) where Russia rightly ends and Ukraine begins.

Ukraine became a member of the UN with borders that all UN members are obliged to respect. It is illegal and unacceptable that Russia did not respect Ukraine’s borders. However, the world is full of border disputes. The border between India and China is undefined and disputed. We have territorial disputes over the Falklands and Gibraltar. The Golan Heights. Spain and Morocco both claim Ceuta and Melilla. Even the US and Canada both claim Machias Seal Island. Some countries, like Russia and China, are just bullies. Despite UN rules, the human world is a messy place, but these conflicts do not have to be escalated.

The border between Russian and Ukrainian territory bounced around for hundreds of years. There have been agreements, violations of agreements, disputes, ambiguity, gamesmanship, and random events. Movements of people happened separately. The Russian Empire took Crimea from the Turkic Tatars and then Khrushchev moved it from the Russian Soviet Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. The music stopped when the USSR collapsed. Is the border as it happened to exist on that day really worth risking nuclear war over?

In Putin’s State of the Nation address in 2005, he lamented that Russians found themselves outside of Russia’s borders after the Soviet Union chaotically fell apart:

“First and foremost it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory.

He shared this view with Americans ten years later:

… in an instant 25 million Russian people found themselves beyond the borders of the Russian state …. They were living in a single country. And all of a sudden, they turned out to be outside the borders of the country. You see this is a huge problem. … Do you think it’s normal that 25 million Russian people were abroad all of a sudden? Russia was the biggest divided nation in the world. It’s not a problem? Well, maybe not for you. But it’s a problem for me.

Putin has long seemed to see it as his highest duty to stitch his torn-apart country back together again, to repatriate those 25 million “Russian people.” The Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine are the largest component of this “huge problem.” That is roughly the territory that Russia claims to have annexed.

The leaders of the Soviet Union did not draw the line between the Russian and Ukrainian Soviet Republics based upon the two becoming separate countries someday. They drew that line for multiple, internal, quirky Soviet reasons, not thinking that it mattered very much. The Soviet placement of that line is not worth mass death and destruction.

My thinking on this has evolved. At first I thought that Putin’s illegality and bullying must not be rewarded. Now, I think that just because Putin is a bully, it doesn’t mean that the Russia/Ukraine border is in the right place. It is past time to deescalate and negotiate.

Early on, Biden’s actions put Ukraine in a strong enough position for negotiation. But Biden missed that opportunity and has been on an increasingly dangerous path ever since. Putin will not let that border continue to sit on the wrong side of his Russian people. Fixing this “genuine tragedy” is an existential priority for him. He’s now gone much too far to turn back.

I agree. And this will surely be the result: some kind of settlement that allows part of Eastern Ukraine to be incorporated into Russia, with security guarantees for the Western part.

Lastly, a reader asks:

Is it too late to add a quick update on your Ozempic experience to this week’s Dish? Fat inquirers want to know!

I bounced back in weight a bit, but that’s because I was sick and gave myself a week off the thing. My basics: started at 187; went down to 167; now around 174. The good news is that my body fat percentage has now gone down to 12.5 percent, and my belly fat — the visceral stuff that’s most damaging to your health — has declined sharply.

My goal is to get to 170 pounds and below 10 percent in body fat. I’m within spitting distance of this now. I’ll keep you posted.

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