BRATTLEBORO-Ambassador Peter Galbraith will take the podium at the 2025 Windham World Affairs Council (WWAC) annual Galbraith Lecture - as he has regularly since 1999 - this year to deliver a talk, "Hot Spots: Revolution in Syria, Ukraine's Munich moment, NATO in peril, War in Iran, and the Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza," on Wednesday, Oct. 8, at Centre Congregational Church on Main Street.
According to a WWAC news release, Galbraith, the son of the distinguished economist John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006), will focus on the wars in Europe and the Middle East that have dominated this year's news and endanger the post-1945 world order:
• In August, President Donald Trump met Russia President Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Trump went seeking a ceasefire, yet returned embracing Putin's plan for Ukraine to surrender territory in exchange for a promise not to invade again.
• Sharp divisions between the U.S. and Europe over Ukraine, Russia, and Trump's stated desire to seize Greenland from Denmark threaten the future of the NATO alliance.
• In Syria, the December 2024 overthrow of the Assad regime provided a moment of hope that has since dissipated amid ethnic and religious conflict.
• In June, a long-simmering tension between Israel and Iran erupted into open conflict, with the United States bombing Iran's nuclear capabilities, albeit with uncertain results.
• And Israel's unrelenting war on Gaza, about to enter its third year, has been declared militarily unwinnable by many of Israel's own experts, with the highest toll being paid by Gazan civilians and the Israeli hostages still in captivity there.
Galbraith has worked in a wide variety of positions, both for the United States government and outside of it, from Afghanistan to East Timor to Ukraine to Syria, among many other places. Currently working as what some have described as a "freelance diplomat," he travels regularly to such hot spots and uses his personal connections to advocate for humanitarian causes.
Since 2021, he has been going to Kurdish-held Northeast Syria to retrieve children born to Yazidi mothers who had been kidnapped and raped by Islamic State group fighters. He has reunited the children with their mothers and facilitated the resettlement of mothers and children to Western countries.
The lecture will be moderated by Brattleboro's John Ungerleider, professor of peace and conflict studies at Vermont Law & Graduate School. Ungerleider has decades of experience teaching and facilitating workshops with students from all over the world.
The Commons spoke recently with Peter Galbraith to get a preview of his talk.
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Annie Landenberger: I want to check about what you'll be addressing - the "hot spots."
Peter Galbraith: There are other significant issues in the world, such as U.S.–China relations and the potential for conflict. But when we talk about hot spots, we're talking about places where there's active conflict that engages the United States in one way or another.
On the one hand, you have the Russia–Ukraine war, now 3½ years into it. And on the other, you have the Middle East/Near East, which is always a hot spot, but with three new elements.
First, the change in Syria with the overthrow of the Assad regime.
You have the situation in Gaza, beginning with the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, and the Israeli response. Both the attack and the response were horrific. There are massive war crimes committed by both sides, with the Israeli response now being determined to be genocide by the United Nations investigative team.
And then the other new element in the hot spot is the direct conflict between Israel and Iran, and the United States participating in military action against Iran.
Obviously, hostility between the U.S. and Iran has been a feature since 1979, and there have been incidents. But in terms of a direct American military strike on Iran, that is also a new development. These are the issues that I'll cover.
A.L.: You'll talk about what's at stake....
P.G.: What's at stake, particularly in Ukraine, is the entire international order that has kept the peace in the world since 1945.
Now, people might say it hasn't been very peaceful since 1945; in fact, it's been an extraordinarily peaceful era in which the United Nations and the post-1945 international system has kept the U.S. - kept the world - from another world war.
The reason, if you think about it, is that wars, almost from the beginning of time, have been about one country or, before there were countries, about one prince or one tribal leader trying to seize the territory of another.
And with the U.N. system, what it has meant is that once you are a member of the United Nations, and you have internationally recognized territory, then you are protected against the notion that one country can go in, seize, and annex your territory.
Now what's at stake in Ukraine is precisely that.
There have been wars over disputed territory and that includes the Middle Eastern wars, India, Kashmir, and others. But the notion that a country can, as Russia is trying to do, invade and try to annex Ukrainian territory - it's about more than just Ukraine. It's really about the international system.
A.L.: So can all that just be shot? Is that the threat?
P.G.: Yeah, I think it's very much the threat.
You have the Trump administration wanting to make a deal. Of course, Trump said he would have this done on day 1. So he's 141 days late.
The deal they're proposing would force Ukraine to surrender territory. In my view, that opens the door to the idea that countries can invade other countries and seize territory. And that may be an idea that appeals to Trump.
A.L.: So it's a slippery slope....
P.G.: It's one big slippery slope. For sure.
A.L.: I gather you'll be addressing the status and stance of NATO as well. It seems like that's being rendered somewhat impotent, too.
P.G.: Well, there are two facets to that. First, what is NATO? NATO is a mutual defense treaty, like the U.N. charter, which basically says if one of its members is attacked, everybody will get together and gang up on the country that's attacking. And that is intended to deter attacks.
One problem is that with Trump seeking to appease Putin, the idea of a unified NATO response to what's happening in Ukraine, and the danger that it poses more broadly, is undermined. But Trump has made clear that he doesn't like NATO. He'd like to get rid of it. And there's no faster way for him to do so than to attack Denmark and seize Greenland. I imagine this is something that Putin is encouraging him to do.
You can see in Trump's mentality, "Putin's getting his, I ought to get mine." A lot of people dismiss [him, saying that] Greenland is just empty rhetoric, a kind of obsession.
But I'll tell you: When I served in the Balkans, we spent billions of dollars on spying operations. The thing we most wanted to know from intercepting their mail and listening to their phone calls was: What were the leaders of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia going to do?
And you know what the best predictor of what they were going to do was? What they said they were going to do!
And so, when you have a guy like Trump saying that he wants to seize power, I take that seriously, especially since I think it actually fits into [Trump's and Putin's] shared agenda of destroying NATO.
Putin has been saying that Ukraine wasn't a nation. And everybody says, well, that was his propaganda. In my experience, the greatest danger is that the people who most fall for propaganda are the propagandists. They believe their own lies.
A.L.: Do you have hope for the world picture?
P.G.: I like to say that pessimism is for a diplomat what cowardice is for a soldier. So it is in the nature of being a diplomat that you need to be optimistic.
That said, I'm a pessimist at this point about what is happening both domestically and internationally with regard to the United States - the very things that I, as the American ambassador, would be talking about in Croatia [in 1993 to 1998], a country that had just emerged from an authoritarian communist dictatorship.
[Leaders] flatter Donald Trump, but they do not admire him. They don't like anything he says. Fortunately, he's easily flattered.
But that is such a different world from the one that I served when representing the United States in the 1990s, when we were the world's only superpower, when Europe was incapable of dealing with the crisis in the Balkans.
At that time, Russia was down, China hadn't yet risen, and we just squandered the moment.
That's not just bad for American leadership: It's bad for the world. We need to be the guardians of democracy.
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Tickets are $25 for the Galbraith Lecture - the WWAC's annual fundraiser - with proceeds keeping programs free to the public and sustaining sponsorship of Brattleboro Union High School's Peace Jam.
The lecture will open with a wine and hors d'ourves reception. Doors open at 5:30 p.m. Registration is required at Galbraith.eventbrite.com.
Anyone who would like to attend but cannot pay should write to windhamworldaffairscouncil@gmail.com for volunteer opportunities or other access.
Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich (robertreich.substack.com) will open the evening with a virtual address in tribute to his mentor, John Kenneth Galbraith, "an economist whose belief that economies should serve people - and not the other way around - remains profoundly relevant," the WWAC release notes.
The WWAC, founded in 1961, hosts lectures, films, and other events on global topics, as well as a monthly Members' Salon, where members and their guests gather informally to discuss topics of the day.
For further information, visit windhamworldaffairscouncil.org.
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Editor's note: Stories presented as interviews in this format are edited for clarity, readability, and space. Words not spoken by interview subjects appear in brackets.
Annie Landenberger is an arts writer and columnist for The Commons. She also is one half of the musical duo Bard Owl, with partner T. Breeze Verdant.
This News item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.