Expertise as contingency-reduction: Evidence from interviews concerning Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine on German TV news

What experts are asked

Below, we reproduce a number of the questions which experts are asked, which serve to illustrate the range and the tone of the questions in our transcriptions and field notes.

Very briefly, Professor, with your many years of experience in this area, what is your gut feeling? Will it still work, will it remain peaceful, or will there be war? (Heute Journal, Question for Neitzel, 14.02.2022, all direct quotes our translation)

But Ukraine is not Chechnya. There are a lot of cities there. Does he [Putin] want to devastate them all now because he can’t win any other way? What do you think? (Heute Journal, Question for Masala, 03.03.2022)

What is your assessment? Can Ukraine really win this war? Or is that rather to some extent wishful thinking here in the West? (Heute Journal, Question for Neitzel, 10.04.2022)

How will we all feel the effects? It’s not just about filling up the car and heating the home. (Tagesthemen, Question for Fratscher, 10.3.2022)

As these quotes illustrate, the conversations take the news as their starting point, which leads to the request to situate events in some broader classificatory context. This general type of question is sometimes asked very directly, for example in the following quote from a clip referencing a meeting between Putin and German chancellor Scholz before the Russian invasion: ‘Could you help us to assess this in its context?’ [‘Helfen Sie uns mal das Einzuordnen.’.] (Tagesthemen, Question for Sasse, 15.02.2022)

In very general terms, we would submit, journalists are asking about what is happening, about what it all means and about what will happen. Questions about meaning are sometimes about significance in the sense of ‘historical importance’. The political scientist Herfried Münkler, for example, was asked: ‘How epochal is what we are currently experiencing?’ (Tagesthemen, Question for Münckler, 11.3.2022).

We observed that the questions posed are largely not about Eastern Europe as an area or about the people affected. They are about military events and about ‘us’, the nation, the ‘we’ that is witnessing, that should act or not, that will be affected in Germany. This is very explicit in the following quote:

What do we need to be prepared for? (Tagesthemen, Question for Kooths, 28.2.2022)

Beyond significance, understood as ‘historical importance’, questions sometimes address different dimensions of meaning. Some questions could be paraphrased as: ‘Does it mean we got it all wrong?’ or ‘What can be done now?’ such as when experts are asked to assess Germany’s, or more specifically the Social Democratic Party’s, past policies towards Russia (Tagesthemen, Question for Kropp, 19.4.2022).

Although historians feature prominently, and historians are at the core of German expertise about Eastern Europe, the questions are rarely about the past but about the present and the future. The question ‘What will happen?’ is part of the question ‘What is happening and what does it all mean?’.

In public reflections on her experience of providing expertise since the beginning of the current crisis, Gwendolyn Sasse, the head of the German flagship centre for academic expertise on Eastern Europe, ZOISS, has commented on the fact that she has again and again been asked the question ‘What is Putin thinking? ³ ’ Also in our corpus, this is indeed a frequently asked question. The following are both actual questions and a type that can be found adapted to a number of actual events:

What does the current course of the war tell you about Putin’s goal? (Heute Journal, Question for Masala, 25.02.2022)

Why is he doing this now? (Tagesthemen, Question for Marsala, 27.02.2022)

The question combines the news that prompts the discussion, a question about the present and a question about the future, with an attempt to access it through the entity attributed overarching causal force in the situation. Much rarer, but also asked is ‘what is [German chancellor] Scholz thinking?’ Examples of this are below.

Why doesn’t the chancellor himself communicate directly how this is supposed to work? (Tagesthemen, Question for Kropp, 15.4.2022)

Today Scholz promised money, but he continues to keep a low profile regarding the delivery of heavy weapons. Does he have no other option or doesn’t he want to? (Tagesthemen, Question for Mangott, 19.02.2022)

Knowledge claims in experts’ answers

Academics in our sample hardly make reference to any research. In our material, the military historian Sönke Neitzel is an exception in that he references research in two examples, concerning the relative security of the cold war period and the causes of war crimes. ⁴

But interviewees make knowledge claims in their responses. In reviewing the knowledge claims that academics give in response to these questions, we can note differences in what these knowledge claims are about. Sometimes this knowledge concerns specific factual or legal questions, such as who or what is responsible for the explosion of an under-water pipeline, whether Russia is committing genocide, or whether former chancellor’s Gerhard Schröder’s proposal for peace should be taken seriously. As they are often asked about the future, respondents also discuss claims relating to the future.

In those cases, experts largely do not claim certain knowledge, but they do reduce the range of plausible answers. Most scholars in the humanities and social sciences would argue that it is not possible to make claims about the future, though this was thought possible in some other periods in history (Loewith, 1949). In our materials, television news experts do not engage in prediction but they do reduce the contingency or openness that might be ascribed to the future.

In our transcripts, experts at times reject the demand for prediction in very explicit terms such as in the below:

Of course, I don’t have a crystal ball any more than the rest of us. Future prices of electricity are also traded on the electricity markets and you can sort of see what the experts, the companies and investors have in mind for the future and, unfortunately, things don’t look so good. In 2024 and 2025–if the markets are right – we will still have electricity prices that are several times higher than what we were used to. (Hirth, Tagesthemen 29.08.2022)

Honestly, ehm, I’m curious to see what happens. (Masala, Tagesthemen, 25.02.2022).

But experts do make claims about the future. This reduction of contingency uses a range of means. First, experts speak to questions about the future through the exclusion of certain possibilities: viewers are told not to expect Putin to give up on his territorial demands and on the demand that what would remain of Ukraine be neutralized. Viewers are told not to expect that the Ukrainian government would agree to Putin’s demands. Experts are speaking against hopes for a complete victory for Ukraine and say that it is hard to imagine that China and India would cease to support Russia.

In the contribution below, historian Sönke Neitzel also starts from the exclusion of the possibility of an overall end to the fighting, a return to ‘normalcy’. He then discusses a range of scenarios, such as a ‘kind of armistice’, a ‘frozen conflict’ (developed by analogy to the situation in Donbass) or a large offensive of Russian Army forces, which give some shape to what may or may not lay ahead.

So, in the best-case scenario, I reckon that in a few weeks there will be some kind of ceasefire – declared or not – in eastern Ukraine. But that this conflict is of course not resolved at all and that we will then have something like what we saw in the Donbass after 2014–in other words, a kind of frozen conflict that flares up from time to time. But other scenarios are also conceivable, such as the Russian armed forces launching a major offensive again after a break of a few months. So, an end to the fighting – as much as we would all like that – a return to business as usual is not in sight at all. (Neitzel, Tagesthemen 22.04.2022)

The distinction between scenarios is the basis for discussing (if not necessarily allocating) probabilities, such as in the below:

And if Ukraine continues to receive weapons, intelligence data, if it receives operational support, then Ukraine can launch further counter-offensives. However, it is more likely that we will end up in a war of attrition lasting for months, where men and material on both sides are worn out, soldiers fall, equipment is destroyed and neither side can make any significant progress on the front. Only when both sides have the impression that they can no longer achieve military success will there be a chance for possible negotiations. At the moment, however, we are still a long way from that. (Mangott, Tagesthemen, 13.12.2022)

Discussion of probability or risk make it possible to discuss outcomes that are of interest to the public, such as an escalation and expansion of the war to include NATO and possibly Germany itself:

I think these kinds of statements, these threats, we’ve been hearing them since the beginning of the war. Whenever Western nations have decided to go into the next higher category of arms deliveries, we have heard such threats from the Kremlin. So far, nothing has followed. Everything we’ve seen in terms of strategy changes from Putin in this war has centred on Ukraine and has not gone beyond Ukraine. Ultimately, I would say the risk hasn’t increased massively, but we can’t rule it out either. We simply don’t know what the point might be at which Putin would decide that this is now one point, or this is now one delivery too many, and now I’m escalating, now I’m at war with NATO. (Deitelhoff, Tagesthemen, 25.01.2023)

Recommendations in experts’ answers

Occasionally, questions turn very explicitly to concerns about ‘what should be done’. Experts are asked in general terms about how the ‘West’, or the German government should react to a move by Putin; or they are presented with a course of action, such as sanctions against Russia or the delivery of tanks to Ukraine, and asked if that is the right path forward.

Experts largely do not avoid answering these questions. In our materials, academics go on record to say that it is necessary for Germany to decrease its dependence on Russian and Chinese energy, for Russian banks to be excluded from the international banking system, for sanctions against oligarchs to be imposed and for tanks to be delivered to Ukraine.

But, as we have discussed, the questions put to experts mostly are formulated as versions of ‘what is happening?’ or ‘what will happen’, or ‘what are the kinds of things that could be happening’, or ‘what would it be like if [something] happened?’ The specific contribution of experts as envisioned by journalists is not in the specific normative statements (which journalists routinely discuss with politicians) but in explaining and situating what is and in making more concrete what could be.

There is, however, also a recommendation underlying the questions and answers about ‘what is happening?’ and ‘what will happen?’, which is towards a specific kind of pragmatic politics. Experts rule out certain expectations, of politicians and of events, and thereby draw attention to political choices, relevant factual questions and longer-term considerations amid external constrains.

When experts rule out certain extreme possibilities, this seems to open up or help maintain a space for a specific kind of politics. Experts are repeatedly asked about the risk of nuclear escalation, for example; by discussing this risk but also putting it into the context of previous experiences with such a risk and advocating against ‘panic’, and by highlighting the need ‘to learn to live with the nuclear threat’, different options within domestic and foreign policy can be discussed.

The resulting vision of politics is made explicit in the following quote from the political scientist Nicole Deitelhoff:

That is indeed very, very difficult. Of course, we can’t let ourselves be guided by these threats. That would actually have as a consequence, that we deter ourselves from taking action in any way. That can’t be the way forward. But of course this leads to a politics that proceeds cautiously and considers every step and also examines what the consequences of these steps are and also observes what happens with certain decisions, including the supply of weapons. So actually proceeding step by step and not letting yourself drift, so to speak, and always going straight to the next stage, but instead actually seeing what happens. I think that the approach that politicians have to take here is like driving in foggy conditions where one can only see at very limited distance. But that is simply necessary in the current situation, a very dynamic conflict situation. (Deitelhoff, Tagesthemen, 25.01.2023)

Similarly, by emphasizing that the war will not be ended quickly through military means in either direction, a range of choices about the delivery or not of arms and about a range of diplomatic steps that could be taken come into view. Drawing on knowledge about past conflicts, an expert, for example, mentions prisoner exchanges and discussions about grain exports as measures that could be taken to build trust (Schröder, Heute Journal according to fieldnotes, 29.01.2023).

When concrete options are identified and considered, factual questions that arise in relation to these options come into focus. Factual questions relating to weapons delivery, for example, include questions about threat scenarios, availability and cost and the difference that different weapon systems can or cannot make.

In some cases, experts make a separation between facts on the one hand and political decisions or the ‘political will’, on the other hand, marking some element of a deference to the political sphere, such as in the below:

Well, the question is what political will exists to supply such weapons. So, what Deputy Inspector General Laubental said is not wrong. The German stock of equipment is not very large and if we were to supply heavy weapons – Marder tanks or others – the Bundeswehr would indeed lack them. But the question is: are we prepared to accept this shortage for the sake of greater security in Ukraine, because we don’t want Ukraine to lose this war. I don’t think the Russian positions are at the Seelow Heights ⁵ right now, but they are in the Donetsk region and that’s where Russia must be confronted decisively, by all means, as the chancellor said. (Neitzel, Tagesthemen, 22.04.2022)

Shifting away from extreme but unlikely options also leads to the discussion of long-term issues, such as energy policy in its various dimensions and the role of critical infrastructures. An example of this is below.

Politicians and institutions must do three things in the future. Firstly, it needs to free itself much more quickly from its dependence on countries such as Russia, but also China, and especially when it comes to energy supplies to Russia, so that it is no longer susceptible to pressure, or no longer so susceptible. Secondly, of course, the expansion of renewable energies must take place much more quickly. This should have happened 10-15 years ago. So, this really needs to be prioritised. And thirdly, the third point is really about savings. We have much, much potential – in the building sector, in the transport sector – to use energy more efficiently. And these are the three measures that should have been prioritised 10-15 years ago and now it’s high time that this happened. That would also help to significantly reduce our dependence on Russian gas and oil over the coming years. But it is now really overdue to do this more quickly. (Fratscher, Tagesthemen, 10.03.2022).

Further analysis

To gain further perspectives on the material, we try to describe what is observed in the context of what might be observed but is not. We understand critical analysis as the practice of placing an object in the context of other imaginable alternatives. A full critical analysis in this sense cannot be confined to the comparison of ‘what is’ with what has already been identified as a preferrable alternative, such as that experts should be allowed to speak longer (Verhoeven, 2010), or that they take a different policy position. We should in principle compare what we observe to all other versions of what might be observed, including those versions that might be considered ‘worse’ from different perspectives. These ‘worse alternatives’ are often not considered in critical analysis as a matter of course.

In our case, we can contrast the interviews with imagined television programmes where news are complemented with specific research findings to a greater extent. We can contrast the material we presented with a plausible world, in which the future is held to be predictable, either in the terms of scientific expertise or in the terms of religious or political ideology.

These conversations could be about history or Eastern Europe, or about Ukrainians directly, but they are not. They are about the situation viewed through the lens of residents of Germany and German national politics. In both questions and answers, the national framing is striking: it underlies the ‘we’ that is implied both in questions about the future and in questions about where ‘we’ have gotten it wrong, and what ‘we’ should do. This is accepted by the experts in their answers.

The relevant views are further limited to a certain political range. There are no questions, for example, about a possible contribution of NATO, or of Ukrainian policies towards minorities in these interviews. There are no questions about ‘what Zelenskyy is thinking’, which would present decisions by the Ukrainian president as a puzzle in a way that is symmetrical to the way journalists often ask about Putin. We are prompted to think that this could be otherwise by one of our background interviews with a Russian studies scholar at a university in the UK, who explained his shock at a series of ‘mad decisions’ by Zelenskyy, who, according to the respondent continued to insist on sending thousands of soldiers into certain death for the cause of Ukrainian nationalism.

The broadly pro-Ukrainian framing by the journalists is not questioned on the shows in the experts’ answers. It is hard to imagine that this relative consensus among experts is not at least partly intended by producers who select and invite the experts. According to one of our background interviews, a selection process which operates to ‘avoid’ ‘pro-Putin’ positions can be justified within public television with reference to the liberal-democratic order established by the German constitution (FdGO), which foresees freedom of opinion within a limited framework designed to protect democracy. This can be interpreted to have a foreign-political dimension. Experts are not staged here to conduct a political debate, though it has to be noted that this political debate is taking place elsewhere, including with participation of academic experts, for example in talk shows and in politics itself. Further research could examine other media as well as public meetings hosted by federal and state agencies for political education, which have emerged as prominent sites of academics’ public engagements in this conflict.

What kind of ‘we’ is imagined in these conversations on public television news? The ‘we’ is used to denote a group of people resident in Germany, who need to ‘buy gasoline’ for their cars in Germany, heat their homes, are worried about war on German territory, and seek to support Ukrainians. There is no evidence for strong assumptions about cultural unity. The conversations here lean towards advocating for military support of Ukraine, and a possible need to strengthen the German army, but there is no evidence of war mongering or expansionism. There is also no talk of past or future (German) greatness or glory and honour. We can also note that there is hardly any hostility towards Russians or Russian culture; indeed, some of the experts featured on these programmes have gone on the record to challenge claims about an association between war crimes committed by Russians and Russian culture.