Angry Planet - A War for the Former Soviet Union

Episode Date: January 8, 2022

The former Soviet Union is looking a bit restive nowadays - putting it mildly. Russia has more than one hundred thousand troops on Ukraine’s borders - and has invaded Ukraine before - and has been fighting a war there ever since.And in the last few days, many Americans have learned there is a country called Kazakhstan, even if they can’t find it on a map. And Russia is playing a role to prop up the authoritarian government there.To help us understand what’s going on, we have the perfect guest. William Courtney is the former ambassador to Kazakhstan and is now a senior fellow at the Rand Corporation.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world and their own making. Frankly, that seems to be the problem. Welcome to Angry Planet. Hello and welcome to Angry Planet. I'm Jason Field. And I'm Matthew Galt. The former Soviet Union is looking a bit restive nowadays, putting it mildly. Russia has more than 100,000 troops on Ukraine's borders and has invaded Ukraine before and has been fighting a war there ever since. In the last few days, many Americans have learned there is a country called Kazakhstan, even if they can't yet find it on a map.

And Russia is playing a role to prop up the authoritarian government there. To help us understand what's going on, we happen to have the perfect guest. William Courtney is the former ambassador to Kazakhstan and is now a senior fellow with the Rand Corporation. Thank you so much for joining us. Sure, happy to. Can you describe Kazakhstan when you were ambassador, sort of the character of the regime and maybe even the people? Well, Kazakhstan is a vast country in Central Asia and the border with Russia. It's as large as all of Western Europe combined or as large as Texas times four and a half. People are nomadic by tradition, but friendly. They were very open to the outside when the Soviet Union collapsed. I think they felt that their candle had been snuffed out by Soviet Union for so long, and so they were thrilled to be welcomed by the outside world. The people, people, maybe as part of the nomadic tradition, tend to be friendly, self-reliant, willing to be pragmatic, and not given to ideological or spasms, if you will. Decentralized power is a more nomadic tradition. So as a result of this and other things, the United States, the West, developed good relations with Kazakhstan right at the outset. And our focus initially was on

helping Kazakhstan get rid of a nuclear weapons legacy that it wanted to abandon and to help it attract Western energy investment, which it very much needed. Now, it's been ruled over. I know it sounds very dramatic when you say ruled over, but the person who's been in charge has been in charge since the Soviet Union ended. A guy named Nurzaltan Nazarbayev. Can you talk a little bit about him and his role in the country? So Nazarbayev was a remarkably pragmatic leader. In many ways, he was the most skillful of the post-Soviet leaders. And we see this in the results for Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan attracted a huge energy investment sooner than Russia did, actually. Cooperated in the elimination of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons infrastructure.

It tried to become early on an international leader. It created something called confidence, an interaction, and confidence building measures Sika, an organization which still exists today and includes a lot of Central Asian and East Asian countries, even some of the Middle East. It was the first former Soviet country to chair the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. It's a well-respected country. President Azerbaijan deserves a lot of the credit for Kazakhstan's accomplishments. But he stayed in power too long, became too autocratic, and his family became enormous a corrupt. That is one of the concerns that seems to be driving the protesters now.

He stepped back officially three years ago. Can you explain that has there been a real transition? Well, there was not a real transition then. Johnson Comart Tokayev became the president. He's a career diplomat. I've known him for 30 years. Very thoughtful, well respected, was a former under Secretary General of the United Nations in Geneva, but he does not have an independent power base in Kazakhstan. So he's been used as kind of a front person, if you will, by the Nazarbaya power structure. It's not exactly clear why Nazarbaya decided to step down as president, although he retained power as chairman of the Security Council and some other capacities. But at the time that was done, suddenly the capital of country, Astana, was renamed Nursetan, and Nassabai's first name,

and that angered quite a few people in Kazakhstan, came overnight with no consultation, and then his eldest daughter was elevated to the presidency of the Senate, and that also caused a stirer. So since that time, about two years ago, there had been persistent, but small-scale, peaceful protests in Kazakhstan. What has happened recently, though, is there, let's say, there's been a spark, if you will, and that has led to countrywide protests on a far larger scale than Kazakhstan has seen since it became independent 30 years ago. Have the protests been violent on the protesters' side to start off with?

The vast majority of the protests have been peaceful protests. There have been some violence, but it's not clear that was carried out by. protesters or carried out by some organized other entities. It's a little bit of lack of clarity, but we still see large-scale peaceful protests throughout the country. And people understand in Kazakhstan, that's the most effective way to express their view. There was, at least I read this morning, a shoot-to-kill order issued by Tokayev against protesters. Do you think that, First of all, do you think that is true? And second of all, do you think that's something that the military is willing to carry out?

That order and his decision to mass security forces against peaceful protesters in Mati, the largest city, those are both signs of a desperate regime. And I don't know the circumstances of the security forces. But the fact that Takayev called for Russia to send in. some military forces to help back up Kazakhstan security forces, suggests that to Kiev and the Nazarbaya power structure, if you will, that they're concerned about the loyalty of their own security forces, and they wanted to show that Russia was backing up the existing authority in Kazakhstan. Several of the former Soviet republics have tried to create cults of personality around their

leaders. And I was curious about Nazarbayev and his family and what sort of control they have exerted over the country and what kind of loyalty they tried to inspire over the time. This show tries to get into sort of underlying causes as much as possible rather than just giving people the day's news, if you know what I mean. Kazakhstan has been so successful as a new independent country. And Nazarbayev has been leading the entire time. Nazarbayev deserves a lot of credit. for the success. He's been a pragmatic leader. He's lost to economic reforms early on, close cooperation with the West, good relations with Russia and China, which the West encourages. He has been behind a policy of promoting tolerance, ethnic tolerance, national tolerance,

religious tolerance. So these are all good things. But as time has gone on, people have become frustrated with a lack of opportunity for a political expression, with severe income inequalities and stupendous corruption at the top. No one knows how many billions he has, but his three daughters are all billionaires, and others close to him are extremely wealthy. So this has caused a lot of frustration in Kazakhstan, and it's one of the reasons why we see the protest taking place now. Can we talk for a second about the role that uranium plays in the Kazakh,

economy and in the world economy. I had read that it's something like 40% of the world's uranium comes from Kazakhstan. Is that a cause for concern for people outside of Kazakhstan? It's not really a cause for concern. So Kazakhstan's the most valuable mineral resource is oil on the edge of the Caspian Sea and just inside the territorial waters in the Caspian Sea. But uranium also is very large. In the Soviet period, a huge uranium mine was, developed to feed the Soviet nuclear weapons program. So Kazakhstan's well endowed with uranium ore, and I think your 40% figure is probably correct or pretty close to being correct. So they are important. I would imagine that however the government develops, whether there is a continuation of something

resembling the Nazimaya power structure or whether there's disruptive political change, the country will be keen to continue its oil exports and uranium exports because they are important sources of hard currency for the country. Can you explain kind of Russia's position here? Obviously, again, you go and look at the map. I'll kind of illustrate this for people at home who may not know. Kazakhstan shares long border with Russia. It's kind of situated between it and China and some of the other former eastern bloc states. What do you think Russia is thinking right now? So Russia and Kazakhstan have long had good relations. And this has been important for Kazakhstan because unlike, say, Ukraine, which has neighbors that are members of the European Union,

it has ports that, so that Odessa, the biggest port, so ships in Ukraine can reach any place in the world. Kazakhstan is landlocked. It's the largest landlocked country in the world. Almost all the train and roads out of Kazakhstan go through Russia. So, and a lot of oils exported through Russia to a port in the Black Sea called Naber Rask, and then exported on ships. So Kazakhstan, for economic reasons, has to maintain very good relations. Another reason is that there are a large number of ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan, fewer than were at independence, but still a significant share of a population, a minority share, to be sure, but about a significant share. So in order to maintain the territorial integrity of the country, Kazakhstan has had every reason to cooperate

with Russia in that area. So what we've seen, for example, the frustrations between the Ukraine, Russia, we just haven't seen that with Kazakhstan. And that's been a pretty healthy development for Kazakhstan. But now it's a time of testing. If Russia were to overreach, for example, several of the northern regions of Kazakhstan have significant Russian minorities. There are internationalists in Russia who say that those regions should be brought into Russia. If Russian troops that are being sent there now were to go to those regions, to the other Russian troops sent there, this could cause a major crisis that would have international repercussions. Do you see that as being likely? Actually, what do you see is the likely outcome?

So I don't think I see that as being likely because any government that comes to power in Kazakhstan, including an alternative government or more democratic government, if you will, is likely to maintain good relations with the two giants who are, or which are their neighbors, Russia and China, no government would have an incentive to disrupt those relations a major way. So I don't think Kazakhstan is going to give Russia an excuse, if you will, to try to seize some of those oblasts. But the political dynamic in Russia has changed in recent years now. And so stronger nationalist, irredentists, even chauvinistic elements, tend to have greater influence. The kinds of motivations that we see that appear to have driven Russia to station

over 100,000 troops on Ukraine's border and potentially threaten another invasion of Ukraine, some of those motivations could have adverse impact on how Russia deals with Kazakhstan. There's just a lot of uncertainty about that. Well, that brings us very nicely to a conversation about Ukraine. and I think what's really driving my interest right now is how NATO is potentially going to respond to events in Ukraine. First of all, do you consider an outright invasion likely at this point? A great theorist of international relations, Hans-Morgenthal, wrote a text. book called Politics Among Nations. And one of his first pieces of advice was not to make predictions.

That was a wise piece of advice. So I don't want to say make a prediction. But Russia has amassed forces near Ukraine's border beyond what would normally take place for a military exercise, even a large military exercise. Some aspects of that force posture include activities that you would have if you wanted to sustain large-scale operations. military field hospitals, for example. So Russia has certainly postured itself to expand its invasion, if you will. In 2014, when President Yanukovych, who became hated by the population, he fled office in the wake of peaceful protests in Maidan Square in Vantan Khair. That came as a bit of a surprise to the West and to others. And so the West had formulated a policy. But over

next six months or so, and then after the Russians shot down a Malaysian airwiner over eastern Ukraine, the West came together, was pretty united in imposing sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. And in that case, it was a seizure and annexation, Russia of Crimea, and then starting a war in eastern Ukraine, which has continued to this day. This time, however, the West is fully prepared, as you've seen in media reports, President Biden, European leaders, Secretary of State of Lincoln and his counterparts, there have been a large number of consultations. And the statements coming from Europeans are just as tough as from Americans, an opposition

to another Russian invasion of Ukraine. Often in the past, in the Soviet period, and after the Moscow fought it could split Europe from America, that Europe would be a softer target. That's not the case now. And so I think probably people in the Kremlin are thinking hard now that economic sanctions that would occur could be quite devastating for the Russian economy. And if it were to carry out another large-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia would become a pariah in the West. And I don't think that's what most Russians want. I wonder about the pariah status and how long it actually might endure.

we had a recent conversation on the show about Syria. And Syria crossed every red line that was put in front of it. And now Assad has been welcomed back into the Arab fold. I'm just wondering, especially when you have such a large player as Russia, how effective can sanctions be and how long can they actually last? Well, it's a good question. With regard to Syria, the civil war there, the ISIS, the Russian's involvement, Hezbollah, the Iranian supported militias from Iraq, Iranian forces as well. That's been really a test tube for

extreme violence for a number of years. And in great part because the U.S. led the opposition to ISIS, an elimination of ISIS, that's made it easier for Bashar al-Assad to regain control of most of this country, but it doesn't have control of all of it. Europe tends to be more central to European policymaking than Middle East countries, such as Syria, where Europe has much less of an interest. So take the sanctions that were imposed in 2004. when Russia invaded. There are various estimates, but they're generally around one to two percent of GDP, gross domestic product growth, has been a decrement to Russian economy as a result of that, and that's cumulative. If there were to be larger evasion and more sanctions, more thoroughgoing

sanctions, then Russia's banks could lose access to the Western financial industry, for example. which would be devastating for Russian banks. So there's reason to believe that this would be serious. The sanctions that were imposed on 2014 have maintained themselves all the way up. So for seven years now, sanctions have not fallen away. So that kind of suggests that it would be prudent to plan on any new expanded sanctions to stay in effect for some time. I don't have any problem imagining the U.S. or Europe actually putting sanctions in play, although I may have doubts about how effective they might be. But what I do wonder is, is there any circumstance under which the involvement on NATO's part becomes military? Is there any will whatsoever to preserve Ukraine that is that deep?

It would depend on what kind of involvement. So NATO, U.S., especially, but other NATO allies, have been training and equipping soldiers in Ukraine since 2014. There's been a substantial amount of effort there. The U.S. has contributed, I think, $2.5 billion in military assistance, including several hundred million dollars just this year. The Ukrainians are mostly fighting with their own weapons. They're using some drones from Turkey that are pretty effective. And the U.S. has supplied javelin anti-armor anti-tank weapons, which are our most advanced system, and they're effective against the best Russian tanks.

So that's a fair amount. Now, if Russia were to carry out an invasion, what more might happen? It's a little bit unclear. in a Yom Kippur war in 1973, Israel suffered reverses that were unexpected. The U.S. changed its mind quickly and started flying over more weaponry to Israel to help it address that threat. In 1950, when the U.S. Secretary of State Atchison said that Korea was not part, not inside the U.S. defense perimeter, and then the North Korea is invaded, we changed our mind. and sent forces over there, and those forces are still there in South Korea.

So we decided that South Korea was worth fighting for. So sometimes you don't know until the shooting starts what could happen. But to give you an example, one would assume that if Russia is going to launch a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, it would precede that with the large-scale cyber attack against Ukraine in order to dismantle its infrastructure, its communications, other things. Well, the West could also launch a large-scale cyber attack against Russia or against those Russian elements carrying out their cyber attack. That's something that is quite possible to imagine that NATO countries would do something like that.

Electronic warfare is another area. Both of these are non-kinetic, as they say, in the military sense. Russia has a big electronic warfare advantage over Ukraine. By electronic warfare, you know, these capabilities that might electronically render Ukrainian weapons unusable, for example. The West could also intervene with its own electronic warfare capability to try to restore some balance, if you will. If Russia were to seek to blockade Odessa, the largest port in Ukraine and the Black Sea,

The U.S. could consider, NATO should consider using its own warships to preserve freedom of navigation to help protect Odessa from being blockaded. If Russia were to block Odessa, NATO warships could blockade the exits from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean of Russian ships. So with all military activities, you know, there are always sort of blows and counterblows, if you were. It's hard to know how these things are going to work out. But there are possibilities that don't involve shooting Russian soldiers by NATO troops or NATO countries that could still involve in helping Ukraine to defend its independence and territorial integrity. I have an existential question, if I can ask it. So I do a lot of reporting on nuclear weapons.

It's kind of one of my beats in my day job. And I was recently having a conversation with somebody about how there is now in people, kind of my generation and younger, a lack of institutional memory of what these weapons are capable of. And the fear that a lot of people lived with basically from 1945 to like 1990 or mid-1990s, right? And I see something similar happening with NATO specifically and Russia. And I think there's been a lot more domestic. pressure in the U.S. on, and a lot more people in mainstream politics asking the question, why are we even doing

this? Why are we part of these alliances? Do you worry about that? And kind of what do you make of this swing to kind of reevaluate these old alliances and our old commitments? And are you, do you, and how do we make sure, I know this is like three questions. And how do we make sure that young people understand why these things are important? Well, those are all excellent questions.

and they're very good questions that deserve attention. Maintaining support for what I think in George Washington's time are called entangling alliances is a kind of effort. We know from our own history that when European security was threatened in World War I, World War II, we found it to be in the U.S. interest to go help protect European security from aggressive action. Europe is so important to us from an economic, cultural, political, other background. And particularly since World War II, because the U.S. has done so much to promote democracy. And so since World War II, we have largely Democratic Europe now, which was not something before.

So that's a prized achievement. To persuade young people, I think good for it affairs, education and history classes in high school and college and things like that, is a helpful thing to do. But also young people today travel the world in ways which my generation, we frankly didn't have the money to travel as much as young people do today. So I don't despair that young people are isolationist in the sense that we, FDR had to confront isolationism before World War II. I think people understand the importance of these relationships,

but the technical way in which alliances work, that requires more careful attention. So in Congress, for example, we have seen bipartisan support for NATO from ever since 1949 when it was created. That support is still there. There was a lot of concern when President Trump was dismissive of NATO. Democrats criticize them openly, but Republicans in Congress quietly criticizing them. And now Trump is not longer present. Republicans and Congress speak out in favor of NATO. So I think people understand how important

this is for our future, but it requires a constant effort to explain to the American public what's at stake for the United States and to help Americans understand history and America's role. And in that respect, let me just do a little advertisement. I'm involved with America 250. In 2006, we will be celebrating the 250th anniversary of America's founding since 1776. So I think over the next five years we're going to see a more active effort, which NGOs, civic groups, others, and hopefully in Washington, will help try to encourage Americans to pay more attention to understand our history, including how our independence came about in great part because of support from allies.

the French fleet at Yorktown, Virginia, being the most prominent example. At the risk of making you sound undiplomatic, do you think there was any legitimacy to Trump's complaint that some of the NATO allies are not pulling their weight? So both Democratic and Republican presidents, secretaries of defense, have expressed concern about this for quite some time. Robert Gates, who was Secretary of Defense for George W. Bush, and then later for Barack Obama gave some pretty stark speeches in Europe about the importance of Europe spending more on defense and spending the money more effectively too. So this is a real issue.

I think probably a lot of Americans become a little bit more fed up that Europe has not done more for its defense. On the one hand, Germany is probably our most important ally. On the other hand, it's spent 1.2% or something like that of its gross domestic product on defense, much lower than the NATO agreed criterion of 2% of GDP. So this is a complex issue. Again, like civic consciousness about the importance of NATO, we need constantly to help people understand the commitment that America has to NATO, and we need to work with

our NATO allies to be sure they spend enough on defense. William Courtney, thank you so much for joining us today and taking us through all of it. You're quite welcome. Welcome back. Angry Planet listeners, this is Matthew. Jason and I have created the show. The show is me, Jason Fields, and Kevin O'Dell. Happy New Year. Hope you liked it.

We will be back next week with another conversation about conflict on an Angry Planet. And if you like this, go to our substack at AngryPlanent.com, where you can get commercial-free versions of the mainline episodes and a bonus episode twice online.