The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Bob Rae On Negotiating With A War Criminal

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

A special episode featuring an exclusive interview with Canada's Ambassador to the United Nations, Bob Rae.  At issue: whether its right to negotiate with a proven liar and war criminal, in this case, Vladimir Putin.  Why do it, and if you do, why trust him?

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. And what an episode it is going to be. Bob Ray, Canada's ambassador to the UN, on how to deal with Putin. How to negotiate with Putin. That's coming up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here in Stratford, Ontario. Well, I don't know about you, but I woke up this morning to yet even more reports, allegations, and proof of what the Russians have been doing in certain parts of Ukraine. And it is awful. It's ugly. It's horrific. We've seen the images of bodies in the streets. We've seen the images that those bodies are citizens, civilians. Not army, not Ukrainian army, just ordinary people. Some with their hands tied behind their backs,

bullet holes in the back of their heads. We don't know exactly how that happened, but we've got a pretty good idea. We've also seen mass graves. Now let that sink in for a moment, because at the same time, as we're seeing those images, we are hearing that talks are underway between the two sides. Negotiations. They appear to be serious. But you never know at times like this. Whether negotiations will lead to real success and the end of the conflict.

Or whether negotiations are just a ploy by one side or both. To rearm. Reposition, resupply. We can hope. Yet at the same time, we wonder, and this came up last week, we wonder about just how you can sit down across from someone or those who represent someone who's a war criminal. There appears to be no argument about that among the members of a world body like the UN, all of whom have spoken individually about Putin being a war criminal. Not all of whom, but many of whom have said that.

So that's the dilemma. You know, how do you negotiate with a war criminal? So I reached out to talk to Bob Ray, Canada's ambassador to the United Nations, of whether he'd have time to have a conversation about that. I've known Bob Ray for, well, since 1979, 80, when he was a young member of the NDP caucus in Ottawa. In fact, crafted the vote that led to the downfall of the Clark government in December of 1979.

But we know his history since then. He got out of federal politics went into provincial politics in Ontario became the premier of Ontario eventually left the NDP joined the Liberals in Ottawa and at one point was the interim leader of the Liberal Party before Justin Trudeau

now he's the ambassador to the United Nations and has been an outspoken critic of Russia and has received all kinds of international praise for some of his speeches that have been made on the Ukraine situation.

So, Ambassador Ray agreed to the conversation and we had it over the weekend so i'm going to play it now i don't want to interrupt it for a break so we'll take the break now and come right back with the interview that's right after this. All right, Peter Mansbridge, back here in Stratford, Ontario. You're listening to The Bridge on Sirius XM, Channel 167,

Canada Talks, and on your favorite podcast, podcast platform. All right, as promised, Ambassador Bob Ray speaking to me from new york over the weekend the idea for this conversation came out of a chat i had last week with our mutual friend old friend brian stewart yeah the two of us disagreed um about whether or not you should sit down and negotiate with a war criminal. Now, I know that's not an easy question to answer. And eventually, in this situation, it will be up to Ukraine whether they want to do that or not.

But in a general way, you're no stranger to negotiation. How do you feel about that question? Is it okay to negotiate with a war criminal? Well, it's tough. I mean, I think the first thing is we have to respect President Zelensky for having to make some difficult choices. And I think it's always easier when you're not in the center of the storm to provide people with warnings and advice.

I mean, that's a pretty easy thing to do. I think he's in a very difficult spot. I think he knows that he's limited because the the issue of dealing with a country that has nuclear weapons, dealing with a leader who is unpredictable on the other side and his own people facing tremendous hardships and challenges. I think that, I think he'll make a choice that he's, he's obviously making a choice. He is negotiating.

They are negotiating. They are, they are exchanging documents. They are exchanging positions on a whole number of, of issues. But there are also limits on the other side. I mean, he's not,

he can't, he can't, he's not going to, he's not going to agree to something that's not workable or that's going to simply put him in a condition of total vulnerability. And there are a lot of unknowns as to what will happen in the future. So I guess my short answer is he's earned the right to negotiate any way he wants to and it's the circumstances are really really difficult and i think we all know that the one thing i think that mr putin has managed to do is to convince everybody uh just about everybody that he's not to be trusted and that if you are going to negotiate with somebody like that, you have to do it with your eyes wide open, knowing what the risks are, but also

knowing that you can't change your neighborhood. You can't change your neighbors. Your neighbors are your neighbors. And I think that regime changes in Russia is not up to us. It's up to the Russian people, and it's up to a whole bunch of other conditions. I think President Biden and others have expressed their views. That's fine. I don't personally don't have any problem with them expressing frustration and their feelings, but I think one has to recognize the reality that he is there

and he is, if you're going to make peace, you make peace with your enemy. And there's no question that that's what he is he is uh you're gonna make peace you make peace with your enemy and there's no question that that's what he is okay well let me let me try and argue it from the other side for a second because i i get all the the positions you put on the table including i guess one of the most important ones is you know russia is a nuclear nation and it is the big difference between you know world war ii which people tell me to stop comparing anything to because it's too long ago. But in World War II, Churchill, you know, unconditional surrender. Roosevelt, same thing.

They wouldn't do anything other than that. But nobody had nuclear weapons at that point. So I understand that difference. But I still have a hard time coming to grips with sitting across from the table, you know, with the representatives or directly with the guy himself, of someone who authorized, and I'll read from the list of all the things you said at the UN, you know, illegal invasion, unprovoked aggression, no repentance shown at all, a violation of the UN Charter, premeditated destruction of entire cities, the bombing of hospitals, schools, slaughtering of children, pregnant women, the elderly. And you're saying, okay, I'm going to

sit down with this guy and see what I can give him so we can end this. It just sounds ridiculous. Well, I guess the question is, what's the choice on the other side, right? I mean, and this is not an academic discussion. They are at war at the present time. And I think everything that you've quoted me saying is what I've said and what I believe to be true. I think it's unarguably true. These are facts. These are not opinions.

At the same time, you have to say, well, what's the choice? The choice would be to continue a war. Ukraine doesn't have the ability to take the fight all the way to Moscow. I mean, let's get real. NATO has no appetite to do that either at the present time. So what choice does he have? He's left in a position where he's in a very tough balance at the moment and I think the next two or three weeks from a military standpoint if there's no ceasefire

and if there is no ceasefire then we don't know whether the military campaign will go really well for him, for Zelensky and Ukraine, or whether the Russians will make a significant pushback. I certainly don't believe that the Russians have decided that they're not going to, they're not abandoning what they think is their right to invade anywhere they want to invade. For me, the most troublesome thing about doing a deal with Putin is it's not so much all of the things that you've described as bad as they are. It's something that I think is fundamentally dangerous about his thinking. And that is that he doesn't think Ukraine actually has a right to exist as an

independent country. He doesn't believe that there is a separate sovereign difference between Ukraine and Russia. He believes that their destinies, their histories are mixed up, their culture is all mixed up, their languages and religions are all mixed up, their peoples are all mixed up, and therefore their destiny is mixed up. And that's what he's written a lot about. He's written a lot about this and spoken a lot about it, quite emotionally. And the problem with doing a deal with somebody like that,

the challenge is that I don't know to what extent one can say. And now, of course, he's going to turn around and say, well, of course, I recognize the independence of Ukraine. Of course, I recognize it's a completely separate country. And of course, I'll keep my hands off. I won't interfere. I won't have spies running all over the place. I won't be doing all kinds of things to upset the apple cart. I won't be trying to destabilize the government of Ukraine. I'll be doing all

it'll all turn. And I think that to me is the most difficult challenging nature of the negotiation of the discussion because Putin has a different view. And that's where I think you say, can you trust the person with whom you were doing a deal? And when Chamberlain did his deal at Munich, I think he felt that he could trust him or that he said, I think we've got a deal here. I think we can live with

dismembering Czechoslovakia. I've talked to him. I've discussed with them. I've shared, you know, I think he believed that. And many people in England at the time didn't believe it. Churchill didn't believe it. And so a year later, the world was at war. Munich was in March of 1938. We were at war in September of 1939 and I know that we're not supposed to talk about history because people aren't interested anymore but I think we have to talk about history and the reason that Chamberlain could never trust

Hitler was because he made it clear what his ultimate objective was which was more and more land more and more territory that belonged to him that had historic ties and that's really where the analogy or the comparison has always been in my head with respect to Putin, because he has

this sense that Russia was robbed by the collapse of the Soviet Union, that it should never have happened, that it was a terrible tragedy. That all these republics leaving was a terrible mistake. Granting independence to Ukraine was a terrible mistake. And I don't think he's ever changed

his mind. I don't see any evidence saying I used to think that, but I don't think that anymore. I don't think he thinks. I think he thinks Ukraine is still his. He's entitled to it. And if he thinks i think he thinks it's he thinks ukraine is still his and he's entitled to it and if he thinks about ukraine he's going to think it about the baltics the wherever you know whichever yes that's true that's true but the question he'll go back to alaska and say that should never have been given up to the americans that'll be well

i mean there's no there's no end to that logic. I mean, I think one of the best speeches given in the UN in the last two, three months has been the speech from the ambassador from Kenya, who gave a really good speech to the Security Council where he said, look, we don't hold to these borders. I mean, we're not fantastically enthused about the borders and boundaries. We were left by the British. They just sort of came in with a map and said, this is you and this is your neighbor and here's your country and this is what you get. He said, but once we start to unravel this, once we come into the United Nations and we've got our borders and our territories and our alliance in the sand and the geography is established, the sovereignty is established, if we just come in

and say, well, we don't, you know, that was then, we still think we have this territory. There are huge fights in Afro territory still. There's a lot of inter-communal conflict in many, many countries. And Ambassador Karmani said, look, if we start going down this path, it'll have no end. It'll never stop. And that's why it has to stop. And frankly, that's why it has to stop and frankly that's why this has to stop i mean we this this has to come to a conclusion uh in a way that is unambiguous and absolutely

clear and have to be guarantees on all sides with respect to what is going to be protected but isn't there something inherently wrong with having a a negotiation that ends up in some kind of an agreement that in fact rewards the aggressor because he's going to get something out of this yeah but you're you're giving us a council of perfection which is always dangerous the question always has to be what's the alternative what's better what's better than this and it's always a matter of shades of gray and and reaching difficult compromises or frankly deciding no compromise is too difficult we can't reach it and i think we have to assume that the discussions are are difficult very very very difficult and I can I'm sure that in the minds of of the people who are negotiating on the Ukrainian side the

kinds of questions that you're asking and the kinds of questions that Ukrainian people are asking are uppermost in their minds because they they they don't want to be back at another back either on the receiving end of another round of of attacks and bombs and aggression or alternatively um having to having to cope with the impact of a decision that is not sustainable. Whatever they land on and whatever the Russians agree to, it has to be a sustainable agreement. It has to be one that's based on a sense of in the circumstances, it's the best we can do. But it's not easy. No one should think that it's easy.

But I think the weakness in your argument, if I may be so bold as to say so, is that it's too black and white. It's too much based on this is the way it should be and it shouldn't be that way because that's morally wrong and this is morally right. I think it's really hard to reach a principled agreement always on in any dispute um many kinds of labor disputes all sorts of disputes and people will always say well if i give that up then i've given up the reason that i went out on strike or i've given up the reason that i didn't settle two two months ago and you say yeah okay so

then you move on and you figure out well this is this is how we do it you know my and i think it also depends what what are the what are the rewards on the other side what have you gained on the other side which didn't happen before right and that's always what people have to have to weigh i guess the real one of the reasons why the argument that i'm putting forward to have a good conversation is black and white is because so much of what's been said in the last month has been black and white depending which which side you were on I mean you've given some great speeches on the UN so have others they're pretty black and white well I think the I think the facts are pretty clear I think there's there's no question that the conflict has fundamentally started by the Russians deciding to invade on the orders of President Putin.

And he's made the argument through his foreign minister that, well, no, they never actually attacked. They were just continuing a dispute that had already existed in the Donbass because they were already having skirmishes and fights and there were all kinds of issues. The Minsk agreement didn't, and then they said it didn't work and it wasn't upheld and lots of, and there has been a lot of fighting in the Donbass. They've lost thousands of lives on both sides. But this was a different thing.

This is a different order of attack, which is why I think it was the General Assembly labeled it an act of aggression. And that's true. But that still doesn't mean that you don't have an obligation to say, how do we settle this dispute while both governments are still in place? And my answer is, with great difficulty, but you've always got to try. And I think there are many people now who are trying. The

Ukrainians and the Russians are talking to each other. Various people are trying to be helpful in getting them to understand better what each side really, really wants. And the United Nations is trying, through the good offices of the Secretary General and a number of agencies of the UN, to get a humanitarian ceasefire established that will allow for the saving of as many lives as possible in these terrible circumstances, which are just awful. But it doesn't mean that the terms of an agreement and further settlements are easy.

They're not easy at all. It's tough. You've led me to where I wanted to go in your talk about what the UN's been doing. I mean, I talked to Margaret MacMillan last week and she was kind of equally puzzled about the UN's role in all this and there were great hopes obviously at the end of the second world war just like the

wherewithaliga nations at the end of the first world war that these bodies could could affect change to the point where we would never be confronted by this kind of a situation again. And yet here we are, not only here we are, but involving one of the, you know, one of the founding members, if you will, of the UN, a member of the Security Council, permanent member, you know, basically violating the UN Char un charter as you said now it it makes one well what's the point of the un with something like this but you're telling me this is actually there's a lot going on behind the scenes that we're not we're not seeing or hearing about in terms of the un's involvement in trying to find a solution to this situation right now?

Other than the talks and some great speeches in the General Assembly and some serious back and forth in the Security Council. There's stuff going on, real stuff going on. Absolutely. I mean, first of all, let's all just take a deep breath and recognize that 1945 was not a perfect moment. And one of the challenges that we have to face up to is that in defeating Hitler, we allied ourselves with Stalin. And I'll leave it to the historians to decide who was worse,

who killed more people, who was more brutal, who was the worst dictator. But they're both totalitarian systems, both dictatorships, both terrible abusers of human rights and of human lives. And the more we learn about the period between 1920 and 1950 1960 we realized just how many people died i mean tim snyder's book called bloodlands on you know what happened to eastern europe between those years i think it just documents and describes so clearly how absolutely brutal and ruthless these two tyrannies were.

We did a deal with a tyranny. We did a deal with the Soviets to settle the war. And Roosevelt and Churchill had all their meetings in Tehran and Yalta and different places and made deals and agreed to certain things, hard compromises, turned the other way, looked away. And that's how we got the UN. UN was not an immaculate conception. It was not a pretty birth, and it was not a pretty compromise.

So I think it's time for us to kind of look through, throw away the rose-colored glasses for a moment and and just say we need to understand what happened and what that was all about. And there was a huge amount of power politics involved as well as an amount of principle and some other dreams. But in the course of which an organization was created which is in a sense different from the member states. There's the member states is what people call the UN, the a sense, different from the member states. There's the member states, which is what people call the UN,

the General Assembly, the Security Council, all the organs of the UN. But it's also an organization that has grown quite substantially since 1945. UN Development Program, UNICEF, World Health Organization, International Labor Organization. You go down the list of all the things that the UN as an organization is involved in, dealing with vast, complicated humanitarian issues, movement of populations, dealing with starvation, terrible conditions. Look at Yemen. We're not talking about Yemen today, but yesterday it was announced

there's a two-month ceasefire in Yemen. Do you know how much work that took? Do you know how many people, how much effort, how much behind-the-scenes negotiation, how many people were brought together, how many countries were brought in, how many things happened?

Huge amount of work was done. Secretary General doesn't get any credit for it, doesn't even expect any credit for it. But it wouldn't have happened without him, without his leadership, without his ability to continue to talk to people and engage with them. Similarly with Ukraine, we have over 4 million refugees coming out of Ukraine into Eastern Europe. We have another 10 or 11 million people who are displaced within Ukraine. And we have an entire system, the UN, International Committee of the Red Cross, all of the agencies involved, the High Commission for Refugees, everybody attempting and trying to say, how do it. Poland and all of its neighbors have done a fantastic job of accepting people. But this requires an extraordinary amount of effort, huge amount of work. We're now facing a global food crisis as a result of Ukraine and Russia.

We're facing a food security issue, which is, again, going to be is now huge. Food prices have jacked up. Many countries depend extensively on Russian and Ukrainian food supplies. It's not called the breadbasket of the world for nothing. It has been. It's been a huge source of food, and much of that has been put out of commission by the war. And the ports have been destroyed by the Russians. It's another crime, in my view. Imagine destroying ports that are there to transport food for people. And the Russians are 100% responsible for that. They can't point a finger and say, we didn't do it.

You did it. Nobody forced you to do it. You decided to blow up all these ports and blow up these boats. And you sunk them. I mean, it's incredible what they've done. It just defies belief. But the UN is doing all these things. I happened to have the opportunity to speak to the

Secretary General yesterday, and we were talking about Ukraine, we were talking about Yemen, we were talking about a number of things. I come away from talking to him saying, you've got to listen to the guy because he knows what's going on, he's he cares a lot about it and he's super smart and he's he takes a lot of flack he took a huge amount of flack from the russians for speaking up uh about the aggression he labeled it right from the start he didn't fool around so yeah you know the un is i mean the the security council is dysfunctional because of the veto and it's functional because of the way the russians and to an extent in a different way the way the

chinese also behave sometimes but we still gotta there's nothing else in town there's no other there's no other institution out there at the moment um so we we there are lots of other smaller multilateral places. They know all sorts of other agencies that are out there, but we, we have to try to make what we have work and work better and work effectively. And I mean, I know you've commented on my speeches.

I do a lot of stuff other than give speeches. I talk privately to people. I engage quietly with people. I can do that. You know what I have to. It's what you do. It's what diplomats do. We try to solve problems. Sometimes we succeed. Sometimes we fail. I think all of us feel that the war in Ukraine has been a terrible tragedy, but frankly, it's not the only

war we're facing. We had war in Tigray and Eritrea. In Ethiopia, we've had a terrible challenge in Yemen. We have this huge conflict in Myanmar, which is still going on, where we've got, again, millions of people who've been forcibly deported from the country. Six million refugees out of Venezuela in the last five years. I mean, there's no shortage of problems out there. But the UN is there. Now, you would say, well, read the charter, which I do regularly,

and it says, you know, in the interest of saving future generations from the scourge of war, have we succeeded in doing that? No, we have not succeeded in doing that. But it's not the UN. It's the countries that are in the UN. The Leafs are playing tonight. We don't blame Scotiabank Arena when the Leafs lose. We blame the team.

Yeah, we sure do. Okay, let me... For the coaches, usually the coaches actually, the managers. I have one more question on the UN before we wrap this up. Before I get to it, more question on the un before we wrap this up before i get to it you touched on the food security issue and the obvious problem created by the fact that the breadbasket of the world ukraine and russia is going to be severely affected by what's going on this year which puts you know obviously some pressure and and some responsibility on the breadbasket of North America through the prairies.

Are we feeling that pressure enough? I mean, it was a tough year last year for prairie farmers. Drought was an issue and it affected the crop. But do Canadians understand the need for Canadian farmers to be able to deliver this year and Canadian ports to try and fill up some of the backlog that's going to be created by the lack of grain coming out of those bread baskets in Europe? We're going to have to be part of a global effort, Peter, that really does two things.

One is insurer supply, emergency supplies. And I know that that's something that every government in the world that has a large agricultural sector, as we do in Canada, is looking to see what can we do. That question is being asked and answered in many different parts of the world the second is even is even I think more important in the long run and that is understanding the need to create global centers of resilience and and supply I think one of the things that COVID has taught us and this this war has taught us is that um the future of globalization is going to be different than the last 20 25 years people

are looking at shorter supply chains they're looking at more local engagement they're looking at more resilience locally in africa and elsewhere and this is true of health it's true of the pandemic response to pandemic i think a lot of countries are sending a very clear message saying to Western countries and others saying, you know what, the next time this happens, we have a pandemic. We're not waiting for you guys to decide when you're going to give us your extras. We're not waiting around for that. We can't do it. We just aren't going to put up with that. And so I think we're going to see a shift in how to create greater coherence in local and regional markets and how to build them up. And I think the same thing is true of food. I think people understand that it's critically important to build up much greater agricultural capacity in countries that have great potential.

And we don't just have great agriculture, which we do have. We also have a big, powerful food industry, which we've been building for the last 200 years. And that, I think, is something which we can help to engage really effectively with global communities about how we can do that. And that's something that we're looking hard at. Okay. Here's my last question.

And I've mentioned this a couple of times in the last few weeks, that 60 years since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and yet 60 years on, we're still finding things that were going on in the background to try and resolve that 13-day dispute right um and some of those things that were going on were going on in that building you work in now in the un there was un stuff happening uh that that moved those two countries much closer together to be able to work out some kind of an agreement.

So in the years that follow this, I assume we're going to be hearing all kinds of things that we didn't know and that we don't know now are happening in the background to this story. And should I assume that some of them are happening once again in that building? Of course. Aside from the things you told me already. No, I mean, but of course, of course. Because you just, I mean, I'm not telling you anything that I'll get an angry phone call from somebody in Ottawa about tomorrow.

This is all public information. The Turkish government is playing, there have been a number of intermediary countries that have played a key role. Turks have been absolutely key. Turkish ambassador here is a very, very highly respected diplomat.

And I know him very well. And he's an extremely important source of advice and information to all parties about what they're hearing and what they're doing. There have been huge numbers of calls between leaders all around the world. People have been talking and meeting and traveling an unprecedented way.

We've had all the NATO meetings. We've had all of us, others, there's zoom calls and you know video calls and chats and social media and whatsapp everything yeah it's i mean so when you say is it happening in this building the answer is not not only and it's also because that that perhaps is you know an old older technology view but is are there networks out there that are trying hard to make things change? Yes. Our prime minister is very busy on this. He's extremely engaged in talking to a number of people about what more could be done and how it could be done and when it can be done.

And I think people should be encouraged by that, the fact that diplomacy is happening all the time, which is what you want. You want it to work. And the key of course is with all of the communications going on is to make sure that it's coordinated and that people know where to go and how things can come together. And I think that's going to continue to be the case. I think that's one of the encouraging things I think that I've seen the last three or four weeks has been not just the speeches are kind of the theater of what has to happen.

But there's a lot of other stuff that has to happen, too. I think we're going to leave it at that. You know, I thought this would be a fascinating conversation and fascinating it has been, and thanks to you being as willing to talk about this stuff as you have been, really appreciate it. It's always good to talk to you, Ambassador. Thank you, Peter, and I look forward to the time

when you can just call me Bob like everybody used to do, and I look forward to the time when we when you can just call me bob like everybody used to do and i look forward to seeing you soon save that for the golf course save it for the golf course okay we'll see you later yes absolutely bye bye bye ambassador bob ray canada's ambassador to the united Nations. And now you understand why when he was in his university days, he won a lot of debates in the debate contest that took place when he was there. We thank him again for that conversation because I think it really helps us understand

what's going on behind the scenes right now. And the stakes that play out at a time when the two sides in some form, at some point, are going to sit across the table from each other to try and work this out. I still find it frustrating that we'd be dealing with him. But that's the situation we're faced with. All right, the other situation we're faced with was this was, as you well know, a COVID Monday, right? And as a result of that conversation, we were unable to bring us our COVID update, but we have a really good one for tomorrow.

And it's Dr. Lisa Barrett from Halifax. And she will lead the pro of the podcast tomorrow. She's just had COVID. You know, she's been with us for the last couple of years. Every few weeks, being on the program, giving us the update from her perspective in Halifax she's an epidemiologist of course well she's still able to give us her perspective on the way things are right now and they're not good but at the same time she's just gone through this and the impact that's had on her so that's tomorrow Dr. Lisa Barrett on the bridge that's had on her. So that's tomorrow, Dr. Lisa Barrett on the bridge. That's it for this

day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back again, as we say, and listen, if you've got a comment on Bob Ray's thoughts, don't be shy. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Thanks for listening today. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.