The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Could Poland Become Europe's New Superpower?

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

What a difference a year makes.  Remember when autocracies had the edge on democracies -- that was in January.  What about now?  And then Brian Stewart joins with his regular weekly commentary with some news about Poland and its stature in Europe.  Plus "endbits" you won't soon forget.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. What a difference a year makes. Just ask the autocracies. And hello there, welcome to the Tuesday episode of The Bridge. Coming up in a few moments time, Brian Stewart with his regular weekly commentary on the situation in Ukraine. But before we get there, remember back to the beginning of this year, the beginning of 2022. And what was the most common theme in the big geopolitical talks of those days? Well, I would venture to say that more than a few leaders in the world, we're talking of the Western world especially,

were talking about the struggle between democracy and autocracy. Joe Biden gave a whole speech on it. But he wasn't alone. Others talked about it. It was talked about in this country. And it certainly seemed, when you looked at the landscape, that the autocracies had the edge. Russia was riding high.

China was riding high China was riding high Iran was making noises North Korea was making its noises and there was trouble and at times chaos within the democracies whether it was in the US whether it was in the UK whether it was in the U.S., whether it was in the U.K., whether it was elsewhere.

There were problems. Well, what a difference a year makes, right? Here we are as 2022 closes. And it looks like the power struggle between autocracies and democracies has shifted a bit. I mean, look at Russia. They invade Ukraine, supposed to last three or four days. Here we are at the end of the year, it's still going on, and Ukraine seems to have the edge.

Although we'll talk about that a little in a moment. But clearly, Russia is on its back foot. It's been a disastrous war effort. And there have been protests in different parts of Russia. Protests unlike anything we've seen. China. Look at China this week. Police in the streets trying to quell the protests. China, look at China this week. Police in the streets trying to quell the protests,

the riots over COVID controls. The country's zero COVID policy. The country's leader, President Xi, demanding his resignation. Putin's resignation demanded. In Iran, protests in the streets. Giant protests, in some cases, supported by protests around the world,

including here in Canada. This does not look like, hey, big day for the autocracies. No, it sure doesn't. And while there's still some degree of chaos and problems on the democracy side, they look in much better shape than they did at the beginning of the year. Even to the point of the champion of autocracy in the U.S., the former president, the twice-impeached, disgraced former president, on his back foot for a lot of different reasons.

And Joe Biden, he didn't exactly win the midterms, but he held on to the Senate, maybe even increased the Senate numbers by one. We'll see after the runoff in Georgia. Lost the House, but the Republicans seem far from anything but disarray. So you have the big global picture that looks considerably different as the year ends than it did as the year began.

Who knows what next year will bring. But at this point, from this vantage, it looks like democracies have the edge. When we went through those countries on the autocracy side and the problems they've had, we didn't mention North Korea because no protests in North Korea, still firing missiles and test firing missiles. So North Korea, a bad actor on the bad actor stage, is not in the same kind of mess. Well, you could argue it's definitely in an even worse mess, really,

than the other countries. But in terms of this kind of chaotic situation of this year, they seem to have dodged the situation. We'll see how long that lasts. All right, let's get to the main point of Tuesdays, and Tuesdays means Brian Stewart. Somebody wrote me a letter the other day and said, you always introduce him as a former war correspondent.

And I do because that's what he used to be when he worked for, you know, the CBC or NBC. He was one of their war correspondents and one of their foreign correspondents. And so now that he's in retirement, he's kind of a former war correspondent. But as the letter writer pointed out, and, you know, good for them, he's still a correspondent. He's working for The Bridge,

the worldwide podcast of influence around the world. And he absolutely is, and we're better for it. And the letters come in every week about Brian. That's, you know, it's great to hear. and he absolutely is, and we're better for it. And the letters come in every week about Brian. That's, you know, it's great to hear. Anyway, let's get to Brian and his thoughts this week, and they're quite interesting. They're very different.

There's not a kind of theme to this commentary in the sense that it's all strings one after the other, but the different elements of it paint a picture, a new picture that we haven't been considering. Okay, enough, Peter. Let's get to Mr. Stewart. He's the one who makes sense, right? Here we go. This week's conversation with correspondent Brian Stewart.

So Brian, as you've been doing all year, you kind of set us up last week. You got us prepared for what was to come in the days that immediately followed last Tuesday's program. You talked about the Russians' use of their air support and their bombing of Ukraine positions, knocking out the power grid, plunging the country into darkness in many areas. Also, the whole munitions issue,

which seems to be an issue for both sides of where they're getting supplied from and how much in need they are of new munitions um but this week comes uh to the forefront an issue that you warned us about months ago uh that could always have a determining factor in a conflict in a war and that's general mud as you put it back then Talk to us about how that's impacting the situation now. It's mud, it's slush, it's snow, it's absolutely miserable conditions, but most important, it makes it impossible really for wheeled vehicles to go forward.

Tanks sink into it and get almost buried into it. And for troops on foot, it's very, very difficult to work through. And that's obviously for both sides. So it basically brings a kind of miserable stalemate to the war. Whereas, of course, the bombing of civilian areas will continue. But along this long, vast front, artillery duels will be taking place they're getting a bit less now because of the shortage of ammunition but small actions will be gone ongoing harassing raids attempts to keep the enemy soldiers pinned down in their miserable positions all waiting for the ground to harden and it depends really on what kind of winter we're going to get and europe is holding his breath wondering where whether it'll be a

watered winter for heating reasons or a really bad winter but if it's a normal winter the ground will start to harden in about a week and a half maybe a bit earlier than that a few days after that the ground gets hard enough so that the vehicles and the tanks and the armor can move forward. And that's when you'll probably see a considerable uptick in fighting. First of all, the Russians trying to fend the Ukrainians off and the Ukrainians trying to keep up that momentum they scored in the south and the

north in those remarkable advances uh up till now uh now stalled so i think we're in a position right now where it's a brief pause in the situation that gives both sides some chance to do what they're most anxious to do right now which is the russians to dig in as fiercely as possible to try and hold back uh future ukrainian advances in ukraine a chance to bring up fresh units give some units to rest um but what you know what the ukrainians are trying to do by continually harassing rage is to keep the russians pinned down because ukrainians are much more suited now to winter war uh than the russians are they're suited now to winter war than the Russians are. They're prepared for it.

They've been fighting on their frontiers for eight long years. They've got good equipment from the West. And they're much better supplied to handle this miserable weather than the Russians are. So what the Ukrainians will be trying to do will really throw the russians off as much as possible it gives everybody a little bit of a chance to think about bigger issues in the war but right now it's it's a sort of a stalemate for about a week or a week and a half okay i don't know whether this is a bigger issue but it's certainly an important issue that's taking place kind of on the sidelines really and and that's And it's more of a diplomatic issue in the sense that you described it as kind of the winds of change

that have taken place in Europe in the past, and they're taking place again right now. This sort of reshuffling of the power structure, the power of the European Union, the power of NATO, with the potential rise of a new Euro superpower, and who would have thought it? Talk to us about it. Yes, right throughout the EU and the NATO, for instance, you have a lot of finger-pointing and guessing as to which powers have really come into their own, which have not, which have been weak sisters, which have failed, which are weak brothers, I should say as well. And what is, people are beginning to look now increasingly to Poland as a future superpower.

It has by far the best land army in Europe at the moment. It has been ferocious in its denial of Putin's ambitions. It has been wonderful in taking in refugees. It's won admiration across Europe, a Europe that often criticizes Poland for its, let's say, right-wing politics, which are very right-wing. But on the subject of standing firm poland is i think by far being the strongest and not only is it standing firm it's pouring a huge amount of money into a military build-up which will make it within about five years by far the largest and most

impressive armed force in europe and And while that is happening, of course, Poland has been very vocal in criticizing those weak capitals as it sees it, Germany, France, Italy. It accuses the Germans of basically being overly friendly to Putin, not doing anything like its fair share of donating, of taking in support uh of being there

of france i'm always looking for an opening for a diplomatic breakthrough with putin italy for june as little as possible uh their criticism of a lot of europe reminds me when i was a young reporter there was this bobby in london who won a award for bravery for chasing down a road an armed robber of a jewelry store and he caught him and he got a bravery reward and when the media went to question him he said you know i don't think you should call me a hero i ran as slow as i could and to the polls this is what a lot of the europeans are doing they're actually supporting ukraine as little as they possibly can get away but they're running as as low as they can the strong supporters uh which would include britain and the united states obviously united states

britain canada's up there very respectfully, although it has limited resources. But it's really been convincing a lot of Europeans that we need a big, strong power in Northern Europe, Northeastern Europe. And Poland naturally has a sphere of influence of the Baltic countries, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania. It will be very close to the new nato members finland and sweden and of course it's already formed an alliance with ukraine so you're looking at a building up major force to be in europe and i think this is going to have a profound effect on the kind of

worldview of of Europe going forward. This is not an entirely new idea. About 10 years ago, a Hungarian geopolitician, a gentleman who studies the way geography influences politics, called George Freeman, wrote a book on the next 100 years, and he predicted that Poland is going to become the next superpower of europe a very easy to see and it will it will take on a position an arm position in europe rather equivalent to israel in the middle east i mean a big powerful efficient state so they i mean this is going to be i think everybody would con concede Europe and NATO are going to be changed in some ways after this war.

Nobody can really predict, of course, just how. There'll be many unforeseens happen and there'll be many predicted events actually may come to pass. But I would say everybody should be putting some money right now on seeing Poland becoming a far more influential country in Poland and the world than it is right now. Well, talk to me a little bit about this for a moment, because what does history tell us on that after major conflicts? And this one is now clearly considered a major one because of everybody who is involved in it but after major conflicts um can the world around us really change that much as a result of what was happening it tends to change not necessarily overnight it tends to become more a a somewhat so moving change but people will come out of this one of the perhaps the greatest moral dilemma facing europe since 1945 and then many people

are making that point this is is a sea change moment involving values morals sense of what the european community what nat NATO is really for. They'll be coming out of it making judgments. You know, where was it strong, Europe? Where was it very weak? Where did it hold together? Where did it not hold together? And I think they'll be judging the United States.

They'll be judging Canada for sure as well. And that tends to lead to a changing worldview as to what states are reliable, what states you should rely upon more. The United States is already signaling in a pretty blatant way that it is starting to look to Poland as the most reliable and muscularly reliable ally in europe it's actually moving its fifth army headquarters to warsaw which is a pretty fierce signal it's selling billions of billions of dollars worth of really top flight armaments to to poland but poland is a country and it's learned through history not to trust other countries very much. It's been stabbed in the back. It's been let down very often. So it tends to be now looking to its own strong future with those neighboring countries that will become likely allies within the EU, within NATO, but it's buying a lot of arms, an amazing amount,

from one of the big surprise armament providers in the world today, South Korea. South Korea is selling wonderful, I say wonderful, purely war sense, tanks and artillery and missiles that are cheaper than the Americans, cheaper and just as efficient as others being produced by the EU. So that's even changing the armaments, you know, industries around the world has been changed as well.

Also, by the way, I should mention that Poland's got a very strong economy, basically under it. It's the, you know the 22nd largest world economy, but fifth largest in the EU, and one of the fastest growing. So it's got an economic muscle, military muscle, and it's, let us say, a very strong sense of moral superiority,

which is not a shame of making vocal announcements of. You know, you mentioned Korea. It's interesting that they're so involved now in the machinery of war and in terms of building it and building it well, it's really no different than what they've done with the auto manufacturing sector. They build vehicles cheaper and better now um than in many of their competitors not just in north america but in europe as well um just a last quick point on on the on the argument you were making there are you basically saying to me and to our listeners that the europe

we knew up until this point uh up until this ukraine conflict will never be that the europe we knew up until this point uh up until this ukraine conflict will never be that again europe will never be the same again well i don't want to i don't want to be go like too far out of the limb it'll be recognizably the eu uh it'll be certainly recognizably though larger to the horror of Russia, NATO, but it will have different power centers, different axes of influence. And I think we're going to see Northern Europe take on much more weight now and deliberations within the EU and within NATO. And I think we're going to see a big change in military growth and armaments manufacturing in that, favoring those countries that are coming out of this, having really engaged. And I also think, of course, at the end of the war, we're going to see Ukraine emerge, even if it's not allowed to join NATO.

It certainly is going to be very involved in the eu and very involved in the west they made very clear and it will be a very powerful admired much admired country for the way it's handled itself and it will be i would suspect a strong a strong ally there of pol and its northern neighbors. Okay, we're going to move on to a totally different segment, and it's basically headlining it, the criminalization of war. We're going to talk about that, but first we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with Brian Stewart and his commentary,

his continuing weekly commentary on the conflict in Ukraine right after this. And welcome back. Peter Mansbridge here in Stratford, Ontario this week. You're listening to The Bridge, the Tuesday segment. That means we've got Brian Stewart with us and we're talking ukraine you're listening on sirius xm channel 167 canada talks or on your favorite podcast platform okay back with you brian on this issue now uh the criminalization of war and i i find this fascinating because we've been hearing about it it's the kind of thing we used to see in movies

and i'll get to that in a minute to see whether we were being fooled by the movies of the past or whether they were actually being accurate about what went on in in past conflicts but let's talk about this one because it's clear that that both sides especially the russian side have been taking you know releasing people from jail to fight in the war. Tell us about it. Well, this is no news to anybody. It's just a horrible, horrible war. And we're seeing a level of atrocities of looting, torture, murder.

There's even stunning longtime U.N. and other international group war crimes investigators. Just the ferocity of it on the Russian side. But the figures here are really sobering. Intelligence suggests that 25,000 prisoners have been released from Russian prisons. Russian prisons hold roughly 325,000 normally. Well, well over 6% of that has now signed up. These prisoners are signing on to a deal that lets, offers them a complete pardon if they put in six months of fighting in Ukraine. And these are prisoners desperate enough to sign on to what they well know now as a miserable military experience

and the Russians are making a very little distinction as to who gets the pardon where we're talking rapists you know bank robbers thugs organized criminals and murderers lots of murderers and so these are becoming increasingly from numerous around the battlefront areas uh famously so with the wagner group i think everybody's heard of which is a kind of mercenary private army run by evgeny prigodzin who himself was a former convict, who's been going to the prisons and basically recruiting some of the hardest cases to come join his private army and go into battle in Ukraine. And criminals have been sent to other units as well.

And this has many effects. First of all, I think it lowers the morale of regular units all the more in Russian units to see criminals joining their lot. But then the behavior starts to break down. All code of conduct of normalcy breaks down where everything gets looted, where people are assaulted, where murders become kind of common practice. And it's this desperate turn of events in war. And I should say, just to keep this balance, you mentioned on both sides, back in February, when the war began, Ukraine also offered pardons to prisoners willing to go and fight in the war. We know very little of statistics,

though. We've heard virtually nothing from Ukrainians as to how many may have signed up, where they're being used. It's generally something only armies in desperation would use because criminals do not make very good, effective soldiers generally. I mean, obviously, they're bad for unit discipline. They cause suspicion in the ranks. They feel, uh, you know, they, they, they, some of their, their worst instincts come out when they feel they can get away with anything. They are, they're almost like in a paradise of now I can steal whatever I want. Now I can assault whatever I want. Nobody's going to punish me. And that's the way it sort of starts to eat away at the core integrity of a military. So most militaries avoid it like the plague. Let me bring up the past a little bit because, you know, we grew up, you and I,

on a diet of post-Second World War movies that were put out by Hollywood and elsewhere, including some big ones like The Dirty Dozen, which the whole premise of The Dirty Dozen was that U.S. forces went to the meanest, cruelest people they could find, and they were usually in jails, to bring them out and put them into behind the scenes action now was that just a movie i mean i think that particular one was but did it speak a certain truth about what had been done in the past by past armies and in past wars well one difference about the dirty dozen which many listeners may have seen is that these were prisoners within military prisons. They weren't civilian prisoners, so they were brought over for offenses they had committed in uniform. And basically, they're all sentenced to death,

so they're all given the option to either hang or go on a mission where survival was not very much guaranteed. But basically, the major countries, Britain and the United States, did not go to their prisons at all in in the second world war with very rare exception one exception i know of which i'll mention but the reason being that these countries first of all they didn't really need desperation recruiting like that they had millions of you know volunteers and conscripts of their own they didn't have to go to prisons and the other reason is the military were absolutely adamant we don't want these quote thugs entering our ranks we don't you know we don't need them what happens if the prisoners

end up with the safe jobs back at the base and the other soldiers are going forward and getting themselves killed what happens if they go forward in themselves and start abusing civilians or whatever? So no, there was a strong resistance. Only in one case do I know of, and that was in the invasion of Sicily in 1943. The U.S. thought it would be clever to bring over some leading mafia figures from the United States

to co-mingle with certain mafia figures in Sicily and certain corrupt local officials. And whether or not that was a good idea or not, I don't really know, except it had to be canceled because obviously right away, liberties start to be taken. But that was the one area I know. And I know the United States using actual criminals, and I think they regretted it. I don't think in Canada it happened at all, though. You'd always hear rumors that so-and-so was about to be sentenced when the judge gave him sort of a choice between doing five years and the slammer or perhaps signing up tomorrow. I think that's more apocryphal than reality, though. Okay.

We've got time for one more segment, and that segment is going to be a focus, actually, really on the U.S., because with the change from the midterm elections and the Republicans taking power in the House of Representatives, there has been a lot of talk by some Republicans that they want to back off on the commitment to ukraine they want um you know they're they're a little bit uh uh concerned

that they're being there's been too much going to ukraine and too much without any accountability they don't know where all these weapons are that they've been sending or at least they say they don't know where they are um and they want more accountability or less movement of money and equipment to ukraine how much of an issue is this uh for ukraine and for president biden and is there some truth in this issue of we don't know where all this stuff's going and if they don't know where it's going from the states we probably don't know where it's going from the States, we probably don't know where it's going from Canada either. Is there any truth to that? Or do we believe there could be some truth in it?

Well, I think both points you make are right on. I think there's a lot of worry in Ukraine and a lot of worry throughout Europe that American will to continue to be the big giver in this war will flag once the Republicans be the good the big giver in this war will flag once the republicans have control of the house which controls a lot of the u.s budget but in actual fact as far as i'm hearing the republicans are making a fairly sensible uh statement they're saying that staggering amounts of money tens and tens of billions of dollars are flowing into ukraine with very little oversight very little careful looking at where it's going who's handling what have you and what we want to have is oversight

we want normal parliamentary congressional oversight and really really, you know, America's got a very good reason to want oversight itself. We all remember Afghanistan and the stories that came out of there of just quite unbelievable amounts of corruption when the Americans, the Department of Defense poured in tens of billions of contracts. And some studies suggested 40 percent of that money ended up in the hands of criminal syndicates and corrupt officials probably corruption more than any one single factor was the one that ate away at uh at afghanistan and crashed it to the ground so i think it's very wise with the americans pouring this much money in and dealing with

contractors around the world uh to to tighten up the to look the one the looking capacity as to where it's going and who's handling it and i think we have to remember without getting too over worked on it that ukraine did not have a very good reputation some years ago. The most corrupt country in Europe was regarded by Transparency International to be Russia, but close behind it was at one stage regarded Ukraine. Now, Ukraine has been valiantly fighting to stave off corruption now for years. But, you know, Zelensky in his inaugural address said that politicians had made Ukraine a country of opportunity. That is an opportunity to loot, steal and bribe.

Now, he and his government and the Ukrainian people have been very, very strong and trying to root out corruption in Ukraine. They get a lot of applause from the international community for it, but it's hard to root this stuff out. It takes a while to make sure that the armaments area, for instance, is not laced with corruption. So yes, I think we should also worry that U.S. resolve may weaken, but we should also think it very wise for the U.S. to take a careful watch at where all this money is going. And what about Canada? Should we be equally concerned about where the money is? You know, we've given hundreds of millions of dollars, let alone a good deal of our military equipment and supplies to Ukraine.

Is there any sense of accountability for the Canadian donations to Ukraine? Oh, I think there is. And I think for all the NATO countries, too. I mean, this is not to slag off Ukraine. It's only a wise when when shutters to think it's some of the deals that uh some out there might be making uh so yes by all means and it should not become too much of a restriction on the flow of the actual pace of the flow uh if done properly and done done with with real care which i think it can be. And I think Ukraine should actually welcome it. It certainly does not want to see

a kind of Afghanistan situation develop there. And the current government is very much committed to a reform, anti-corruption future for Ukraine. Okay. We're going to leave it at that

for this week, Brian. Another fascinating conversation covered a lot of different ground in there today but we appreciate all of it look forward to talking to you again next week okay peter thank you brian stewart with us again as he has been on most tuesdays uh since the conflict in ukraine with russia invading back in February. So we thank Brian. And I know that for many of you, this has been a really important part of the bridge over these, I guess, many, many months

to get Brian's take on things as they've been going on. I want you to know it hasn't just been those of you who have been listening in Canada and the United States, but also from different points around the world, because I've received emails from listeners in Europe, in the Far East, and other locations as well, where they have been very complimentary about the kind of coverage and explanations we've been giving to this conflict in Ukraine.

And we've been doing it. Who would have thought we'd be doing it on a weekly basis? But partly the reason why we're doing it on a weekly basis is because the demand for it has been quite high. And that's good. So Brian will be back with us, obviously, next Tuesday as well. Time for a couple of end bits, as we like to call them. Do you know, if you're an average driver, if you're an average vehicle owner,

do you have any idea how many miles in your lifetime you will cover? The average difference, and these are in miles, these numbers, the average distance a motorist will cover in their lifetime across all cars. This from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency. I wonder where they are. They're in Britain. The average number of miles.

This is astonishing. I'm surprised at this number. 750,000 miles. So you do the math. What is that, 120,000 miles. So you do the math. What is that, 120,000 kilometers roughly? 750,000 miles. You know what that's the equivalent of? It's the equivalent of going to the moon and back twice.

Anyway, this comes out of an article that the agency has put out on the car it's found that's done more miles than any other car i guess in the uk okay it's a citroen x sarah or x sarah tops the record for the car cars still on the road with the most miles on the clock. An astonishing 999,994. So my guess is by the time I'm reading this, they've passed the million mile mark. 999,000 miles. Other vehicles just short of the million mark include a Mercedes C-Class, two LDV Maxxis vans, I don't know what those are, a Vauxhall Corsa, a pair of Range Rovers, a VW Golf, a Citroen C3, and a Honda Civic.

There you go. Got to come to the bridge to find out these facts, right? And here's your last one for today. I like this story because we're so often consumed by, you know, each year we're told such and such an animal or such and such a bird or such and such a fish is becoming extinct or is now extinct. Well, here's the reverse of that story. This is on the world site at CNN. This bird had not been documented by scientists since 1882.

Then they captured video of it in Papua New Guinea. A bunch of researchers and scientists were into the jungle areas of Papua New Guinea, and they'd set up cameras in different places looking because they'd heard a rumor that this bird that's been extinct for 140 years had been seen and was a regular occurrence of sighting by some of the groups in the jungle in this particular area of New Guinea. What kind of bird is it? It's the black-naped pheasant pigeon.

Now, bird watchers in our listening audience, and I know there are some, because I know them personally. And they're wonderful people who get up early in the morning and they go out and they try to sight or hear birds, and they accumulate in their own personal records the number of different species that they've managed to track over the years. I know a good friend of mine, former editor of McLean's magazine, Bob Lewis.

He's a bird watcher. And you go golfing with him and you'll be walking down the fairway and he'll go, listen, that's a red-tailed whoopee snapper or whatever it may be. And it's like hitting a great three iron. If he gets to hear a bird, he's made his day,

especially if it's a bird he's never heard before. Anyway, the black-naped pheasant pigeon can be taken off the extinct list based on this new research on these finds in the jungles of New Guinea. So doesn't that make you feel good? It should. 140 years since it was last documented. Now it's there. All right. That's it for this day. Tomorrow, Wednesday, it's Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth

with Bruce Anderson. Thursday, your turn and the ranter. If you want to have something to say, this weekend has already been a lot of mail. A surprising amount about spam, given yesterday's discussion of spam. Not the kind you get in your computer but the kind you eat anyway drop me a line at the mansbridge podcast at gmail.com the mansbridge

podcast at gmail.com friday of course your turn your turn friday good talk with chantelle a bear and bruce anderson Don't miss it. Lots to come this week. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you again in just 24 hours.