The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - How And Why Would You Negotiate With A War Criminal?

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

In his regular  Tuesday commentary long time foreign correspondent Brian Stewart takes us beyond the headlines to focus on what we know and what we don't know about the war in Ukraine.  Also some big news about The Bridge.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Why would you negotiate with a war criminal? That's coming up. And hello there. It's Tuesday, and Tuesday is during this whole war invasion of Ukraine. Tuesdays we set aside to hear from Brian Stewart. Brian, the former foreign correspondent, war correspondent. Lots of background and experience on the ground during conflicts of the past 40 years. And Brian puts his perspective on what we're witnessing, what we know and what we don't know about the conflict in Ukraine. That's coming up. But first of all, it's a big day here at the bridge.

It's an exciting day. It's a day we're kind of very proud of. And here's why. During the night, we passed the 3 million download mark. Now, I know this is kind of the terminology used in the podcast business, and not everybody knows exactly what it means. I mean, the bridge is heard two different ways. As you hear every day when I promote the way you're listening to the bridge,

right after that little break we have in the middle of the program, and I say, you're listening to the bridge on Sirius XM Canada, channel 167, Canada Talks. And that is one way of listening. Because of our deal, our agreement with Sirius XM, satellite radio service. And it's broadcast all across North America to the potential of three and a half million listeners. That's the subscriber race of SiriusXM.

So that's one way it goes out. And the other way is as a podcast that you download from whatever podcast service you use. And there are many of them, as you well know. And the bridge is available on just about all of them. So in terms of podcasts, they put numbers to podcasts by the number of people who download the podcast. Well, when we, and this is all arranged by SiriusXM, they put it on their satellite radio service, but they also arrange through a podcast platform how to put it up every day.

So it's available to anyone in the world. And that's why we hear when we do our Your Turn segments on Thursday, we hear from listeners around the world, mainly Canadians who live in different parts of the world who like to stay in touch with Canada in some fashion. And one of the ways they do that is through listening to The Bridge. So download numbers are one way of judging the success of a podcast. And when we made this arrangement, this agreement with SiriusXM, it started last February, so February of 2021.

And we went from being this little hobby podcast to being a little hobby podcast that is helped by SiriusXM in terms of its distribution. Still do it out of my kind of den office in Stratford, Ontario. That's where I am today or when we're in Toronto or when we're in Scotland, which we'll be in another two weeks.

And we had some great shows from Scotland last year that you seem to really enjoy, and hopefully we'll be able to do the same thing again when we're there for a couple of weeks in April. Anyway, that's kind of the basis. That's the root of how the bridge gets to where. So during the night, we passed the 3 million download mark. And that really is, that's a pretty significant number.

And it's a credit to those of you who feel that we're offering you something to think about on a daily basis monday to friday and of course in the last two years that's it's kind of it's either been about the pandemic which has been a constant through this whole time was one of the reasons i started doing this. Politics, Canadian politics, and American politics, because we follow the Trump story pretty well, but Canadian politics mainly. We've covered two elections. You know, 2019 and 2021. The convoy

and Ukraine. And we've had some really important programs on all of those. And I think we've stimulated a lot of discussion on your part, a lot of thoughts from you, and it's been great to hear from you. But I wanted to do two things. I wanted to thank you for listening to The Bridge and letting me know when you like things, and just as important, letting me know when you don't like things. And obviously without you as listeners, the bridge would be kind of irrelevant.

The other person I wanted to thank was a fellow by the name of John Lewis, who's the Senior Vice President at SiriusXM. John and I worked together at the CBC for years, even though we didn't really know each other. But quite a few years ago, John left the CBC and was instrumental in the startup of SiriusXM Canada. And after I retired from the CBC and started knocking around with this little podcast, John approached me and one thing led to another and we decided to make a little kind of partnership. And it's, you know, it's been great for both of us.

But John now has reached his age of retirement, and he's in the final days, if not the final hours, so it's serious. And it's kind of nice that in terms of the bridge, things have come together at the same time. Past the 3 million download mark, John makes the decision that he's been anxious about for the last few years

to get to retirement, and he's done that now. So I just wanted to thank him because without John, I don't think this would have been as successful as it's been. He's been a great friend and, you know, business partner really on this whole little enterprise. So thank you, John.

Thank you to the listeners and thank you to the bridge. So let's get going. Today is the Brian Stewart day, as I've said before, gives us a sense of where we are on this story and looks at those questions, as I mentioned, of what's happening, what's not happening. What do we know? What do we not know?

So let's get to this week's conversation. Maybe we should take a quick break before we do that and then come right back with Brian Stewart right after this. All right then. Listening on Sirius XM channel 167 Canada Talks or on your favorite podcast platform. Let's get to Brian Stewart. This week's look at, I like that phrase, what we know and what we don't know.

Here's our conversation. So Brian, I guess one of the confusions about this story is trying to understand what some of these numbers that are thrown at us really are and i'm talking about the casualty numbers we hear on the you know we're told that on the russian side their casualties are anywhere between seven eight to to 15,000 casualties, deaths actually, in terms of Russian soldiers. We hear about the civilian population and the terrible, tragic numbers there.

But what we're not hearing about, or at least we don't hear very often, is what's happening on the Ukrainian side in terms of their army, the troops on the Ukrainian side. What do we know uh with any certainty with certainty we know very very little indeed and the ukrainian government is very tight the information about where different units are and what movements are underway uh and certainly when it comes to the casualty figures in the desk i don't know what they really are right now. I've heard variously

estimated at 1,300. I think that's been given out by the Ukrainian government. That seems to be low if the Russians have lost quite so many in this kind of nonstop, ferocious fighting. And we do know that several Ukrainian battalions have been very badly battered up by the Russians in this fight. I would think perhaps their death toll is higher than that. But we just don't know. There's so many unknowns in this war. In some respects, we see these small units fighting for the Ukrainians, but it's it's kind of a ghost army and we've discussed this before on your show that we don't really know what formations are moving in or where all their

tanks are their any aircraft or missiles and their long-range artillery is out there and it's been fired upon by the the russians fairly steadily when they get it in range, they can actually accurately target it. So we kind of think, I kind of think, the casualties must be higher than that. I also think, and I think this is generally assumed, the civilian casualties are

much, much higher than the numbers we've given out. I mean, I've seen a number of 1,000, sorry, 100 for Kyiv. I think that's unlikely. We'd only have 100 deaths after a month of shelling and the kind of attacks we've seen. We just don't know. What does that tell us about the Ukrainians?

Is it smart positioning on their part in terms of keeping these numbers uh you know close to their vest or is it a sign that the things are perhaps more chaotic than we think they are on that side it could be either one i think there is some smart position both sides are trying to manipulate the media story the russians with very little success at all the ukrainians with an enormous amount of success and they're doing what they should be doing, which is to get world attention and world sympathy and world physical help in the fight. But there's also a reluctance to let the enemy know just how badly they've damaged you, where they damaged you, what position you were in when you were damaged and what weapons you used that damaged them.

So there's a great deal of effort here to keep the enemy guessing as much as possible. I remember in Afghanistan, on the Canadian base there, Kandahar, they wouldn't report when the Taliban would fire a missile into the base. They wouldn't report that it actually landed, even though the Taliban watching from hills outside would see the flash. But that was just the standard doctrine. We don't let on where incoming arrives and we don't speak of our wounded in numbers like that. So there's a bit of that going on for sure, trying to confuse the enemy. And also to make yourself appear,

and I think this is a legitimate attempt, as the advancing successful force at the moment and not the battered and weakened force. You know, in talking about where this stuff is landing in different cities in Ukraine, I saw a remarkable thing happen on the air the other day watching one of the American satellite news channels, cable news channels. And, you know, they've all been doing, you know,

quite a job really in terms of live reporting on the ground. But here was this situation where, sorry, for some reason I have my alarm going off there um but there was this remarkable scene where i think it was uh levive where they they'd hit these um oil tankers or not oil tankers but uh storage units storage a couple of them in a big wide area and they were showing the pictures and then they were talking to a witness and the witness pleaded with them don't show the pictures because it shows the russians where they hit and where they didn't hit in an exact way and they can adjust their firing for

the next time round and you know they he was pleading with the American television crew who sort of nodded and then moved on and kept showing the pictures. Right, right. But you tend to forget, you know, in this 24-7 world we live in now, that something like that, as basic as that, can actually play a role in the way things unfold. Oh, absolutely. And, you know, picture intelligence is very important. They'd have their satellites, of course. So I doubt they would need CNN or some other network to show them where their missile had landed as they have satellites overhead and likely a fair number of spies about.

But yes, they want to, the defending side wants to close down all the information that the enemy can possibly get about where they're firing their missiles or their artillery shells fired, where they actually land. We want precision so they can make adjustments. It looked to me like this was an exactly precise hit by a long-range missile that just went right smack into the target i would think they'd be able to check that within minutes from satellite uh data i'm stressed but you but you know they they lay down uh procedures in war and people follow them even when sometimes they don't make all that much sense. One of the great things that you've been doing for us over these last few weeks is you've been

going back through the data, especially on the Russian side, in terms of what were their military experts, their analysts, their retired generals, whoever it may be, what were they saying about their capabilities going into this? And in this latest few days of research, you've been finding some pretty startling stuff. Yeah, we tend to think about all the discussion going on in Russia would be behind closed doors and none of it gets up. There's actually quite a lively intellectual debate going on all the time in Russian military circles. Very cerebral staff and top military experts analyzing whether there's strengths and weaknesses. What's really striking over the last half decade, maybe six, seven years even, is the sense that they're not being able to reform fast enough to stay current with NATO. They're really fretting about their they've fallen behind for a number of major reasons.

When Ukraine broke off all relations with them, interestingly enough, Ukraine used to supply 30 percent of the Russian armaments. So the Russians had to now start building their own enormous costs. They've also been trying to professionalize their military, which drives the costs up further. And it's just not rich enough a country to keep up with all the rising costs. Also, sanctions in the West cut off a lot of technological apparatus that they needed for their weaponry and other things. And so they've had to start building their own. So their costs have risen. Their major reform ambition, which was to professionalize the army much more,

make it more professional like NATO armies, if I could say that, have generally failed because they haven't had the recruits they've expected to get. Putin's very insistent on this, but it hasn't worked out as the way he wanted it. Russian youth see fighting going on on the Ukrainian border in Syria, in Georgia, and they say that's not the career for me. So they've fallen well short

of recruiting objectives. And the equipment, a lot of the equipment that Russians have is very old. It's Soviet era equipment. It's older than a lot of the Ukrainian equipment, a lot of the equipment that Russians have is very old. It's Soviet era equipment. It's older than a lot of the Ukrainian equipment, actually. It's certainly a lot older than NATO equipment. So you tend to get at conferences, Russians talking about, you know,

we do not foresee any major conventional war with a peer competitor any time in future. Clearly they seem at some level and I suspect it was above the generals and more in Putin's office to have decided Ukraine doesn't belong in that era as a peer competitor. But in fact, Ukraine had been for eight years as we've discussed before, going through a remarkable reform of its military. It's building up professionalism and it's working towards NATO standards, which the Russians are very conscious of, you know, in terms of logistics and precision guided missiles and the rest of it. So the Russians have had very leery feelings about a war with the West.

I don't think for a moment they sit there looking forward to sometime invading the Eastern flying nations in the North and the rest of it, because the Russians have also, in their conferences, have made it very clear that they worry about where a NATO war would go, that their basic doctrine, which is the coup d' de main, the blow of the hand, get across the border, sit up, sit there and then demand accessions from your enemy. And when you dare the enemy to come and attack, the enemy does that. Then you start threatening nuclear weapons. And time after time, there's a current sort of worry expressed that competitiveness in war now, in conventional war just, is so serious and so complex that very quickly it could push

leaders towards nuclear war. And I think this is a very worrisome thing for us to be hearing today. Well, as we heard from General Leslie yesterday, it's, you know, one of the things that worries him. He thinks we're at a much more dangerous point than we've ever been before in the history of the planet. He says this is way worse than Cuban Missile Crisis in 62. We're already at that point for a variety of reasons so one of which you just outlined now if their own conventional weapons aren't good enough in the field to deal with the situation they got to go the next step up and they grab a slice of land to go to get the bargain they want

which is effectively what they're falling back on now, Eastern Ukraine. And if Eastern Ukraine counterattacks with a lot of NATO support, Russia will start more and more to threaten either chemical weapons or nuclear weapons, I would think. And this is just getting into dangerous, dangerous territory. I'm not sure I agree with the comparison to the Cuban Missile Crisis. I kept a diary through every single day of that crisis, and I still can read it today and get very sweaty at palms. That was a very nerve-wracking time. But yes, I think, as he often is, absolutely right that we're in a very dangerous area right now

because when things don't go well for the Russian military, they've got a limited number of options. One is to just keep killing civilians through long range artillery and make life miserable or fall back and dig in, which they're doing in many of the fronts, several of the fronts now.

But we'll in the east, they will dig in and say, okay, try and get us now. And will Ukraine counterattack? And if they do so, will Russia say one more counter-attack like that we will probably go nuclear hoping to scare nato right out of the game hoping to scare the rest of the world right out of the game and leave ukraine isolated i still have this image in my mind of what leslie was talking about yesterday with these subs lying on the ocean floor

in different parts of the world around the globe, all able to fire their nuclear-tipped missiles from the bottom of the ocean and hit anywhere in the world. Just the thought of that is terrifying. And even short of that, if they got into an exchange of tactical nuclear weapons, these are much smaller than the big strategic monsters that take all cities, all states, in fact, provinces.

The tactical nuclear weapon will destroy a city and all the troops in it and all the civilians and have a radius of about six to nine kilometers of just flattening the place so it would be basically a nagasaki or a hiroshima of that scale if you can imagine in europe to which navy would have to make the choice uh do we do we come through and then stand up and in fact answer in kind with our own tactical dupes or what else can we do i'm inclined to think russia can't possibly think seriously of doing it because even if it got away with winning ukraine or half the ukraine i mean this economy would be devastated i mean it would not it wouldn't be a pariah state it would be a toxic state nobody would want to touch i don't think the chinese or the indians or any of the others we still have relations uh continuing with them could possibly

continue if they ever did such an act that killed what 250000 people in one morning or something. So I think they would, you know, I really find it hard to believe they'd actually take that step. But it's very important that we make it very clear to them what the consequences will be and not leave it up in the air. It's somehow vague. Well, it seems to me that that is one of the points at which we're caught because you know biden went off script for the end of his speech the other day in um in warsaw uh where he said this guy's got to go you know he can't stay in power and he's been you know he's been

beaten around the ears by a lot of people as a result of making that claim. But here's the dilemma that I face. And I know you and I disagree on this, so let's try and have it out in a few moments here. Because, I mean, to me, what he was saying was what everybody is thinking, that this guy can't stay in power beyond this. If the best you can come up with is a stalemate, even then he can't stay in power beyond this. If the best you can come up with is a stalemate, even then he can't stay in power. He's a butcher. He's killed babies.

He's killed the elderly. He is the one who has been trying for regime change in Ukraine. The claim is that Biden was trying to justify regime change on his part with those last few words, when in fact he was talking about the elimination of one person, not their whole system. Right, right. But nevertheless, what was wrong with him saying that? I still don't understand the torrent of criticism that he's received. Well, I'm part of the torrent i guess because you know i i find it

very hard to understand how somebody as old as biden and you know i'm his age so i know i wouldn't trust me in the white house so i'm a little worried but uh but you know i'm seriously i find it hard to believe somebody with his experience would at the moment when the world is very tense for the thought of exchange of nuclear weapons chemical weapons and the rest of it would just blurt out off script without having okayed it with his senior staff his senior officials not to mention all the nato countries he's trying to lead here that he was going to come out and basically uh demand that the Russian leader be deposed, be overthrown. I think that the problem there is, as you say,

that's something everybody might wish for and everybody might think. But if we all think that and wish for it, why does he have to say it? Because we don't have to sit down and negotiate with Putin, but he does. At some stage, America is going to have to negotiate. And basically, this one, whatever the effect is, you know, it's in the Kremlin. I think it's bound to be pretty serious. It may cause them to prolong the war, which means more innocent civilians are going to die seeking to get this thing over with. We can. And it may also push us even further towards people inside the Kremlin getting extraordinarily risk prone. And that's what we certainly don't want to have happen right now. He didn't have to say that he could have ended that very well crafted, excellent speech.

I thought right up to that point, he was really going perfectly, hitting all the right buttons. And then whammo, yet again in his career, as happens so often, he went off script and tripped over his tongue. Yeah, and he's been hammered for it. When the last guy who was in there, every day he said something off script. Exactly. And didn't pay any price for it. And all the hangers on and the sycophants around him would just say, oh, you don't know. You don't have to believe everything Trump says, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, to get back to your central point, he's going to have to negotiate. Why does he have to negotiate? The guy's a war criminal. He's a thug. He's all the things everybody says about him. Why would you negotiate with this guy? Why did we negotiate with Joseph Stalin in the Second World War? He was a bigger thug and he murdered a lot more people.

Ah, but what was the phrase that Churchill used? Your enemy's enemy is your friend. Right. And for that purpose, it was during those years. I mean, we weren't talking about one particular thing. He hadn't done this to an ally of ours. You know, you and I have covered God knows how many over the years, peace conferences, peace conferences between various leaders of countries and warlords and generals. And most of them have hated each other's guts but to get to any form of peace

they've got to return to a kind of diplomatic arena where you know the ghost diplomats can do a lot of the heavy lifting of the negotiations and countries have to at least settle down and bury their venom for the period of making uh you know the peace agreement i don't think we can leave we don't want to leave russia uh hanging on to a a core of a rump of uh ukraine uh threatening weapons we want we don't want this to continue for months ahead so at some stage it's going to end through negotiations but negotiations which negotiations would suggest he's going to get something out of it well we negotiate with china i mean we're not at war with china i mean we're not at war with russia but we we we are in a way at war with russia we're supplying you know the all the

armaments for the ukrainians to do the. But I mean, any settlement of this thing in the long run that leaves Putin with something and still in power would seem to me like it's a failure. Well, he may get something, but I think the sanctions will remain, and his economy is being devastated day after day, which I think is a big... Whenever we talk about the military front,

the economic front may be far more devastating in the long run, more pressure on Putin than anything else. But I do think that, you know, Biden's been doing a good job of actually leading NATO as far as it can possibly get away with in sending weapons into the Ukraine. Without tipping this over into war, he said that was his objective several times. To suddenly go from that objective to calling the guy who's in charge of the Russian state a butcher who should be overthrown is really throwing whatever caution he was showing to the wind at a time when I don't think,

frankly, the allies want this to happen. I mean, I think the fact that the allies, Macron, right through the rest of them, have been quite shocked by this is a pretty telling fact that Biden did not act in a way one would expect of a U.S. president. And the fact that we've had two presidents in a row now capable of going off script in the most bizarre way, it's hardly reassuring. I think if you had to put her to vote, we know which way they'd vote in terms of which of those two choices they might want. Well, look, if this conversation has proved anything,

it's that neither one of you or I are going to be heading into the diplomatic service anytime. No, exactly. Certainly not me. But you know what I might do? I might phone a guy that you and I covered for many years and is, from every indication I've seen, is doing an outstanding job at the UN. That's Bob Ray. Oh, yeah. And see what he says, because he's not holding back in the speeches he gives on what he's saying about Putin and his leadership in Russia.

And talk to him about about this whole issue of how do you negotiate with that guy? He might have some interesting things to say. Well, he'd be very interesting if he says Biden did exactly the right thing and said the right words, I'll be convinced. Bob Ray is a very, very wise man indeed. He is. Listen, Brian, thanks very much. Good discussion, as always. Look forward to seeing you next week. My pleasure, Peter. See you. Brian Stewart. Gosh, I love talking to Brian. You know, we've been friends for, I guess, since the early 1970s. So that goes back away.

A lot of water under the bridge since then. And a lot of good conversations over the years about situations somewhat similar to the one we're in right now. But on that last point, you know, I thought about the Bob Ray idea some more. And I reached out to Bob, and he's agreed to come on the program again. He's been on the bridge before. And we'll do that for early next week, and we'll have that conversation. How do you sit down across from somebody who you have called you know a war criminal a butcher you know the list um and try to negotiate a settlement

where clearly that person across the table from you is going to get something out of it i don't know i can't see that. I mean, you know, I often refer back to, as you well know, to Churchill. You know, and as far as Churchill was concerned in those final months of the Second World War when some of the Nazis were desperately trying to cut a deal,

he had nothing to do with it. Neither would Eisenhower, who was doing the actual negotiations. As far as they were concerned, the surrender was to be unconditional. No conditions attached to it. And, you know, obviously there are those in this current situation who feel the same way. But we'll see the direction in which it goes,

and I look forward to having a talk with Ambassador Ray about exactly this kind of question about the way a negotiation would take place and how it could possibly be successful when you have said the things you've said about the person across the table from you. Anyway, that's next week. Again, I'll leave you with a little thought,

because I mentioned earlier how we'll be going back to Scotland for a couple of weeks in April. And we'll be doing the podcast from there, so I'll probably take a couple of days off around Easter. But one of the things that I'm going to have to be, to recognize when we get there, is the rapid rise in energy costs. And that's happened kind of around the world

as a result of the situation we find ourselves in. But it's especially so in the UK in terms of electrical costs. So here's the advice I want you to know. It got in the mail the other day. My electrical supplier for our little place in Scotland, up in the Highlands, up in the North Coast, our electrical supplier is called SSE EnergyVO. It's the UK OVO. Anyway, they sent this kind of flyer around about how you could

cut back on your energy costs. Here's their advice. No kidding. This is what they say. I guess it's good advice. Eat porridge. That's right. Get up in the morning, have porridge, warm you up. Or buy socks made of merino wool. That will all help keep costs Or they also suggest customers do a few star jumps and have a cuddle with pets or loved ones to keep cozy during the cool months. All right.

I have to get on that. Let's get that porridge out. Get those merino wool socks. I don't even know what merino wool means. I guess I should Google that and find out to see whether I have any merino wool socks and get them ready for the trip. All right. That's it for the trip. All right. That's it for this Tuesday.

The 3 million download day. Thanks for listening. I'm Peter Mansbridge. This has been The Bridge. Tomorrow, smoke, mirrors, and the truth. With Bruce Anderson. He'll be by. Can't wait to see what he has to say this week.

That's it for now. Talk to you again in 24 hours.