The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Lesson of Winning The Battle But Losing The War.

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

It’s an old saying but perhaps truer today than ever. Dr Samantha Nutt from War Child Canada has seen it all in sone of the most desperate corners of the world. And what frustrates her almost more than anything else if the fact that many countries just don’t learn the lessons of our history. She’s our guest for this conversation.

And hello there, Peter Ransbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's an old saying, lose the battle, but win the war. It could be more true today than ever before. That's coming up. And welcome to The Bridge. It's the Tuesday episode. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Before we get going on a conversation I'm really lucky to have had, and I'm looking forward to sharing it with you. But before we get going, I want to just give you a heads up on something. Thursday, as you know, is your turn, your opportunity to say what you'd like to say on any topic that comes to mind. But this Saturday is Remembrance Day.

So I thought I'd ask this of you. If you have a Remembrance Day story to tell, it could be about your father or your grandfather or an uncle. It could be about any number of different people who perhaps participated for Canada in the Second World War, in Korea, Bosnia, peacekeeping missions, Afghanistan. Any service that is worthy of linking towards what we tend to think about on Remembrance Day, I'd love to hear it.

Now, I'm not looking for long stories. I'm looking for short anecdotes, something perhaps your father or your mother told you or your grandfather or your grandmother told you about war years, about their experiences. Now, if you have one of those, send it along to the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com, the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. And you should probably send it, you know, in the next day or two,

because I'd love to include it on Thursday's program, on our Your Turn program, some of your remembrances that fit with Remembrance Day. So as we like to say, don't be shy, drop me a line. Okay, now about that conversation. I kind of hinted at it yesterday. We had a fabulous talk yesterday with Janice Stein about the situation in Ukraine and the situation in Israel and Gaza with Hamas. But I mentioned during that broadcast that today I was going to talk to Samantha Nutt, Dr. Samantha Nutt, Canadian physician, philanthropist, founder and president of War Child Canada. Samantha's spent the last couple of decades

working in war zones. She wrote a book in 2011, Damned Nations, Greed, Guns, Armies, and Aid, details her work over the course of all those years in some of the most devastated regions of the world. And Samantha still does that work. So she has a lot of thoughts about war, about the consequences of war, the impact on children, the impact on ways that we discuss war, and this issue of losing the battle but winning the war.

So here's my conversation then with Dr. Samantha Nutt. I found it really fascinating to be a part of the conversation and I hope you find it just as fascinating to listen to it. Here we go. So Sam, I want to start with something you said in a note to me the other day. It's not a news saying.

It's been around for a long time. But it does kind of work in ways that I'm not sure we've been thinking about in terms of the whole situation in Israel with Hamas. And that is you can lose the battle but win the war, basically, is what it comes down to. So explain to me how that makes sense in this story. Well, I mean, look, you know, the challenge here is that when you look at what's going on right now in Israel and in Gaza, when you look at what the outcomes will be over the long term, what does victory actually look like? Because there is the military victory, which would ultimately be the removal of Hamas. But it's very hard. And we have seen this in

Afghanistan. We've seen it in Iraq, for example. In other parts of the world, it's very hard to have any kind of military victory over a psychology. And what remains in this context, when you think about the millions of people who have been displaced as a result of this violence, the psychology within Israel itself with 1,400 people who were killed, more than 200 people who were taken hostage, the impact that this is having on civilians on both sides, it is very difficult to see in the long term how you foster any meaningful peace unless you begin to think about this psychology piece, unless you begin to think about how will it be that people's lives can be eventually rebuilt and that eventually we can get to a place of greater understanding. And this is the big question in my mind going forward, but it also

speaks to the rifts that we're seeing on a global level. I mean, this has been a turning point right around, right across the world in terms of our failures to understand one another, to communicate with one another, to really build bridges and alliances and to stand together in defense of our common humanity. And that's the part to me that is, frankly, most alarming. And I'm not sure at this moment how we recover from that, except to say it's going to be a long, slow, and very painful process. Well, you know, the combatants must have realized that going into it, especially Hamas.

One assumes Hamas never thought that they could actually defeat Israel in a military campaign, or the United States if they get into it as well. They're already into it to a degree, but you know what I mean. They must have realized that. So going in, what was the goal on the psychology of war, on the ideology that they were expounding, on the belief that they could change opinion? Do you think that's what their goal was all along? I do. I think that the goal of terrorism anywhere in the world is to so upend people's sense of security. It is an assault on their very being. And when you do that,

and when you can see the global response, I mean, they would have known that Israel would react with great strength and determination in response to these very significant atrocities that were committed, the worst in Israel's history. And so, you know, there is no way that they didn't anticipate that this would then spiral into something much larger, to the extent that it became or is becoming, in some respects, a new front in the global culture wars, where we're seeing so much division, so much animosity, so much, you know, there's legitimate protests, but then there has also been very, very polarizing and I would say harmful protest that's been taking place as well in many corners of the world where people are spewing a great deal of engagement and reaction that took place outside of Israel and outside of Gaza. But the fact that that is happening certainly, I think, will embolden

not just Hamas, but other groups like Hamas going forward. I mean, you think about groups like ISIS, for example, what they were trying to do was infiltrate the psychology, particularly of young men in other corners to create, to foster a movement, an ideology. And that is not that dissimilar from what we're seeing with Hamas. It has become, in a way, a kind of movement that is appealing to people for different reasons. And that's the part that's most frightening. And that is also the part that's going to be hardest to defeat. You know, it's interesting you bring up the ISIS example, because there was a situation where, you know, the Americans went in whole hog on ISIS. They were going to defeat and crush ISIS. And through the Obama administration and the Trump administration, there was the appearance, in fact, that they had done that, that they had crushed ISIS. And Trump still goes around talking about how he personally crushed ISIS. But in fact, ISIS is still around and it's in a lot more countries than it was then.

Absolutely. And I've confronted some of these elements in different corners of the world myself. Look, it's already expanded to more than a dozen countries. It is, for example, when I was in Uganda a few months ago, there was an ISIS-affiliated group that attacked a school and more than 40 schoolchildren were violently killed. Two weeks ago, I was in Yemen, which has ISIS elements and al-Qaeda elements as well, and they have begun abducting aid workers again for kidnap and ransom.

I mean, it is it is, you know, it's certainly not it's it's not as well funded as it was during the Iraq days where it had access to and Syria days where it had access to oil revenues and consistent revenues. But certainly as an ideology, it is it is quite pervasive and including in places like Afghanistan. I mean, this is an ongoing reality. So it's very naive to believe that you can defeat these kinds of terror movements militarily. They have a tendency to morph into something. Sometimes it is even more frightening and more determined. But the real thing, and this is going to be true for Hamas, and this is one of the questions that I think international governments are beginning to wrestle with as well, is how do you starve the financing of groups like this? Because when you can control that, when you can limit the arms flow, when you can look at some of the alliances that you have, whether it's Qatar in the case of Hamas and other groups, and really ask, how is it that they're able to generate this kind of revenue to mount these kinds of offensives? Where is it coming from?

If you can choke off that, then you have a much greater likelihood of long-term success. But for as long as there continues to be war and violence and instability, it becomes very difficult to contain even those elements, the financing and the arms transfers, for example. As you have mentioned, you've seen some of these situations with ISIS, especially up close. What is it beyond the funding? What is it that attracts a young man, a young woman, I guess, in some cases, to join a group like ISIS in some of these countries

that you've worked in? What is it? What's the appeal? It's usually never one thing, Peter, but many things. It is anger. It is anger, it is identity, it is a sense of belonging in a perverse way, redemption for years of bloodshed and loss and trauma. In some cases as well, even if you look at other armed movements, whether you're talking about, for example, Mai Mai militia or Janjaweed militia in Sudan, Mai Mai being in Eastern Congo,

attract a lot of child soldiers. Within that as well, sometimes these are economic questions, they're questions of protection. How do I best protect my family if I don't participate in these armed groups and we're more vulnerable? There is no local, there's not a lot of local employment or other opportunity. And so people feel helpless. You know, that helplessness mixed with hopelessness mixed with rage is a very toxic combination that drives and fuels militant groups throughout the world, unfortunately. And until we begin to tackle some of those very real issues, which is where things like humanitarian aid become really important, economic development becomes really important, diplomacy, for example, becomes really important.

And yet we're shortchanging those things at the expense often of our own peace and security. Do Western, major Western powers, and I include us in that, get it on that front? I mean, the picture you paint, and you would obviously be an expert on this as a war child, Canada. But one assumes that these groups are going for children. That's how they start. That's how they indoctrinate them. The Western powers who are all ready to load up the weaponry to help out a country they feel is, you know, kind of in their orbit, do they get it?

Do they understand where this is really festering and why you're winning the battle, but you're losing the war? No. No, they don't get it. Our memories and our understanding on this side, our memories are short, and our understanding is often not

at the level of depth that it should be. And I'll give you an example. I mean, sometimes it's as if we can't walk and chew gum at the level of depth that it should be. And I'll give you an example. I mean, sometimes it's as if we can't walk and chew gum at the same time here. Ever since the crisis in Ukraine hit, now with the Israeli-Hamas conflict taking place, we have witnessed a dramatic contraction in humanitarian aid spending across the board to every other war-torn nation that exists. And this is at a time when we're facing the worst refugee and displacement crisis since World War II, with more than 117 million people forced from their homes, mostly as a result of conflict and also related

to climate change. And so against this backdrop, also with the worst food security crisis we faced in recent memory, we are seeing dramatic cutbacks to aid spending. And the very populations that are most at need and most at risk are being neglected and being denied those opportunities. So Yemen, I mentioned, country with the second highest rate of famine in the world. Children, when I was there, are, without exaggeration, are wasting to death and dying in front of your eyes because there isn't enough food, because of cutbacks that the World Food Program has been forced to make. Because the global humanitarian the Global Humanitarian Appeal for Yemen, now in November, for all of 2023, is still only 30% funded. And if you look at Sudan, for example, which is another place where War Tots had

operations for 20 years in the Darfur region, where our staff have been displaced as a result of that violence, where mass atrocities, genocide is in fact taking place right now, with more than 4 million people displaced, tens of thousands who are at risk and who have lost their lives. That appeal is less than 40% funded. Afghanistan, 30% funded. I mean, this is, so when we think about how it is that armed groups are able to operate with such lethal efficiency and recruit families and recruit young people, it is a bottomless pool of opportunity for them. And we don't think about these problems in a longitudinal way. We think about what's happening right now, and it's in the news,

and it's terrible, and it's horrible. But often the real battle begins the moment those cameras turn away. And that's when those problems become exponentially worse. And that's often when you begin to see many thousands more deaths from entirely preventable causes. And that, again, just creates a breeding ground for armed groups and for violence and insecurity that can never be contained. And we see this. We're seeing this everywhere in the world. It spills across borders. It infects people's psyche, and it makes us all more unstable and insecure. Darfur is a perfect example of it, right? I mean, when was it? 15 years ago, the Darfur was at the front lines of the world's attention, concerned about what was happening in

Darfur. And now it's back again with kind of like no warning. And the world's not talking about it. There's so many other things in the forefront. You're heading back there again in the next little while. How did it sort of slip away and get back to where it was all those years ago? It's a war of opportunity. It's also related to what's been going on in Ukraine. I mean, you look at Russia has had major gold concessions over the last few years in Ukraine. They have generated billions of dollars as a result of those operations. They have very willingly financed both sides of this conflict. The military side, as well as the Janjui,

the Darfurian rebel side, who are the two that are battling for control right now. And they did that for very strategic reasons. They did that to get around Western sanctions that were being put in place that made it very difficult for them to finance their ongoing war with Ukraine. China has been very active in Sudan for many years, and in other parts of Africa, buying up various resource concession rights and oil rights and various other things. And they will do business with any side to a party regardless of their human rights track record, for example. And so what we're seeing has been a bit of a free-for-all driven by groups who are utterly unaccountable,

whether it was groups like the Wagner mercenaries that were operating, not just in Sudan, but elsewhere. And they are arming various groups who behave in ways that are utterly unconscionable. And at the same time, there has been a contraction of multilateral engagement, whether that's at the UN or other international forums. So it has limited our ability

and certainly it has limited Canada's ability as a voice for, I think, trying to be out there as a voice of moderation and reason and peace and diplomacy. It's limited the number of channels that exist to be able to reach peaceful solutions. And as a result, there's just impunity and growing violence, and we ignore it to our detriment. It's been shocking to me i don't mean to go on here although i think it's it's probably too late um you know it's been

shocking to me that that the entire coverage of sudan which blew up in april and it's gotten so much worse month over month over month with tens of thousands of people living in abhorrent conditions at huge risk of of cholera and and everything else living in very um very difficult refugee and displacement camps it the only coverage that we really got on this side of the world was the push to get foreigners out and since then it has been radio silence. And yet it is as devastating as any conflict, if not more so, that we're watching unfold right now. And that isn't lost on people who are living with war. And that's something I hear all the time is why is our suffering not enough? Why do people not care? That's a point I want to,

I want to raise with you because you also mentioned it in this note to me the other day, but I'm going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with Samantha Nutt right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Tuesday episode. Dr. Samantha Nutt from War Child Canada is with us. You're listening on Sirius XM, channel 167. Canada Talks are on your favorite podcast platform. We're glad to have you with us.

All right. I'll have to publish this note you sent me the other day because it's so good. There's so many good parts to it. It was probably too long. No, it was great. Here's the other point that you raised, and I think you were almost getting to it in that last answer before the break, which is you think we need to find a way, a better way to discuss war,

a better way to talk about war. Because what we're doing now is leading in some ways to the polarization that we see on various issues. And, you know, obviously there's the Russia-Ukraine story, there's the Israel-Hamas story. But tell me what you're thinking when you say that. How do we look for, how do we find a better way, a better understanding of the discussion about war? We have to tone down the rage. We have to avoid language that is polarizing, that is hateful, that

fails to recognize our common humanity. And that may sound in a way very naive, I suppose. But the reality is, whenever there is war, and I've seen this throughout the world, I've been doing this for 30 years, people take sides, they start shouting at each other. It doesn't take much to go from shouting at each other to killing one another. Believe me, I've seen that everywhere. And the scorekeeping and the dehumanization of the other that takes place. And the only thing that offsets that decline, that changes that trajectory are, and again, it speaks to sort of the humanitarian movement and what I've seen in the great courage that I have been privileged to bear witness to to is when reasonable people step into the fray and behave reasonably

and model that and become examples of that. And then through that, begin to rebuild their communities to promote a different ethos, to really reach across the aisle and recognize one another within that. You know, it's for anybody who, for anybody who has not lived with war, who's not seen it and felt it in that bone shattering kind of way, it's very easy to intellectualize it, to put it down to military strategy, geopolitical strategy. But if you have actually endured war,

I don't know many people who have endured war, who ever believe that war is the answer to the things that divide us it forever changes who you are your sense of yourself your sense, your well-being. It psychologically claims a piece of you that you will never, ever get back. And so within that context, I think that we all have a duty to behave reasonably, to make an effort to understand one another, and to try as much as possible to protect one another from what is the most horrific and terrifying thing that any of us can ever be a part of and bear witness to. How do we achieve that in an era of social media, which seems to have been or is the driving force behind a lot of what

we're witnessing in the streets today. It is. And I think, as we've mentioned earlier on, I think it has become, in a way, a proxy for the new culture wars where we've just become so divided and we are propagandizing in a way people's grief and suffering to try to score points on one another and it's um it's quite appalling actually and and i think that the only we can only do two things in this situation either we can step away from social media and say we're not going to participate in it at all, or those of us who believe in reason and compassion and empathy and understanding can do everything

within our power to continue to promote those voices and advance that perspective and make an effort to demonstrate that we understand that in this situation, everyone is suffering. And the only thing that's being asked of us is that we do what we can to try to mitigate that whenever we can do it. The last question, whenever I talk to you, I tend to end up asking you a last question about what it's like for you personally dealing with the kind of things that you see and hear and witness in your work. But how, when you're in Yemen or in Darfur or, you know, in the various places that you go to continuously and have done for 30 years, how do you, at know, in the various places that you go to continuously

and have done for 30 years. How do you, at the end of the day, after witnessing the kind of things you've witnessed, how do you sort of square it in your own mind, like this world that we live in? How can it be like this? I mean, you see things that none of us will ever see. Thank God we won't see them. Perhaps we should, but we won't. But you see them.

And so you have to live with it. And you have to somehow go, you know, we can make a difference. Somehow we can change this. How do you do that? I mean, not how do you change it. How do you do that? I mean, not how do you change it. How do you survive through into the next day with what you see and hear and feel around you? unimaginable grief and human suffering, I have also witnessed extraordinary people who have endured the worst that war has to offer, who get up every day and who are trying to help, in particular, the next generation children rebuild and recover. I look at the programs

that Wartel is running throughout the world where we have catch up learning for kids who have been who have missed out on years of education as a result of war or displacement and who can do two years over one year and then can get back into the appropriate grade level. And so kids who were struggling, who were at risk of being re-recruited by various armed groups now are back in school and have hopes and dreams and aspirations, and they no longer feel helpless in these situations. And you see that transition taking place, that move away from that cycle of violence and poverty and despair into something that is very different, that I think will make us all better in the long run. And so when you see that, you hang on to that. The stuff that makes me really, that I find the most difficult to reconcile is when you see those gains, you see that progress. around that so much cynicism when it comes to even international aid and international aid organizations that those gains are hard to maintain because our attention spans are diverted and the donor pipelines dry up and governments no longer consider that part of the world,

Afghanistan being a great example, to be a priority for various reasons. And that's the part that's most frustrating. But it's been hard. I mean, watching what's been going on, particularly with Israel and Gaza, I mean, I have been bunkered down in basements when bombs were going off. And I have been fleeing to vehicles in the midst of bullets flying everywhere. And when I watch that footage and I see children expressing their grief and their absolute fear and families, you know, I feel that in my, I feel that very, very intensely. And yet I also know that there is a role that we can play to help those families recover. And that investing in that humanitarian space, whatever that looks like today or tomorrow or the next day, that that's what's needed to avoid these kinds of outcomes in the future.

It's the only thing that's going to work. I think we'll leave it there, but I know we'll pick it up again at some point. Good luck and stay safe in your new travel. And we'll talk to you again soon. We all have a great deal of admiration for what you and your colleagues in any number of different agencies, but obviously, especially in your case in War Child, do in different parts of the world. So thanks, Dr. Nutt. Thank you, Peter. And good luck with the book tour.

Okay, thanks. Dr. Samantha Nutt, founder and president of War Child Canada. And if you want to make a difference with War Child, go on their website. You'll find ways to do that. Warchild.ca. She gave me a nice plug for my book. Comes out two weeks from today. How Canada Works, written with my friend and colleague, Mark Bulgich. We wrote Extraordinary Canadians together a few years ago. Now this one, How Canada Works. We'll talk about it coming up in the next couple of weeks.

I'll have Mark on the show and we'll talk about what we're trying to achieve in this book this time around. But two weeks from today and then at some point closer to the holiday season, I'll be going on a book tour in different parts of the country. Not everywhere, but kind of Halifax to Calgary, I think, is the plan, and a lot of points in between. That's the best we'll do on this part of a book tour. All right, just one other note on what Sam was talking about.

She's heading back in the next month or so to Sudan and to Darfur. There's a piece in, I think it was yesterday's Globe, the Globe and Mail, by one of the world's best foreign correspond Globe, the Globe and Mail. I am one of the world's best foreign correspondents. The Globe's Geoffrey York. And the headline, Escalating War in Sudan Displaces Millions, Aid Agencies Struggle for Funds as Global Focus Shifts Away. And the global focus has shifted away, for sure.

You know, whether it's Ukraine, whether it's Gaza, it's shifted away. But meanwhile, the disaster in Sudan and in Darfur continues. Anyway, it's a really important piece that Jeffrey writes in yesterday's Globe. Jeffrey's based, I think, in Johannesburg now. But he has his story on Sudan in there, in the Globe. You can finally just go online to the Globe and Mail and punch in Sudan, Jeffrey York, and I'm sure the story will pop up. Okay. Got a little bit of an end bit here

before we go for today. It's from the New York Times, from their newsletter. And it's an intriguing discussion, as so many discussions are intriguing on this program, right? Well, this one will get you thinking as well. So I'll read bits of it.

The next time you take a trip within the United States, obviously New York Times, it's an American story, but I think some of it could fit here as well. The next time you take a trip within the U.S., I encourage you to try a thought experiment. Imagine how long the same trip might have taken a half century ago, 50 years ago. Chances are it would have taken less time than it does today.

Okay, does that surprise you? Maybe it doesn't. But I bet for many of you it says, no, no, you're going. There's no way. It must be faster now. Here's the argument. The scheduled flight time between Los Angeles and New York, for example, has become about 30 minutes longer.

Planes still fly the same speed. However, aviation technology is not advanced in ways that speed the trip. And the skies have become so crowded that pilots reroute planes to avoid traffic. Nearly every other part of the trip also lasts longer than it would have a few decades ago, thanks to traffic on the roads and airport security. All told, a cross-country trip could take a few more hours today than it would have in the 1970s.

Shorter trips also take more time. Auto traffic in almost every metro area has worsened. The country has done little to improve its rail network. In 1969, MetroLiner trains made two-and-a-half-hour nonstop trips between Washington and New York. Today, there are no nonstop trains on that route and the fastest trip takes about 20 minutes longer than the metro liner did. The speed at which people can get from one place to another is one of the most basic measures of a society's sophistication. It affects economic productivity, human happiness. Academic research

has found that commuting makes people more unhappy than almost any other daily activity. Yet in one area of the U.S., travel after another, progress has largely stopped over the past half century. This lack of recent progress is not a result of any physical or technological limits either. In other parts of the world, travel has continued to accelerate. Shanghai's airport is almost 20 miles from its city center, and the trip on a high-speed train takes less than 10 minutes. LaGuardia Airport and Times Square are significantly closer together, yet good luck making the trip in less than 30 minutes.

Actually, Toronto's an example, and I think Vancouver too, where the trip is much faster as a result of the high-speed stuff they've got. In Toronto, you can get from Pearson Airport to downtown Toronto in about 15 minutes on the train, where if you're driving or in a cab or a limo or an Uber, it's like 35, 40 minutes and a lot longer at rush hours.

Why is it more difficult to get around the U.S.? Above all, it's because our society has stopped investing in the future as we once did. For decades, government investment in highways, mass transit, scientific research, education, and other future-oriented programs has grown more slowly than it once did and has often failed to keep pace with economic growth. And the private sector tends to underinvest in the same areas because any individual company has a hard time making a profit

from early startup investments. Interesting, right? Did you answer that question? Slower or faster in the last 50 years? Well, that certainly makes the case that in some parts, at least in the United States, it's slower than it used to be. And I think some of those arguments could still be the case in Canada as well. All right, that's going to wrap it up for today's program.

These two conversations, back-to-back, Janice Stein yesterday and Samantha Nutt today. We did this a couple of weeks ago, too, with the two of them. Two outstanding people in terms of getting the nub of a matter and putting things in context. The stories behind the stories, right? The stories behind the headlines. So it was great to have them back to back again this week.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, it's Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce will be by. Thursday, your turn. And I'm hoping some of you are going to write about some personal anecdote about Remembrance Day. Because this will be the way we do a Remembrance Day show this year. Friday, it's Good Talk, Chantelle Hebert, Bruce Anderson. The Random Ranter, by the way, will be here on Thursday as well. I'm Peter Vansbridge. Thanks so much for listening today.

Take care. We'll see you again and talk to you again in 24 hours. Thank you.