The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved: NATO is partly responsible for Russian aggression in Ukraine

Starting point is 00:00:00 I distinctly remember hearing someone yell, stop that van. From CBC podcasts, an investigation into how young men are being recruited and radicalized on the internet. And she asked me if I was friends with a guy named Alec Manassian. By a new supercharged form of hate. On Facebook, police say he wrote the incal rebellion has already begun. A dark online subculture that's spilling over into the real world. Boys like me, available now on CBC Listen and everywhere you. you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:00:35 These statues have to come down. It's always been a pandemic of the unvaccinated. The problem now is it's a pandemic of the willfully unvaccinated. Falling birth rates are good. They're good for our planet. They're good for our societies. We're not responsible for the escalation with Russia. We're not the ones who invaded Ukraine.

Starting point is 00:00:55 I don't think it's fair to portray people of color as victims. It is a very dangerous time in American politics. Welcome to the Monk Debates. Every episode we provide you with a civil and substantive debate on the big issue of the day to arm you, the listener, with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved. NATO is partly responsible for Russian aggression in Ukraine. Amid growing concern worldwide about the situation in Ukraine,

Starting point is 00:01:28 President Macron has been holding talks in Moscow with President Putin. The French president said he hoped discussions would begin a process of, de-escalation and reduce the possibility of a Russian invasion. Vladimir Putin told a news conference, Russia, of course, did not want war, but Moscow's concerns still hadn't been met. He said for years, Russia had been promised that NATO, an alliance of North American and European countries,

Starting point is 00:01:53 would not expand toward Western Russia, but that that expansion had occurred anyway. Good morning from the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, gunfire and explosions have been heard here and in the second city of Kharkiv. overnight launched its long-anticipated attack on Ukraine, striking military posts across the country. An unprovoked war in Europe is now underway. Hello, I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffith.

Starting point is 00:02:21 While as Russian troops rolled into the Ukraine sending shockwaves across the region and around the world, many are questioning why Putin initiated a seemingly unprovoked attack on a neighbor. Some experts argue that U.S.-led NATO expansion in the 1990, and 2000s must bear some responsibility for the current crisis, welcoming countries like Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania, all once part of the Soviet sphere of influence was an unnecessary provocation of Russia, still reeling from the humiliating defeat and collapse of its Soviet empire. The Russians viewed this expansion of NATO along their western border as a real and urgent threat made worse by Ukraine's decision to pivot towards the European community in 2014.

Starting point is 00:03:14 The West, especially the U.S., some foreign policy experts argue, must be held partly responsible for the current disaster unfolding in Ukraine. Others see Putin's finger-pointing and NATO expansion as a deflection of the real cause behind the conflict, the machinations of a paranoid autocrat with imperialist ambitions, is using war to deflect from domestic unrest and consolidate power both inside Russia and amongst its former Soviet territories. All the blame for this crisis, they argue, must rest on Putin's shoulders, his alone. On this installment of the monk debates, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion, be it resolved, NATO is partly responsible for Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Starting point is 00:04:07 Arguing for the motion is Barry Posen, the Ford International Professor of Political Science at MIT and a director of the school's security studies program. Arguing against the motion is Stephen Radamaker, former Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for International Security and nonproliferation in the George W. Bush administration. Barry, Stephen, welcome to the Monk Debates. It's good to be here. Yes, thank you for having me. Well, we couldn't be having a more timely conversation. I think it's important for all of us to try to understand some of the antecedents of this horrible conflict that we are seeing unfolding right now in Ukraine. I think the opportunity to talk about NATO's role, past present and possibly future with both of you, is just going to be hugely informative for our community.

Starting point is 00:04:58 allow us to, again, kind of think about how we got here and what possibly the response, the reaction to this crisis should be based on the history of the last few decades of NATO's engagement with Europe, with Eastern Europe, and Russia. So, again, the opportunity to go deep with both of you is a privilege indeed. Our motion is be it resolved. NATO is partly responsible for Russian aggression in Ukraine. Barry, you're arguing in favor. the motion. So I'm going to put a couple minutes on our proverbial show clock and turn the program over to you. Okay. So if I

Starting point is 00:05:38 go on too long, please stop me. Academics are windy. So the immediate cause of the current phase of the Russian-Ukrainian war is Vladimir Putin's decision to move from coercive diplomacy to war as a tool to realize his conception of Russian security interests. But to say that NATO is partly responsible for this war is to say that NATO and its leader of the United States pursued a range of policies

Starting point is 00:06:04 that put the alliance very high on Putin's foreign policy and national security agenda and put Ukraine's security policy even higher on this agenda. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO has expanded more or less inexorably up to the borders of Russia, incorporating former Eastern European members of the old Soviet military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, as well as some former republics of the Soviet Union. And as the self-proclaimed most powerful and effective military alliance in history, NATO led by the U.S., the self-proclaimed most militarily capable global power in history, any student of international politics would predict that this creep would make those responsible for Russian security policy nervous, whether or not their name was Putin. And from

Starting point is 00:06:51 Gorbachev to the present, Russian leaders told us repeatedly that this made them nervous and that they opposed it. Early on, when the Cold War ended, we gave the Russians numerous assurances that NATO enlargement would not happen. Partisans of enlargements take refuge in the fact that this was not written down, but we now have ample diplomatic records that have been declassified that show just how often such assurances were made. Now, not much was done with the Ukraine part of this project, which was first broached in 2008 at the Bucharest summit in which the Bush administration, for its own reasons, put this on the NATO agenda and the NATO allies agreed with a lot of pushing and pressure from us that they should decide to do this. And since that event, relations on the matter of

Starting point is 00:07:41 Ukraine have gotten gradually worse with an acceleration since 2014. In this particular phase of the crisis, Vladimir Putin made his concerns known yet again and backed those concerns up with a military mobilization that's gone off and on for at least a year. The United States, NATO has been somewhat responsive to Putin's concerns, offering various kinds of resurrections of arms control processes and venues from the Cold War and the post-Cold War world to try and assuage his security concerns. But on the specific question of Ukraine, about which Putin and Russia have been extremely neuralgic, basically nothing was really offered to the Russians. So both in terms of

Starting point is 00:08:24 the underlying and the immediate causes of this particular phase of the war, I think NATO bears significant responsibility. Thank you, Barry, for those opening remarks. So, Stephen, your opportunity now for an opening statement in this debate, you're arguing against our motion, be it resolved, NATO is partly responsible for Russian aggression in the Ukraine. Let's get your early framing statement for this debate. Thank you, Roger. It will not surprise you to hear that I profoundly disagree with the points just made by Professor Posen.

Starting point is 00:08:58 I guess the first point I would make is that it's not just great powers that have agency in the world. Smaller countries have agency too, and they have opinions, they have interests, and they have desires, and they're free to express those desires. In the case of NATO enlargement, which began in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, there was no U.S. or NATO master plan to bring the former Warsaw Pact countries into NATO. In fact, there was a great deal of resistance in the 1990s to that idea. The professor might be surprised to hear that a lot of that resistance actually

Starting point is 00:09:35 came from the Pentagon. They were the agency of the U.S. government most opposed to enlarging NATO because they looked at it as additional defense obligations, additional budget requirements. They were not very enthusiastic about NATO enlargement. What turned the debate in the United States was the persistence of the countries of central and eastern Europe. They were very concerned about their future. And that leads to my second point, which is actions have consequences. History has consequences. The reason the countries of Central and Eastern Europe were so determined to join the sphere of peace and prosperity that they perceived in Western Europe,

Starting point is 00:10:13 a sphere provided by the defense guarantees of the NATO alliance, coupled with the, the economic arrangements provided by the European Union, they were eager to join that because they had just emerged from almost 50-year brutal military occupation by the Soviet Union, which included military interventions in Hungary and in 1956, in Czechoslovakia in 1968, in which the governments of those countries were essentially overthrown by the Soviets and replaced by even more pro-Soviet governments. This was the history that those countries were living with, they were afraid that history might repeat itself.

Starting point is 00:10:52 And you better believe that as those countries look to what's going on in Ukraine today, they breathe a great sigh of relief that they asked for and were able to join the NATO alliance in the 1990s. Excellent. Thank you, Stephen, for that opening statement now, a chance for rebuttal. So this is the opportunity for each of you to reflect on what you've just heard from each other. What are the key points that you want to take exception with at this point in the debate? Barry, you're up first a couple minutes on the clock again for your rebuttal. The question here is not whether Eastern European states wanted to be in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Starting point is 00:11:31 or even whether they had the right to want to be in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The question is, was it wise for NATO to admit them to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? And at the time, there was considerable debate in the U.S. about this matter. And many, many experts on both national security policy and on Russia itself opposed the idea of NATO enlargement because they knew that Russia would be very neuralgic about it. And this was not a mere concession to Russian amortopra. This was an acknowledgement that most great powers don't like military alliances led by other great powers in their backyard. So this is why people such as George Kennan, who was the original author of the U.S. containment policy against the Soviet Union, basically said, you know, this is not a good idea.

Starting point is 00:12:39 This is not going to end well, right? and it's not ending well. Even given the policy, there were, you know, off-ramps along the way where the alliance could have stopped, right? There was no rule or constitutional requirement for NATO to go beyond the first tranche or the second tranche or in 2008 for then-President Bush to decide that we should move in the direction of admitting Ukraine and Georgia. Each success of a wave was another decision point and produced another set of reactions on the other side. And these reactions were against the backdrop of other things that had related to U.S. foreign policy and to NATO's policies in the region.

Starting point is 00:13:29 So this is basically International Relations 101, right? We and the East Europeans were tempting fate with this project. And I think many who study international politics in Russia are not so surprised that we've ended up in the tragic situation where we now are. Thank you, Barry. Excellent rebuttal. Steven, same opportunity for you. Come back on Barry's opening statement or what you've just heard now. Very, you're certainly correct that we had a robust debate in the United States in the 1990s.

Starting point is 00:14:07 There were some experts who thought NATO enlargement would be a mistake. I noted that the Pentagon had great reservations about it from a practical standpoint. But there were experts on the other side, obviously, and we had the debate, and the second group of experts prevailed over the set of experts that you're pointing to. And, you know, this was not just a debate among experts. It was a debate among our national leaders. And Bill Clinton, for his first term, was not very enthusiastic about NATO enlargement. But what happened was the countries of Central and Eastern Europe wore him down. Their persistence in saying, you know, we do not want to live in a gray zone, a zone of insecurity.

Starting point is 00:14:52 We want to be in a zone of security. We are afraid that the former Soviet Union, which today is flat on its back, and militarily, may one day resurrect itself. And one day may be a leader who declares that the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century was the collapse of the Soviet Union. And of course, we do have such a leader. Vladimir Putin said that in 2008. I personally believe that had we not enlarged NATO in the 1990s, as we did,

Starting point is 00:15:24 Vladimir Putin's words in 2008 would not have been that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. His words would have been the collapse of the Warsaw Pact was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. And instead of dealing with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we would be today looking at the Russian invasion of Poland. That's my personal belief. It's unprovable. But I think my belief is probably shared by most of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. They're very grateful that the United States made the decision that it made. Essentially what you're advocating is that when these countries came knocking on America's door and NATO's door, and I was stressed they came knocking in a very, very persistent

Starting point is 00:16:11 way, we should have just slammed the door shut and said, too bad. You know, your geography is destiny. You're too close to the former Soviet Empire. Geography consigns you to that gray zone that you don't want to be in. Good luck to you. Maybe you want to be an armed neutral. Maybe that'll work for you. But you're on your own. That was not the decision that America's leadership, it was Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Joe Biden was the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was a strong supporter of enlarging NATO. That was our national decision. I personally feel in retrospect, it was the right decision. Thank you, Stephen. Let's go another round of rebuttals here. It's just an excellent conversation that's, I think, touching on so many of the issues people are trying to think through right now.

Starting point is 00:17:02 So, Barry, do me the favor. Just before I jump into this debate, let's have you just react to what you've heard from Stephen. Well, there's a little bit of selective forgetfulness here. NATO and the United States had a very interesting policy towards the East Europeans, which also included the Russians. It was a project called Partnership for Peace. And through that policy, NATO and the United States were endeavoring to try and stabilize relations in Eastern Europe, while at the same time not provoking the Russians. And the Russians were pretty comfortable with partnership for peace.

Starting point is 00:17:44 And the real question was, would the partnership basically continue as an institution on its own, in which all of the Eastern Europeans, including Russia, were members? or would the Partnership for Peace turn out to be this waiting room for NATO membership or a waiting room that, you know, in which, you know, Russia would wait. And, you know, we weren't really going to bring them in. And they really didn't want to come into an alliance in which, you know, the United States was going to be the leader. And within the contracts of a Partnership for Peace, we were in a position to help all the East Europeans do things. to improve their own defense posture. And the argument or the implication that a version of arm neutrality was not a viable strategy for these countries

Starting point is 00:18:39 is vitiated by the fact that two armed neutrals did very well in the Cold War. Sweden did very well as an arm neutral in the Cold War. Finland right up next to Russia did very well for itself as an arm neutral in the Cold War. Austria did well for itself as an arm neutral in the Cold War, and so did Switzerland. So the idea that against a much weakened Russia, these countries, with a quiet assist from the United States, could not have put themselves into a position where Russia, unthreatened by a NATO creeping to its borders, would find very hard to come up with a good reason to threaten these countries. Now, there are no perfect solutions in international politics.

Starting point is 00:19:22 It depends on what you think the major causal relationships are and how you think the world works. So American leaders, beset by East European demands, were able to make decisions without too much fear of Russian reaction because Russian was weak. And I participated as a minor player in these debates. And there was considerable contempt for Russian power and that people shrug their shoulders and said, what are they going to do about it? Right. So there was a kind of assumption, a weird assumption.

Starting point is 00:19:59 East Europeans are demanding to be in NATO because they're fearful that someday Russia will be strong. And Americans are inviting them in because they're convinced that Russia is so weak that it cannot respond. Right. Well, this is tailor-made to produce a spiral with the Russians. If you treat a great power

Starting point is 00:20:16 or even a middle power, with profound disrespect for its interest and its views, views that were expressed regularly, even by leaders who we thought were friendly to us, like Orbitchov and Yeltsin, we're putting an argument in the Russian foreign policy debate. You're giving hawks on their side a major argument for why they need to mobilize against you, and that's basically what happened.

Starting point is 00:20:44 My argument here is the policies we pursued were simply foolish from the point. of view of the U.S. national interest, but it was also foolish, even from the point of view of the interests of these countries, right? They succumb to a kind of worst-case analysis. It's certainly understandable why they did it. But, you know, it's our job to think a little harder and to take a longer view, and it's easy for us to do, given how powerful we are and how secure we are. But nevertheless, is something we should do. And I think our failure to do so has a good bit to do with why we've come to this really sorry moment. And by the way, if we don't change our thinking, I think that it may

Starting point is 00:21:33 be very hard to get out of this moment before Ukraine is essentially shot to pieces, at least eastern Ukraine. This is a very consequential moment. And while I'm not going to make excuses for Russia, war aims or Russian war means, people like to say we are, we are where we are. And we are at a point where I don't see an endgame for this war that does not, to some extent, involve recognition that Russia has some security interests that are going to need to be met. I know that's, you know, we all feel for the outnumbered party. the wronged party.

Starting point is 00:22:21 But as realists, we have to kind of stand back a bit. Thanks, Barry. Stephen, your opportunity now, just we're going to have this kind of double round of rebuttal just because we're pushing this debate, I think, onto a lot of the terrain that people like myself, a layperson looking at this, are kind of struggling with. It's been super helpful, Stephen. So let's get your rebuttal and then I'll join the conversation

Starting point is 00:22:44 with some questions that are top of mind for our listeners. Barry's premise seems to be that none of what we're seeing today would have come to pass if only we had sent the Eastern Europeans away empty-handed in the 1990s. Of course, that's a counterfactual, and we can't prove anything one way or the other, but I think the countries of Central and Eastern Europe would certainly say, if asked today, that it was precisely because they feared the kinds of developments we're seeing today that they wanted to join NATO in the 1990s. And what's happening today vindicates the judgments that, that,

Starting point is 00:23:17 they made. And the notion that events with Russia would have gone in a very different way, but for NATO enlargement, I think is, well, I think it's wrong. I think, you know, Vladimir Putin, it isn't like we had a series of leaders come to power in Russia. We had Boris Yeltsin, and then once he was gone, he was replaced immediately by Vladimir Putin. So, you know, Putin was the successor. I do not think it was issues of NATO. that led to the choice of Vladimir Putin as Yeltsin's successor, had much more to do with the economic collapse that the Russian Federation was living through during that time.

Starting point is 00:24:00 And Putin represented stability. He also had, as a former KGB officer, he also had a deeply held view about the security interests of Russia and the vision that he's manifested during his time in power of reconstituting the Soviet Union. I'm going to go on to make an additional point, though, about Ukraine. You know, I was personally involved in the NATO enlargement debate in the 1990s. I was the Chief Counsel, the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Starting point is 00:24:27 I helped write a lot of the legislation that promoted NATO enlargement. I traveled to the region during that time. It was in 1996 that the Clinton administration finally reversed position and went from its support for the Partnership for Peace, which was basically a don't call us, we'll call you message to the Central Europeans about their prospects for joining NATO to Clinton switched to a position where he favored the admission of the first four former Warsaw-PAC countries to NATO. That was Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republicans, and Slovenia. I traveled to Eastern Europe during that time.

Starting point is 00:25:09 After President Clinton announced his new policy, I traveled to Ukraine. And I was very interested at that time to talk to government officials, political party leaders, journalists in Ukrainian journalists in Ukraine about their view of potentially joining NATO. Because at that moment, the United States just announced its support for the first round of NATO and largements. I was very curious to know whether Ukraine was interested in joining NATO. I went there under the auspices of the U.S. Embassy. I recalled vividly the first thing that the U.S. Embassy told me as I was getting ready to go off and meet at the Ukrainian foreign ministry to talk about NATO enlargement and Ukraine's

Starting point is 00:25:48 interest. They said to me, please understand that virtually every foreign ministry official you're going to meet with today is a former Soviet diplomat. These are people for whom the Russians are not foreigners. They went to school with Russia's diplomats. They worked in Soviet embassies all over the world. Their families socialized with the families of the Russian diplomats. They were from the same country. And three or four years earlier, there's two countries that split up, but the personal relationships still existed. There are no secrets between Ukraine and Russia. That's what I was told. That was very interesting, and that was borne out in my meetings. There was very little interest in Ukraine in 1997 in joining NATO. In Ukraine, NATO had been there. They're

Starting point is 00:26:42 adversary. Russia was not seen as a hostile power. Just three years earlier, Ukraine, which upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union found itself in the possession of the world's third largest nuclear arsenal had just three years earlier in 1994 agreed to give up all of its nuclear weapons, return them to Russia in exchange for security assurance. It's from Russia that Russia would never invade Ukraine. You can only imagine what they think about that decision today. But the point is NATO membership held no attraction to the people I met with in Ukraine in 1997. Obviously, there's been a radical change. I think Professor Pozen would suggest that somehow America is responsible for this change.

Starting point is 00:27:26 That is absolutely untrue. What changed in Ukraine was a consequence of Russian policy, Russian bullying, Russian mishandling of their relationship with their closest neighbor. And you see this today. I mean, it is absolutely mind-boggling. Vladimir Putin claims that the Ukrainian people and the Russian people are a single people. And he's expressing his love for the Ukrainian people by leveling their cities and bombing their hospitals and killing the women and children, turning them into refugees.

Starting point is 00:27:59 It's Russian bungling that created the situation we see today, changed the sentiment of the Ukrainian people from one of feeling of friendship toward the people of Russia to one where they share the views of the Eastern Europeans today about the threat they face from the government in Moscow. And that is not America's doing. That is not NATO's doing. That is Russia's doing. Thank you, Stephen. So you're listening to our debate today, be it resolved NATO, is partly responsible for Russian aggression in Ukraine. I'm going to join the conversation now with just a responsibility to kind of think through some of the questions that are on the

Starting point is 00:28:36 minds of our listeners tuning into this fascinating conversation. that we're having today on NATO's role in this crisis. And Barry, to come back to you, I want to build on one of Stephen's points, because I think it is one that people are trying to figure out right now, which is the extent to which Russian aggression here was inevitable. This has to do with internal forces and dynamics in Russia, a certain new brand of Russian nationalism that Putin has been an architect and a proponent of, you know, dynamics,

Starting point is 00:29:10 related to his own autocracy that he is set up and created and how it's sustained. And really, to say that NATO is partly responsible is just to ignore the overwhelming preponderance of Russian forces, Russian trends and drives and impulses, they are behind almost exclusively this horrible act of aggression that we're seeing. Let's hear your response to that. different theorists privilege different causes in their analysis, different policymakers privilege different causes in their analysis. I hear this argument all the time,

Starting point is 00:29:54 and one of the things that I guess bemuses me about it is how profoundly illiberal the argument is coming from liberals. Because basically the argument suggests that there's something congenitally wrong with Russia that produces congenitally aggressive behavior and congenitally evil leaders. And that was not the view we had of Russia when the Cold War ended. Now, all countries had different cultures. All countries throw off different leaders. leaders, most cultures and countries today have some form of nationalism, our own country,

Starting point is 00:30:43 the United States, where Stephen and I are privileged to live, is a very nationalistic country. And our country, since the Cold War ended, because of its view of how the world should be run, has been more or less constantly at war since the Cold War ended, trying to build a world in its image and opposing states that do not. So I would say, coming back to the original statement of the debate, that we want to look at all possible causes that brought us to this point. And anybody who studies international politics or who has practiced security politics, understands that all countries have interests, all countries seek security, all countries at various times

Starting point is 00:31:43 will look to their armaments as they look for security, and all countries are wary of what others are up to. That's Balance of Power Theory 101. The greatest alliance in history, led by the greatest power in history, with a strong inclination to intervene in the internal terrors of other countries, to make them more liberal and more democratic, that alliance keeps inexorably moving towards Russia's border. This is the causal story I'm privileging. It's a balance of power story. It's a security story. We look inside Russia, and we're trying to understand the particular moment. It is exactly right that Putin's been around for 20 years. And for 20 years, basically, we've dissed him. We've treated Russia's

Starting point is 00:32:37 interests, his statement, his view of Russia's interests. We've basically treated it as essentially a problem to be waived away. And we've continued in the direction that brought us here. But I've argued is that we have put Russian security and NATO's role in Russian security Ukraine's role, high on Putin's agenda, high on the agenda of his advisors, and this was entirely predictable. Russia experts, security experts, at the very beginning of the post-Colder world, they basically said this was going to happen, they said the reasons why it was going to happen, and it has happened. Now, this doesn't absolve Vladimir Putin of responsibility for deciding to move from diplomacy to coercive diplomacy and from coercive diplomacy to war.

Starting point is 00:33:31 It's my view that there was still scope for diplomacy to satisfy Russia's security interests, or at least there was avenues that could have been explored. But I don't believe we could have avoided war without finding a way to accommodate those interests. Thank you, Barry. great great insights there your debate you're tuning into right now as be it resolved NATO was partly responsible for Russian aggression in the Ukraine so Stephen let me come back on something Barry mentioned towards the end of his answer there because which it does I think it does puzzle some people that the extent to which NATO knew that Ukraine could

Starting point is 00:34:12 and would never be a member of the alliance because of the security risks that that entailed not just for Ukraine, but more importantly, for NATO and what we're seeing now, the heightened possibility of an actual conflict between NATO and Russia, a kinetic conflict. So why is Stephen in the context of the run-up to this crisis? Why didn't NATO just take that off the table to try to de-escalate, to try to acknowledge some of Russia's security interests here as a great deal? power and and just call it like it is that Ukraine would not join NATO and Russia would have that guarantee and we would all move on together with a better sense of our respective spheres of

Starting point is 00:35:04 influence and let's say a walking back of this attitude that Barry's painted of a kind of hyper power trying to shape the world in its image and in doing so directly antagonizing Russia's security establishment. I think that's an excellent question, but I think there's an absolutely compelling answer to it. And I'll go back to where I began, which is even small countries have agency. And I would add to that that when those small countries are democracies, the people of those countries have agency.

Starting point is 00:35:38 They have a voice, too. And for better or worse, and maybe Barry thinks it's for the worst in that part of the world, but Ukraine is a democracy and a fairly vibrant one these days. And the reason that NATO, I think all the NATO members and the United States hesitated to, on their own, simply declare, forget it, Ukraine will never join NATO. That's a concession we're prepared to make to Vladimir Putin in response to his threats to use force. Had that happened, had we done that, the Zelensky government would have fallen. And I don't know what would have replaced it. But that would have been quite a victory at a hand of Vladimir Putin, that he uses military threats and the NATO countries capitulate in the face

Starting point is 00:36:30 of those threats. And as a result, a democratic government in Ukraine falls and is replaced by who knows what. The reason it would have fallen is because of the overwhelming popular support in much of Ukraine for joining NATO. And this, again, this is support that did not exist 20 years ago. It's support, its enthusiasm that has grown over the last 20 years as a result of the arrogant, aggressive, threatening policies pursued by the Putin government. You know, Barry said something which I profoundly agree with. He said, all countries seek security, great powers seek security.

Starting point is 00:37:12 they want security on their periphery. That is absolutely true. But they can pursue security on their borders with policies that are wise or with policies that are unwise. And if they pursue that security with unwise policies, they are going to reap the consequences. In our own hemisphere, I'm sure the professors pointed this out on occasion. You know, the United States has always tried to exclude foreign. That's the Monroe Doctrine, right? We don't want foreign powers projecting influence.

Starting point is 00:37:42 into the Western Hemisphere. There was a time, you know, a hundred years ago where the United States was quite aggressive in intervening in countries of this hemisphere. We decided at a certain point, in fact, it was Franklin Roosevelt who decided that's not a very good idea. That's a policy that over the long term is going to backfire against us. And so he adopted a new policy, called it the Good Neighbor policy. And, you know, we stopped intervening. We stopped occupying. You know, you can point to one or two exceptions, but we did not do what the Soviet Union did. We did not militarily occupy countries in this hemisphere for 50 years. We did not brutally put down, you know, overthrow governments when we didn't like what they were doing.

Starting point is 00:38:21 That's what the Soviet Union did in Eastern Europe for 50 years. That's why those countries, when they emerged from communist domination, were desperate to join the Western Alliance because they feared being put back into that situation again, if there was ever a resurgent Russia, which is what we have today. Ukraine didn't have to go that way either. they did go that way because of, again, profoundly unwise policies pursued by the Putin government over the last 20 years. Policies that backfired against Russia. I mean, what policies could have backfired more against Vladimir Putin and his declared objectives than the ones he's pursued? I mean, he claims he worries about NATO. Well, he's done more in the last two months to strengthen

Starting point is 00:39:05 and revitalize the NATO alliance than America could have done in 20 years. And likewise, the Ukrainian people. He doesn't want Ukraine to join NATO. Well, as long as Ukraine is a democracy, there's going to be a popular demand in NATO, or I'm sorry, in Ukraine to join NATO. And, you know, if that wasn't true before this military intervention, it's absolutely going to be true after the military intervention. Putin has guaranteed the very outcomes he claims to most fear. Hi, Rudyard Griffiths here, your host and moderator. I have a favor to ask you, please consider becoming a monk member. Membership is free and you get access to a series of great benefits,

Starting point is 00:39:47 including a 10-plus-year library of some of our best debates, dialogues, and podcasts. You also get a free monthly newsletter featuring the debates that we're watching around the world. And you get a specially curated Friday weekly monk members-only podcast that focuses on the big international events and trends shaping our world. All of that, again, free at www.w.com. I hope you'll consider joining and becoming part of our community. Now, back to our program. Let's in our remaining moments before closing statements get both of you to reflect a little bit on where this conflict goes from here and how potentially we resolve it.

Starting point is 00:40:38 So, Barry, to come to you first, and I'm going to allow you to correct me here. but listening to you, I would extrapolate that you believe that or think that some kind of solution would require recognizing Russia's security interests. Can you paint us a picture for what you think those interests are and how potentially they could be reconciled in an agreement to end this horrible conflict that we're witnessing in Ukraine? So I think many people who study international politics would say that whatever the particular issue of a war, wars happen because the parties cannot agree on their relative power and their relative will. And what war does is measure relative power and relative will. And the settlement of the war basically reflects that measurement of the war basically reflects that measurement of relative power of relative power. and relative will, right? So right now, both parties are showing us that they agree that they are somehow as strong or stronger than the other,

Starting point is 00:41:54 or their will is as strong or stronger than the other. Now, I think if things continue more or less on the trajectory that they're on, which is to say the Russians, in some sense, winning, ever so slowly at very high cost, and the Ukrainians finding new and creative ways to kill Russians and to sustain the war, we may get to a point where we have, through a tragic process,

Starting point is 00:42:26 allow the two parties, along with NATO standing in the background, to measure relative power and relative will. And I think if they get there, there may be a moment where one can find some sort of a compromise that the two parties can live with. It's not a compromise they would have liked at the beginning, but it may be a compromise that they're willing to accept to end the war.

Starting point is 00:42:55 And I think what that could look like is the Ukrainians will have to do what the Finns had to do at the end of the Second World War. The Finns had to recognize that Karelia was lost to Russia and they were never getting it. back. I think Ukraine's going to have to recognize that Crimea's lost and they're never getting it back. I think Russia is going to have to recognize that they're so terrified Ukraine with this intervention that Ukraine is never going to be disarmed. Putin mumbles about disarming Ukraine. That's not going to happen. But I think that Ukraine can propose and I think it will be very credible for it to say, say that it will be an arm neutral. It will remain outside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, right, and we will agree, but it will not be disarmed. It will be heavily armed with a kind

Starting point is 00:43:53 of defensive weaponry that has used to such tremendous effect against the Russian invader, right? They were making the same point now that the Finns made in two wars in 1939 and then 1941 to 44. which is they convince the Russians that a small country can fight like the devil impose really high costs and we'll do it again right this is what ukraine has going for it now they've in some sense they are proving their metal and that metal can be harvested to the task of a credible armed neutral situation right in russian i could like this because they they they talk about a disarmed ukraine that's off the table but a ukraine that itself stands up and says this nato idea was not a good idea we're not going to do it. And a NATO that says, we honor the Ukrainian decision, I think this is a plausible part of an overall agreement, right? And, you know, it means the unions are giving more,

Starting point is 00:44:54 but the fact is that despite their heroic performance and despite their great courage, they are the weaker party, and they are fighting in an area where Russia's interests are very, very strong. So the Russian will is also strong. So I think that's about the best we can hope for. There are other happy endings that people want to see, such as the collapse of the Putin regime, and maybe the world will get lucky, and Putin will have a heart attack or be replaced or something like that. But hope is not a strategy. We need a negotiating strategy that we can work with, and that's one that recognizes at least some of Russia's interests. Thank you, Barry. Fascinating stuff. So, Stephen, same opportunity for you.

Starting point is 00:45:36 Your thesis here, your thinking is that the cause of this war, the responsibility of this war, lies overwhelmingly with Russia, with its paranoia, its profoundly poor leadership under President Putin, who started this disastrous war. So how would you see the conflict resolving itself? Does Ukraine ultimately become a member of NATO in your scenario, in your thinking? Is that the security guarantee we need to really ensure that this conflict is frozen for a period of time? So I think President Putin pretty clearly made a huge blunder launching this military operation. It's unclear whether Russia is going to win this war. It may lose, it may fight to a stalemate, or it may succeed in conquering the country, and then, you know, as America did in Afghanistan 20 years ago,

Starting point is 00:46:37 and then have to deal with the consequences of occupying a hostile population, a very large population that is increasingly hostile and resentful of the military occupation. I don't believe the Putin government survives defeat in Ukraine. Putin is an autocrat. He survives through intimidation of his opponents. You've noticed the incredible, crackdown on press freedom and opposition political activity that's taken place in Russia since the beginning of this war. He is today lying to his own people about what they're doing.

Starting point is 00:47:13 He's concealing the extent of their losses. He cannot let the Russian people know how disastrously this war is playing out for Russia and Ukraine. So I actually don't discount the possibility that the Putin government will collapse as a result of this. I don't know what comes next. But, you know, Russia under President Putin, I think, made some really bad choices. The door to the West was always open to Russia. It was Russia that felt no, you know, the West is our arrival. You know, we are in constant tension with the West. We, you know, they are a threat to us. We need to push back on them. There was another vision that Russia could have adopted. They could have sought to join the West. They would have been the largest single country in Europe.

Starting point is 00:48:07 They would have to adopt serious political and economic reforms, but there's nothing that in principle prevents Europe from seeking to join the European Union, where they would be even probably more dominant than Germany is within the European Union today. They chose not to be that course, not to go that way, because I guess their view was it wasn't sufficient for them to be the single most powerful country in something like the European Union, they would only be satisfied if they could completely dominate

Starting point is 00:48:36 whatever structure they joined. But as a consequence of the choices they've made, increasingly what Russia is going to discover is that it has turned itself into a satellite of China. Putin has nowhere to turn, but China. And China is vastly more powerful

Starting point is 00:48:54 economically, demographically, than financially today than Russia. And I think we're seeing militarily, given the poor performance of the Russian army in Ukraine. You know, Xi Jinping is probably contemptuous of Vladimir Putin at this point. So they will find their ongoing relationship with China to be a deeply humiliating one. You know, China will exact a price. They'll take the oil that Russia can't sell on the global markets and buy it at a deep discount.

Starting point is 00:49:25 they will take advantage of the situation that Putin finds himself in today. So I don't know that there's going to be a negotiation. Russia has shown no flexibility in this demands. Maybe at some point they'll show some flexibility. But right now, I think Putin has painted himself into a corner. And at this point, he's purging generals and intelligence officers. that's a really bad sign. He's turning on his own people because he's angry and he needs to blame someone other than himself.

Starting point is 00:50:05 And so he's blaming the people around. We've seen this movie before. It was the Stalin era in the Soviet Union. So I come back to where I started. It's a really bad situation. It is not NATO's fault. It's the fault of the leadership in Moscow, which has made a series of bad mistakes and is compounding those mistakes today.

Starting point is 00:50:27 Thank you, Stephen. Let's go to closing statements now. This is an opportunity for both of you to kind of reflect on this debate, leave our audience with key arguments and ideas that you think should kind of frame our understanding of our motion, be it resolved. NATO is partly responsible for Russian aggression in Ukraine. Barry, could I get your closing statement? Basically, I think I've made most of the key points that need to be made here.

Starting point is 00:50:53 In international politics, great powers are very chary of the behaviors of other great powers. And they're particularly chary of their alliances and their cherry of their military preparations. And regardless of who led Russia, the policies that NATO has pursued would have placed security high on the agenda of any Russian leader. And the decision in 2008 to bring in Ukraine and Georgia was in some sense the icing on the cake because there's nowhere for NATO to go after Ukraine. I mean, you're on the Russian border. And any military analysts or strategists worth their salt can put themselves in the position of Russian intelligence people, a Russian general. and look at NATO there in Ukraine and scratching. This actually is a major security problem, right?

Starting point is 00:52:01 This is before you get to anything it has to do with Russia's national character, Putin's nature, anything of the sort, right? So in that sense, we, we, the West, made ourselves a number one security problem for that country. So we are where we are. Putin's list of demands to NATO were all security demands. The Biden administration tried to find some diplomatic tools to satisfy some of those demands in part in the long term. They did the best they could, and I thought it was rather clever, and I thought it might have worked. But they offered nothing on the question of Ukraine.

Starting point is 00:52:48 And Ukraine itself offered nothing. They doubled down on their commitment to join NATO. Well, if you looked at the Russian mobilization and you looked at the demands and you looked at Vladimir Putin, you come to the conclusion that this is going to end badly. It's going to end badly. This doesn't make Putin's actions morally right or ethically right. This is just a basic geostrategic observation. And just as Stephen said that countries have to, even great power, should take some care in their security policies in their regions, small powers who live next to great power should also take some care. Right.

Starting point is 00:53:35 And I think in a fundamental way, Ukraine's policy here was somewhat reckless. That sounds like blaming the victim. I'm not blaming the victim. I'm saying the victim in looking at its list of priorities and at the possibilities did not seem to understand just how bad this could get. Outside observers seem to have understood it, right? And the United States should have understood it. And we should have worked a little bit harder to find a way to denature this problem

Starting point is 00:54:10 in Putin's mind and in the Russian security apparatus. and we didn't do much. So it's a world of interactions international politics. And in that sense, failing to anticipate their reactions was a mistake on our part. Thank you, Barry. Okay, Stephen, we're going to give you the last word in our debate today, be it resolved NATO is partly responsible for Russian aggression in Ukraine. Take us away.

Starting point is 00:54:40 Notwithstanding Barry's protest that he doesn't want to blame the victim, I think that is precisely what he's doing, claiming that Ukraine should have known better than to stand up to Russia. Let me speak for a moment about this promise to NATO, or promise to Ukraine to join NATO, ostensibly made in 2008. That was never an unconditional promise. The promise was always conditioned on Ukraine meeting the criteria for admission to NATO. One of the criteria, one of the main criteria was and is, no boundary. No boundary. No boundary disputes, no territorial disputes, no ongoing armed conflicts. I think it's been forgotten, but a number of the other countries that were eventually admitted to NATO had those kinds of

Starting point is 00:55:23 problems during the time that they were seeking membership. And they took efforts, made efforts to resolve those problems. And they had to resolve those problems before they could join the alliance. Vladimir Putin's not stupid. He broke the code early on. And guess what? He created territorial disputes with Ukraine. That was his way of vetoing. NATO membership for Ukraine. And what has happened to advance Ukrainian NATO membership since 2008? Answer, absolutely nothing. NATO has taken no steps to actually bring about NATO membership for Ukraine. Vladimir Putin's veto was holding. It was holding firm. So the notion that Putin needed to go into Ukraine today or this year because of the imminent threat of NATO membership for Ukraine is completely

Starting point is 00:56:18 untrue. This was a manufactured crisis. I believe that statement is false. I'm sorry. I believe your characterization of the situation is false. I think there's lots of evidence that suggests it's false. There was absolutely no movement in NATO toward admission of Ukraine. That decision in 2008 was a compromise because there was a proposal of that time to extend something called the membership action program to Ukraine, which is sort of the stepping stone to NATO membership. And instead of agreeing to extend the membership action program in 2008, they made this statement. It was rhetoric instead of concrete action.

Starting point is 00:56:56 Here we are. 14 years later, still no membership action plan for Ukraine. You know, and that would have been the first baby step toward actual admission of Ukraine to NATO. And Putin just, what this is about is not, let's be clear, this is not about stopping Ukraine's interest in joining NATO or stopping some imminent invitation to NATO membership to Ukraine. This is about Vladimir Putin's vision of reconstituting the Soviet Union. That statement of his in 2008, the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century was the collapse of the Soviet Union. And he's made it his mission to reverse that catastrophe. And what we're seeing today is his effort to reabsorb Ukraine into a polity that essentially

Starting point is 00:57:49 would be the new Soviet Union. And, you know, he's made great progress. You notice he's got all his troops based in Belarus, which is another former Soviet Republic. Just a few months ago, he sent forces into Kazakhstan, which has acted the largest of the foreign, in terms of territory, the largest of the former Soviet Republic. So, you know, he's made enormous headway in reconstituting the Soviet Union. The problem he faces is that in Ukraine, which is really the crown jewel of the other former Soviet

Starting point is 00:58:14 republics, he is so antagonized the population that he had no alternative but to launch this invasion. And, you know, so far it's not working out so well for him. God bless the Ukrainian people. They are courageous. They're fighting for their freedom. They are not to be blamed for the situation they find themselves in today. they deserve our support, our assistance, and our prayers. Thank you, Stephen, and thank you, Barry, for a terrific debate.

Starting point is 00:58:40 You know, this is a complex issue, and it's just a privilege to, again, kind of dip into some of the history here, the context that's led up to the horrible war that's now unfolding before our eyes in Ukraine. So I want to, just on behalf of the Monk Debates community, thank you both for the kind of civility and substance that you brought to this conversation. to your engagement with one another and to the elucidation of a lot of important ideas and ways of thinking about this conflict

Starting point is 00:59:11 that I know I'm going to carry with me for some time to come. So Stephen Barry, thank you so much for coming on the program. Thank you for organizing. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank our participants, Barry and Stephen,

Starting point is 00:59:29 they've certainly gave us a lot to think about. If you have feedback or reflections on what you've just heard, please send us an email to podcast. at monk debates.com. A reminder that our monk members-only podcast is available for yours free to listen to any time as a perk of monk membership. You can grab your complimentary monk membership right now at triple w monk debates.com for membership. Thank you for spending some time with us and lending your attention to our efforts to bring back the art of public debate one conversation at a time. I'm your host and moderator, Rudyard Griffiths.

Starting point is 01:00:09 The Monk Debates are a project of the Aure and Peter and Melanie Monk Charitable Foundations. Rudyard Griffiths and Ricky Gurwitz are the producers. The Monk Debates podcast is mixed by Residia. Be sure to download and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like us, feel free to give us a five-star rating. Thank you again for listening.

The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved: NATO is partly responsible for Russian aggression in Ukraine

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.