The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved: The West should isolate, not engage, Putin’s Russia

Episode Date: May 27, 2021

Vladimir Putin, Russia's paramount leader for almost two decades, is facing mounting pressure at home and abroad. His ally in Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko, is facing wide spread opposition since claiming re-election last year in a widely condemned election. Russian diplomats have been expelled from the US, Czech Republic, and Poland, along with new a round of economic sanctions by Western powers. At home, mass protests are springing up across the country in support of jailed Putin critic and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny. Putin's response has been a show of force; the President moved 100,000 Russian troops to disputed areas of Ukraine, deployed warships to the Red Sea, cracked down on protesters, and warned the West it would cross Russia's “red lines” at its peril. Some experts believe that the only way to de-escalate tensions with Russia is through open dialogue on issues of mutual interest. Negotiations will reduce the risk of conflict and advance common goals that benefit both parties, such as arms control, Middle East stability and the Arctic. Others see isolation and increased sanctions as the only answer to Putin's regime. The Russian President is a dangerous actor whose efforts to destabilize the West are a clear and present danger. Appeasement of any kind will only encourage more bad behaviour and increase the risk of an open conflict. Arguing for the motion is Bill Browder, political activist and author of the best-selling book Red Notice, which chronicles Browder's mission to expose the Kremlin's corruption while running the largest hedge fund in Russia. Arguing against the motion is Matthew Rojansky, Director of the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute, and one of the country's leading analysts of US relations with Russia, Ukraine, and the region. QUOTES: BILL BROWDER: “We have to think of dealing with Putin like we're dealing with a criminal enterprise....we have to contain him and not give him any latitude for bad actions.” MATTHEW ROJANSKY “Strategic stability between the United States and Russia is absolutely critical. Arms control doesn't happen without dialogue.” Sources: BBC, US Department of Defense, AFP, MSNBC, PBS The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ The Munk Debates podcast is produced by Antica, Canada's largest private audio production company - https://www.anticaproductions.com/   Executive Producer: Stuart Coxe, CEO Antica Productions Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Kieran Lynch Associate Producer: Abhi RahejaBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are options, and that's why we need to take this opportunity seriously. There's no way you can prevent global warming unless China is part of the solution. This is not normal male behavior. This is predatory behavior. We don't know how bad this bug is. We don't know what this bug does. All of that was thrown away in those eight minutes and 46 seconds, and that's the moment that I became an abolitionist. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Hello and welcome to the Monk Debates on every day. 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, the West should isolate, not engage Putin's Russia. I hope no one will cross Russia's red line, but in each case, we are the ones who will decide where the red line is. Organizers of any provocation, threatening our security Hello, I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffith. Well, Vladimir Putin has issued a dire warning to the West. Any provocations against Russia will be met with a harsh and rapid response. The Russian president blames the United States since allies for trying to destabilize his government

and the balance of power in Eastern Europe. So far, his warnings have amounted to an increased show of force, including troops in the Ukraine, warships in the Black Sea, and crackdowns. on protests across his country. Some governments in the West are hoping for a reset with Russia to improve bilateral relations. Ultimately, I think what we can hope is to have a relationship with Russia that is at least predictable and stable. And so given that, our intent is to engage Russia in ways that advance our interests while remaining

very clear-eyed about the challenges that it poses. That's the U.S. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken. Many believe that Blinken is right that re-enging with Russia will help reduce the risk of conflict and advance interests on both sides. Others argue that negotiating with Putin in any way is the wrong approach. The Russian president is a dangerous actor whose efforts to destabilize the West prove that he cannot be trusted. Isolation and increased sanctions are the only acceptable responses to the threat that. that Putin represents. On this installment of the monk debates,

we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion, be it resolved, the West should isolate, not engage Putin's Russia. Arguing for the motion is Bill Browder, political activist, and author of the best-selling book,

Red Notice, which chronicles Browder's mission to expose the Kremlin's corruption while running one of the largest hedge funds in Russia. Arguing against the motion is Matthew Rajansky, the director of the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute and one of America's leading analysts of Russia-U.S. relations.

Bill, Matthew, welcome to the Monk Debates. Great to be here. Yeah, thank you, Roger. Very much looking forward to today's conversation, I think of all the major foreign policy issues in the world today. The question of what should the West stance be with regards to Putin's Russia has to be at or near the very top? of that list. And specifically, is the nature of that relationship best served by an attitude

of engagement or an attitude of isolation? And we've had this debate as a society, as a culture throughout the Cold War, with important ramifications. And we are now re-engaging this debate at a crucial moment in Russia's relationships with the West and Western powers and vice versa. So our resolution today, simple to the point, be it resolved, the West should isolate, not engage Putin's Russia. Bill, you're arguing in favor of the motion. Let's have your opening remarks. So Vladimir Putin is first and foremost a kleptocrat. Over the last 20 years, he has stolen, in my estimate, 200 billion from the Russian people and the Russian state.

And a thousand people around him have stolen another 800 billion. And so a trillion dollars has been stolen by a small group of people for their benefit and have left the Russian population in destitute poverty. Now, this kind of approach is not a sustainable long-term approach, and it's particularly not sustainable in a country that still calls itself a democracy. And although Russia is not a democracy by any stretch, they still have to live under that fig leaf. And so for Putin, it creates.

a very difficult dilemma because if he's ever not going to be in power, then he loses that money, he probably goes to jail, and he could even die. And so for him, he has an existential objective of staying in power in Russia. And so how do you stay in power in a situation like that? Well, you do two things. One, you make sure that all the people who are angry with you for that, and that makes up a lot of people because it's hard not to be angry if you're destitute and hungry. And you turn the screws on those people.

And the second thing you do is you try to take that anger that they have directed towards you and you direct it towards foreign enemies. And as a result of that, the war in Ukraine is a war of distraction. The war in Syria and Putin's involvement is for distraction.

All the attacks and other types of activities on democracy in the West is a distraction. And the purpose of all this is for Putin to stay in power. And so as we look at this from the West, it's not as if we can do anything to change his behavior because he's not doing it because of us. He's doing this out of his own personal fear of losing power, becoming poor, going to jail and dying.

And therefore, we can't really, think about anything other than how do we stop him from doing all this type of stuff? And so it's interesting because we're playing a card game with him, a poker game, where we have a full house and he has a pair of twos. Vladimir Putin and I should say Russia can't go to economic war with us. They have an economy the size of the state of New York. Their military budget is 90% less than the U.S. military budget, and 80% of that military budget is stolen by corrupt generals.

And so they can't engage with us in an economic war, and they can't engage with us in any kind of physical on-the-ground war. And so the only kind of war that they can engage with us on is an asymmetric war. It's a war of hacking. It's a war of targeted assassinations. It's a war of interfering in American and Western democracy. And it's not something where the traditional tools of diplomacy, the traditional rules of diplomacy apply.

If Putin is a guy who is ready to kill his enemies with Novichok, with radioactive poisons, he's not a guy who we can then have a conversation with and expect him to act in good faith. And so the only option with a man like this is we can't think of it as dealing with a sovereign state in the way we deal with almost any other sovereign state. We have to think of dealing with Putin

like we're dealing with a criminal enterprise. And with a criminal enterprise, we have to be absolutely tough. We have to contain him and not give him any latitude for bad actions. And all of the tools that we thought and we've tried before to engage with him haven't worked. There's been many, many heads of state in the United States and elsewhere that have tried resetting, engaging, et cetera, and none of it works. He just laughs at that.

And so the only option left at this point is a full-scale containment strategy. Thank you, Bill, for a terrific opening statement, sitting this debate up nicely. Matthew, it's now your opportunity to come to us with an opening statement. Our resolution today, be it resolved, the West should isolate, not engage Putin's Russia. You're opposing the resolution. Let's have your opening remarks. Thanks, Richard. I would start by saying this, where it's in the interest,

the United States to work with Russia, we should and we will. Where Russia seeks to violate our interest, that is the United States' interests, we will respond, and we will always stand in defense of our country, our institutions, our people, and our allies. Now, those words are, in fact, a direct quote from President Biden, and that's not an accident. I strongly support that formulation. I think it's a wise formulation. I think it has, in fact, proven effective over many years, and I support that formulation going forward. But let me unpack that a little bit. What should be our goal now in dealing with this very difficult interlocutor, Russia? The goal, I think, should, as President Biden has said, be a predictable and stable relationship. Part of that is to have clear communication

at all levels, including at the top level, but very importantly, recognizing the danger of Russia's behavior towards the United States, towards U.S. allies and partners, towards values and interests of the United States, to try to impose some guardrails on that behavior. And I think when it comes to the biggest danger posed by Russia, that's one we can't possibly overlook, which is that Russia, like it or not, is the one country that within an hour can act to end life as we know it on this planet. It is either the first or second largest nuclear power in the world other than the United States. And that means, as President Biden has underscored, that strategic stability between the United States and Russia is absolutely critical. The president's in favor of arms control.

So am I. That doesn't happen without dialogue. Of course, the risk of the two countries escalating to direct nuclear experiments, is very low. Thank God it's very low. But that is such a significant event. As I say, that is a life-altering or potentially civilization-ending event. It's one that we have to take seriously. That, I think, is why President Biden within his first week in office called President Putin. That wasn't something he otherwise intended to do. I think he's been crystal clear about his view of Putin. He's called him a killer. I don't think there's any love loss there. But he did it in

order to extend this vital treaty, which has, in fact, worked constraining the arms race, constraining the strategically stable relationship between Russia and the United States. I am not interested in a reset. I don't think President Biden is interested in a reset. We have a realistic expectation about what's possible. It's limited. Our allies are comfortable with that expectation. We talk to them about it. And we come from a position of very clear strength. We go into the dialogue, having announced, and in this case it's Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, who announced it, both seen and unseen measures to make up for the policy drift in the last administration to signal red lines. Unlike the previous administration,

we will be taking steps to hold Russia accountable for the range of malign activities that it has undertaken. That includes interfering in America's democracy. It includes the poisoning of citizens on European soil with chemical weapons. It includes the types of hacks and breaches as well. We will do that at a time and in a manner of our choosing. You see the new executive order from the Treasury Department that enables very significant future sanctions. And yet at the same time with all of this, the President has, and I fully support this, called

for de-escalation, for thoughtful dialogue and diplomacy. Again, the aim being to reestablish a stable and predictable U.S. Russia relationship. So I'll simply end by saying, I fully support that approach. Thank you, Matthew. Really great opening statements from you both. I can sense some of the kind of fault lines in this debate emerging, and I'm really looking forward to getting into those with you both in the moderated middle portion of our discussion. But before we go there, let's have some quick rebuttal. So Bill, give us your rebuttal to what you've just heard from Matthew. Well, so of course, yes, Russia has a lot of nuclear warheads pointed towards us.

We have a lot of nuclear warheads pointed towards them. We have for the last 50 years the use of nuclear weapons against each other is possible, but it hasn't happened during the Cold War. And I think that for us to bring nuclear weapons into a discussion about a lot of other things that are going on gives them a sort of error of legitimacy and a sense of power that they don't have in any other conversation. But most importantly, this whole concept of de-escalation is really, from my perspective, a word that I've heard so many times, and not just from the United States, but from other countries, when we're not responsible for the escalation with Russia. We're not the ones who invaded Ukraine.

We're not the ones who shot down MH-17. We're not the ones who bombed using chlorine, weapons civilians in Syria. We're not the ones who organized Novichuk assassinations of our political enemies abroad. We're not the ones who cheat and dope in the Olympics. This is what Putin does. And every time he does one of these things, he escalates. And it's not our job to de-escalate, and nor is it our – we have any ability to de-escalate because, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, he's doing this.

for reasons having to do with his own survival with his domestic base. He's not doing this because of any of our actions. And so I don't believe that it's our job to try to contain a sort of a wild, irrational bully who's operating on the basis of motivations that have nothing to do with us. Our job is to set up absolute clear boundaries that he cannot cross, to not give him any latitude whatsoever, to come down on him like a ton of bricks when he does that because I know him and I've seen it

and I've been fighting with him myself for a long, long time. And what he respects is hard power and what he doesn't respect is weakness. And weakness is going to him and trying to apologize to him for stuff that he's doing. He just laughs at that and uses it to his own advantage. Thank you, Bill, for that rebuttal. Matthew, same opportunity for you,

a couple minutes on the clock to react to Bill's statement or what you've just heard now? Yeah, thanks, Richard. So first, I confess a little confusion about Bill's view of what I referred to as strategic stability, essentially preventing nuclear war. It seems to be that because we haven't launched nuclear missiles at each other for, actually call it 70 years, that we don't have to worry about that problem. And I would flip that on its head and say, it's because we were.

worry about that problem because we put arms control in place, because thank God for the most part, we have leaders who take that problem seriously that we haven't actually gone to nuclear war. And again, I say it's a low probability event, but one that would be so catastrophic that it has to be taken seriously. I think it would be a very serious mistake to assume that because we don't think nuclear weapons are perhaps morally legitimate or because we don't, you know, have to sweat that problem every day, that that is a reason that we need not address it in the serious way that it has been addressed. And that's principally through arms control and what we call strategic stability dialogue. That is far and away item number one on the agenda for the

administration's dialogue with Russia. And that's based on the U.S. national interest. Second, I think that there's a broader mistake here about the record. It is not true that, you know, everything we have done in our engagement with Russia has failed. This is the claim that Bill has made. Arms control is, of course, the first example, but it's not the only example. There are a lot of folks in the U.S. government who will tell you very clearly there were a number of areas where Russia could have kept pushing, but didn't. Now, I won't argue that Putin has, you know, turned tail and pulled out of Ukraine. Patently, he hasn't done so. But to argue that there's no place there for the kind of diplomatic dialogue that we have and that I hope will continue to have,

I think is a mistake in the record. The same could be said for a number of important regional conflicts. Afghanistan is one that's very much on the horizon. There's a lot more that I could talk about, including transnational issues like climate change, preventing the next pandemic, Arctic security, and of course nonproliferation of the most dangerous substances on Earth. All of these things are not things that Russia does as a gift for the United States. These are things where Russia and the United States, clear-eyed, advancing each of their

respective national interests can work together because it's in their interest to do so. It doesn't make us friends. It doesn't make us partners or allies. It doesn't mean our values are the same. It's something that we do in order to advance our respective national interests. Hi, Munk podcast listeners. Rudyard Griffith here, your host and moderator. A big thank you to all of our listeners. In the last couple of days, we've achieved an important milestone. One million downloads in 18 short months since we started the Munk Debates podcast. That's a testament to you, our listeners, appetite for civil and substantive debate

on the big issues of the day. Please write a review about the Monk Debates podcast in your podcast store. Like us on social media, spread the word about civil and substantive debate via this pod. Thanks again for all your support and for helping us achieve this important milestone,

a million downloads in 18 months. Now, back to our program. My chance now to join the debate and kind of think up to some of the questions on the minds of our listeners having just reflected on your really thoughtful opening from both of you to this debate. And Bill, maybe to come to you first, I want you to address a little bit more specifically Matthew's point that there are mutual interests in the Russia-America relationship, from arms control to the Arctic to the Middle East to Afghanistan to climate change. So why can't we chew and walk gum at the same time? Why isn't it possible to draw red lines on the issues that are important, but also seek understanding and advancement on issues that are also imminently in America's national interest? Well, I'm not suggesting that we don't talk to Russia ever,

but I'm suggesting that Russia primarily and Putin need to be contained. And so let's look at some of those issues you brought up, the Arctic. So Russia is on a sort of land grab in the Arctic right now, ignoring all previous treaties and basically grabbing what they can while they can when nobody else is stopping them. So once they've grabbed all the land, we can talk to them for the next 50 years about,

well, what should we do now that you've grabbed the Arctic? Or we can stop them from doing it and make them mad while we stop them. In the Middle East, various administrations allowed them to basically get a foothold in Syria. When Obama didn't enforce the red line on chemical use of chemical weapons, and it was obvious that we were not going to go in

and Assad's regime, Putin went in. He established an Air Force base, and all of a sudden now we can't do anything in the Middle East without talking to Putin. And it wasn't helped even more when the Russians, when Trump backed out of northeast Syria and the Russians took over American bases. In every situation, Putin is pushing at every open space.

And what I'm suggesting is we can talk to them until we're blue in the face, but we should absolutely create devastating consequences in a hard line so they don't do that kind of stuff. That if they were to advance one millimeter in any direction outside of their borders, that there will be unbelievable consequences. If they hack our elections, that there will be unbelievable consequences. if they start doing extra-territorial assassinations, there'll be individual sanctions on all the top people in the Putin regime.

We have to create a totally unfavorable environment for them to be doing all this terrible stuff. And we can talk all we want, but Putin doesn't care about talk. You can't negotiate with a criminal. He's the guy who will absolutely kill you with his own bare hands if he thought that that would further his interest. And so any talk that we have with him is just empty. What he needs to see is hard consequences,

and that's what causes him to behave the way he does or not behave the way he does. Matthew, I want to go a little bit deeper on what Bill just said, because it was part of his opening statement that really gripped me there is a thesis, an idea here, that we're making a category error when it comes to Putin and Russia. We are negotiating, we're interacting, we're engaging with them as if they are a fellow,

sovereign state with, you know, a set of interests, I don't know, broadly held and disseminated. And, you know, we're capable of having our diplomacy and systems of interoperability with theirs connect and move forward ideas together. Instead, what Bill's saying, no, this is a criminal conspiracy. These people are not a state. They are a kleptocracy. And you cannot assume, as you would, with other rational state actors, that mutual interests are mutual and that they are pursued together in good faith. Do you, why do you deny that characterization of Russia when so much of Putin's behavior

and so much of the regime's behavior over the last decade seems to correspond to Bill's rather depressing outlook? Yeah, thanks, Roger. So a couple of points. Number one, I think I just heard actually Bill agree with my position, which is he said, I'm not saying we shouldn't talk to the Russia. Great. So we agree about that. We should talk to the Russians. I also agree with Bill. So these are now two points of agreement that we should push back as hard as is merited whenever that is going to be

affected. Again, as long as you measure policy by whether it makes the situation better for the U.S. national interest, I'm comfortable with that if the answer is yes. So I think the disagreement perhaps is about how much we talk to the Russians or maybe which Russians we talk to. But it does occur to me that some of the arguments that Bill is making, again, back to this point of, well, no one's launched a nuclear missile at me lately, so that's not a problem, are precisely taking place within the umbrella of we do talk to the Russians. And in fact, we have talked to the Russians. Let me go to this point about the Arctic.

I found that really very interesting. the land grab in the Arctic. I'm really interested in that. I'd like to know what land has been grabbed because in actual fact, I would argue that deterrence has worked really quite well in the Arctic. Second, what do you do about it? So let's say for the sake of argument that Russia, in fact, was trying to grab territory in the Arctic. One option would obviously be go to war.

That's probably not a super appealing option for obvious reasons. You ideally want to avoid war between a nuclear arms. armed alliance and a nuclear power. And so you would look to some of the existing instruments. We have an agreement about avoiding incidents at sea and in the air and how to manage those incidents. We're actually trying as much as possible to rely on that agreement, but also to update that agreement. That only happens through dialogue. And finally, to this point about, you know, Russia as a criminal regime, or let's say Putin's regime is a criminal regime and you don't talk to criminals, you defeat them. A couple points there. Number one is if there was a world,

courtroom and a world police and a world prison where we could simply arrest the criminals and put them in jail and they'd stay there and good people would go on about their business, that would be great. Again, by the test of whether it's an effective policy solution, I would be all for that. The problem is that's a fantasy. As Bill himself pointed out, we don't have really great instruments for affecting Putin's behavior, I would say, were a far cry from having great instruments from removing Vladimir Putin from power and treating him as a criminal and taking him out of the scene. So what we're left with is the reality that he runs Russia, like it or not. And there, I think, the relevance of the criminality of the regime, and that's well documented.

I'm not going to disagree, is that it makes the regime more vulnerable. And for our purposes, you know, it's mixed, but it's mostly a good thing. That gives us a number of opportunities to exert leverage, where ultimately, be it the Russian people, be it other members of the Russian elite besides Putin himself, can see the reality that's being imposed on them by Putin, especially when we exacerbate that condition through our sanctions. Thank you, Matthew.

So, Bill, come back on this bigger point. I mean, Matthew, in effect, I don't want to mischaracterize your views, Matthew, but you're in effect saying that Bill is describing the world how he wants it to be as opposed to how it is. Matthew is being the realist here, Bill, and you're kind of engaging in, you know, this ravenous view of Russia to pursue a foreign policy that isolates, contains, really forces this regime into what, regime change? Is that what's ultimately the goal here is to try to push Putin out? I'm just, want to try to have our listeners understand how far do you want to go to isolate Russia? And do you

accept or not that Matthew's view is more realistic about how the world actually works today? Well, I think that his view would be realistic if we were dealing with Sweden, for example. I'm sure that we could take all these councils and meetings and summits and, you know, negotiate with Sweden with great effect. And we could come up with, you know, our policies that affect the U.S. national interest and the Swedes can come up with their policies. But we're not dealing with Sweden. We're dealing with a man with absolutely no honor, no integrity, no shared values, and someone who is ready to do truly anything to further his own interests.

And so what he says one day will change the next day. And so all this talk about discussion and negotiation is really kind of quaint and sort of sweet. But, you know, let's do that with the Swedes and the Belgians. but when it comes to dealing with hardcore criminals, this is not like him being realistic. Actually, let's touch briefly on this whole issue of nuclear weapons. You know, Matthew wasn't involved in these negotiations, and so I'm not criticizing him,

but the successive governments' negotiations on these treaties are not what has prevented a nuclear war from happening. It's very simple what's prevented a war from happening, which is mutually assured destruction. That's the elephant in the room. That's what prevents. countries from the United States and Russia from destroying each other. I think I'm being totally realistic and understanding what Putin's all about. And coming back to your question, are we trying

to regime change Russia? No. That's not our place to do it. That's the Russians place to do it. That's what the Russian people can decide to do or not do based on their risks and opportunities. But we have huge leverage over Putin because of who he is and what he's done. Putin has become the richest man in the world, one of the richest men in the world. One of the richest men in the the world. Unlike the Soviets, Putin keeps all of his money in the West. And so we have an opportunity which we never had before when we were dealing with the Soviets, which is to go after his money and to go after the money of the people around him, his oligarch trustees and his cronies. And that has an enormous and powerful impact. Putin is a man who's ready to kill for money.

its money is more important than human life and the risk to his money is what makes him absolutely crazy and so when we're dealing with him in all this jabbering in meetings and summits that's for people like ourselves but we're dealing with almost a different species here we're dealing with a complete madman

and we have to figure out where his pressure points are and his pressure points, one of his major pressure points is his money and so that's one of the reasons why he hates the Magnitsky Act so much is because that was the first thing ever that put his money at risk. American-born businessman Bill Browder was once the largest foreign investor in Russia

until he says he and his attorney, Sergei Magnitsky, tried to expose massive corruption among people linked to the Kremlin. Sergei Magnitsky was jailed and later died in custody. Browder was a driving force behind the 2012 Magnitsky Act in his name, which for the first time impose sanctions on individual Russians. That's why he hates all the attacks on his oligarchs,

and that's where we have an opportunity when we want to push back on him. But I'm not a believer at all in this sort of, you know, I would say, you know, historic old world disrupted view of how you advance statecraft, which is something that, you know, people were doing 25, 30 years ago. It's like, you know, we're not on an IBM PC anymore. Yeah, so I got to, I got to. I've got to push back a little bit here. You know, it strikes me that Bill is taking your framing regimen of why wouldn't we walk and chew gum at the same time and essentially saying because walking is enough.

You know, when it comes to what I called strategic stability, so essentially the arrangement by which, you know, the world's nuclear powers, but in particular, Russia and the United States far and away the largest nuclear powers don't, in fact, go. to nuclear war with one another, you know, Bill is saying, well, we all have nuclear weapons, so we deter one another, and that's what's worked, right? That's why we haven't gone to nuclear war. First of all, there's kind of the, my watch keeps tigers away problem there, right? Which is, it's an article of faith. If you want to say deterrence is the only thing that's worked, then, you know, it's a historical. In actual fact, we have had arms control in place since the 1960s. We have had dialogue in place since the 1960s. You want to go back to the Cold War? The Cold War was an even better example than today of pushing back in every conceivable way against the hostile Soviet

threat, and yet we had dialogue. But I would argue that the way that you avoid the risks attendant on nuclear escalation is precisely by getting both limits on what each side has in place. And the reality is, though their compliance has been imperfect in a number of other areas, on the core strategic nuclear arms control agreements, the current generation of which is the New START agreement, Russia has actually complied. Today, the US and Russia agreed to extend the only remaining treaty that limits the deployment

of nuclear weapons. New START restricts strategic or long-range nuclear weapons. Today's agreement will last until 2026. We have been able to limit the amount of nuclear weapons that Russia has, which used to be in the tens of thousands, now down to, you know, call it around 1,500, which is not a good number. It's not a number that I sleep well at night thinking about, but that agreement has worked, and we are safer as a result of that agreement. That's one thing, limiting numbers. The second thing is transparency. Stability, the stability that billed prizes,

it doesn't come from deterrence, right? You don't make good choices every minute of every day because you think to yourself, if I don't, the cops are going to come in and arrest me, right? You make good choices because you know what are the factors that go into making those choices. Is it to your advantage or to your disadvantage? Do you need to or do you not need to take the action? And the transparency that we gain through nuclear arms control helps both sides make good non-escalatory choices, right, that result in stability. It's an incredibly important point.

If you just rely on deterrence, you take your... your chances. Good luck. I don't want to live for another decade or two decades or three decades without arms control. And I think neither does President Biden. And that's why he agreed to extend the new START agreement by five years. I think one other example is really illustrative here. And this is important. If you don't negotiate with Russia, you're not going to get Russia's compliance, acquiescence at a minimum, to other important things that you need to get done in the world where Russia can, in fact, be a spoiler. Bill gave the example. of Syria. That's gone pretty badly for the United States, I would argue. Israel is an interesting

example of talking to the Russians in order to do what they seek to do in Syria because they recognize they have no choice. But I would bring in a related case, and that's Iran. We're trying now to get back into the Iran nuclear agreement in some form or other because we believe it's important that Iran doesn't have access to the most destructive weapons on the planet. That agreement's not possible without Russia. That's a statement of fact. So the question is, do we talk to the Russians about it? Or do we assume that this criminal regime will never go along with what we want, or even if they do, they'll cheat. So why talk to them? I think we have to talk to them. Thank you, Matthew. Before we go to closing statements, I want to spend a moment talking about Alexei Navalny and get both of your views on how the West, the United States in particular, should react to this imprisonment of Navalny, the suggestion.

that his health is in peril, that he purposely has been incarcerated to kill him. The leading critic of the Kremlin, Alexei Navalny, has been detained by police after returning to Moscow for the first time since being poisoned with a nerve agent in an attack he blames on the Russian authorities. Bill, you have far too much experience, as anyone would wish, about people dying in the Russian prison. system, how concerned are you about Navalny and to what extent vis-a-vis our debate motion today of

isolation versus engagement? What are the tools? What are the isolating tools that you would urge the U.S. government deploy, other governments deploy, to give Navalny and possibly his larger political movement a fighting chance in Putin's Russia? Well, so I believe that Putin has to, in his own mind kill Navalny because if he doesn't, he's opened the door for other people to challenge him in the way that Navalny has. Putin is a man who rules by symbolism and by example. Alexei Navalny is an incredibly brave guy who has showed no fear of Putin. And the fearlessness that Alexei Navalny has shown is just terrifying to Putin. And so Putin wants him dead.

And how do we know Putin wants him dead? Because he tried to kill him. He tried to kill him with Novichok in Siberia. And through just pure accident, it didn't work. And he would have killed him in prison if the whole world hadn't erupted in this massive outrage when he was on his hunger strike. And so what can we do about it?

Well, you don't have to ask me because Alexei Navalny made it clear and he was right about what should be done about it. He created a list before he went back to Russia and he said, if anything is to happen to me, anything bad happens to me in Russia. Here's a list of 35 Putin trustees, oligarch trustees who hold Putin's money.

And if anything were to happen to me, these people should be sanctioned under the Magnitsky Act with all the countries that have Magnitsky acts. And he identified the people, we don't need to sanction the generals and the KGB officers. We need to sanction the people who hold Putin's money. Because as I said before, what Putin cares about is his money and the people who hold his money. And that would save Alexei Navalny's life.

Let it be known that all of these people will eventually be sanctioned if something terrible happens to Navalny. That's the kind of world we live in. And that's the kind of thing that Putin responds to, and that's the kind of thing that will keep him alive. Matthew, let's get your view on that, because why are we pussyfooting around Putin's oligarchs? Isn't that just an acknowledgement of the fact that we aren't sanctioning these people? It's an acknowledgment of Bill's theory of the case that this is a kleptocracy, that the pressure and pain points around Putin are financial, and that if we want to change his behavior, whether it's on Navalny or arms control agreements or Syria or. or whatever, we have to punish them in terms of their access to the ill-gotten gains, the hundreds of billions of dollars that they've squirled out of Russia into foreign bank accounts

and jurisdictions around the world, including the United States. Why isn't it time to do exactly what Bill's recommending? So a couple of points here. One, I actually think this is an area where Bill and I probably agree about more than we disagree, but I'm a little confused again because Bill has, said very clearly, we can't affect Putin's behavior. He does what he does because it's about sort of survival of his regime. It's driven by his own criminality, psyche, whatever it may be. If that's true, if Bill is right that we can't affect his behavior, then the calculus that says do sanctions in order to affect Putin's behavior, that can't be right. I actually

think that there are other good reasons to do sanctions. You know, number one's the demonstration effect. You want to set the rule. You want to set the precedent that what is being done is unacceptable and more than merely shaking your finger, this is something it has costs. It has costs, by the way, for both sides. If anybody imagines that sanctions are cost-free for the West, talk to Europe, talk to Germany, talk to Japan. They're not cost-free. But that's okay. That shows that we're serious about them. You know, it might change the calculus for people other than Putin himself. broadly speaking, I'm completely with Bill on what is being done to Navalny now, which is torture, quite frankly, you know, the murder of Magnitsky in the past, the arrest of Lebovsobol, of Ivan Pavlov, of countless Russians who've stood up for independent voices in Russia, the persecution of free media and homegrown human rights groups like Memorial. This is all unacceptable. The question is, making sure that what we do actually changes the outcome for the better and is consistent with U.S. national interests.

If you go to what Navalny himself said during the interim when he was free and able to testify for the European Parliament back in November, both he and Vladimir Karamorza sent the same message, which is essentially sanctioned the oligarchs, go after the kleptocrats, don't punish people. And I think that this is a very good formulation. I want to quote him here. He said the basis of a new approach should be very clear dividing two things. Russian people who must be welcomed and treated very warmly from the European Union, from my perspective, and the Russian state, which must be treated like a bunch of criminals. I think that's right.

When you think about sanctions, you want to make sure that what you're doing is not punishing 145 million people when in actual fact the person that you want to try to exert leverage on is Vladimir Putin and his regime. the question is always going to be an ends test. Does it work? So if Bill is right that we can't affect his behavior, then we need to be very careful about what we do. I actually think there are probably ways in which we can affect his behavior, and I think that the sanctions should be targeted for that reason. Thank you. Before we go to closing statements, a final question to you, Bill, which is when Matthew was rumored to be appointed to Joe Biden's National Security Council as a key advisor on Russia policy, you publicly and vehemently opposed his elevation, his arrival at the

NSC. Having listened to him during this debate, do you regret that now? Do you sense that maybe the common understandings you have are great enough to give you confidence in Matthew and a role like that for him in the Biden administration? Well, it's not for me to say who should be in the Biden administration or not. I can only say which policy ideas would work well in this moment in time and this moment in history. I'm sure that Matthew would have been a perfect national security advisor in the Obama administration because the things that he said today were absolutely consistent with what Obama was doing. Obama was interested in strategic nuclear disarmament talks,

and he was interested in doing that kind of at the expense of everything else. And I believe that created a very difficult environment and gave Putin an encouragement for where we are right now. I don't think that the strategy that he has in the world that we live in right now is the best strategy. Maybe in a future administration where the issues are different, I would support Matthew's national security proposal. But I think where we are right now is in a very dire situation. Thanks, Bill.

Before we go to your closing statement, Matthew, do you want to say anything about that episode? I know clearly having your career discussed on the pages of the Washington Post and elsewhere, most likely a somewhat searing experience. Am I right? Yeah, I think I have a couple of concerns. One, I think disinformation is a very serious problem that we face in the United States, presumably Bill and other British subjects face that in the UK, and people I know face that in European democracies. And I think that some of the attacks on me, including bills, were classical disinformation.

And it was very unwelcome. And then I think second, I very genuinely disagree with the, idea that the world has changed so fundamentally that the point the bill himself made, we have been safe, despite the danger, from the risk of nuclear exchange for, in fact, more than half a century. Well, if in fact what we have done has worked, then why should we change course on that? I don't think the Obama administration was at all naive when it came to preserving the infrastructure of nuclear arms control from the Cold War and extending it into the post-Cold war era. That is precisely what they did. I think they did the right thing. I don't think

everything that they did was right, and I don't take responsibility for it. Thank you, Matthew. Bill Browder, let's get your closing statement in our debate today. We've been debating the motion, be it resolved. We should isolate, not engage Putin's Russia. You've taken the pro position in the debate. Wrap it up for us. So the key issue is what does it mean to isolate versus what does it mean to engage. When I say that we should isolate Russia, what I'm saying is that Putin is an international malign influence. He breaks the law. He does terrible things whenever he wants, wherever he wants. And in order to stop him from doing that, we need to create a containment strategy. And the containment strategy should be hard barriers and serious consequences.

to his actions. And the idea that we should in some way engage with him while we're doing that, it all depends on what engagement means. If engagement means putting down our hard barriers so that we can talk, it then depends on what are we going to get from those talks and what are we giving up for those talks? And I would argue that we can pro forma talk all we want. but if we were going to give anything up,

that just shows weakness, and that gives him a further opening, and we shouldn't give him any openings that he's constantly looking to take. And he will continue to talk to us, no matter what we do, on a arm's length basis, as an adversary,

and of course we should talk to him, so there's no misunderstandings, but this idea of appeasement, engagement, talking at the expense of being tough, It's just not the right way to go with an international pariah, fugitive criminal like Vladimir Putin. Thank you, Bill Browder. For the final word in this debate, Matthew, we're going to come to you.

You've been arguing against our motion, be it resolved. We should isolate, not engage, Putin's Russia. Let's have your final words. So a quarter century ago, I was a high school debater, and maybe some of that comes through. But this isn't a game. This is about the real world and real people. It's about life and death. And so it upsets me a lot to hear this game, this straw man, is the term that you use in debate in a courtroom, that somehow talking is equal to appeasement.

It is somehow equal to giving something up. It is somehow equal to not being tough. and the proof that that is glaringly wrong is President Joe Biden. It's not me. You don't have to agree with a word I say in order to recognize the reality that President Biden is tough as nails on Vladimir Putin. And he is going to talk to Vladimir Putin. In fact, he already has.

And the U.S. government at senior levels are talking to the Russian government. And it is the right call. It is necessary. It's not easy. but you don't go in giving anything up solely in order to have a conversation. You can say a conversation between adversaries. You can frame it however you like. But it's not weak to talk.

I think that's a straw man. That is a false argument. Again, I come to the president's bottom line, which I endorse 100%. Where it's in the interest of the United States to work with Russia, we should and we will. Where Russia seeks to violate the interests of the United States will respond and will always stand in defense of our country, our institutions, our people, and our allies. If you stick with that formulation, I think you get the policy right. The goal ultimately has got to be a predictable and stable relationship.

Going into a dialogue with Russia, a Biden-Puton summit, or any other kind of dialogue doesn't guarantee that we get the guardrails on Russian behavior that we want, but not going there guarantees that we don't. you, Matthew. And thank you, Bill. This has been a civil, substantive conversation. I've learned so much from both of you in the last 45 minutes that we've spent together. On behalf of the Monk Debates community, thank you so much for coming on the program, for bringing your expertise, your knowledge of this issue to bear for our benefit. And again, thank you for the tone of the discussion. Much appreciated, Bill. Much appreciated Matthew. Thank you. Thanks, Richard. While that wraps up today's debate, I want to thank our participants, Matthew and Bill, for a terrific debate. They certainly gave me a lot to think about. If you have any feedback or reflections on what you've just heard, please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com.

Again, that's MUNK DebateswithanS.com. Here's a note from Jack on our recent Monk Debate podcast on Beethoven versus Mozart. Hi, Redyard, Jack writes. I really put off listening to this podcast as I thought it would be dreadfully boring. Finally, today I ran out of other downloads to listen to, so I put it on. It was fantastic. I couldn't stop listening and thoroughly enjoyed it. Lesson learned.

Hey, thanks, Jack. And if you want to go back and check out that Beethoven versus Mozart podcast, it is in our podcast feed from two weeks ago. A little bit of an experiment here at the Monk Debates, but I think that you. a successful one, at least for Jack. Hey, and reminder that we also have a Monk members-only podcast that comes out every Friday. It's a look at the current events shaping our world. We provide you with a bit of debate, hopefully some original analysis and insights, and it's free for your listening pleasure as part of our basic,

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