The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: Borat Coup – Affirmative Action

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

Friday Focus provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. The following is a sample of the Munk Debates’ weekly current affairs podcast, Friday Focus.   On this week’s edition of the Friday Focus podcast, Janice and Rudyard start the show with a recap of the last week of events in Russia. What exactly happened? How will Putin respond to the biggest domestic crisis in his twenty-year-plus rule? And what should Ukraine and its Western allies take away from it all? On the back half of the show, exclusively for Munk donors, the conversation turns to the U.S. Supreme Court decision on ending affirmative action policies based on race at American universities. What are the implications of the ruling? Is there a better way for universities to select for the vast human potential in society today and not on the basis of race, class or test score performance? Janice's Article in the Texas National Security Review: https://tnsr.org/2023/06/escalation-management-in-ukraine-learning-by-doing-in-response-to-the-threat-that-leaves-something-to-chance/ Rudyard's Article in The Hub: https://thehub.ca/2023-06-26/rudyard-griffiths-what-did-we-learn-from-russias-borat-coup/ This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become 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.

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full-length edition of this program. Thanks in advance for your generous contribution. Hello, Monk listeners. Rudier Griffiths here, the executive director of the Monk Debates. Welcome to this, the regular Friday Focus podcast. This is the weekly program where we dig into. the big issues and ideas behind the news with Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs, internationally renowned scholar and author.

Janice, great to be with you as we kick off a long weekend here in Canada. I don't believe it's Canada Day yet again, Roger. And for all our non-Canadian listeners, we are going to be celebrating it in the midst of smock from fires. It's something. Strange moment in the country. You just have so much going on. We're going to get into some of those topics this week.

It'd be kind of nice to get a break. A little reduction maybe in the news flow. That's not happening. I think since we started this podcast, maybe we're to blame, Janice. It's some computer simulation that's decided that our podcast should be the pivot point for how the world will unfold. Let's hope not.

Because the first topic, Janice, I want to get your views on, obviously, is what we saw in Russia over the course of last weekend and this week. If there's one key insight, a key piece of analysis that you think our listeners should take away from these extraordinary events, what would it be? I'll tell you what I took away, Richard. I watched how Putin reacted to what was an unprecedented. precedented situation, frankly, chaotic. Was it you?

It was you, Roger, who called it the Borak coup, and I thought that captured, that was just brilliant to capture the whole almost farcical atmosphere of what Perotian organized. That having been said, I was watching Putin. Now, there's broadly two things he could have done. He could, and you saw the angry Putin, he could have washed out, or he could have. or he could have done what he seems to have done. He has managed his anger, swallowed some pretty humiliating decisions, frankly,

on the advice of people that he must have listened to, and not only Lukashenko, but generals and security services, people, just sucked it up, frankly. Now, I think it's interesting he did the second. there's something that we can, there's something absolutely comforting we can take away from that.

That despite, and this really personally humiliating for him, he did not lash out. That has to be, relatively speaking, good news for the world in which we live. Yeah, my take on it,

which you can read if you're so inclined in the hub, um, another project I'm associated with, was that this, you know, wasn't just a deranged, you know, mercenary bent on some ridiculous march for justice, as he called it. This, in fact, had elements of a coordinated effort involving other elements in the Russian military, maybe oligarchs behind the scenes. And I think the last 72 hours or so, that has been borne out in the reaction of the government, the investigations that are going on,

the people that have seemingly disappeared for media reporting, a particular senior general, the so-called kind of butcher of Syria, really lovely guy who seems to have been very close to precaution. That makes me think, Janice, that this was serious. It would indicate that there are deeper fractures in the Russian military and security complex maybe then we first realized. And I guess the question for you is, you're right. I think Putin has shown that he's managing through this. But I guess what one wonders if it's not just progoshan and we subscribe to that analysis, what does that say about the vulnerability of this regime going forward?

Because my perception is that it's more vulnerable than I had assumed. The omnipotence that Putin had created around it, the mystique of total command and control, has been shaken on the outside. But what interests me is just what is the rot on the inside and how deep could it run? that is a $64 question. We probably say $64 million question given inflation. No longer

interesting to say $64 question. And that's what all the analysts are looking at. And Regi, nobody really knows. General Siruufkin is a long time ally of prognosian. They met in Syria through the Wagner group and worked together. And he got his reputation of the butcher of Syria and it was Wagner forces that worked with him.

Not surprising there's a friendship there. Boy, American media did not help him when they leaked an intelligence report that he had advanced knowledge of the coup. That's why he has disappeared very quickly. The real question is how broad is this discontent? Not at the very senior levels. Cus are never made at the senior levels. They're made at the kernel level. Is there enough frustration about really two big things?

things. One, the command and control, the hierarchy of the Russian system. This was, this modernization process was supposed to be lean, flexible, capable of fighting a lightning small war. That was the goal. Well, that's failed because the Russian army hasn't changed its culture. That's really the problem. Secondly, how angry are they about the lack of supplies, the disorganization, the fact that they were fighting often with all the equipment and allows erasions to put it bluntly. That's when you, so it's, I'm not optimistic, Roger, that we will get a military coup from inside. You notice Shoygu is still there, the Minister of Defense. We'll watch and see what happens to the chief of the Russian general staff, but all the security chiefs, too, are still in place. These are Putin's buddies.

Nobody joined that rebel column. Nobody joined except the Russian Air Force that got slaughtered as they were bombing up the highway. No ground units, not a single ground unit. They stood on the sidelines, but they didn't join. So I think we have to be careful not to overestimate the huge risk that people take. And when we'll see how big the backlash is, how big the purges are inside the army. If they're substantial, that's a further disincentive. Now, Ukraine goes out.

I mean, I don't think, Janice, you get to 200 kilometers of Moscow without, you know, some pretty significant tacit, you know, support within within the military. But that, that matters. And that, and that sends a shock. And I guess my analysis is that, you know, we have been pushing Russia very, very hard as we should. Maybe I disagree with the rate and pace and sophistication of some of the weapon systems that have been provided. But we've been doing this on the basis that, you know, Putin is, was and will be the status quo in Russia. what I take away from this last week's developments is it's not a it's certainly not a inevitability, but it's a risk that we now need to manage, which is what could happen if Putin is weaker than we thought.

It's certainly the case of the last week that's been revealed. So the question is the extent of how weak. And I think this is a serious risk. And in our usual, a historical way, we forget, you know, in the 1990s, we dodged a major crisis, which would have been the breakup and dissolution of the former Soviet Union, atomic weapons that would have fallen out of the command and control system of the Soviet Union, republics that could have been pitted against each other by regional powers. that would have been a huge geopolitical disaster, which everyone, including us, would have paid a significant and ongoing price to try to manage. We would never have put Russia back together again, but we would have had to pay an ongoing price of friction in international relations and global risk for decades.

Well, we are courting that risk again. And as with this war, every step of the way, Janice, I'm frustrated at our inability to think about risk and to think about risk outside of the specific conflict. What is going on here? And it looks like, you know, within the administration quietly,

because you can't say this stuff publicly because it's unpopular, it looks like the Biden administration, the Europeans maybe have woken up. to this and are starting to understand that this might be the last Ukrainian counteroffensive. We are not going to be pushing endless arms into this conflict to fight another forever war to destabilize the Russian Federation to reacquaint ourselves with a potential disaster that could have been the 1990s. Hi, Monk listeners.

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perks and privileges for as little as $25 a year live streaming of two annual debates. and of course our much-anticipated weekly Friday Focus podcast. Get all this right now on triple W.munk debates.com and learn about the future of AI. Okay, there's so much to unpack what you just said there. Let's take two. Okay, the first I think is an argument you're making, right? That there is risk in the breakup of Russia.

That is not something that is discussed in public. that is not something the public is aware. And much of the chattering classes are preoccupied by scenarios of how to do it. I've had to get Putin out of power. That's almost the wish, the dream outcome of all of this. Very little attention to, oh my goodness, what happens if there is a chaotic breakdown rather than some frankly smooth, very land transition to the one or two remaining Democrats that are left in Russia who haven't fled the country.

So I think you're right to put that on the table. But counter argument to what you just said is let's go for it. Let's break up the Russian Federation once and for all. Let's remove this existential risk that will continue to threaten Europe. The only thing we have to worry about here is those loose nooks, the largest number in the world. So what you consider a risk, there are people in Washington, although not many, but they're in Warsaw, they're in the Baltic states, they're in other parts of Europe, then I actually think what you're describing is a desired outcome. And so there's a real controversy about this. And we probably need to write and talk much more about this.

The second issue is what happens to Ukraine and all of this. Well, firstly, there has to be a short-term gain here for Ukraine. And it's so you watch what's happening on the ground. No Russian forces moved during that 48-hour period, 72-hour period. They didn't pull back from Ukraine. Nothing was pulled back to defend the capital or anything like that. The Ukrainians still face this daunting challenge. that you and I've been talking about right there.

You know, I just saw a release this morning from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. They advanced 1,200 yards. Yards! This is World War I trench nightmare. Gone mad, frankly. And the number of casualties you take to those Russian dug-in defenses are still there the morning after all this in Moscow.

That hasn't changed. Yeah, for the Ukrainians, are Russian soldiers going to be demoralized by this weekend? That's the hope, right? That the people who have to defend these trenches are going to fight with less enthusiasm or desert if there's any kind of a Ukrainian breakthrough. And that's, we'll see in the short term, if there's an advantage to the Ukrainians. Longer term, even before this happened, there was a sense. And in many ways, unfairly to the Ukrainians. And Ukrainians are pushing back on it. Don't hype this counteroffensive, but there was that sense. Everything's gone into this effort.

This cannot continue. Nobody wants another forever war, least of all, the United States. And there's not domestic support for a forever war. So the stakes were already high, and I think they've just gotten higher, frankly. This next, before the mud sets in. So it's not even to the winter. It's to the fall. If the Ukrainians cannot show progress, and I think this is unfair, but it is. If the Ukrainians cannot show progress, the pressure will be on. One last little vignette that are at listeners in my life. Very interesting.

While this was going on, and you and I were mesmerized last weekend, I was literally watching this unfold in real time. The Biden administration was sending message after message to the Ukrainians. Do not attack inside Russia. Do not allow any heroic organizations. Do not, do not. And those messages, of course, were intercepted by, monitored by the Russians. This is a Seraget Lavra.

One of the, you wouldn't like this. You wouldn't like him either, if you met him, Roger. You wouldn't be any more impressed than you would be with some of the other characters. But he actually came out and said, The West was not behind this. Now, that's extraordinary that we would get a senior Russian decision makers saying in Moscow, the West was not behind this coup, this internal issue. So even while this is going on, there's that same policy of restraint operating on Ukraine.

Yeah. Yeah. Look, my final point, and I've said this, you know, we've discussed this before, is that there are many people who argue that our interests, all of our interests are completely synonymous with Ukraine's interests. And I get what Ukraine is doing. They are in the proverbial, you know, fight of their lives. And if any of us was in that situation, we would try to ensure that everyone else shared our interests from A to Z. But there are bigger issues in this conflict because it does involve a great power.

It does involve Russia. It does involve a nuclear arms power. And there are various issues, whether it's the risk of the breakup, of the Soviet Union, whether it's the risk of the breaking of the 75-year taboo on the use of nuclear weapons, these are risks for us, which not all the way long, and it shouldn't be all the way along, but at certain points, we need to pause and think, are our interests synonymous in every aspect with those of Ukraine? They're not. And we have to create some space, some time, and I think the Biden administration has been responsible about this, about trying to

think through carefully how we don't incur one of those horrible risks that would cause long-term damage to international relations, to our own relative position in the world, to other consequences for the liberal international order, which are outside of this immediate conflict and this counteroffensive. So we'll see how the next few months of this offensive play out and we'll continue to follow it on Friday. You might put a link in the chat notes to a piece that I sent you, a long piece that I wouldn't say to our listeners read it.

It's long. But it is about a fairly favorable evaluation that I've done of the Biden administration on how it's done exactly what you've just described on how it's on very carefully about risk. we might put that in the for the law for somebody who's looking for something long and heavy you're really on a day weekend this long weekend we'll put that in the notes okay uh quick break back on the other side

we're going to talk affirmative action important ground breaking decision by the u.s. Supreme court what does this all mean um wow it is uh and i are there are there lessons or debates here for Canada and how Canadian universities uh, of this issue of the racial preferencing of applicants for higher education. Back right after this break. Thanks for listening to this excerpt of the Friday Focus podcast. To get full-length editions of each and every episode of this program,

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