The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: Leopard Tanks – Healthcare – Davos Man

Episode Date: January 20, 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 program with a discussion of the debate this week that raged between NATO powers about sending heavy tanks to Ukraine. Why is Germany ragging the puck on its tanks? And, what is at stake in terms of the next chapter in Europe’s biggest conflict since WWII? The second half of the program dissects a wild week in Canadian healthcare with Ontario announcing new private clinics and Ottawa leaking that a major federal bailout of provincial health systems may be close to fruition. The show concludes with a half-serious discussion of the week’s Davos summit and whether this elite confab has a future or not. To access the full-length editions of the Friday Focus podcast, consider becoming a donor to the Munk Debates for as little as $25 annually, or $.50 per episode. Canadian donors receive a charitable tax receipt. 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.comBecome 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.

The following is a complimentary excerpt of this week's edition of the Friday Focus podcast by the Monk Debates. Access full-length editions of each and every episode, along with all kinds of great additional benefits and perks, become a donor to the Monk Debates. You can do that for as little as $25 a year, and you'll receive each and every year 50 Friday Focus episodes at full length. It's all available right now on our website. in just a few simple clicks.

Triple W. The monk Debates.com. Look for the Friday Focus option in our navigation bar, the top right of the website. Make your donation, and we will send you each and every Friday a link to listen to the full-in edition of this program. Thanks in advance for your generous contribution. Hello, Monk members. Welcome to this, the Friday Focus podcast, our weekly program where we dig into the big issues and ideas shaping the news.

leaving you with some new analysis and insights on each and every Friday focus. I'm joined by Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs, an internationally renowned scholar and author. Janice, welcome to the program. Great to be here with you, Richard. Well, let's see if we can do it. Three topics that I want to get through this week. First, I think we've got to start with the news coming out of Ramston Air Force Base in Germany today,

the 20th of January, a big meeting of the military kind of heads of NATO about requests from the Ukraine government for heavy tanks to not only potentially fight off and increasingly mobilized Russia, but for the Ukraine to go on a winter or spring offensive. The latest news as the time recording is that the Germans still are not agreeing to release their leopard to heavy battle tanks, which are held by Poland and Stony, a lot of other countries that are very eager to give them to Ukraine, but they can't without German permission as the manufacturer. What do you make of all this, Janice? What's going on here is the coalition starting to show some divisions, is common sense

winning out over maybe some who are beating the war drums a little too loudly for the for the likes of the German Chancellor? Well, let's actually start with this bizarre story in the New York Times yesterday that you and I exchanged and actually talked about. Here's the core message of that story. And all on background with officials and nobody identified by name, but here was the message. The U.S. has now come to the considered judgment that Ukraine needs

battle tanks in order to go all the way to Crimea. Because as long as Russia's forces are shielded in Crimea and can use it as a launching pad, this war will go on. And so they are at that critical decision time, and they are now urging allies to send battle tanks. Well, it took about what? 15 minutes before Medvedev, once seen as more moderate. And then Putin issued a statement in which he said, nuclear powers do not lose worse. That has never happened in history, and we are a nuclear power.

So it was an instantaneous, visceral kind of gut-clunching response to what the United States was doing. And it was even worse, that article, some official. Let me just read the Medevip quote here, because I think it's important for people to extract the terror that the Russians are trying to convey on this. So he wrote, in response again to the New York Times story about not only tanks, but possibly the Americans giving permission for the high mars, these long-range missile systems to be now turned and targeting into Crimea to do long-range bombardment. He said, quote, the loss of a nuclear power in a conventional war can provoke the outbreak of

nuclear war. The nuclear powers do not lose major conflicts upon which their fate depends. Yeah. That was, I have to say it was an alarming response. Alarming. Alarming. Because Russian military doctrine is really clear. It says when there is an existential threat to Russia, that legitimates the use of nuclear weapons. Well, when he says upon which their fate depends where I don't really think there's much of a distinction between that and an existential threat. But let me come back just for a second, because I have to say I was scratching my head to that New York Times article, because it ended with, well, U.S. officials do not believe that Ukraine can actually expel Russian forces from Crimea, but they want the Russians to believe that

the Ukrainians can do it in order to break out of the stalemate. impasse. Now, if you really think that, why would you be loose-lipped enough to say that to a New York Times reporter? It really boggles the mind. So what's going on there, Janice? Is that just, again, sloppy communications? Or is it a game within a game? Well, you know, that's always the rest, right? I mean, I have to say when I read that story. I read three times. I try. And I went to where you just went. This cannot be sheer stupidity or loose litness or somebody who has no business talking who went too far, which is probably the likely explanation, by the way.

Are they trying to send signals here? Because it makes no sense. But it did exactly what you were worried it would do. It triggered this reaction from Medvedev. And now we get to Germany today. And Olaf Schultz, the decider, he's the decider. He fired his defense minister and Boris Pistorius is the new one, been on the job three days. And it's Olaf Schultz, who has to authorize Poland and other NATO members to transfer their leopard to tanks.

We have 90, by the way, about 20 are functional. All the rest are in the shop, which is a whole other story. story, but you can't transfer equipment without the authorization of the original provider. We've all agreed to those rules because we don't want loose stuff. But he is now, we are at one of those crunch moments. And here's why, Redyard, a frozen conflict, a stalemate where the line running through the Don Bass works overwhelmingly to rushes advantage. It can afford to do this. It's got strategic depth. It's got eight, seven times the amount of manpower, depending on how you think about mobilization. The Ukrainian army is being crushed. So if it stays like it is, that is a really bad outcome for Ukraine. And everybody anticipates two things. A Russian counteroffensive starting in the spring and a Ukrainian counter.

offensive. So the United States is ramping up the pressure, pushing against the clock to get these tanks. But it is, it is an amazing story over these last nine months as the United States has gone up the ladder. If anybody's escalating here, it's the United States. Yeah. And I mean, it's something we've, you know, talked a lot about on this program since this war broke out. It would be amazing to flash back to where we were, what we were talking about eight, nine months ago. I think we'd all be shocked at how far this has escalated. You know, at the beginning we were worrying about simply sending javelins and, you know, other even defensive missile systems. We're now into Patriots, you know, batteries, heavy tanks, more artillery.

And this idea of permitting U.S. weapons, it seems often with U.S. targeting, so using U.S. satellites and other intelligence to assist the Ukraine's in targeting to attack into Crimea. And here I just often find the media a bit lazy in this. They describe Crimea as a Russian vacation spot in the home of the Black Sea Fleet. actually, Crimea is a bit more than that to Russia. This is a place in the 19th century where almost half a million Russians died in something called the Crimean War. This, you know, and this doesn't justify their illegal occupation, but it's important to understand your adversary's kind of psychological state of mind.

And Crimea is bloodland for Russia. It is soaked in the blood of their soldiers. It's soaked in Russian history. It goes right to the heart of the kind of toxic nationalism that Putin subscribes to and promulgates. And if you are going to allow American weapon systems targeted possibly by American satellites and intelligence to go after major infrastructure and strategic assets in Crimea, you're just, cannot fool yourself into thinking that you aren't escalating this war in a whole new way that goes well beyond anything that's happening right now in the Dombas. There's no question about it, Redyard.

And, you know, just two reasons to support what you just said, right? Up till now, the rules of engagement are very clear. And they still are. The United States has said to the Ukrainian army, we do not want to get in your way of targeting Crimea. or any parts of the Donbass, but you can't use American weapons to do so. That's the rule on the ground. That's what's up for grabs now if this tank transfer, in a sense, goes forward. So you're right to signal that.

And then secondly, if you're going to do this, why would you talk about Crimea? Don't talk about it. If you're going to send eggs, it's to push back the Russian forces to the February 24th line. because, you know, the Russians sent their army into Ukraine in 2014, not in 2022. So the sheer stupidity releasing that kind of article yesterday, it is almost a deliberate taunt to the Russians. And however we debate the pros and the cons and the strategy, taunting Russia is just plain stupid. it. It also seems, Janice, my last point, just seems like an escalation of war aims, right? That we've gone rightly from a war aim that I think everyone agreed to, which was resisting

the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and pushing back against that and hopefully getting the Russians back to their original borders with Ukraine and out of the Dombast and out of the south of Ukraine. And now we're talking and seemingly about adding on to that objective, which is a pretty weighty and significant one already, basically addressing 2014 and the Russian occupation of Crimea. And we're going to just push Russia out of Crimea. We're just, that's, you know, that's part of what, you know, mission accomplished now looks like. I don't know. I just, this to me seems all just a classic set of circumstances. We can go back through history and look at how smaller.

wars can sometimes, especially unfortunately in Europe, become truly great wars. And I think it's none of our interests, none of our interests, that this become a great war. Will you agree to that? Yes. There's no question about that. And you're right. This is what we call mission creep, right? And you see, this is in a sense the larger problem that when you're doing very badly on

battlefield, very, very, very badly, you're more open to some kind of settlement. As soon as the tide turns and the tight turn for Ukraine in September when they took back almost 40% of what Russian forces had occupied in 2022, you become much more resistant to any kind of settlement. And Zelensky has never equivocated. He's always said he wants Crimea back. This is not mission creep for him, but it is mission creep for the United States and for NATO allies. And that's why you're seeing this agonizing discussion among middle members about tanks. I think this has just been so poorly handled from a strategic perspective, Roger. Well, let's take a break.

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