The Munk Debates Podcast - Joseph Nye Dialogue

Episode Date: June 29, 2022

Episode summary Joseph Nye has been listed as the most influential scholar on American foreign policy and is widely thought of as one of the leading global thinkers of our time. Extremely well-versed in nuclear weapons and nonproliferation, Nye, a former deputy Undersecretary of State and National Security Council Chair, will join us to talk about what role the threat of nuclear weapons has played in the war in Ukraine and what this war might tell us about future conflicts.   QUOTES: “ That Putin has been able to deter the west from going too far, no boots on the ground, no long-range weapons, you're seeing something of a boundary in this conflict. It's not very good for Ukrainians. It's not very good for the world, but it's better than nuclear escalation.”   JOSEPH NYE   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/   Senior Producer: Kelly Linehan Editor: Adam KarchBecome 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.

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.

I don't think it's fair to portray people of color as victims. It is a very dangerous time in American politics. Hello, Monk debate listeners. Rudyard Griffiths here. host and moderator. Welcome to this, an audio edition of the Monk Dialogues. The Monk Dialogues are a regular program of the Monk debates, where we interview some of the world's sharpest minds and brightest thinkers. The objective of these programs is to leave you, our listeners with some new analysis and insights into the big issues, ideas, and trends that are changing our world. Putin parading his nuclear

arsenal this past weekend, showing off to the world what Russia is capable of before he launched his full-scale invasion into Ukraine. A single modern nuclear weapon hitting in a major American city would be many times worse than the Hiroshima or Nagasaki. It would be a historic destruction of unbelievable proportions. Our guest today on the Monk Dialogues is Joseph Nye, one of the world's leading thinkers on international relations. He's the former dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government

at Harvard University, where he currently holds the position of university distinguished service professor. Joseph Nyes had a remarkable impact on U.S. security and foreign policy, serving in multiple U.S. presidential administrations. His prominent roles have included everything from acting as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs to chair of the National Intelligence Council under Bill Clinton. His books on international relations have influenced a generation of thinking about how states interact with each other in times and war and peace. And it's a real privilege right now to have the opportunity to welcome him to the monk dialogues. Joseph Nye, great to be in conversation with you today.

It's a pleasure to join you. So looking forward to this conversation. You're someone who has a unique blend of lived experience, but also decades of doing a lot of the hard work of thinking about international relations, how nations conduct themselves on the global stage. And boy, are we in a moment right now where we could all, I think, benefits from some clarity and insights onto, you know, the state of geopolitics. So I want to focus with you, not exclusively, but certainly to start on what I think is on all of our listeners' minds, which is this war unfolding in Ukraine. And I think it would be fascinating for the Monk Debates community to get a sense from you, Joe, about how you place this conflict in terms of its significance. Are we living through a geopolitical event at this moment of real enduring significance and potential consequence? Or maybe would you caution some perspective, some history here to really understand its effects, its meaning both now and into the future?

Well, I think the invasion of Ukraine on February 24th was a turning point in the sense it totally changed the agenda of world politics. And it also posed a threat to one of the basic norms of world politics that's been in place since the UN charter was created in 1945, which is you don't steal your neighbor's territory by force. Now, you can say that had already been violated in 2014 when the Russians did and take Crimea by force, but Crimea was something of a special case. And the full-scale invasion that you saw on February 24th really was a shock to both the European stability and European system, but also to the broader framework of norms that was enshrined in the UN charter. So I think it was a significant turning point. It has happened. This is Ukraine's capital.

What seemed unthinkable in the 21st century is now underway. Where do you see this war at this moment? There is a, I don't know, a growing worry here, maybe realization that this conflict may go on for quite some time. Obviously, there have been initial hopes maybe of a surprise, Ukraine, if not victory, at least an ability to kind of bring the Russians to negotiations through the really large-scale losses of Putin's armies in the early weeks of the war. What's your sense of the state of this conflict and how it's likely to unfold in the months to come? Well, first, we have to realize that this is not what Putin expected.

He called it a special military operation. I think he envisaged something like the Soviet intervention in Budapest in 56 or in Prague in 68. After a few days or a week, he would control Kiev. He would get rid of Zelensky, put in a puppet. and declare victory and go home, that, of course, is not what happened. And the fact that the Ukrainians were able to defeat him in the north was a very significant change from what I think had been planned. But then switching his objectives to the east and south and the Donbos, Putin has

somewhat better terrain to work on. And also he has this strategy of basically obliteration. Somebody said he's doing to the Donbass, what he did to Chechnya, just reduce things to rubble. And he has, in that sense, a much larger capacity to do that than the Ukrainians have. And so I think the likely outcome is a prolonged situation of conflict. Sometimes people in the past have called this a frozen conflict. But it's not frozen. It's better described as a conflict on simmer,

which he can turn up the heat or turn down the heat any time he wants. The danger of that is if his goal is to undercut Ukraine as an independent country because he doesn't accept the Ukrainian nationality and sovereignty is legitimate. He can do that by essentially having something of a stalemate in which he continually turns up the heat and down the heat and deprives Ukraine of its exports, of its internal stability, ruins its budget. So I'm afraid it right now, it looks like a prolonged stalemate. And I would hope that somehow that could be broken,

but at this moment, it doesn't look very optimistic. The Kremlin's foreign minister accused the West of waging a proxy war with Russia by army Ukraine. And he warns such support poses considerable risk of nuclear conflict. Is there a historical analogy that you think, in terms of a conflict, that could help us understand this war and where it might be headed?

Well, I think some people have been using the analogy of 1938 in Munich, where efforts to placate Hitler by separating the city land and giving them to Germany. But then that was followed by the full scale. and German invasion of Prague. Some people say, well, if Putin is given the Donbas, Luhansk and Donetsk, would that satisfy him? I think the answer to that is probably not. And the danger is at some point he still intends to prevent the Ukrainians having a separate independent civilization. of one person put it, Putin may be a Machiavellian, but he's a romantic Machiavelli.

He believes in so-called Ruski-Mir, the mystical, medieval origins of Russia and Ukraine as one civilization. And he's often said that Lenin made a big mistake by allowing Ukraine to be treated as a separate entity. So I think the idea that if he got the Donbos as well as his land bridge from Crimea to the Donbos, that that would satisfy him and we could all live in peace and goodwill, I think that might be an analogy to the view that Chamberlain announced in 1938 that he achieved peace in our time by giving the sedaten land to Germany. and that was, of course, followed by the invasion of Czechoslakea, as it then was. Let's talk about, I think, one of the persistent now dynamics of this war,

which is a steady and many would say necessary kind of escalation in terms of the support that NATO countries, the United States in particular, are offering the Ukraine in terms of more advanced and lethal weapon systems, both, you know, with impressive range, but also just simply the scale now of NATO involvement in this conflict. Has that surprised you? Do you think that there are limits to that involvement in terms of the risk of a Russian response, a Russian escalation to ever greater NATO support for the Zelensky government? Well, I think the big surprise was the extent of German change after February 24th.

Remember, the Americans had been pressing the Germans not to use the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and pressing the Germans to increase their defense budget to 2%? of GDP to no avail. And then after the invasion, Germany suddenly changed on both those issues. So Putin accomplished something that the Americans hadn't been able to accomplish. And within that framework, what was interesting is how NATO held together. Remember about a year or two ago, Emmanuel Macron in France would say NATO is brain dead. now nobody thinks NATO is brain dead. NATO defense ministers are meeting in Brussels today

to talk about the future strategy for the war in Ukraine. Putin essentially changed the climate, the political climate, so radically with his actions that it really made possible this provision of weaponry to the Ukrainians, but also the acceptance of refugees from Ukraine into Western Europe. On the other hand, let's make sure we keep it in perspective, which is right from the start, Biden has made clear he doesn't want World War III.

And when people were clamoring for a no-fly zone over Ukraine, Biden said no. when there was a question of taking aircraft from Germany or Poland and giving them to Ukraine, which would have allowed Ukrainians to attack inside Russia. The answer was no. And when longer range artillery and missiles were provided, there was a major point in Biden's approach. that they should not be of a range that would hit Russia itself.

So within the boundaries of the fact that Putin changed the climate in Europe dramatically with the invasion and the fact that the, if you want, deterrence works, that Putin has been able to deter the West from, from, you know, going too far, no boots on the ground, no long-range weapons, you're seeing something of a boundaries on this conflict. It's not very good for Ukrainians. It's not very good for the world, but it's better than nuclear escalation. Well, that's where I want to go with you next, because I think one of the features of this conflict that has been, I think, particularly alarming was the Russian proclivity right at the very beginning to start to rattle the nuclear saber

in a variety of different ways. And they've continued to do it, Joe. It seems throughout this 100 days plus, there are regular, I don't know, we'll call it. them intermissions where senior Russian figures are coming forward and warning about nuclear escalation. To what extent do you take those threats seriously and maybe more to the point, how are we to interpret them? What are the Russians doing here by seeming to break a bit of a taboo, which is to speak in much more forceful and threatening tones about, frankly, weapons that we haven't discussed in any way in any recent conflict, certainly in my memory.

Well, I think what we've seen is that nuclear deterrence works, and we're the ones that were deterred. In other words, if there had been, if Putin had treated this without his nuclear saber rattling, there might have been a no-fly zone. There's some danger that you could have long-range weapons introduced. But the deterrence works somewhat in Putin's favor because he's declared the Ukraine situation to be a vital interest to Russia, whereas for the Americans, it's a major interest, but not vital in the same sense. That gives Putin a degree of bargaining power. So the nuclear saber rattling that you've seen right from the start, which is repeated from time to time, is a way for Putin to remind

the West that there is a danger here, risk here, and not to press too hard. On the other hand, it's worth noticing also that Putin has not, he, Putin is deterred as well. He has not tried to hit supply lines of weaponry crossing Poland. he has been careful essentially while he rattles his nuclear saber as a bargaining point. He really hasn't gone that far in terms of putting Russian nuclear weapons on alert. Early on he made some steps that were said to be an alert, but when people looked at them very carefully, they were not really steps. went into alert at any serious level.

So in that sense, both sides are aware of nuclear deterrent effects. But Putin is using the rhetoric in ways which I think I very much regret because it does somewhat weaken the nuclear taboo. but I think he's also, his behavior is demonstrated that he also is deterred. Yesterday we had words from the Kremlin that suggested they wanted to go along the path of diplomacy. Today we're seeing what looked like actions. Joseph, your long experience stretching back decades now, working at some, you know, the very highest levels of the U.S. government in terms of, you know,

foreign policy, defense policy, security policy. I mean, this is not new, is it? I mean, great powers using the threat of nuclear weapons to shape and effect influence, to project power, to pursue, in this case, war aims. Am I right to see this as part of a pattern in terms of how the threat of nuclear weapons is used for other objectives and other ends? Yes. I mean, the classic case of this, of course, was the Cuban Missile Crisis, where there was a standoff between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, which is probably many people think is the situation where the world has come closest to nuclear war since 1945. but it's not the only case where there's been a brandishing of nuclear weapons for political purposes. Remember in 1973 in the Yom Kippur War, when the Soviets were coming to the assistance of the Egyptians

and there was some danger of what would happen to the Israelis, Kessinger and, Nixon raised the defense condition three. There's the level of alert in the United States, the so-called DefCon 3, which is sort of in the middle of the spectrum of preparations. And that was a political signal to the Soviets of we're not going to stand by and let you provide assistance to the Egyptians that will destroy the Israelis. So in that sense, it's not. unprecedented. My own personal view is that we should be trying to get nuclear weapons out of the

front lines, out of the bargaining situation. It's unfortunate that when they're used this way, because it traits them as normal weapons and they're not normal weapons. On the other hand, you're right, this happens in the great power competition. issue. Joseph, you made an important point there. You know, they're not normal weapons. I think it's just important to remind listeners why that's the case, because part of what we've seen is, is, you know, longstanding innovation and the development now of these much lower yield, so-called tactical nuclear weapons. I think it's important for people to hear from you about why in a sense a smaller tactical nuclear weapon in some ways is just as dangerous in terms of

the nuclear taboo that you mentioned earlier, and I'd like you to talk about that, as the use of any type of nuclear weapon. This is to talk about the use of force in ways that I think would shatter just about every international norm that we've managed to develop over the last half-century or more. It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. I think it's very true, and it's worth remembering the origins of the nuclear taboo. I wrote a book recently called Do Morals Matter? presidents in foreign policy from FDR to Trump. And in that, I'd look carefully at the decisions that Harry Truman made regarding nuclear weapons. After all, he's the first person who authorized their use in warfare.

At that time, in 1945, when there was no experience with nuclear weapons, the view was that they're just a bigger bomb. That's a little bit oversimplified. but when Truman saw the effects of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, a uranium bomb and a plutonium bomb, he said, I'm not going to do that again. Indeed, there was a third bomb on Tinian Island ready to be used, and Truman said, no, we're not going to kill that many more women and children.

And in 1950, when the U.S. was being pushed down the Korean Peninsula in the Korean War by the Chinese crossing the Yalu and into Korea. General MacArthur said to Truman, I can win this war for you if you'll allow me to drop 20 atomic bombs on Chinese cities. And Truman said no. And Tom Schelling, the Nobel laureate economist who was a great strategist said that may have been one of the most important decisions of the post-war period because Truman was saying that we're not going to treat nuclear weapons as normal weapons and the development of tactical nuclear weapons, shorter term nuclear weapons tries to create the impression that you can use these in normal warfare

at one time, there were the so-called honest John weapon in Europe was something which was deployable by just a few soldiers. But that taboo still worked, that even though you could create a nuclear weapon with a yield that was down in the range of the conventional weapons, it was cross-examined. a threshold and you didn't know where the escalation would go after that. And that taboo, which Truman initiated, has been extremely important and that's why I worry about threats like the Russian threats in nuclear saber rattling because they erode that taboo or they weakened the taboo.

If they were actually to use a tactical nuclear weapon, that would be devastating. And we would have to have some sort of major response. I don't think it would be a nuclear response, but something of great significance to try to restore the taboo. Any case, the nuclear taboo is important. Those are its origins, and we ought to be very concerned to maintain it. 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,

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. www.munkdebates.com. I hope you'll consider joining and becoming part of our community. Now, back to our program.

Do you believe that the Russians share that taboo? We've heard about the so-called doctrine of escalating to de-escalate. This is something they train for in their war games, the use of, again, a tactical nuclear weapon in the face of an enemy incursion to, you know, allow either an orderly retreat of their forces or in effect to reset the conflict on a different set of terms that would be in their advantage. Well, that's, they do talk about escalate to deescalate. And, you know, sometimes a month or two ago, people are saying that if Putin does badly enough,

he might explode a nuclear weapon over the Black Sea, or he might use one against a Ukrainian unit just to demonstrate how serious he is. But the people who I know in government who have looked at this carefully say that there's one thing to put that in your formal doctrine, it's another thing to actually cross the line in terms of preparations to the point where it looks like you're actually doing this. The Director of National Intelligence, Havril Haynes, and the director of the CIA, Bill Burns, both stated in public testimony that they've seen Russian steps, but not major steps in that direction. So even when the Russians are in the process of losing the battle around Kiev,

and Kharkiv, the preparations we saw suggested that they weren't actually implementing this doctrine because they knew that it was a dangerous and slippery slope. I mean, it sounds perverse on the face of it, but talking about these types of dynamics and seeing, in a sense, how conflicts have been managed in the past between powers with nuclear weapons. Are they in a sense a lid on conventional conflicts? I mean, they create a series of circumstances where each party has to give greater thought and attention to escalation precisely because of the threats, the risks of a nuclear exchange lying beyond that conventional response. Yeah, in some of my writings, I wrote a book called nuclear ethics a while ago, like 30 years,

in which I used the phrase that crystal ball effect. And the crystal ball gives you a picture of what the world will look like after the war. And if you transpose that back to 1914 and the origins of World War I, all the major leaders thought it was going to be a short war. The troops would be home by Christmas who would clear the air, clarify the balance of power. In fact, they wound up with four years of trench warfare and the major empires, four major empires, were dismembered and the leaders lost their thrones. And I argue if you could have handed them a crystal ball in August of 19. and said, here's what the world's going to look like in 1918. Do you still want to press ahead?

I think they would have said no. In that sense, the nuclear weapons and their devastating effect, when they particularly if you escalate to large-scale nuclear use, is a crystal ball saying, you really want to go ahead with this, when this is what you'll reap. And so in that sense, I think they have set something of a lid. But notice that crystal balls can be shattered. They can be shattered by careless handling or by dropping them in so-called accidents.

So, yes, the crystal ball effect is there, but we shouldn't feel relaxed or confident because of the crystal ball. And that's why it's so important to keep the nuclear taboo. Do you think the trade-off is worth it in terms of what you've just talked about, which is the real effects of that crystal ball of looking into, you know, destruction on a scale really unimaginable in human history versus the potential reality of that destruction, no matter how small that risk is. It doesn't that just seem like an incredible risk for a civilization to run? Oh, absolutely.

And if I could go back and rewrite or rerun history, I would say, please, don't split the atom or don't use it in weaponry. But we cross that humanity, cross that bridge in the 1930s, 40s, and we're stuck with that. So the question is you can't abolish nuclear knowledge, and it's not clear that you can abolish nuclear weapons. So there obviously have been major efforts to propose that. what you can do is try to reduce the prospects of nuclear use or if you want get bombs out of the front lines and into the basement or in vac shed so to speak which i think is a somewhat more realistic uh proposal than than abolition but if i could create abolition i would it's just i don't think it's doable Fair enough. If we pull back then, we look at the current situation, there's, I believe, only one arms control treaty left between the United States and Russia regarding the control of nuclear weapons. We have reports that China is investing and building rapidly a larger intercontinental ballistic missile capacity.

And then we have events in North Korea where we have in a sense a rogue regime, a pariah regime, continuing to push not only the design of its nuclear warheads, but launch systems that potentially could threaten the continental United States. Does it worry you? I mean, again, I enjoy talking to you because you have perspective that many of us don't, having thought about these issues for really the better part of, of at least much of my lived experience, do you feel we're on a dangerous path that we've

somehow lost sight of, as you say, taking these weapons from somewhere and putting them in a deep, dark basement where hopefully no one can access them, yet alone use them? Well, it does worry me. And it's worth noticing that there was a period at the end of the Cold War, when our anxieties about nuclear use went down,

in the sense as the U.S. Soviet competition was replaced by a more open relationship. Then you say the problem was not the existence of the weapons, it was the nature of the relationship between the countries possessing them. I mean, both France and Britain had nuclear weapons, but nobody thought that there would be a nuclear war between France and Britain. So the Soviets and the Americans both had nuclear weapons, and at one point we thought there could be war between the U.S. and the Soviets' nuclear war. But that feeling diminished greatly after the end of the Cold War. Alas, what's happened is that the relations between the U.S. and Russia and the U.S. and China have gotten worse and worse, and that means that the prospects for nuclear weapons playing a dangerous role increases.

So if you go back to the philosophy I was advocating, which is focus on reducing the prospects of nuclear use, the worsening of conditions between countries does indeed worry me because it enhances the prospects of use. As for proliferation to states like North Korea or Iran, it's worth noticing that the nonproliferation treaty has had an effect. In the following sense that when John Kennedy was president, in the early 1960s, he expected there would be something like 25 countries with nuclear weapons by the 1970s. In fact, what we have today is nine countries that have nuclear weapons, and we've even seen some like South Africa who've given them up.

The nonproliferation treaty, which was signed in 1968, has allowed states to forego the possession of nuclear weapons and have some sense that their neighbors are foregoing it as well. But if that dike is broken, for example, if you see a Iranian bomb, you may then wind up with a Saudi bomb and so forth. I mean, we have to be very careful to make sure that we maintain the nonproliferation regime. It's worked so far, but again, like my proverbial crystal ball, it could be shattered. Do you think the United States could or should play more of a role here? I mean, I believe the U.S. is the only country in the world that has a first,

use doctrine. You are spending what looks to be set tens, possibly hundreds of billions of dollars on the modernization of your strategic nuclear force. Are those policies that help or hurt in terms of a world that does seem to have, if it's not losing control, it's certainly less stability when it comes to the spread and potential use of nuclear weapons? Well, the U.S. is not alone on that in the sense that if you look at the buildup in China or if you look at the buildup in Russia, the U.S. argument is that it is trying to keep pace so that deterrence is maintained. And, you know, if you could find a way where you could improve relations and maintain stability at lower levels without that buildup, obviously it would be a much better world. But the deterioration of political relations that we've seen in the last decade makes it more difficult to accomplish that. As for the doctrine of no first use, I think the Americans have basically moved.

It's something like no first use against non-nuclear weapon states unless they're alive with a nuclear weapon state. So it's not a serious first use doctrine. and I think I personally would be happy to see statements about no-verse use, but we have to be realistic that doesn't matter what the declaratory policy is. The question is what are the overall relations and capabilities as to the probability of use? And I'd rather focus my attention on that. Explain to us a little bit again why this renewed arms race around nuclear weapons arsenals.

I mean, you also focus a lot on climate. We certainly have a lot of new science out there that suggests that even a limited use of large nuclear weapons, megaton devices, could cause profound climate disruptions that could end the lives of possibly hundreds of millions of people as a result of crop failures and other consequences totally independent of the cities or nations struck by these weapons. So why do we need thousands of nuclear weapons when we know that, you know, a dozen or more could potentially do irreparable damage to the planet in human civilization? Well, in my view, the answer is we don't.

And I think I would like to see a situation where more countries accepted the reality of what McGeorge Bundy once called existential deterrence, which is not war-fighting deterrence. the nuclear doctrines that developed during Cold War, people would do calculations of if you struck first or if there was a preemptive strike, could you destroy the other size of nuclear weapons so that they would then not have the capacity to strike back and therefore you would be able to win a war. This led to elaborate calculations of nuclear balances and a buildup of extraordinary forces. Yet if you go back to the Cuban Missile Crisis where we came closer than any other time to a nuclear war, what's interesting is that it was the prospect of one or two nuclear weapons going off in an American city that deterred Kennedy and not the prospect of something going wrong with the nuclear balance. At that time, the Americans, its strategic weaponry, the Americans had an advantage of, something in the range of 17 to 1.

But that fact that just one or two weapons could go off in an American city wasn't enough to make Kennedy compromise on the Cuban crisis. And the compromise, of course, is that, you know, the not only guaranteed that we would not invade Cuba, we also removed missiles in immediate range missiles from Turkey. So when people say, oh, the Americans had the, this great nuclear advantage and that's why they won the Cuban Missile Crisis. First of all, they did have the advantage, but secondly, it wasn't a pure victory. It was bargained out.

So in that sense, I think the lessons are that because only a few nuclear weapons will ruin your day or your future, that's enough to provide a degree of deterrence. And that was basically, the line that the Chinese took for a long time. They had just a few hundred weapons. And the view was as long as they could deliver some of them on the American homeland, that would be enough to deter the Americans. And that was, I think, the correct way to think about it and largely true. But as China has been aspiring to be a greater power with more control over the Pacific and in the world, it has apparently decided that increasing the number of its nuclear weapons so they can engage in these calculations, hypotheticals of who goes first

and who could have a disarming strike and so forth will increase their bargaining power on political terms. I think that's unfortunate. One of the things we've seen in this war in Ukraine is the Russian use of hypersonic missiles. Do you think that's important? Do these new missiles, both in terms of the innovation, the technological innovation they represent and their potential to really allied any kind of defense, missile defense, does this concern you as an evolution? of warfare and maybe tie that back to what we've just been talking about, which is the broader

nuclear threat and the worries about escalation and how, let's say, the United States looks at a Russia that has hypersonic weapons that right now are using conventional warheads, but could easily in the future carry, or even right now, carry a nuclear bomb. Well, there's a debate among strategists about how important that. hypersonics really are. Some people have written articles called the hype about hypersonics. In strategic terms, we don't have missile defense that would prevent a strike by Russia or China now. So the fact that hypersonics would undercut the missile defense really doesn't change that much strategically. In tactical terms, if you were talking about a limited use of nuclear weapons or tactical weapons,

hypersonics by shortening warning time might make some difference. But there's a debate among strategists of how significant this is. If you believe in existential deterrence at the strategic level, then the hypersonics don't make a big difference. If you believe that there could be war fighting at the tactical level, then hypersonics make a difference. I lean more toward the first camp. Another area of expertise of yours is as cyber warfare. Interestingly, we haven't seen much in the way of a public demonstration of cyber warfare and cyber capabilities, both on the part of Russia,

which supposedly had impressive cyber war fighting systems. And likewise, with regards to NATO, what do you think is going on there? And has that surprised you in terms of the absence of cyber, at least on a large scale in this conflict? And is it too an escalatory risk? Do you see it in that way? Or should we look at cyber as something completely?

different. Well, a lot of cyber conflict has been below the level of armed conflict. And so there's an argument that there is a cyber domain in which you have constant interaction, constant conflict for a variety purposes, sabotage, espionage, and so forth. But it's not strategically an advantage in terms of warfare. But what's interesting about the Ukraine situation is the first time we've had cyber being used in a major war. And many people thought that you would have, you know, the war would start with the lights going out.

Russians had penetrated the Ukrainian infrastructure since the night, it basically goes back to 2015 and earlier, and therefore you'd have a major factor by use of cyber. Turns out the Ukrainians, by suffering from Russian interventions in their infrastructure before, have been able to take some preparations to disconnect or remediate intrusions into the grid. And when the Russians, when the war started, the Russians damaged Viasat, the satellite network that affected Ukraine, but also some other European countries, the Ukrainians were able to use Starlink, which is a new form of dispersed lower altitude satellites.

So what's intriguing to me is that while there's been a lot of cyber attacks during the Ukraine war, none have been decisive. None of that really changed the situation. So cyber, I think, is best seen as an adjunct rather than as a two warfare and will be used that way, or it will be seen as a way of having conflict below the level of armed conflict or the threshold of armed conflict. But cyber is the ace which is going to overcome, you know, otherwise calculable orders of battle. It doesn't seem to be the case. Fascinating. Just as we wrap up this interview, Joseph, it's been just a great conversation with you.

We've gone in so many directions I've learned so much. I want to get a sense from you as to what what is your feeling right now about we've talked about all these various dimensions of the war in Ukraine the conventional the nuclear threat cyber now are you worried about the potential for escalation here some people are your many of your fellow colleagues have writing opeds or speaking out loudly about the need to quote you know provide Putin with a golden bridge to retreat over to kind of ensure that we don't climb in one of these escalatory ladders. Others are saying, hey, this is exaggerated. Stop worrying. This is a war that we can prosecute more aggressively, and we should do so immediately. Well, I always worry about escalation because humans always miscalculate and make mistakes, witness what Putin did on February 24th.

I don't think the highest probability is that Putin will turn to nuclear weapons. I worry more about the fact that if you have a prolonged stalemate, you'll not only be losing 100 to 200 Ukrainians a day, which Zelensky said is the toll, but there'll be 100 to 200 Africans starving because Ukrainian grain can't get out through Odessa. and that other people will be suffering because of the price of energy is going up. So a prolonged war, even one that doesn't escalate, can do enormous damage to not just to Ukrainians, but to the world.

So I'd love to find some way where this could be brought to a stop sooner, but not just because of fear of escalation, because of fear of the damage that is doing to the rest of the world as well as to Ukraine. Joseph Nye, wise words. We will reflect on them. And thank you again so much for sharing your wisdom and insights with the monk debates community. I've just so greatly enjoyed our conversation today. Well, thank you, Rudyard. I enjoyed it too.

Thank you for listening to today's monk dialogue with Joseph Nye of Harvard University. I hope you enjoyed our conversation. I know I certainly learned a whole bunch from the time that we were able to spend in conversation with Joe. We love your reactions and feedback on this program. Please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. That's M-U-N-K Debateswith-N-S dot com. Also, if you enjoyed this monk dialogue, please consider become a lot. a complimentary member of the Monk debates. And you can access all of our great programs, including

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