The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Dialogue with Dmitri Trenin: the threat of nuclear war

Episode Date: October 27, 2022

The war between Russia and Ukraine has killed thousands of people and displaced 13 million Ukrainians. Yet despite heavy losses on both sides, the conflict shows no signs of abating anytime in the near future. What will it take for both countries to agree to a ceasefire? How does Russia view America’s role in this conflict? And should Russia continue to suffer heavy military losses, will Putin make good on his threat to use nuclear weapons? Dmitri Trenin was a colonel in the Russian army for 21 years before becoming Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. He offers a perspective from Russia on the continued conflict and how it might change in the coming months.   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: Ricki Gurwitz 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.

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, Munk debate listeners. Redyard Griffith here, your hosted moderator. Welcome to this, the latest installment of our podcast series, The Monk Dialogues. The Monk Dialogues are in-depth Q&As with some of the world's sharpest minds and brightest thinkers. We're going deep into the big issues that are transforming our world and that are top of mind for you, our listeners. This week, we speak with a member of Russia's Foreign and Defense Policy Council as we try to answer the question that has gripped all of us since the spring of this year. What is the future course and trajectory

of Russia's war, its invasion of Ukraine? For answers, we go to Dimitri Trennan, the research professor at the Higher School of Economics and a lead research fellow at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations. Until earlier this year, he was the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, a prestigious Russian-based Western think tank. He joins us now from Moscow. Dmitri, welcome to the Monk Dialogues. Thank you very much for having me, Roger. Let's spend a little time together. It's part of the enjoyment that I get, and I think our listeners do too, out of these Monk Dialogues, is we don't have to compress everything into a five-minute TV interview. We get to spend some time with You've learned a little bit about you, your story.

So let's start with how many of us here in the West know you. We've known you for decades as a member of the prestigious Carnegie Institution running its Moscow office. You did that for many decades. You recently, though, have resigned that position and are out on your own as a kind of commentator and thinker on global affairs. So maybe you could explain that decision to us and in a sense why you decided to reimagine your role as a public intellectual today. Well, Roger, actually, I did not resign my position. Six weeks after the start of the Special Military Operation, Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Justice closed the Carnegie Moscow Center that happened in early April.

And, well, my position immediately evaporated. So I did not resign. I just accepted the decision made by others. What I did choose was to stay in Russia. Some of my colleagues have left the country and are now working within, let's say, the Carnegie family, as I understand, from Europe and elsewhere. Now, I've always been someone who felt very much about my own country. I'm a Korean military officer. There was no question of me, let's say, siding with the other side when my own country was at war, and it is at war now.

It is formally, let's say, de facto at war with Ukraine, but this is a proxy war. And Russia is essentially in a country. A shooting conflict with the country that is supported by the West. There was no chance, not one in a million for me to choose the other side. I'm with my country and with my people. I have a new position which is with a couple of prestigious Russian research institutions. I enjoy that position. But let me say, I greatly, enormously enjoyed my 28 years at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

I have nothing but good things, excellent things to say about the Carnegie Center, about the Carnegie Endowment and my colleagues at Carnegie. I may disagree with some of my colleagues. I did disagree with some of my colleagues on a number of issues over the time. that was accepted by Carnegie culture. This is one of the things I really appreciate about the Carnegie Endowment. You can speak your mind. You can dissent.

You can disagree with your colleagues and your nominal superiors, which I did. I did not abuse that. I did not do that on purpose. But whenever I felt it, I used that privilege, that freedom. and I cherish my Carnegie days greatly even today. And I have no problem saying that in Moscow today. Thank you, Dimitri.

I appreciate you giving us that background. And just to, again, remind listeners here that I see the purpose of this interview as speaking to Dimitri as a very informed observer from Moscow who will have a Russian perspective on this conflict. So I'm here, hopefully, listeners to act in your place to draw out insights from Dimitri. I'm not here to have a debate with Dimitri about the war. We've done that on the Monk debate stage, and I would refer you back to our website to access a lot of terrific debates that we've done around this conflict. So, Dimitri, let's go a little bit deeper here.

what do you see as the current state of this conflict? To what extent you've just alluded a little bit to the idea that this is a conflict that's bigger than just a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, that it has elements you feel of a proxy war between Russia and NATO? I want to sense from you of the Russian perspective of just how urgent, maybe how dangerous from, again, a Russian view, this war has become, you know, as we enter, I don't know, what are we in now, Dimitri, the seventh, eighth month of this conflict? Well, the war has certainly become, well, it certainly changed its character when you look at it from the Russian side.

Initially, it was started as a, I used the term, the official term, a special military operation. which was supposed to be more special than military. For the reasons that we can discuss or better wait until we get a fuller picture, when we get more information, it did not work out the way it probably was supposed to. Then for a number of months, the war was fought on the Russian side by a professional military force. draftees, soldier, conscript soldiers were not involved in that fighting. Only contractees, only military professionals were fighting on the Russian side.

That was a war that was going on somewhere, maybe closer to home than other wars, such as Syria or even Chechnya. But still, it was something that was going on in parallel with ordinary people's lives. Not anymore since September 21, since the presidential decree on partial military mobilization. Now it has struck much deeper, and it is affecting, well, certainly millions of people. Three hundred thousand reservists were called up and they were added, they are being added to the to the fighting force. That means about a million, maybe more people are directly

affected in Russia. And it's it's no longer somebody fighting that war. It is very much a national endeavor. That I think is the biggest change. Another big change has been the decision by the Russian parliament after the proposition by the president, based on the referendums in the four regions that used to be Ukraine. to add those four regions to the Russian Federation.

And the war, which used to be still a foreign war, again, a war fought in the near abroad to a lot of people, certainly of my generation. It's always been a war fought in the territory that, well, that used to be us collectively, the former Soviet Union, certainly the core area of the, the former Soviet Union Ukraine. But now it is legally being fought in Russian territory because Ukrainian lines are inside the territory that Russia formally recognizes as Russia's. So this is another element to that war. So a lot has changed and a lot is likely to change going forward.

I think we are still closer to the beginning. down to the end of the story. Tell me, Dmitri, about, you know, red lines. So when we talk about these types of conflicts, historically, we've often characterized them in terms of the different participants having red lines. What is the Russian view right now of your own red lines, but maybe more importantly, more interesting to us, what is your view of the red lines that the United States or NATO might have. How do you think that debate, that tension between these red lines is playing out

at this moment? Well, I think that it's easier to talk about NATO's red lines. I think that NATO's red line is Russian military action in NATO territory or against NATO forces or against NATO military platforms. That would be a red line. Another red line that is more of, in my view, red herring is Russia's use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, which I, again, from where I sit, from what I know, I find this extremely unnecessary. I put the moral issue to one side. But from a strictly military standpoint, I see, and political standpoint, I see Russia's use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine against Ukrainian targets to be absolutely unnecessary in terms of

Russian, the Russia's conduct of the war. It doesn't mean that nuclear has no role in this conflict. I think the role that Mr. Putin has attached to that based on his pronouncements was to be a deterrent to send the message to the United States primarily, but to other NATO countries as well, that too deep an involvement into the Ukraine crisis could expand the conflict to blow into the faces of those Western countries, starting with the United States. I think that a lot of outside commentators interpret that as meaning that we will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine if we're losing the conventional battle. I think this is based in part, at least, on the

traditional thinking in the West, during the Cold War, when Western forces in Europe were outnumbered by the forces of the Warsaw Pact, the NATO doctrine stipulated that at some point the Russian advance would have to be stopped by Western nuclear weapons so that they do not reach the English Channel within 48 hours from eastern Germany. But the Russian doctrine is different, and I think that for Russia, it is not, I don't think, is a battlefield weapon today. But it is, it continues to be a deterrent. And the country to be deterred is not Ukraine. It is not America's European allies. It is the United States itself. That's, that's how I see it. Again, this is, as I said, this is a personal view. This is

my view. But for all it's worth, I'm sharing it with you. I wanted to let you know about our other weekly audio program. It's called Friday Focus. And hey, guess what? It comes out each and every Friday. It's half an hour long. And it provides you with a masterclass on international events, all the big issues and ideas shaping our world. We've got that for you. Each and every Friday here at the Monk Debates. Simply access via our website, triple w monkdebates.com. Click on Friday Focus in the top right navigation. You'll get all the details or check out a sample of the program in the same podcast feed as the main Monk Debates podcast. I hope you'll join us for the next edition of the Friday Focus podcast. Now back to our program.

So just to summarize that then, Dimitra, you're saying in a sense the discussion, the messaging that's occurred around, nuclear weapons. This is primarily to act as a deterrent. You do not have a high sense or conviction that we are likely, even in the face of a potential Russian conventional losses in Ukraine that the Russian government will choose to use a nuclear weapon as a way of, I guess, the Cold War doctrine, I believe it's called, you know, escalating to deescalate. Well, that's correct. But this is not everything that we should be discussing at this point. It doesn't mean that the Russian government will accept conventional defeat in Ukraine.

And certainly Russia has no – I'm talking about the Russian leadership when I say Russia. So Russia has no interest in being to use their – the phrase used by the U.S. Secretary of Defense, General Austin, Russia does not want to be strategically defeated in Ukraine by the United States and its allies. So I'm not suggesting that Russia will meekly accept defeat. But there are other ways of acting and counteracting, than using nuclear. I think they, again, this is my, again, my private view. So my private view is this.

If the military assistance that the West is giving to Ukraine reaches the point, it has not reached that point yet of making a strategic difference in Ukraine, not a tactical difference as it has so far, but strategic difference. If Russia is in a position of losing its position in Crimea, for example, or Donbass, then I think what Russia will be doing is interdicting Western military supplies, going into Ukraine.

And that interdiction, again, I'm thinking off the top of my, well, not exactly off the top of my head, but I'm thinking freely. You can strike targets outside of Ukraine. So there are some hubs, supply hubs, in NATO territory close to Ukraine. Some of them are in Poland, some of them are in Romania, and I wouldn't exclude, at least this is what I hear on the airwaves here in Moscow. Suppose that begins to happen. Russia could launch attacks against those hubs in NATO territory, thus provoking the use, the activation of Article 5 of the Washington Treaty. Another potential target in this dire situation for Russia, which again does not exist today, nor do I believe it will exist.

But in war, you should clearly take everything into account. Part of the reason for the successful operation of the Ukrainian forces, when they are being successful, is the use of real-time intelligence supplied. by U.S. satellites. Now, those satellites clearly are also vulnerable. And I know that this is another red line for the West. Satellites, NATO territory. In this situation, in this case, I count satellites alongside airplanes and other platforms. So that could bring us to a direct conflict with NATO, which at some point, and in my view, pretty soon, could escalate to the nuclear level. So basically, I would argue that there are several stages before we reach nuclear.

And the conflict to me is extremely dangerous. And in terms of the stakes involved, I think you have the maximum danger for very limited stakes. And certainly they are more limited for the West than the upper Russia. But still, they are not comparable to the stakes that existed 60 years ago during the times of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fascinating, Dimitri. I really appreciate this perspective. I want to circle back on something you just mentioned there, because it's part of, you know, the security debate and conversation around China, too. We've just seen the Biden administration come out with these, you know, prescriptions on the exporting to China of semiconductor chip technology.

Again, an attempt seemingly to hold back China's technological advance and therefore its competition with the United States. You just mentioned a perception in Russia that the United States here is trying to, through the conflict in Ukraine, as a proxy war, is trying to denude, defenestrate Russian military power. Some people have even mused that there is a not so subtle policy of regime change, ultimately, behind some of the West's engagement in this conflict, a desire to see a new political leadership or order in Russia. Are those debates, as they are in China? They're very real right now.

Are they very real in Moscow, in Russian centers of power, a perception that this conflict isn't just about Ukraine, it's about an attempt by the West to, in a sense, permanently alter Russia's status in the global panoply of powers? Well, the short answer is that, yes, this is a very popular interpretation. And the evidence that a lot of people supply is abundant in the various media sources and the pronouncements by former leaders, opinion leaders, whoever. This is not something that you hear from Western politicians occupying

and positions of power. But certainly that's something that people are discussing, and that is translated to the Russian audience. One of the things I just, there's a website in Russia that translates Western media stories about Russia. and you can download and you can see what the West is saying about Russia without, you know, without any censorship. And what caught my eye the other day, maybe it was yesterday, was that there was an article. I never cared to look at that, but there was obviously an article in some Western newspaper or magazine, that was promising to Russia the same fate as that of defeated Nazi Germany. I don't know who said it, but it's something that a lot of people must be discussing these days.

The thing is that Russia cannot be defeated from the outside, and certainly Ukraine has no power to defeat Russia, even with all the Western support it's getting. I also don't expect a full-blown war between Russia and the West, and if God forbid that happens, then, well, God save us all. We will all be very quickly in mortal danger and probably will all evaporate before too long. But history tells us, even recent history, Russia, although cannot be defeated from the outside, can be destroyed from the inside. It was destroyed back. in 1917. Prior to the Bolshevik revolution, it was destroyed in February, 1917, when the monarchy was toppled by a bunch of disgruntled soldiers, by people who by the army that had

lost confidence in their commander-in-chief who was the Tsar, and by a cabal of liberal politicians sitting in the Duma, with some help from, I think, Western intelligence that was sympathetic to a change of regime in Russia from authoritarian to more liberal. 1991 was another case. So within a hundred years you had the country going down the grain within months due to turbulence of domestic origin. So should people in this war lose confidence in their leadership. Should the leadership lose control of the country? Should chaos replace the bodycom of order that still exists in the country? Then, you know, you have to be very realistic. Things can go badly wrong inside Russia. So this may not be the

actual plan may or may not be the actual plan. I don't know what people are planning, but may or may not be the actual plan of whoever sees Russia as a mortal danger to whatever, the Western liberal order or anything. But this could very well be the consequence of these things, military setbacks and military failures. 1917, there was some military setbacks, some some some, some things. failures, no big defeat. Russia was still holding the line from Riga to Minsk to very much west of Kiev. So not much territory proportionately was lost, and yet there was a feeling of defeat, disgruntlement, and all that. So basically, we have to take things seriously. It's going to be existential for Russia, how this war plays out. And we have to be also serious about the likely agents of Russia's potential collapse

should things be allowed to, you know, to go badly wrong. Again, I'm not suggesting that we're anywhere near that today, nor do I expect things to happen that way, but there are certain things at the back of my mind. And I think that they're also at the back of the mind of the people who are making decisions. It is existential not only for the head of the Russian state, not only for the political regime that exists in Russia, there can be existential for the wider government, they can be existential for the state and for the country. Because in Russia, all these things, starting from the head of state to the country as a whole, they are so closely tied together, much more closely than in any other country that I know, that if you think that

you can only change things at the top and then everything else will somehow cooperate to restore things to some kind of normalcy, you may be fantasizing. That's fascinating, Dimitri. You know, those historical parallels are really interesting. And it's interesting just from a Western perspective to understand that, you know, collapse is something that is in the Western psyche, as you say, there was the end of the Soviet era, a period of collapse. There were other periods of collapse previously.

So this is something in a sense that's more maybe real than we in the West who feel through our institutions and our continuity of experience of our governments. This stretching back well into the 19th century, we have a kind of different perspective on that. So a really important insight. And thank you for sharing it with us. Let's talk, Dmitri, a little bit about possibly how this conflict could be resolved and what, if any, optimism that you might have. have that there is a deal to be reached here between the different protagonists, between the government of Russia, the government of Ukraine, but maybe more importantly, as we know often, and you are a student of history, Dimitri, that these types of conflicts are often resolved,

you know, fairly or not, for better or worse, through the great powers and through a conversation that happens, maybe not even between Russia and NATO, but between President Biden and President Putin at the very top of the respective administrations. Do you see any basis for a resolution? What could that look like? And maybe more importantly, what is the likelihood right now of conversations, discussions, dialogues along those lines? Well, unfortunately, Rajat, I do not. feel were close to a serious dialogue on those issues. I think that the,

all the parties immediately concerned, including the Kremlin and the White House, as far from a potential compromise as you can imagine. So I have to say that I would expect fighting to continue that means I expect more many more lives to be lost on both sides before we come to a situation in which some sort of a provisional status could be could be tolerated or could be you know, could become a de facto ceasefire line, if you like.

Let me say this. I see no, absolutely, no chance of Russia stepping back from what it has already achieved in Ukraine and actually more. legalities of the inclusion of the four regions into Russia, refer to those regions in the administrative borders of the Oblasts in Ukraine, and part of those territories are still in the hands of Ukraine. So Russia would press to recover that territory. There's no chance that But the present leadership in Ukraine, which is referred to now in Russia by Russian officials as nothing else than the Kievan regime, which tells you where we are in this situation, there's no chance that Ukraine and its friends around the world would at this point accept

any territorial concessions to Russia. So the maximum that, or let's say, let me put it this this way, the minimum that Russia would insist upon is very far from the maximum that the West, not to speak of Ukraine, would be able to offer. So much for the territory. Then there's another issue that is what Putin called the demilitarization. the whole business of Ukraine started with the security issue. To Putin, Ukraine as an unsinkable aircraft carrier by the United States, sparked the doorstep of the

Russian Federation pretty close to Moscow, was absolutely intolerable, intolerable, as intolerable as Soviet missiles were to JFK and his and his captain's. and the military and the American nation in the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. But how can you make sure that Ukraine becomes and stays a demilitarized country after everything we've been through in the last eight months, and last eight years, because the conflict in Ukraine started in 2014. not in 2022. It stayed at a fairly low level, but it was always there, smoldering for eight years before the launch of this operation. And thirdly, Putin insists on denazification of Ukraine,

which if you want to decide, if you want me to decipher that, means the elimination of all ultra-nationalist and anti-Russian elements from Ukraine, which are very much you know, present at all levels of the Ukrainian leadership, Ukrainian government these days, at least judged from the Russian side. So how can you achieve these things without Russia achieving full control over the entire Ukrainian territory, which in my view is unlikely? So we are in a quandary. my

well the best guess I can you know if you press me hard against the wall and ask me what do I expect I would expect as I said the fighting to continue for a period of time I think the rushable advance rather than retreat in the

in the next months and maybe more than months maybe a year or I don't know But it's not going to end very quickly. And then there will be a certain line drawn across Ukraine, much like the line in Korea. And you will have a Ukraine which will join Russia. I don't think that Russia will build a pro-Russian Ukraine. I think that it's more likely that if there are new.

territories to be added to, if you are new territories to be controlled by Russia, they are more likely to join the Russian Federation than to constitute a separate state. And then you will have a rump Ukraine, which will be as anti-Russian as you can imagine, which will be militarized, which will be a de facto, you know, I wouldn't say member of this, it will not be a member of NATO because NATO will not put its troops in the line of fire, I don't think, but it will be as closely tied to the United States and NATO as you can imagine. So they will be a de facto ally without a Western commitment to send forces to defend or to fight in Ukraine.

And that may be the future. armed peace if you like or an armed ceasefire not really peace an armed ceasefire in that part of in that part of Europe that's that's how I see things going forward yeah the the comparison the illusion to to North Korea and the DMZ separating it from the south is an interesting kind of example of how this these types of partitionings can happen needless to say that's critical lot of uncertainty and other risks in the ensuing decades in Asia and between the Korea's.

Dmitri, let me just end by just tapping into your sense of the mood there in Moscow and in Russia amongst your fellow citizens, your fellow Russians. As you say, your country has entered into a new phase, this call-up, conscription that's going on. We have reports. I mean, there are a variety of estimates. One isn't exactly sure what the correct number is, but the possibility maybe of tens of thousands of your fellow citizens

who've already died in this conflict. To what extent, Dimitri, do you feel that there is a national will, that there is a solidarity on the part of Russians to, continue to commit to this war. Does that exist? How deep is it? What is supporting it if it is there and it is going to sustain Russian resolve over the months and as you portray possibly years to come? Well, I think this story is a complex and contradictory. Actually, the most important thing that's happening to Russia is what's happening inside the country rather than what's happening on the battlefield. Russia is being transformed very quickly, politically,

economically, financially, socially, ideologically. It's a new, it's a transition to a new version of the Russian Federation. The first post-Soviet version of the Russian Federation, the first post-Soviet version of the Russian Federation was a country that, you know, was very much focused on relations with the West. It was mostly concerned with money, commercial issues, and, you know, adopting various modes of behavior, various lifestyles that existed in the West, you know, all that. Very few people thought that they would ever see a real war, much less to have themselves or their loved ones participate in one. That was just even a year ago. Very, very few people thought that what's happening in Ukraine right now would actually be happening at any time.

But the country is changing. course, as I said, very quickly, not only in its foreign policy, I think that mentally, a smaller portion of Russians found that this new, mood, new environment in the country to be intolerable, and they left the country. We're talking about, I think, hundreds of thousands of people in totaled since February, who decided they can no longer stay in Russia, they can no longer support what's happening in Russia, et cetera. And that was even before the mobilization. Now mobilization has added a number of people who were not a big number of people.

Again, we don't know the figures. I don't know the figures. Maybe dozens of thousands and maybe a couple of hundred thousand people. maybe more, I don't know, who for fear of being mobilized, decided to leave the country, temporarily or otherwise. And they have left the country. At the same time, there is a very different kind of feeling emerging in Russia itself. There is solidarity. There's a volunteer movement, there's patriotism, things that, you know, a lot of people believed were extinct in post-Sovia Russia. That people only cared about money, their own well-being, and, you know, as a popular saying went, your motherland is where you can live comfortably.

That is the bearers of that notion, most of them, at least a large part of them, have left the country. Now, the people who are in Russia believe that some, well, certainly the more active part of the people who decided to stay, well, who had options to leave but decided to stay, I believe that Russia is engaged in one of those historical battles for its identity, for its independence, for its future. And it's not about a fat fratricidal war against a brotherly nation of Ukraine. And indeed, if you watch Russian television, if you watch interviews with Ukrainian POWs, you see the same people as the people interviewing them. There's a very little distinction that you can make by just watching these guys between Ukrainian captured Ukrainian soldiers and Russian soldiers. They speak the same language, they have the same mental organization, and all that.

So for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there is, I think, there's more energy, more activism on behalf of, let's say, the patriotic wing of Russian society than in the liberal wing of Russian society. The liberal wing that used to be predominant for a long time, even when liberalism was no longer in vogue, a lot of those people have left, and there is this self-selection within Russian society that continues. And that goes beyond the supporting Putin's policies, because to a lot of people, Putin, at least before the start of the bombing campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure targets, a lot of people believe that the Russian leadership was doing far too little, that in some even feared conspiracy, not to use Russia's full might against Ukraine.

This culminated at the time of the bombing, of the attempted bombing of the Crimea bridge, well, partially successful bombing of the Crimea bridge. So that's where we are. Many very important things are happening in the country. And as I said, we're closer to the beginning of the process than to the end of it. Dimitri, thank you so much for your time today. We did in this interview exactly what I wanted, which was to have a conversation with you to get the Russian perspective on this war.

I hope, I think we all hope, that there can be some way, some path to peace, that this conflict, this war can end, and that Canada and Russia, which historically have had good ties and at times good relationships with each other. We share an Arctic together after all can return. I hope for that. I know you do too, and I just want to thank you for coming on the monk dialogues today and speaking with our audience. Well, thank you very much, Bradia.

Thank you for your questions and thank you for your, well, for your hands. hospitality on this interview. Great. Thank you, Dimitri. Well, that wraps up today's monk dialogue. I want to thank our guest, Dmitri Trennan. He certainly gave us a lot to think about. I'm sure you've got some feedback and reflections on what you've just heard. Please send us your thoughts, your comments to podcast at monkdebates.com.

A reminder that our weekly current affairs podcast, Friday Focus, that surprised Surprise, surprise, comes out every Friday is now available to all Monk Debate. Listeners, you can grab a link to the show anytime at our website, www.w.w.munkdebates.com. Simply look for Friday focus in the top right-hand navigation. Thank you for lending your time and attention to our efforts to bring back the art of civil and substantive public dialogue, one conversation at a time. I'm your host and moderator, Rudyard Griffiths. The Monk debates are a project of the Aurea and Peter and Melanie Monk charitable foundations.

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