The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Members-Only Pod: Season 2, Episode 12

Episode Date: March 11, 2022

This program provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving 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. This week's Munk Members podcast explores the issues and ideas raised in Janice Stein's important article this week in Foreign Policy magazine. To access the article in full click here. Rudyard and Janice discuss different approaches to deterrence in the current war, how they are likely to encourage divergent risks and outcomes and the importance of considering psychological factors when trying to predict and ideally change Putin's behavior. The episode also digs into the risks and reasons to be cautious about transferring NATO fighter jets to Ukraine and setting up “no-fly” zones. To access the full length episode consider becoming a Munk Member. Membership is free. Simply log on to www.munkdebates.com/membership to register. Under your membership profile page you will find a link to listen to the full length editions of Munk Members Podcast. If you like what the Munk Debates is all about consider becoming a Supporting Member. For as little as $9.99 monthly you receive unlimited access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, monthly newsletter, ticketing privileges at our live and online events and a charitable tax receipt (for Canadian residents). To explore you Munk Membership options visit www.munkdebates.com/membership. 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.

Hi, Monk Podcast listeners. The following is a sample of the Monk members-only podcast. To access the full-length edition of this episode and all of our regular Monk members-only podcasts, go to our website, www.W.Munkdebates.com and register for membership. Membership is free, and it's available for you right now at www.munkdebates.com. Hope you enjoy the program. Hello, Monk members. Rudyard Griffiths here, your host and moderator. Welcome to this, our regular Friday, Monk members-only podcast. Each week, we convene our program to provide you with hopefully some new analysis and insights

on the big international events that are shaping our world. We do this with Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs and internationally renowned scog and author. Janice, great to be in dialogue again with you today on. on a Thursday. We're going to record this a few hours earlier than we might normally on a Friday morning. And I'll explain in just a moment why we're doing that. But first, I wanted to say hello and wishing you the very, very best. Good to be with you, Roger, and with all our Muck members. So the reason we are recording this on Thursday, the 10th of March, is that you've come out with a

terrific article in probably I think look Janice all say it I think it's the world's most prestigious journal of international relations called foreign affairs and it was an article that really helped me I don't know just kind of work through some of the second and third order frankly thinking that we've all got to do about how this horrible war in Ukraine is likely to play out what the real risks are so if you were okay with it Janice what I thought we do for this this edition of the Monk Members podcast is have me walk you through your article so that we can kind of benefit from your sustained reflections on where we are in this crisis. Are you okay with that? I'm happy to do that, Roger. That article has provoked a fair amount of email at

Twitter traffic. So happy to talk to you about it. Great. So the article is entitled, Ukraine Dilemma. It's, again, Foreign Affairs Magazine. Can the West save Kiev without starting a war with Russia? We will post a link to the article that you can skip the subscription page of FP, just this once, to get Janice's article, on the monk members' website page for this edition of the podcast that's on our Monk Debates website. So simply go to your Monk member account. You'll see a link to. to the podcast. If you click on that, it'll send you to this episode page for this edition of the podcast and you'll get a nice, big, prominent link there to read Janice's article. So, Janice, just to frame this article, what you were trying to do with it, let me start with one of your first quotes. The United States and allies face a tough dilemma. How can they protect Ukraine

and push back against Russian aggression, but avoid war with Russia, a country with the world's arsenal of nuclear weapons. So, Janice, unpack that for us. What are the horns of the dilemma, as you see it right now? You put your finger, Roger, on the core of the dilemma. If Ukraine were a member of NATO in some other world, if it had ever joined NATO and was part of our collective defense organization, an attack on Ukraine would have meant they would, they would would have invoked Article 5, the right to collective defense, and we would all be at war with Russia, with everything that means. We have never in history been at war with a country, with an arsenal of nuclear weapons of the size that Russia has. So any historical parallels that we draw,

and people are drawing them all the time now, 1938, 1939, 1941, They are different because we don't have any experience of being at war, except in 1945 at the end of World War II when the United States dropped nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That is why the risk of being at war with Russia looms so large in everybody's head. That is why their people are trying to be so careful. Now, on the other hand, being careful not to go to war with Russia leaves Ukraine, let's be honest, fighting alone against Russia. It is an unfair fight. Ukraine is the victim here, unmistakably, of unprovoked, brutal aggression. And yes, we are doing everything that we can in terms of sending weapons and sanctions.

But in Kiev, in Maripal, in Kharkiv, it is only Ukrainians who are fighting the Russian army. And that is the horns of the dilemma. That's not fair, as people say to me. And I say, no, it's not. Well put, but just one piece of that, before we know this truth and other key ideas in this excellent article, the Janice has written for Foreign Affairs magazine. Again, the link is on the web page for this episode of the Monk members podcast on our website. Genesis, it seems often, as you say, that there are a lot of analogies that are getting floated. 1914, 1938, you know all the numbers and permutations.

it does interest me that there seems to be this gap. And I think it's between public and expert opinion, but there seems to be some experts who have this cognitive gap about what is different this time, that we do have a large nuclear armed power here. And I'm surprised with me. I want to just see if you are too, at the extent to which I think a lot of the public,

maybe out of, frankly, just out of some historical amnesia, It's been a long time since we thought about the threat of nuclear weapons, so not blaming anybody here. But I do see a lot of experts who seem to kind of discount this, who seem to suggest, well, okay, it's not going to happen, never going to use them. Let's call his bluff. That's the narrative that I've really heard over the last few days. And I'm just wondering what your counter argument to that is. Is this just a big bluff? He talks about nuclear weapons. He's a bully. He talks tough. No one's ever going to use these. things because they represent effectively the end of everything. Well, that argument is all about Roger, how do you calculate risk?

And as you summarized it, and I've got lots of emails like this in the last 24 hours, that is the argument. He's bluffing. He's doing this to deter to prevent the United States and the rest of NATO from giving Ukraine what it really needs. Let's call his bluff. He's never going to do it. it. Now, why do I worry about that argument? There's at least two big reasons we have to really take

into account here. First of all, nobody knows what Vladimir Putin is going to do. Virtually everybody got it wrong three weeks ago. Nobody expected this kind of all-out, massive assault. And they did not because, and not Russian experts, the only exception here, by the way, is U.S. intelligence, which systematically got it right and predicted how massive this was going to be. But the reason people were dubious and didn't believe U.S. intelligence was they thought, this doesn't make sense. This is not rational. He doesn't need to go this far to effectively get control of Ukraine and prevented from joining NATO.

So when people say to me, well, he won't use it. My answer back is, how do you know? Which risk are you trying to balance? Which risk are you trying to hedge here? Right. Secondly, there is one thing we do know about Russian military doctrine, which matters here. In the West, we have what we call a nuclear taboo. It's been there for really 60 years under no circumstances used nuclear weapons. They're different. from other kinds of weapons. Now, in fact, a low-grade tactical nuclear weapon is not all that different from a high-grade conventional weapon with massive explosive power. But that's not how we think about it in the West.

It's once you break through that ceiling, that taboo is gone. Now, Russian military doctrine, and there's no mystery about this, it's public, think differently. They don't put a firebreak between using a tactical battlefield nuclear weapon. It's just one more weapon as you keep going.

And so I think there is a fundamental difference in Russian military culture where the use of nuclear weapons, tactical to start with, is thinkable. That is very hard for Western observers to grasp. And that's why they talk about it that way. You know, Vladimir Putin has talked about it three times. He's put his forces on alert. Sergei Lavrov has talked about it. It's not way at the back of their heads.

It's at the front of their heads. And when you know that, you have to manage the risk differently. And Janice, maybe just explain to people why that taboo is important. Obviously, there's an immediate risk, which is you have a tactical nuclear weapon used on a military target in Ukraine. And it causes a huge escalatory. kind of response and you don't know where that escalator response is going to go. But more importantly, Janice, am I correct that if Russia was to do that, it is breaking a taboo.

It sends a message to the North Koreans, the Iranians. It maybe gets the Saudis thinking, well, it's time to ask Pakistan for our share of their nuclear arsenal. It would be a, it would be a dangerous rupture in a convention that has. lasted, as you said, since Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I think there's two issues that you're putting on the table here, and both are worrying, frankly, using a nuclear weapon, a tactical nuclear weapon on the battlefield legitimizes it.

It breaks through a taboo, and it makes it possible for other nuclear powers, and then there are nine of those to think about doing the same thing. Secondly, it would be met with horror. horror. If we are all appalled at what we are seeing and publics are pushing governments to do more, do more, were that to happen, I think the pressure on Western governments to respond would be unstoppable. And frankly, we would be at war. Thirdly, there would inevitably be some radiation leak. And where would this happen? It would happen in Ukraine. So let's understand that this is as great a risk to Ukraine right now, as it is to everybody else. Unfortunately, with respect to your second point,

nuclear proliferation, who's going to, who's rushing to get the next nuclear bomb? I think that we've lost that fight now. We've lost that fight because Ukraine had Soviet Russian nuclear weapons stationed on its soil, gave them back. James Baker and his Russian counterpart negotiated. an agreement because they were worried they wouldn't be properly secured, gave them back to Russia in 1994. And in exchange, Russia and the United States guaranteed the borders of Ukraine. We forget about that. We say they're not a NATO member, but they got a guarantee of their borders from the two big nuclear powers. There is no country at risk today that is watching what is happening to Ukraine that is not saying to themselves, I want nuclear weapons. Because it's inconceivable

that Putin would have done what he's done if Ukraine had nuclear weapons. That's already a casualty of this crisis. Okay. Let's move on to, in a sense, two different paths that you outline in this article on foreign affairs on the kind of the way forward in some ways the way we are now in terms of the tactics and strategies that we apply in the West to this crisis. The first you write is the view that the only way to stop an aggressive leader is to raise the cost of military action and demonstrate unshakable resolve, both in words and deeds. And then the other way of doing this is, in a sense, creating an environment where

these leaders have reacted to that unshakable resolve in a way that increases their sense or anticipation of serious loss and that in that kind of psychological state they're more prone to make riskier decisions so there's a kind of tension that you're outlining this article here between what we've done over the last two weeks, which is this 10 days, this is very resolute, rapid and expansive response. But in a sense, there's a tradeoff to that in terms of how the other actor responds to that and the risks associated in a sense with that original action. So unpack that for us a bit.

There is. And that's what I do during my day job in my own research is right about this tension that probably hasn't got as much attention historically as it deserves, but is getting a lot of attention right now. And let's make things simple. Just call this the deterrence argument and the psychological argument because people will understand. Everybody's practiced, anybody who has kids has practiced deterrence. If you do this, then I will do that. And the then really matters. And when the kid does it, you actually have to follow through

on what you said you were going to do or your credibility is shot. That is the essence of deterrence. The Biden administration has been doing that resolutely. It has warned Putin of terrible economic consequences if he attacked. They held off until he did attack, which is a good. right strategy because you don't implement your threat before the person does it. Then the person might as well just go ahead. So Biden and the people around them have done a textbook practice of deterrents. Now it failed. Went ahead anyway, maybe disbelieving, maybe thinking the United States

was bluffing and the sanctions came crashing down. And I think Kishol, frankly, at how severe these sanctions are. We're in round two now of deterrence, and it is the following, and Camill Harris was in Poland today, Thursday, and I warned again that if Putin attacks any NATO member, they are going out of their way. To say the smallest NATO member is a NATO member, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, New Poland, not small,

but join. Any single attack against any NATO member will involve all NATO members. In plain English, that means we will go to war with Russia to protect even the smallest NATO member. And they are saying it every day, Rudyard, in an effort to make sure that Putin understands that, how successful that strategy will be. We're living it. And people who think that Putin has unlimited, aggressive intentions and will not stop with Ukraine.

And I've been hearing from those people are saying, go all in now and help Ukraine. Because if you don't help Ukraine right now, the dominova fall. Well, again, nobody knows what Putin is going to do next. Nobody knows. And so, and I agree with the Biden administration, men. manage each risk as you go. Don't foreclose the fact that he will not proceed any further by functionally going to war right now. Because once you do that, he has no intent to stop.

And you have a European wide war. What's the other approach? There's a lot of good evidence from this. And many of you might know Danny Kahneman's book, Thinking Fast and Slow, it was a bestseller. he and his late colleague were the people who did all this foundational research. And here's what it says. When you find yourself having lost something really big, you take more risk. You don't become more conservative. You're not sobered up by the losses. You actually take more risk. Your decisions get riskier and riskier. And I think people understand this when we say,

say when you corner somebody, that's when they lash out. That's the simple English translation of hundreds of experiments that have been done over the years. So don't back somebody into a corner because if they feel cornered, they'll lash out. There is, and this is not just some academic like me now saying this. April Haynes, who was briefing Congress and she's the National Intelligence Advisor, said fundamentally that yesterday when she said he's angry, he's cornered. This is much tougher than he thought it would be. We, and her prediction, we think he will double down on the war in Ukraine. That's a risk.

So we're on a ledge here, Regard right now. Okay. And here's the strategy for right now. Stay a non-combatant. Stay one centimeter on the side of the line that keeps you from being a formal participant in this war with Putin. So when Vladimir Zelensky pleads for no-fi zone, don't do that because your planes would have to shoot. Russian aircraft out of the sky if they violate that no-fly zone. That's why not a single member state is willing to do it.

And by the way, just for our listeners, a no-fly zone would not be that material right now because the horrible bombings that we're seeing are not the result of planes, the result of artillery shells and missiles. And a no-fly zone could not stop that. don't supply MiG aircraft jets and you notice the Polish offer was so careful. Here

here's what that offer was, tells you everything. Our migs are on the ground in Poland. We're not going to fly them into Ukraine, nor are we allowing Ukrainian pilots to come to Poland to fly them in. We're to transfer them to U.S. air base.

And anybody who comes to pick them up will come to a U.S. airbase, not a Polish. air base. Now you can understand why the president of Poland said that because they are worried about becoming a combatant. That's what NATO is doing right now is trying to say one centimeter on that line. It is doing everything it can to provide defensive weapons, financial aid, and crushing economic punishment on Putin, but it is staying just short of the line. Once it crosses that line, then we really do not know what Putin will do.

This is the most dangerous period, Richard, and I know you know this. This is the most dangerous period you've been in for 60 years. When we come back from this very short break, James, I want to take you up on your offer, kind offer to kind of go through some of the reactions, the challenges that you've gotten since this piece has been published this week. because I think kind of thinking through both what those counterarguments are and what your response to them kind of helps us move this conversation forward. So back with that, Monk listeners, right after this short break. You've been listening to a sample of the Monk members-only podcast. To access the rest of the episode, consider becoming a member.

Membership is free and available at www.w monkdebates.com. Once you've joined as a member, go to your membership profile to access the rest of this. episode and all of our monk members podcasts. Thanks for listening.