The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Members-Only Pod: Season 2, Episode 13

Episode Date: March 18, 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 catches up on the week of news out Ukraine and digs into the Munk Debates recent one-on-one podcast debate on NATO and its role in the crisis. Janice and Rudyard discuss the implications for the war of the Russian army effectively stalling out on the battlefield. Do the setbacks Putin is now facing open a pathway to a ceasefire? Or, is a humiliated Putin more like to prosecute the war to an even more bloody conclusion? And finally, what is NATO's role in helping creating the preconditions for the war? Janice and Rudyard dissect this week's Munk Debate podcast, which you can stream here.  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.wmunkdebates.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. Roger Griffiths here, your host and moderator. Welcome to this, our regular monk members-only podcast where we dig into the big issues and ideas in the news, hopefully leaving you with some new and original analysis and insights.

To do this, we are joined every week by Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs, an internationally renowned scholar and author, Janice, terrific to be in conversation with you again. Good to be with you, Roger. Well, here's what we're going to do on today's show. We're going to break this up into two halves. The first half, Janice, I really want to drill down on your latest thoughts of the developments of the last week. We spoke last Friday. So we've got seven days to kind of catch up on. And then the second half of the show, I want to talk about our Monk debate podcast out this week, a one-on-one debate on the Ukraine war.

And a resolution, be it resolved, NATO is partly responsible for Russian aggression in the Ukraine. It's a controversial idea, but occasionally, Janice, and I will admit this, lightning doesn't strike all the time, but occasionally when we do these podcasts every week, month after month, everything falls together. You get two considered well thought out debaters engaging on, I think, a key issue in topic, doing so with great civility and substance, but also a sense of history as participants themselves in this debate, Barry Pozen and Stephen. Stephen Redmaker.

So let's talk about that in the second half of the show, but I want to begin right off the bat to ask you the following question. Are we seeing the end of the beginning of this war or the beginning of the end? What's your sense of how things have played out over the last seven days? I think, Richard,

the war has gotten more dangerous. It's gotten more dangerous for several reasons. First of all, and most important is Putin, who gave two speeches this week that were deeply alarming. The tone of them was alarming. His anger was palpable. So this is somebody that is clearly emotionally overwrought.

This was not in any way a measured speech. This was not the speech of somebody who recognizes that this has been a strategic disaster for Russia and that there is, he should be looking for some kind of exit strategy or off-ramp. It was exactly the opposite. And secondly, and we're going to come to this in the second part of our discussion, so I don't want to see too much. but what he said really had almost nothing to do with Ukraine and nothing to do with NATO, but was in a much more deeply embedded view of Russia as the victim of the West.

And scathing comments about Russian liberals as traitors and scum that needed to be. expelled from Russia. It's clear, Roger, to anybody who's listening, this is about far more for Putin than Ukraine. Yeah, let me try to build on that. I mean, I think the interesting thing of the last seven days since we last talked last Friday is that the shift in a in a strategic balance of power here in terms of the specific kind of kinetic fight that we're seeing right now in Ukraine. And that is that Russian forces clearly have suffered casualties well beyond what they would have predicted. Six thousand. Six to seven thousand.

And I think you can generally treat these numbers are not out of, not from the Ukraine government. They're from the United States Department of Defense, the UK Department of Defense. I think there's some accuracy. You know, let's say pick a range. It's still very significant because you need to multiply that by four. or five to think of the number of people who are now wounded and incapacitated. Then you need to think a little bit. Let's stop for one minute.

It is an astronomical figure for Russia. To have lost 6,000 dead in a month is unprecedented. Far worse than what they encountered in Afghanistan, far worse than what the United States encountered in any of the wars it's fought. But this is an, it is a catastrophe, frankly, for Russia, these numbers. And then what I would say is walk back from the original invading force. Let's say it's 150, 160,000. There's this thing in the military called Teeth to Tail.

So that's the number of support and supply troops you need to support the actual people who are fighting the war. You know, those ratios are often five to one. Let's say Russia's a more efficient army, let's say, or cheaper army. They're doing it three to one or four to one. you're still talking about combat unit losses of anywhere from 15 to 20 percent fatalities not simply casualties but fatalities so i think there's a sense here and you can understand maybe why they have made no meaningful gains in the encirclement of kev is because this army has ground to a halt its morale has plummeted there are stories of widespread bred desertion. There's a sense here, Janice, of a kind of military collapse on the part of Russia and worrying developments as the week goes on that the Russians now are having to resort to the tactics of Grozny and Syria, which is heavy arterial bombardment. But even then, it's not clear

that they can continue to prosecute this war on the basis that either they don't have the ground troops or the ground troops won't fight. So, One could say that this is this is a critical moment because it, and this is what I want to ask you, is that how does that shift what happens next? I mean, is it conceivable that the Zelensky government says, look, we're, we may not be ultimately winning this war in terms of pushing the Russians out of Ukraine, but why negotiate now? Why settle for some kind of partitioning? they would say dismembering of our country when arguably the tactical balance of power has shifted over the last seven to ten days from Russia to Ukraine. So I think you have identified the major shift.

And let's just use as evidence here, Rudyard, the fact that Russia has called for foreign fighters. That really tells you everything when you're recruiting foreign fighters, largely Syrians, to augment an army that has no operational reserves. It has no reserves that it can really throw into this fight anymore. That tells you how catastrophic this has been for Russia. Now, it's also catastrophic for Ukraine. The damage and destruction, which will only get worse as the Russians run out of smart weapons and start using heavy artillery fire against cities, the damage to the southern cities,

we have not seen anything like this in Europe since World War II, frankly. There is no real protection. Yes, Ukraine is now getting a much more sophisticated. anti-aircraft and anti-missile system than it had up till now. But when you have our heavy artillery that is moving up, bombing your cities, Zelensky and his government are seeing Ukraine, West Eastern Ukraine, really destroyed before their eyes. The second big worry for Zelensky is how long those supply lines stay open. All this is made possible by a western resupply of Russia, which is tantamount to the Berlin airlift.

It is hard to exaggerate the massive amount of equipment, which has come through Poland and Romania into Ukraine. And it's a land route. The material is offloaded in Polish and Romanian-Iromanian air. airports and driven across the border. If those supply routes are disrupted and he hasn't done it yet, which is interesting in itself, why he has not, but he has not. He doesn't seem to be able to get air superiority, which again is another sign that this military campaign has kind of proverbially fallen flat on its face.

Absolutely. But those supply routes are vulnerable because they're convoyeds. they're visible from the air. So what you have here is both sides are very vulnerable. It is not only one. So what are we seeing then? We're seeing two tracks. We are seeing one track of negotiations between senior Ukrainian negotiators and Sergey

Lavrov. And Lavrov said early this morning, well, he sees some grounds for optimism. A deal is close. frankly, who would believe him at this point? If you look at his record, he's lied, or he is so out of touch with his president that he says one thing, and his president pays no attention to what he's doing. So I think it's very hard to attach any credibility to any statement that Putin himself does not issue.

Now, what are you hearing out of Putin? exactly what you and I talked about in the first part of the show. There is no sign that he's willing to de-escalate right now. And contrary to that, we are hearing reports from U.S. intelligence, which has proven to be very reliable, that they are warning again and again and again against the use of any chemical weapons, which is not inconceivable, given how, badly this war is going for Putin and the inevitable temptation for furious Putin, because that's the

only way you can describe him at a fever pitch of intensity to lash out. And that's why this is, I think, a deeply worrying moment. I think the lashing out could also be simply a response that, you know, your conventional forces are no longer a tool to pursue your policy. And effectively, your army is broken so then you reach into that horrible diabolical toolkit of of chemical or biological or other other weapons to try to create a moment of kind of existential doubt and crisis for the ukraine government that forces them to capitulate i mean it it i guess i just wonder jannis if there's a if looking at that putin speech if there was also another audience that he was criticizing. And it's worth, you know, listeners going back and just watching it

on YouTube or elsewhere because it really is quite a remarkable performance. I wondered if there was a criticism in that speech of his oligarchs. If this is a leader who, again, during the pandemic and maybe before, became very remote and removed from reality and believe that he had one army and one set of capabilities, but in fact, his very coterie of oligarchs, he was, that he surrounded himself with, like many militaries through history, were engaged in large-scale profiteering. And basically what Putin ended up with is a Potomkin army. He ended up with a set of tools that were not the set of tools that he thought he had. And the result now is a not simply a catastrophic economy and a plunging ruble and 20% interest rates and soaring inflation. But

literally on the battlefield, a series of conventional forces assembled in units who are now no longer being supplied, who are experiencing mass desertion, who have lost the will and the morale to fight. I mean, is it conceivable, Janice, that we may be witnessing just the complete collapse of the Russian army in Ukraine and and Putin in a sense forced into the reversal of what we thought a week ago, which is Putin suing for peace effectively. I mean, is that I think we have to wishful thinking or I think I think we have to be cautious here. Certainly what we heard out of Ukraine is they are now going on the counteroffensive. They are starting to attack in a. I have. I think, in a massive way, especially in the South, Russian artillery and tanks, they are pushing back,

which lends some credence to the arguments that we've been making that the Russian army is in deep trouble. That's a far cry, though, from the collapse, from the total collapse of the Russian army. You know, let's distinguish for a minute, Roger, the oligarchs on the one hand, who are the people who have become multi-billionaires by buying up Russian industry when there was a fire sale in the 1990s and two other groups that really matter here. The FSB, which is a secret service reinvented each time.

There's a new president in Russia. And the FSB are Putin's cronies. And these are the five or six men that Putin has seen regulars. over the last years he's seen nobody else because in order to see but maybe these are the men that diluted him that built you know you see these super yachts and cons and Italy and elsewhere these they don't own those yachts fantasies of affluence some of them do though some of the the businessmen that are part of this inner circle do and you kind of wonder if they just stole not just from russia but

they robbed Putin blind they robbed him of the very thing that he thought he had which was this powerful surgical, you know, conventional force that had proven itself to tragic ends in Aleppo, in Syria, you know, that had fought successfully in a whore, again, horrific ways against the Chechens in Grozny. But what if what if there's no there there to quote Dorothy Parker? And it's just a question. I'm I'm schizophrenic. I agree. Like I've just completely flipped the last week. I just wonder if we just kicked the door down. There's nothing there on the other side.

It's just. I think we have to be really careful. It is a kleptocracy that has robbed itself of, of in a sense, the capacity to pursue the very policies that it sought out to pursue. They're victims of their own avarice and greed. I mean, it's a perfect tragedy. Yeah. So let me just distinguish the three groups here for men. because they're so different.

The yacht-owning oligarchs are in the industrial sector and in finance. They are not the people providing any military advice, zero. There's two groups that are providing the critical advice to Putin right now. One of the FSB in Secret Service, and people like Dugan who believe in, who are responsible for Putin's deep engagement with Russian history and Russian mysticism and the Slavis. people, which so infuses the tone of his speeches now. That's one group. The second group is Defense Minister Shoy Group and Chief of the Defense

Defense Staff, Vladimir Garasimov. These are the people that modernized the Russian Army eight or nine years ago. And failed, it's clearly have failed spectacularly in that mission. They're the problem. They're the problem. But they are- So what's Putin thinking about these guys? Well, that's really interesting.

And that's the big question, because Putin created them. He's the one who found them, promoted them. They delivered for him in Syria. They, you know, they blistered Aleppo and to Rupple. So these are the people that told him, this is a week's war, and that's all. What does he do? A bliss. Yeah, Blitz Creek. That's what he, and we know from intelligence, who's listening to the chatter, that that's what he was told by short. How long does the defense minister last? How long does the chief of the army last? Three generals have been killed at the front. So the real, I think the moment to watch for in this story is if and when Choygo loses his job, if Putin fires him. Now, we're talking about 200,000 men that have been moved up,

all the way some of them from the east, who are the sharp end of the spear. There is a long tail behind. So to argue that the state will collapse, the security services are still intact, this is not a state without the capacity to use coercive force. It has an enormous amount of artillery and heavy armor left that it is now moving forward. And it has, unfortunately, the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. which is a very strong deterrent. It is deterring the West from all the things that Volensky is asking for, like in a fly zone.

This is still, this is not a stake that's going to implode on itself. I don't believe that. Which makes it worse, which makes it worse. Yeah, I know, I know, because you try to think through. Well, then how does this end? If the Ukrainians, in a sense, have the wind in their sails, so to speak, to use a poor metaphor, but I can't think of an, another one right now. They, they are understandably going to say, well, you know, we're not going to

concede to these massive territorial losses and, you know, forced neutrality. And at the same time, what can Putin do? He can't concede to allowing them to join the European community. Because the loss of face, it would have sensually reveal the Potemkin reality of modern Russia to the world now. The Estonians and others are starting to say, well, maybe we're not. really that afraid of Russia anymore because look how bumbling and ineffective and chaotic and inept this invasion has been. My sense listening to Zolensky all week as he spoke and to the Canadian Parliament in the U.S. Congress, this is a man who wants a ceasefire. And what we know of those negotiations that are going on with Lavrov. And, you know, we, the United States,

is coordinating fully. We're getting full details. You know, Ukraine has agreed to neutrality. It's agreed to the loss of the Donbass. It's agreed to the loss of Crimea. That's already done. What's left is very little, frankly. If you look at what Russia has historically demanded, they've said demilitarization. That's out of the question. The Ukrainians will have an army. and they've said security guarantees rather than joining the European Union, which would really mean joint NATO Russian security guarantees. There is not a great deal of substance dividing these two sides right now. What's the big issue that is standing in the wave of ceasefire right now?

So why are you? I know you're concerned about this right now. So what you just said makes me think, well, maybe we're a few days away from some kind of ceasefire agreement because the Russian military is collapsing. The fields are turning from, you know, frozen tundra that their tanks can roll over to giant mud pits that are going to bog them and their heavy artillery down from now through to next, you know, December. The big, the big question and how ironic that everyone's fate hangs on one. man. There is absolutely, I have seen nothing, Rudyard, that says that Putin is prepared to agree to a face-saving ceasefire in which he could say to his people, we claim victory, we got everything we asked for, Ukraine is dismembered, Ukraine is neutralized, he could turn around and say

all of that. What you saw on the contrary was what I think is an opening attack on Russians themselves who have the remotest sympathy for anything in the West, for Western lifestyles inside Russia. I think we will see, even if a ceasefire is enforced, we are going to see repression in Russia that is unimaginable. None of what we call the blob, you know, the famous description of the Washington chattering classes. And, the mees of Canada. None of us will survive in Russia. He is in fact pleased to see the flight westernized Russians from Russia because he wants a de-westernized Russia that is repressive on a scale that we have not seen in Russia since Stalin. It's very concerning. I'm not convinced

that he can be in the short term, that he can be brought to the table to agree to a ceasefire. It doesn't matter what Lavrov negotiates. If Putin doesn't sign off, there's no ceasefire. He is a long-term hatred of the West. That is what has become transparent in these speeches. So before we go to break, let's just play that out then. So let's say he is committed to some you know, revanchist theory of the West, which then requires him

to prosecute this war. To what end does he prosecute it? I mean, what is the next phase that we would see that that would lead to some outcome that he would want to achieve through brute force?

I mean, his army is effectively neutralized. I mean, he is not encircling. in Kiev. The entire west of Ukraine, yes, is subject to missile strikes and fighter bomber attacks, but those themselves have also been degraded and they'll be degraded more as these new Western anti-aircraft systems come into place. The question is, how long does somebody so emotionally out of control?

Let me choose my words carefully. So angry, how long does it take until the realities on the ground penetrate? Who among the senior military advisors are going to say this is not reversible? Which of these generals and his minister of defense that he appointed and he created and whose careers depend entirely on him are going to tell him how the battlefield situation has deteriorated. So he may not actually know what's happening. Again, we may be in this kind of courtier culture where the information that he's receiving is edited and glossed to perfection. Yeah, we saw how he treated his chief of intelligence services.

we saw it online. Who's now been arrested? Who's not been arrested? Exactly. So imagine being the bearer of bad tidings to Vladimir Putin right now. It's not a prospect of a pain heard of. No. And that's why it's worrying, frankly.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's take a break. When we'll come back, we're going to chat about our one-on-one monk debate podcast this week that explored the topic of NATO's role, possibly in creating some of the preconditions of this crisis. Back to you with that conversation 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 monk debates.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 podcast. Thanks for listening. Thank you.