The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Members-Only Pod: Season 2, Episode 15

Episode Date: April 1, 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 only podcast focuses on two stories in the news. First, after a promising start to the week that featured peace talks in Istanbul, the conflict progressively took a turn for the worst with renewed fighting across Ukraine. What is the likelihood of ceasefire anytime soon? Why is Russia saying one thing and doing another? And, second, Canada's federal budget is out next week. Will it include significant new defence and diplomacy spending? Or, is the care agenda in the form of new national health programs likely to dominate Canada's record deficit spending?  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. Roger Griffiths here, your host and moderator. Welcome to this. our regular monk members only podcast. This is our weekly program where we dig into the big issues and ideas, shaping the news, hopefully leaving you with some new analysis and insights. Each week on

this program, we're fortunate to host Janice Gross Stein. She's a founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs and internationally renowned scholar and author and she's all ours for the next 30 minutes. Hey Janice. Hey, Richard. Looking forward to this week. I thought we'd do two things here, a kind of show on are we serious? And let me explain that. I think one, are we serious to think possibly that Putin is about to get serious about negotiations? What's happening here? We started off the week with a lot of optimism around what could have happened in Istanbul.

We're kind of ending the week. I think on a down note, a sense that this war could drag on much longer. And then in the second half of the show, let's talk about a federal. budget that's coming up next week. And is Canada about to get serious when it comes to our own defense spending? What could this mean for the budget? What does it mean for a Canada that's really straining its fiscal capacity with a whole bunch of ambitious social programs that it wants to roll out at the same time, possibly of significantly stepping up its NATO commitment? So, Janice, give us your quick take on the week that was what happened here? Why did we

we go from some optimism Monday, Tuesday, to, again, a kind of down note on Putin's thinking and where his head is at come weekend. You know, Richard, we had some encouraging sounds out of the negotiators, particularly Russian negotiators, whom we have to pay attention to here, talking about serious progress, and Zelensky put on the table that long-awaited discussion of neutrality. But that is not Putin's MOU. And out of Moscow, much more somber. What he's done in the past, he has frozen conflicts.

They don't end. They go on at a low level of attrition. That's what Ukraine has lived from 2014 on. So, Janice, just to spark two things off your comments there. One, you know, the rubble bouncing back strongly here in the last week, in fact, returning to it's value comparative to the US dollar. So I wonder if Putin's getting a little more sense of confidence about the future trajectory of his own economy and the ability to survive these withering sanctions. But I would recommend to our listeners to check out this show on Russian television called The Great Game.

It's quintessentially Russian. It's got all these digital chess pieces moving around, these kind of portly guys sitting there pontificating at each other. You can get it with some. titles on YouTube. The reason I've been kind of clued into this is on Twitter, people are clipping this show. And it's interesting because it provides you with a raw unvarnished take on Russian nationalist public sentiment. And these people are making it very clear that any kind of deal with Ukraine, that is anything less than a strategic victory for the for Putin in terms of his goals with this war and possibly with NATO itself is in effect a failure, a failure of the regime and a failure of Putin.

So, Janice, am I right to think that Putin is under an incredible amount of pressure here internally to not compromise, to deliver something very close to the original objectives of this war, which were ambitious and have met a hard, harsh reality on the battlefield. For sure, that's right. Reginal authoritarian suffer from a terminal disease regimes that one person personalizes. They cannot fail. They cannot take a risky gamble and fail because that is the root, frankly, the losing power. I think it's really important not to underestimate the pressure on Putin.

On the other hand, there's such control of the media. Yes, stuff gets through, but there's such control of the media that the deal that those negotiators are talking about, they can sell, frankly. They're good marketers. There will be nationalist rallies in celebration of the great victory. Also important to remember here that Zelensky's under tremendous pressure. That's why he talked about a referendum. His folks have been fighting now for five and a half weeks. And if he comes back, seating permanent sovereignty, he doesn't have as long a lifeline as most of the outside world thinks either.

So pressure on both sets of leaders making these really, really tough negotiations. No early end in sight, Richard. So the issue really seems to boil down, Janice, to territorial concessions. You know, Zelensky is talking neutrality. Putin's talking, well, maybe it's not regime change. You know, we can, quote, you know, kind of live with a degraded Ukrainian military. We can even possibly let Ukraine join NATO. I'm sorry, not NATO, Europe.

So why is the territorial aspect, you know, the same? sticking point here. Yeah, I actually don't think that will be the real sticking point as we move down the road. The sticking point for now is that Solensky says he wants to put the issue of the control of Crimea to a referendum. Now, Crimea goes to the heart of both. For Russians, it's, you know, they would look at us and say, what are you talking about? Of course, Crimea is Russian. For Ukrainians, Crimea and the access to the sea, just the heart of Ukraine. So yes, that's important. But here's the bigger one. And this is going to get to you. Question, are we serious? Not only is Putin serious, are we serious? Zelensky says, fine, no NATO, but I want security guarantees. And oh, by the way,

I want one from you, Canada, along with others, not alone, but along with others, that if I'm attacked again because who would trust Putin as long as he's in office, you will come to my defense. You will supply fighter aircraft. There will be an all-fly zone. That's the demand above the layer of territorial transactions. That is going to be really difficult for the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, to offer the Turkey, to offer the kind of security demands that Zelensky wants. He's getting NATO-like. That's what he's asking for. It seems to that, as you mentioned, he's under an incredible amount of pressure not to concede the Dombas region just unilaterally. Now, possession is nine-tenths of the law. And if you have

the Russian army squatting in Dombas, it's not like you really own it. So maybe that, you know, that slides. But it does look like the Russians are continuing to prosecute this war along the coast, Mary a Pole. There's been this ongoing threat around, you know, the siege of Odessa next that would effectively kind of shutter the entire coastline, the southern coastline of Ukraine. You know, again, to what extent can a lambridge from the Dombas to Crimea be something that Ukraine accepts? I mean, it effectively cuts them off from a substantial maritime presence, shipping all their commodities and everything out, this would then have to go through contested Russian territory. I would think that would be very hard for the Ukrainians to accept.

Very, very hard. And I think the area to focus on is exactly the one you identified. Roger, it's not the Donbass, despite all the conversation about it. It is access to the ports and the coasts. You know, Ukraine is a wheat exporter. It's a grain exporter. It ships by sea. This is really important for its future economic revival as it will struggle to come back from the destruction. That is going to be a really contentious issue. And frankly, there are ideas floating around right now for international peacekeepers in the coastal areas. That is just wholly unrealistic for all intents and purposes.

You know, one last point might be worth leaving with our listeners. And it takes me back to the Russian TV show that you talked about, which is really fun to watch. But there's a myth out there about how strategic Russian decision makers aren't particularly Putin. And you move the chest pieces around. Yeah, outsmart the West. But that's actually not the story here. Russia made a major miscalculation. It got the strategy wrong.

It's important not to give too much credit and be too intimidated by the brilliant strategists on the other side when you're playing chess. Yeah, I've also been a little bit, I don't know, it's a little bit too cute by half to see all these retired American generals, Petraeus, Wesley Clark and others coming out and kind of, you know, tis tis-tissing and dissing the Russian military. and their prosecution of this war, when these are the very same men who led campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, which were anything but a strategic or frankly tactical success. You know, I'm not about commensaries here or equivalence, but it is important to remember that the Iraq body count, which one is one of the most, you know, serious and substantive civil society efforts to document the number of civilian deaths in Iraq due to America's war, it's upwards of 180 to 200,000 civilians who died in that war. So as we kind of dawn ourselves in this moment with this kind of mantle

of righteousness and the extent to which we, the West, are the, you know, carrying these values and this war against autocratic Russia, let's remember that our own record in Iraq and in Canada, in Afghanistan is a pretty dismal one that unfortunately led to the deaths of tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of civilians. So look, let's not, in other words, get over our skis here about our moral superiority in this moment.

Maybe there's a bigger lesson to learn here, Regard. You're quite right. The United States fought two ground wars over 20 years, lost them both. Let's be honest, lost them both at enormous expense. The Russians are fighting a ground war against a fierce Ukrainian resistance where Ukraine is more important to the Ukrainians than it ultimately will be to the Russians. as Iraq was more important to the Iraqis than it would ever be to the United States. Maybe the big lesson here is if you're a big power with a big army, don't use that army in ground warfare in a place where the local resistance cares much more than you do

and is determined to fight to the very end. That's a sobering lesson, I think, and you're quite right, not only for Russia, but for NATO and its allies as well. Yeah, and imagine if in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Chinese and the Russians had been putting in thousands of Stinger missiles, javelin missiles, these switchblade drones that fall to the sky to slice people, you know, in various, you know, pieces and sections. I mean, let's understand here that the Russian.

military isn't simply going up against, again, a very formidable and brave Ukrainian army. They're going up against the, in a sense, a lot of the arsenals, I believe half of all of America's javelin missile inventory has now been sent to Ukraine. So I just think these generals might just want to, you know, a little humility, a little humility and just this idea of crowing over this. It just seems like, hey, we failed, but they're failing too. So we're all failing. together. Well, Jess, let's take a break. We'll come back after this very short intermission. Talk about Canada. We've got a budget coming up next week. Are we going to see some some big new announcements in that budget that could reflect the reverberations, the after

effects of this war on Canada's own security? Back after this. 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.wunkdebates.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.