The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Members-Only Pod: Season 2, Episode 18

Episode Date: April 22, 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 this week. First, what can we take away from last week of the war in terms of how the conflict could unfold in the coming critical period? Is this a moment where Ukrainian forces will once again surprise military strategists and repulse Russia's large scale offensive in the Donbas? What could this mean for Putin and his plans to celebrate a “victory” for his “special military operation” in early May? Second, France goes to the polls on Sunday to decide their next President with populist Marie Le Pen in contention. Canada is having its own populist moment in the Conservative Party of Canada as candidates contest the leadership. What parallels can we draw between these two events and what they say about the future of populist movements? 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.com, and register for membership. Membership is free, and it's available for you right now at www. Monk Debates.com. Hope you enjoy the program. Hello, Monk members. Rudyard Griffiths here, your host and moderator. Welcome to this, the regular monk members only podcast, the weekly program where we dig into some of the big issues and ideas in the news, talk about the trends that are shaping this extraordinary moment that we're living through. To do this, we are joined on each of these programs by Janice Gross Stein,

the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs, an internationally renowned scholar and author, Janice, great to be in dialogue with you this week. Great to be with you, Richard. Well, a double-barreled show. Let's spend the next half hour doing two things, Janice, if you're okay with that. The first, let's update on what's happened the last seven days in the Russia-Ukraine war, some not insignificant developments that might start to flesh out the next steps in this horrible conflict. Then let's spend the back half of the show talking about populism, both in Europe. There's these big elections coming up on Sunday in France, but also here in Canada.

It's interesting to see the attention being generated in and around the campaign of Pierre Paulyev for the Conservative Party leadership. Has Canada's populist moment arrived? We'll get into that in the second half of the show. But, Janice, give us first your sense of what were the big developments in the Ukraine conflict that we should take away from the last seven days to understand what might happen next? Well, we are in a new phase of the conflict. We are on the edge of a major land battle for the Donbass. But I'm now going to say something which is going to surprise you, Rudyard. The United States and its allies have escalated their war objectives. That's what you see in this transition. For the first period of this war, it was all about Ukraine surviving. and the Zelensky regime surviving. They did not expect Zelensky to last more than a few days

due to the incredible performance and the military assistance that NATO allies have provided to Ukraine, which unprecedented really since Berlin in 1948, the goal is now to win to push Russian forces back. and that is a major shift in NATO objectives. And that's what happens in a war. That's why they're so tough to stop. They're so easy to start. They're so tough to stop because the side that has momentum

changes its objectives and loses their interest in negotiation. This week we saw the battle for Maripole seemingly reach a kind of puric conclusion for the Russians. So basically the capture of the city, the containment of Ukrainian troops into this metallurgical factory site, two kilometers by five kilometers in the kind of heart of the city. This suggests, Janus, that Russians can now redeploy some of those troops around Maripole

north. It also suggests that they're very close, Janus, to this land bridge that they wanted from the Dombas and the disputed territories into and across the coastal, the southern coastal seaboard of Ukraine to connect Crimea. Does that suggest, Janice, that a major Russian warium is now in the process of being completed? Yeah, there's no question about it. There's no question about it, Roger. that capacity to connect to Crimea by land has been an objective of Russia's ever since in an ex-K Crimea in 2014. You can resupply.

It is a hugely important objective for the Russians. And this is a, it is a win for the Russians, but it's not. Like everything else, it's how you see it. It's a win for the Russians. because it's just a critical objective for them. But, you know, there are a thousand people still in that industrial plan. And Putin states to show yesterday in Moscow where he said, and we're getting ready for May 9th for celebrations of victory.

And he states to show and he said, no, we're not going to assault it. We're going to lay seeds to it and starve them out. The truth is that an assault would have cost them hundreds of truth. It would have taken, despite the desperate conditions that exist inside that fortress, it would have taken days and days and days. And he's just chosen not to fight because the costs are too high. So let's understand what it is. But big picture, you're absolutely right.

Getting that land bridge to Crimea probably was his most important objective in all of this. And he got that. So Janice, could we see, because you just mentioned May 9th, so there's a lot of speculation and that, you know, the Victory Day parades of World War II that are commemorated each year in Russia, kind of Remembrance Day slash, you know, Fourth of July combined in one, that Putin will use this to somehow claim that the war aims are complete. So if they have the Lamberge to Crimea, next it is the Dombas, and can they push the Ukrainian entrenched positions?

that have been created and developed over really eight years, so not insignificant in terms of the tunneling and the defensive kind of capacity of those Ukrainian forces. But nonetheless, facing off against long-range Russian artillery, air support, tanks, a large surge, 20 to 40,000 new Russian troops and irregulars heading into that conflict. To what extent, Janice, could you see a scenario here where whatever happens, Putin is going to be. to declare victory on the ninth because simply he can't go on any further. He's committed what he can commit in terms of having some conventional force capacity left over to deal with Russia's remaining security issues with China, with NATO. And one way or another, we're going to come to

some kind of impasse by the ninth. What's your view on that? Well, let me, let me spin a scenario for you, Roger. He definitely has, as we said, the land bridge, but pushing forward further west to take all of the Donbass, which is what he said he wants. He's only got part right now. Pushing forward, he's going to encounter fierce Ukrainian resistance. And what's flowing into Ukraine right now, and here's where we see the change that talked about, NATO members, not NATO, but individual members of NATO, are sending in long-range artillery to the Ukrainians for the first time. Right. American howitzers.

American howitzers are going. And that is different by an order of magnitude from javelin missiles, which we're used to fire at Russian tanks. And some Soviet-era tanks that some of the Central European states have are moving in in the Americas have promised to a plane. And planes. So let's talk about this possibility that it's a wall that Putin's troops hit a wall, that they cannot gain an inch. And in fact, they're possibly pushed back from where they are now.

That's what I mean in the change in tone. What you're hearing from Washington over and over in the last three days, this next month is critical. These are the most important 30 days of the war. They are going to try to push Russian forces back from territory they currently hold in the Donbass. If they succeed, it's going to be pretty tough for Putin to go to that victory period on May 9th and claim that he's won a victory and this war is over. So two thoughts about the chance. Is it possible just the propaganda apparatus is so pervasive and sophisticated in Russia that, you know, he can claim whatever he wants on May 9th? He can kind of, you know, signal that, you know, whatever, the war aims are achieved and that troops will remain in the Dombas to protect, you know, citizens from the threat of genocide, all the usual propaganda lines that they use.

And effectively what we'll do is we'll settle into a kind of World War I style, you know, trench warfare. In a sense, the condition of the war before this latest massive incursion by Russia in. to Ukraine that has pervaded the Donbass region since, you know, 2014. Is that the likely outcome here that we're going to see kind of two static lines, wherever that line is drawn, Putin kind of ending the special operation for political and other reasons, but back to a nastier version of the pre-invasion reality, which was, I don't know, it had elements of Flanders field. I mean, this is similar terrain, large open, you know, spaces with, you know, forces entrenched across from each other,

dueling with artillery and snipers and all the kind of horrors of a static war. Oh, that's probably the most likely possibility. And it is. In fact, that's what we had from 2014 to 2020, right? Eight years of fundamentally trench warfare. Ukraine forces dug in. at the line Russian forces behind and nobody moving very much had 15,000 people killed during that people, 14 to 15,000 people.

So reverting to that line is, I think, the most likely possibility, along with the land bridge to Crimea, which is the big win for Russia. But there is another scenario here, which is what I'm paying attention to, and how likely this is, we will know in a couple more weeks, that the Ukrainians advance. And if they do, given the new equipment that's coming in, the disorganized Russian troops that are coming in, yes, he's putting in 20 to 40,000 more. These people have them trained together. They're cobbled together from units that suffered casualties.

The momentum was with the Ukrainians. New equipment is coming in that they know how to use. There's no incentive them for the Ukrainians to stop. That's the problem. And this is a classic war story that we're seeing. Then in order to get people to stop, both sides have to make the same calculation at the same time. Right now, Ukrainians have the wind in their sales. And it may be very, you know, he can go and say this is a great victory and we've got the Donbass.

And the Ukrainians continue to fire the next morning and push forward. But, Jan, it's just to play that scenario out. as the last kind of element of the block of the show, what is the likelihood of that? Because as soon as you step outside of those defensive entrenched positions in an open, you know, environment with really far less villages, forest places to kind of shelter and protect, you don't have the same amount of heavy armor as the Russians do. You are really exposing yourself to, you know, to the full threat of Russian artillery and air power. So isn't the more likely course of action that our Ukrainian victory is simply

holding the line in the face of this latest Russian onslaught? And the worry here, I guess, Janice, is what is the Russian reaction, maybe not immediately, not May 9th, but what is the Russian reaction to stalemate? We have talked a lot out on the show about escalation and trying to understand what the particular pressure point of escalation. Listening to you, I would think one acute pressure point would be the scenario where the Russian, where the Ukrainian troops leave their entrenched positions, advance on the Russians and push them back. I mean, that would be a moment of real reckoning for the Russian security establishment, the Russian regime, the Russian army. So maybe just give us a sense, A, of that scenario, how escalation could happen. But

But if it is more of an entrenched war, reversion to some larger scaled up version of the 2014 conflict of two static armies facing off against each other, I don't want to say any of this is fortunate or what anyone would hope for, but is that potentially a de-escalatory moment that we've all been waiting for over these last 54 or so days where, frankly, the risks abate to the extent that, you know, the entanglement of NATO or Russian use of chemical, chemical, biological, or atomic, all those things go down in the context of what would then be a slow burning kind of hot war in the planes of the Dombas. You know, I think you're absolutely right. And, you know, I hope our listeners under, don't misunderstand the word I'm going to use now,

the most stable outcome here, the least dangerous outcome. is a stalemate on the ground where the two armies face each other. And we functionally return tragically to what was before the war, with the exception of Marriott-Pol and the land bridge to Crimea. And the Russians would have expended all this blood and treasure. You know, Ukrainian cities, the huge economic cost to Ukraine, which we don't talk about, Roger. The Ukrainian economy is going to shrink by 45%.

45% there's a massive rebuilding coming after. But that is the most stable outcome. There is, however, the second one, and that's why I wanted to bring it to the attention of all our listeners, you're right that when they move out of these trench warfare positions, much harder to fight in open fields against superior army. But we've seen one thing around here.

It's worthwhile, just think about it. The Russian army is very close. Plunky. The Ukrainians are mobile. They're fast. The easiest way we could talk about this is the difference between swarming and lumbering. The Russian army lumbers. The Ukrainians swarm. And they've been able to do that to great effectiveness. Not clear to me because he's intangibles matter to the degree that they do that the Ukrainian. will not be able to achieve tactical successes, given the equipment that is flowing in right now to Ukraine over these next three to four weeks. And that does, I agree, create a more

dangerous situation. If the Russians are pushed back, we see from Putin, you know, he sent the West a message. He launched an intercontinental ballistic missile from the Far East. in Kempchakka in Russia. That was, don't mess with me anymore than you're already messing with me. People, you know, Biden administration has been resolute. They get the signal. They don't respond to it. They don't escalate, but they don't change a single thing they're doing.

And they're upping the ante right now, along with Zelensky and an army that, feels legitimately extraordinarily proud of what they've done. Not clear that they're going to settle for going back to 2014. We'll know a lot more over this next week as we watch. Yeah, so fast, so fast changing. Well, thank you, Janice. It's a really masterful summary of what we should take away from this last week in the Ukraine war and how we might think about the next critical 7 to 14 to 28 days.

Well, let's come back from this short break. We're going to talk about populism. Big election coming up Sunday in France. We've got our own Conservative Party battling over its leadership and an insurgent populist candidate drawing big crowds across Canada. We'll get into that, all of that with you next, right after this 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.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' podcasts. Thanks for listening.