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

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

This is a sample of the Munk Members-Only Podcast. The 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 focuses on the big geopolitical story of the moment, the growing risk of a military invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the potential for a sweeping U.S. and NATO response. How did this week's high stakes negotiations end up? Are we closer to war now than before talks started? What are the potential off-ramps for Russia and America to defuse the conflict? And if there is an invasion what are risks for all sides in the first major hot war in Europe in a generation? 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. your welcome to this, our regular Monk members-only podcast. This is our Friday program where we dig into the big issues and ideas in the news. Look at the events and trends that are shaping our lives at this

extraordinary moment. As our guest on these programs, our guide, we're so fortunate to have Janice Gross Stein. She's the founding director, the Monk School of Global Affairs, International Renowned Scholar and author. Janice, great to be in dialogue with you again. And what an extraordinary week we have seen internationally, Richard, and what an extraordinary few weeks we have ahead of us. Let's do this, Janice. I think there is one topic that we're going to dedicate today's show to because it is, I think, the fast emerging and big geopolitical risk of this moment, and that is the growing threat, the growing potential for a Russian ground invasion of, of Ukraine in the coming weeks, maybe sooner, maybe later, but I want to start with you by helping

us unpack what exactly happened this week. I went into this week thinking that there was some signs of repression between the Biden administration and Putin and Russia, that there were noises being made about listening to each other, about trying to come up with some negotiated settlement to this standoff over Ukraine. Is it allowed to join NATO? Should it be the recipient of significant U.S. military aid or not? We end this week on a very sour note. The Polish foreign minister, Zabignau Rao, saying of the OSCE, Europe's kind of security group of all the countries in Europe. This is the greatest risk of war in the last 30 years. What happened? Well, just to go over the busy travel schedules that diplomats had this week, unlike the rest of

us who can't travel anywhere right now, we had three meetings. The first of the most important one was between Wendy Sherman and her Russian counterpart, and that took place in Geneva. That was the two, Mana Amana, as we used to say, the Russians in the America, it's almost a flashback record. What happened during the heyday of the Cold War, everybody hanging on the words. She is probably the best U.S. negotiating, that most experienced, the toughest, diplomat that the United States has in its arsenal. And she went to convey two messages. We are not going to back down. We are not going to do what you ask, which is commit in advance that Ukraine cannot join NATO. And the reason for that, she says, it is a foundation,

it is a fundamental principle of NATO that any state can join. That's a NATO decision. You're not going to make that. Certainly the United States is not going to make that in isolation from others. But oh, by the way, we'll talk to you about a lot of other things that you care about. Missiles, tactical nuclear missiles, will agree to remove those. The United States doesn't have any in Europe. The Russians do, certainly in their own territory, and conventional arms. He was not impressed, but he did say when he left that meeting, so here's why you could be optimistic, Richard.

Well, these talks are very difficult, but Russia is not going to invade Ukraine. Okay, that's not a bad market signal. When that one happened, that was Monday. On they moved to NATO headquarters. For the first meeting in two years, it's called the NATO Council Partnership with Russia. All the NATO members got together with Russia. That was a partnership that was. was created as the Soviet Union dissolved and NATO members were looking for a way to assure

Russia that NATO was not going to push up against its walls, frankly. And James Baker, then the Secretary of State, actually floated the idea that Russia joined NATO. That one never got anywhere, had more traction. There was a meeting that was not as productive. And out of that, The Secretary General of NATO says, this is not going in a good direction. There was no meeting of minds here, Stoltenberg, I'm worried. And then the final meeting that was in Brussels. And then they moved on to Vienna. Many of the same people for the meeting of the Organization of Security Cooperation in Europe.

Ukraine was at that meeting. And that was the one that led the Polish Foreign Minister. or afterwards to make the very alarming comment that you just reported. Let me tell you about one other meeting that wasn't on the travel schedule this week, but the meetings that have occurred between in private, in a back channel, between the Ukrainians and the Russians. Where the Ukrainians at the end of December made a fairly generous offer to the Russians. We will give those two eastern provinces that your little green men are in,

right now, we will give them a lot of autonomy. And that has been the fundamental Russian demand. Because think about this in Canadian terms, if you give our western provinces a lot of autonomy, they could block the federal government from joining any international agreement. You gave those two eastern provinces in Ukraine autonomy. They could prevent Ukraine. internally from ever joining NATO. That was a really generous offer that no president of Ukraine has been willing to make up till now. The Russians said, interesting, but didn't pick that ball up. That's the rapid fire tour of where we stand on the diplomatic circuit right now.

Yeah, and another quote just to end off the week, the head Russian representative in those Vienna talks. said on Friday, if we do not hear a constructive response to our proposals in a reasonable time frame, we will be forced to draw the corresponding conclusion and take all necessary measures to assure strategic balance and remove unacceptable threats to our national security. Now, that to me, Janice, are the two interesting things here. Strategic balance and unacceptable threats to national security. I mean, isn't this about a lot more now than just Ukraine? It's about Russia's sense of its own national security, as the representative just said,

with billions of dollars of U.S. military aid now flowing into the Ukraine. It's the single largest international destination of U.S. military assistance and equipment, an area where you are on the border of the Russian motherland, so to speak, you have, should they ever happen, cruise missiles staged in the Ukraine by NATO that could reach Moscow in under eight or nine minutes. Hasn't this thing now become something bigger, more intractable, higher stakes than just, you know, an intramural? intra-religious ethnic conflict in eastern Ukraine? For sure it is. And here's what the Russians have done over the last month. And I have to give Putin credit as a strategist for doing this.

He has put squarely on the U.S. agenda. He has gotten the attention of President Biden. And don't forget, this is the president who wants to focus on China. But no way, he has forced this to the top of the U.S. administration. Credit to him for doing that, it's not easy to get the attention of the U.S. president. Secondly, he said, Russia has strategic interests. We told you right from the beginning, and you told us that you were going to respect our security in Europe. We can go back over who said what to when whom, but it doesn't really matter.

Because we have NATO forces right up against our borders in the Baltics. And it is inconceivable to us, the Russians, that Ukraine, which has been part of Russia in one way or another for hundreds of years, that the Ukraine would ever join NATO. We need an agreement. And here's a very old world that respects our spheres of influence. And we need a buffer zone in Europe between our border and your forces. These are very old, very reasonable strategic ways of thinking about how you manage relationships

between great powers. And interestingly enough, Frederick, three times this week, Russian officials talked about the Cuban missile crisis. Okay. And I think it's worth thinking about that for a moment. Well, they've also floated the idea. Yes, they have. Conard and anything else of returning Russian troops to Cuba and Venezuela and other parts of Latin America to basically get in under the U.S. sphere influence, the so-called Monroe Doctrine.

And how, you know, how does it feel when the shoes on the other foot? That's right. Let's treat that as serious for a minute, for a minute only, and then move along. But just imagine if any kind, if the scope of. Russian military aid, never mind forces to Venezuela and Cuba, went up the way U.S. military aid to Ukraine has gone up, what the reaction would be in the United States. There would be fury. So I think Putin is put something on the agenda

that Western Europeans and the United States has to take seriously. And it's beyond the discussion of missiles that the United States doesn't have. have there and would agree to ban, frankly, and a conventional forces arms agreement in which Russia has all the advantages. I think the United States is going to have to do more. And I, you know, if you've been reading the editorial pages of Canadian newspapers this week, you know what I am saying is an unpopular position to put it mildly. But we, the United States and its allies, if they want to stabilize Europe and if they want to. want Russia to feel that it is not, that the, that Western forces are not bumping up against them,

we're going to have to do more. And, you know, the argument again and again and again that you hear from, and the Germans are the best at this. The Germans say the following, and they say this in private is, well, we know Ukraine is never going to be admitted to NATO. That's never going to happen. But it's a foundational principle that any country that wants to come into NATO could potentially in the foreseeable future in the next century be admitted. So we can't pull back on that. That's a foundational principle of who we are. But why not? Why can't we pull back on it? It makes no sense. Janice, to people, one other piece of this, this onion, a big onion, why are the Americans doing this? Because as you just said, in their own strategic doctrine, they have acknowledged that China is the geopolitical threat

to their military, economic, technological supremacy, which they currently enjoy. So instead of focusing on China, they are now engaged in a high-stakes credibility. High-stakes Russian roulette, that's what they said. Yeah, a bid, but it's a bid on American credibility that now rests in the Ukraine of all places, which in terms of, you know, the priority of American national interests abroad, you know, if you came from Mars and landed on Earth, you would think that it would be, I don't know, a thousand and two on a list of thousand and one of one priorities. So why are the Americans so insistent on asserting a, you know, a series of assumptions, many of them we would subscribe to, you know, the right to self-determination of nations. Ukraine is an independent nation represented in the UN and elsewhere and acknowledged as such.

So there's all kinds of good liberal international order principles that I, understand why America is behind. But let's talk about realpolitik and self-interest. Why are they getting sucked into this? And why are they raising the stakes? Why, for each one of Putin's bids, are they raising him again, as opposed to pivoting to Xi and China? That is a great question. And I think the way you phrase it captures exactly the dilemma, Russia. They didn't choose this. it has been forced upon them by Putin. And that's why I say standing back, and I'm no admirer of Putin. He's just a well-dressed thug in many ways, frankly.

Those of us who work in security recognize, because you see versions of them all over the world. They all look alike and they all dress alike. So you know them, frankly, when you see them. So I'm not an admirer of his in any way. But he succeeded here, right? he has forced the United States to come to the table. So you ask yourself then, well, why couldn't Wendy Sherman make a deal with him? Well, she couldn't make a deal for the following.

We are coming off for terrible years that the United States has had with its allies. So here's what she said, and I thought, oh boy, is she trapped now by Trump, frankly? And what went on it? She said the following. No deal on Ukraine without Ukraine. No deal on Europe without Europe. The United States only acts with its allies. We're coming off a period where, you know,

and you look at withdrawal from Afghanistan, frankly, was a unilateral decision. People criticized Biden bitterly because he didn't consult his allies. The United States cannot afford on a core issue of European security. to step all over Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and not engage in the kind of extensive consultations. And there's not a willingness inside NATO, and particularly the Germans here, to reward Putin for what they consider his aggressive strategy. And that's where the United States caught.

Okay, Janice, let's take a quick break. And when we come back on the other side, let's talk about how this could unfold. What are the potential permutations here of action and reaction in the coming weeks? And, you know, I want to know what you think. Are we actually going to get to a significant ground war in Europe, possibly the largest in 30 plus years in a matter of a few weeks from now? A scary thought. We'll dig into it on the other side of this quick break.

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