The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Members-Only Pod: Season 2, Episode 20

Episode Date: May 6, 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 the upcoming May 12 Munk Debate on the Ukraine War. Janice and Rudyard discuss how the two teams of debaters will approach the debate motion be it resolved ending the worst geopolitical crisis in a generation starts with acknowledging Russia's security interests. What are the key arguments that are likely to be put forward by both sides? Which will have the most weight as the war enters into its third month? And, is there any basis to acknowledge Russia's security concerns in the context of an invasion that is now seeing mass human rights abuses and large scale civilian causalities?  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.

These statues have to come down. It's always been a pandemic of the unvaccinated. The problem now is it's a pandemic of the willfully unvaccinated. Falling birth rates are good. They're good for our planet. They're good for our societies. We're not responsible for the escalation with Russia. We're not the ones who invaded Ukraine.

I don't think it's fair to portray people of color as victims. It is a very dangerous time in American politics. Hello, Monk members. Griffiths here, your host and moderator. Welcome to this, the regular Monk members only podcast. This is our weekly program digging into the big issues and ideas in the news, hopefully leaving you with some new analysis and insights. We do this every week with 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 again.

Great to be here, Rudyard, and this is just a few days. before the big debate that's coming up. That's right. May 12th, Roy Thompson Hall, two and a half years we are returning to in-person live debate. And it's just been terrific. The response from Monk members to get back off our screens, seeing each other,

being together for meaningful public conversation dialogue. I want to remind listeners that we are making a big push at the Monk debates to get younger people out, Janice. We think it's important. You're a former and current professor and academic. I know you're teaching young people. What's your sense about the importance of young people getting back, back to the physical world? It's impossible to exaggerate how important it is for everyone, but for young people specifically to get back to the physical world.

For two reasons, Roger, which I think all our listeners, I'll understand. The first is we are all so tired of staring at a screen. Just to be in the room, have physical, make eye contact, be physically present with somebody else, just a totally different experience. And we are not programmed as a human species, not to have any human contact with other people. We're just not. And it exacts a terrible toll. There's a second, a big issue, which goes to the heart of our politics, which I know you worry about, that debate is so important

because we listen to somebody else's arguments that we disagree with. And the virtual world does not promote that. You can spend the whole day just chatting virtually or listening to people that you do agree with. It's especially important for young people that they hear views that are different from their own, the challenge theirs, that they become comfortable with that and that they respond in a civil

way to civil arguments. So bring on physical debates. Yeah. And I would say, like, remember, the algorithms that we're all using to consume videos and podcasts, and you name it, they're tailored to a lot of your behavior in psychology. So I think another real advantage here for all of us, young people and older too is just to get outside of the algorithm, right? Get back into the Newtonian universe of objects, you know, bipping and bopping and the wonderful serendipity, you know, of life in the real world. So for those of you listening to this podcast, if you have a younger person in your life, we want them at this debate. We've got an incredible deal right now. We're giving tickets $10, 10 bucks, okay? A price of an expensive frappuccino caramel,

whatever at Starbucks. You can, if you're 25 or under, attend the monk debates. Simply go to the Roy Thompson Hall box office and enter the promo code MD. That's M as a monk and D as in debate. 10, the numeral 10, where it asks you for your promo code and you can select a seat of your choice at Roy Thompson Hall. You don't have to be up in the bleachers. We're going to give you the proverbial royal treatment. If you jump on it now, you can get an orchestra seat possibly. We have set aside some of those, especially for this student program because again, we really want to try to help young people get back to physical debate and discussion. So Janice, here's what I want to do on I want to spend the first half of the show talking about the debate, giving our community here a little bit of a sense of the arguments that are going to be teased out over the course of this hour and a half discussion on the Ukraine war.

And then in the second half of the show, let's touch briefly on, you know, the week that was in central bankland, big rate heights, massive market gyrations and growing fears of a global recession. So on topic number one, Janice, give us your sense. You're going to be moderating the panel portion of the debate. I'm really excited for that. Our motion is, be it resolved, ending the world's worst geopolitical crisis in a generation starts with acknowledging Russia's security interests. So let's talk about what you think are the most compelling arguments pro and con the motion. And then I'll give you, I'll interspers into your analysis, my sense of some of the key points.

both for and against this, let's face it, controversial assertion that Russia's security interests do somehow need to be acknowledged and addressed in order to bring this conflict to a close. It is a controversial assertion, Roger, and feelings are running high about this debate. Let me use the most provocative language that I can. There are two polls in this debate. One poll have nothing to do with this murderous butcher who has been accused of being a genocidal killer and a war criminal. How can you even think of sitting down with somebody like that? That's one poll.

And I think we'll hear versions of that in the debate. The second poll is, don't let your emotions run away with you. thousands of people are dying on the ground in Ukraine. We somehow need to stop this fighting. And there is only one way to stop this fighting, which is to engage with Russia and understand better what the minimum it meets in terms of security arrangements in order to stop the hell that it created on the ground. Those are the two polls, I think, of this debate.

people feel very strongly on one side of the other here. Well, let's zero in a little bit on the second poll because it's really at the heart of our resolution, which is, you know, the crisis ends by acknowledging, you know, Russia's needs here loosely. Let's talk first about the historical antecedents of that argument, because we're going to hear at this debate. John Mearsheimer is appearing. He's a well-known and provocative contributor to international affairs. And he's described. He's self-described with Stephen Walt, his debating partner, as, quote, realists. So you've been teaching international relations for as long as I've known you.

Forever. What is a realist? And why does a realist end up with a set of conclusions that are seemingly more in the Mearsheimer Stephen Walt camp that Russia's security interests do have to be acknowledged? Full disclosure here, Rudyard, I know both of these people very well. They are longstanding. We like everybody else, you know, there's a small community. It doesn't matter where they are in the world.

And I know these two very well. And here's what they are going to tell us. They are realists in that they both believe that power matters in international politics. And they would be the first to agree with Thucydides' great statement, the strong do what they can, though we suffer what they must. That is probably the single best suffering of realism. Looking back in history, great powers matter more than smaller powers, just because they're great and powerful and they can get their way.

And the fundamental argument that John has made, don't poke the Russian bear because the bear will lash out. And don't do it when they're down in the mistaken belief that Russia is not a great power in that part of the world and will not lash back when it is insulted and humiliated. big mistake moving NATO up to Russian borders. He's been saying this since 2015 and in a sense has predicted this war. Janice, I'm just curious, what do you have like a, I know these are labels, so they're very crew, but do you have a label that you ascribe to? Like at times when we talk, I enjoy you because you are clearheaded and I would say realist in your view, but at the same time, I know you have a lot of care and compassion and concern

about those smaller powers that Thucydides kind of asserts need to simply accept the way the world the way it is, as opposed to the way they might want it to be. The label I would probably put on myself is pragmatist because you have to ask yourself, no matter what you do. You have to ask yourself all the time, what can work, what will work, what's possible in this world. And so there is an important grain of truth in saying that big powers matter. Really interesting for Canadians. We have lived next door to one of the most powerful countries forever, Roger. I think Canadians understand. Our prime ministers have always understood. The last person, to poke a U.S. president in the nose was Lester Pearson who did it to Lyndon B. Johnson.

And, you know, the big height difference. And Lyndon B. Johnson just picked him up by the lapels of his coat. So we've learned how you live next door to a big power. And we have to learn because it's a survival instinct for us. We're so dependent on the U.S. for trade. Russia has neighbors to that fear it, hate it, resent it. Russian forces have invaded, have carved up Poland, for example. You know, Germany and Russia carved up Poland.

No surprise that a Polish, any Polish leader, and we have one with us for the debate, is going to say, don't deal with the devil, no matter what, don't deal with the devil, but you have no choice. So the challenge then becomes, how do you put in place some arrangements which assure Russia, this is the key, which assure Russia, that no weapons will be deployed on its borders, that its border territories will not be used as a springboard to do two things. John talks about one, invade, but there's a second thing that Vladimir Putin really worries about.

Don't launch a color revolution. Don't support demonstrators in the street. don't engage in covert activities that are designed for regime change to get me in office. That's a harder one. That's what I hope our debaters will talk about. Can we do that? So Radik Sikorski, the former foreign minister and defense minister of Poland, will be one of those

debaters on the other side opposing Mir Schimer and Stephen Walt. He's going to be joined by Michael McFaul, a former ambassador of... and a member of Barack Obama's National Security Council with a responsibility for Russia. So let's talk about the McFal-Sukorsky's side of this argument. You brought it up earlier, which is, you know, Russia has now performed and demonstrated an utter disregard for the liberal international order in the post-World War II. values that inform and shape global affairs. It is effectively a pariah state. And on that basis, not only should it suffer for this invasion, but I think as we're seeing in the press this week, Janice, you know, continuing reports out of the U.S. military, out of the visit by Nancy Pelosi

to Kiev, this idea that Russian power should be permanently denuded in order to prevent it from ever doing this again. It's a pretty maximal idea, and it is a direct refutation of our resolution that ending the crisis requires acknowledging Russia's security interests. This is not only we're not going to require their interests, we're going to, we're going to degrade, we're going to defenestrate Russia militarily. That's exactly what we're hearing. I'm I think it's what we will hear at the debate. Just to go back for one, that one of the most provocative things,

that John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt say, it is liberal hubris record that causes crisis. Liberals, let's understand, liberal hegemons behave like this, and think they can remake the whole. So, just let's explain, because these labels, you know, slip off your tongue, you know, with beautifully with all kinds of awareness. When you say liberal, you're not saying like liberal as in a capital L liberal who's a member

of a liberal party. This is something different. So just explain that concept because this is really helpful. So what do they mean when they say liberal hedgements? They say the United States and its allies, those who believe that democracy is the path of the future. As Barack Obama said, the arc of history is bending in favor of us. These are universal values, free speech, human rights.

Everybody in the world wants them. It is only a matter of time until societies all over the world become more open, democratic, free, and respectful of human rights. And Russia and China are backward looking. they don't get the message of history. Stephen Walt and John Mearsham are bitterly critical of that, accuse the United States and NATO of exporting its own values, but being entirely unaware of doing so,

and imposing Western values, whatever Western means, but they really mean these values of human rights and democracy, trying to impose them on the rest of the world. So they look at those color revolutions, those early revolutions in Georgia, in Ukraine in 2014. And they argue, look, Vladimir Putin only sees this one way, U.S. assistance intervening to overthrow friends and allies of Vladimir Putin. And in some ways, that is probably a bigger issue in what caused this war than pushing. NATO forces right up to Russia's border. Vladimir Putin has, is an authoritarian with a deep-seated fear that outsiders will intervene in Russian domestic politics to organize massive street

demonstrations to overthrow his regime. But if you look at where this war is now, you know, 60 plus days into it, would you say that the McFaul-Caucer argument is, kind of holding out that we have we have massively reinforced the Ukrainian military they have effectively pushed the Russian military away and out of the threat the dire existential threat they initially posed against Kiev in the government there's now reports that the Russian campaign in the Dombas region is similarly stymied by low morale by a problem of supply and troop deployments. So isn't it right to say, look, we can win this war, in effect?

And we're fighting for something really, really important, which is that liberal international order. If we don't draw the line here, and maybe this, we're kind of want your view as to whether we're going to hear this from McVall and Sikorsky, but if I was the debate, I would say if we don't draw the line here, then what does that say to China? Yeah. What does that say to the other autocratic powers that are now threatening the liberal international order on a whole series of fronts, not just military, but technological?

They're spying on our human rights activists. They're degrading and denuding our multilateral institutions like the WTO. You know, this, this is time to verbally create. create that red line and Russia's drawn it and we're drawing it and get ready. I think that's exactly the argument. I hope we hear Roger for them because it's a strong one. And they will go further and they will say that U.S. weakness. Obama drew a line when Syria used chemical weapons and then blink did nothing about it.

We had this chaotic, shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Just last summer, it seems like forever ago. It is U.S. weakness that is allowed Russia to take the big gamble that it did. That's why this war happened. And if the United States doesn't step up and fight for these liberal values, it is a slippery slope. This is, some people can tell you this is a Spanish civil war. The small but important.

Yeah, great analogy. Right? Where everybody watches, China watches, everybody watches and learns. That's one. The more irate ones will tell you, this is Munich. In 1938, where Chamberlain went and made a deal with Hitler. That's exactly what we should not do, Michael McFal, who, by the way, was a former ambassador to Moscow and knows Vladimir Putin that has dealt with him.

This is exactly what we should not do. This is the moment to resist. And oh, by the way, worrying about escalation and spreading in this becoming a wider war, be damned. Don't worry about that. Not so, says John Schimer and Stephen Walt. The risk of escalation is very real. The biggest losers will be Ukrainians if this war spins out of control.

So great to have these high-minded principles, but watch yourself and don't talk about weakening Russia forever. That is an incitement to escalation. That's where I hope the debaters join the fight. Wow, Janice. Thank you so much for just giving us a tease of what the key arguments. And you can just see, among members, just how important it is to have this type of extended conversation not a five-minute cable interview but a hour and a half debate with four big thinkers

and janice right in the middle to help guide us to some new understandings and hopefully a renewed appreciation of what's at stake in this conflict just add one comment because the monk debates have always been terrific but this one i think um is so important it is one of the defining moments this war. Everybody in the world is watching this war and drawing lessons from this war. It likely, it has changed our world going forward and it will shape the world that we will live in for sure for the next decade. So how important is it to really argue out the meaning and the significance of this war in a civil but really smart discussion? Yeah, that's a victory. for everyone. So I just want to remind listeners that if you have a young person in your life,

25 or under, they can grab a $10 ticket to this debate on May 12th at Roy Thompson Hall in downtown Toronto, 7 p.m. kickoff. Simply go to the Roy Thompson Hall box office, Google Roy Thompson Hall, and you will enter the promo code MD, M as in Monk, D is in debate, 10. And that's going to get to you that $10 ticket. There are a couple remaining tickets that not meant many left for general audience participation. You can grab those at the same box office, Roy Thompson Hall, online. All ticket proceeds will be donated to the Canadian Red Cross's Ukraine Relief Fund. So our goal here is to raise tens of thousands of dollars for Ukraine relief through this debate. Janice, I had promised that we we're going to talk about this crazy week in central bank land and markets, but you know what?

We run up against the clock, and I want to do that topic justice. I'm going to have a discussion that meets, I think, all of our curiosity about what the heck is going to happen next? Are we headed towards a recession? So with your permission, can I punt that till next week? And we'll see how much further the NASDAQ will have fallen. These are jittery times we are living in. Boy, these are jittery times.

Yeah, housing off, stock markets down, inflation soaring, geopolitical instability like a few of us have seen. It all, I don't know, Janice, it eerily seems like the 1970s all over again. It does, it does. But made worse by the digital world we're living in because it's all amped up. It's all speed. it up so much more than it was in the 1970s. Yeah. So again, just a final appeal here to listeners, you know, let's put down the devices just for one evening, May 12th. Let's gather together, have a conversation that's not on a screen. Wow, wouldn't that be nice after two and a half

years? Let's all go to the Monk debate on the Ukraine War at Roy Thompson Hall, May 12, 7 p.m. information at wwww monkdebates.com or the Roy Thompson Hall box office. Janice, thank you so much for this conversation this week. And we'll have a special edition of this pod next Friday, summarizing the debate and everything that happens. So we're really looking forward to spending some time with you in person over the next seven days. Have a good week. Bye, bye.

Thank you for listening to the Monkney. members-only podcast with Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs, and myself, Rudyard Griffiths, your moderator. As always, we'd love your feedback on these monk member podcasts. What are the questions or topics you think we should be covering? Let us know how we're doing. Please send us an email to membership at monkdebates.com. Thank you for being part of our community and helping us restore the art of public debate, one conversation. at a time.