The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Members-Only Pod: Season 2, Episode 4

Episode Date: January 28, 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 two stories in the news. First, what should we be making of the last week of frenetic negotiations over the fate and future of Ukraine and Russia's security demands in Eastern Europe? Was meaningful progress made in defusing the risk of an invasion? Or, are we closer to an outbreak of hostilities that we realize? Second, the convoy of truckers descending on Ottawa is making international news. Is this a sign that populism is alive and well in Canada after all? And why are our political leaders of all stripes ramping up the rhetoric on the convoy, vaccine mandates and risk of violence at a moment when calmer heads and hearts are clearly needed? 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. Monkdebates.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 of these, the regular Friday Monk members only podcast. This is the program where we dig into the big ideas and issues shaping our world, hopefully leaving you with some new analysis and insight on the

week that was and the issues and trends you might want to keep an eye on for the week to come. As our guest, our guide, our Sherpa to this incredible moment we're all living through. We are so fortunate to have on this program each and every week. Janice Gross. Stein. She's the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs, internationally renowned scholar and author. Janice, an action-packed week for us to unpack. Absolutely. Gripping, gripping tension in Eastern Europe right now, to a level of that you and I have Nazi in 40 years.

So that's where, obviously, I want to start with you. You're a scholar of international. relations, you've been following great power politics for a generation or more. What happened this week? And where do you think we're ending the week? I'm, again, increasingly confused. And so let me just unpack my confusion for you and maybe you can try to solve it for me.

You know, on one hand, we have Putin, you know, saying it towards the end of the week, having received the United States as response to its, in a sense, demands. about a withdrawal from NATO from the former Eastern Bloc, particularly a request from NATO never to allow Ukraine to join the alliance. A word out of Moscow, you haven't met our demands. This is not progress. But we consider diplomacy important and we think there are the grounds for continuing conversation. Obeit, good. Okay, I get that.

They want more. They're not willing to, you know, invade or fold yet. They're playing out the string. But this is where I get confused. It's on the NATO or allied side. On one hand, you have the Biden administration seeming to be increasingly, I don't know, can I use this word hysterical? I don't know.

You have this sense of imminent danger coming from the Biden administration leaks that there was a readout of a call between Biden and Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, indicating that Biden was warning him that Kiev could fall, that, you know, they should have evacuation plans in place. And then on the other side of the so-called alliance, you have Germany and France sitting down calmly for eight hours this week with Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, to have an in-depth discussion, these so-called news. Normandy talks about the future of the Dombas region and eastern Ukraine. So are the Allies schizophrenic? Have I schizophrenic? Come on. Put a, put a, I don't square this circle for me if you

can. Let me sit back for a minute and put a big picture around this, Roger. Thank goodness for the Olympics. Let me start there. Okay. All right. And why do I say this? Because Vladimir Putin is scheduled to go to Beijing for the opening of the Olympics. And he is not going to mess up his partners, Olympics with a war. So part of what you're seeing is maneuvering. But in fact, everybody, every intelligence agency in the world is looking at the earliest start date for anything, which will be probably 10 days at the earliest after the Olympics start. the middle of February. So what you describe, Bridgett, is all the monitoring

and the maneuvering that's going on. But nobody expects any significant use of force before the middle of February. And that's why you're seeing all of this. Secondly, I did a fun and interesting thing that I want to share with our members. I'm running a tournament. And I've asked international security experts

around the world, put your reputation on the line, estimate the likelihood that the Russians will use ground forces. Now, what's coming back? And we're in our second week of this. And, you know, we often explain after the fact, that's different from how right were we before the fact. Well, what are you getting, Rudyard? Anywhere from 15% likelihood that's very low to 70% likelihood. very right. The confusion you're hearing, people make different assumptions here about what Vladimir Putin really wants. And that's why you're hearing this, you know, cacophony of voices and the confusing messages. Now, some of those people are feeding into different intelligence agencies in different parts of the world. So not surprising you're hearing all this disagreement.

Interesting. Now, where does this go from here? We know that Putin is the so-called decider-in-chief, that he's now, he has these proposals returned him from the United States. I guess he seems open to negotiating with multiple interloculars. So he has this conversation between Lavaev and Macron and the new chancellor of Germany. He's kind of, you know, jealously also guarding this direct mano-a-mano conversation with Joe Biden and the Americans. So let's first take a glass, half full perspective. Where could the potential solution come from? Because if I look at this constellation of opposing players and dynamics,

I don't know, I could see a path for Putin out of these Normandy talks, that he would get an agreement that the Dombas region is autonomous, that Ukraine is effectively federalized, that that region would then have, in a sense, a kind of constitutional veto of some sort, possibly on, you know, Ukraine's for future security path vis-a-vis NATO in the West and even joining Europe. There's the Finlandization, which is a, you know, you can explain to our listeners what that is, but it's a concept that has kind of worked in Finland vis-a-vis Russia, vis-a-vis the same types of dynamics and risks that Russia perceives opposed and facing off against the West.

So Finlandization means you learn to live very quietly next to Russia. You're a collaborative neighbor. You keep your independence, but you keep your distance. and that's essentially what Finland has done and it's given them 60 years, frankly, of peace next to their very, very big, powerful neighbor. And there's a strong argument for that for Ukraine because those eastern provinces

that you've just talked about contain an overwhelming majority of Russian-speaking Ukrainians. And their identity is multiple. It's not single. So yes, you pointed to one, obvious path towards solution. You allow these provinces to be autonomous. And what does that do? It gives them a veto inside Ukraine, which would prevent, functionally, Ukraine from joining NATO or the European Union, which is the bottom line for Putin. And he's talked about it for years.

And those talks are going on, by the way, between President Zelensky and Vladimir Putin's representative directly. He's put that kind of offer on the table. So secondly, Putin wants one other thing. He wants an end and he's talked about this. And this is an interesting one. Let's just spend a minute on it. Trump withdrew the United States in 2017 from a treaty that restricted the deployment of intermediate range missiles in Europe. He's had the And there was a lot of evidence the Russians were cheating. And so he withdrew in typical Trumpian fashion. But one of Putin's biggest worries is that the West will deploy,

even in the Baltic states, missiles that can reach Russia in seconds, as he puts it. And he talked about that and talked about that. This is an easy win for him if he wants it. The United States is happy to ban, to go back into that treaty, and to ban deployment of missiles, easy for them, Roger. They don't have any there. It's always easy to give up something you don't have. So we have really a two-week window in which we will test.

How much does Putin really want a way off at off rampant? And the reason I think there is grounds to do this seriously, it looks more and more like the explicit use of, force, not little green met, but the explicit use of force will be a disaster for Russia. The costs are mounting every day. Here's a great paradox, Reggie. Yeah, ramp up the tension. Yeah, threaten you coerce. And what has Putin accomplished? He's unified NATO, more or less, less leave out the Germans and the French. They're just doing what they always do, but all the smaller powers in NATO are unified. Biden is doing things that he, if you'd have asked him three

months ago, he and his team would never have thought of. There's considerable agreement on tough economic sanctions. So actually going ahead with a full-scale invasion, even of eastern Ukraine, will be very, very, very costly for Putin. So there's grounds to think he's going to take what he could get now, which is more than what he had, and that he will claim victory, which is what he needs to do. And by the way, Joe Biden will claim victory. I deterred Vladimir Putin. That's the cup half full argument. And we're going to test it out in real time over these next two weeks. So let's talk about the cup half empty. And that is some facts on the ground that we're seeing this week further forward deployment of of Russian forces in and around the borders of Ukraine.

We're also seeing, you know, messaging from the Russians, as we have throughout this, that this is about more than just Ukraine and Dombas. It's more than just about creating a buffer zone or in Russian, you know, probably view a buffer state in the form of the entire Ukraine. they have very publicly tied this to a realignment of the larger security environment in Europe. So they have up the ante. And that anti, interestingly, they haven't removed it. They haven't dialed back that talk.

They haven't in a sense, you know, just as a layperson looking at this, they haven't paved the way for an off-ramp. To the contrary, they seem to be doubling down on this rhetoric, on this view that the threat here is more than just Ukraine. The threat is NATO's forward deployment into a variety of former Eastern Bloc countries and a desire on Russia's part to have their security concerns taken seriously in those countries. and I guess a view that NATO troops should leave those nations, not likely, but probably beneath that a view that NATO should draw back weapons and ornaments at minimum, and, you know, there should be some more tough binding agreement on intermediate range weapons and where and how they are deployed.

So, you know, unpack that argument for us, Janice, because you put those dots together, and it seems to be, you know, a path, away a conduit towards war, towards a conflict, A where it's hard to de-escalate, and B, where the stakes are just, have become much bigger than when this whole thing started months ago.

So, Redyard, you're absolutely right here. and that's why we get some of our expert group saying a 60 to 70% likelihood of war. How would this scenario play itself out? Biden's weakness in Afghanistan. It starts there. Putin makes a judgment this is the moment to move. He's been unhappy for 12 years. There are NATO forces small but real in Lafay, Lithuania,

and Estonia. And by the way, Lithuania just last night asked for additional NATO forces because it's so alarmed by Russia's behavior. So that's when you get this self-driving cycle of escalation. Putin has made a judgment. The Chinese, the relationship with China and Russia much better. Biden is on the ropes, given his poor domestic standing at home. And the obvious lack of willingness of the United States to get involved in another war. Okay, this is the moment to reverse those losses that the then Soviet Union experienced, and he's going to go for it. There's no domestic opposition in Russia right now.

Navalny's in jail. And so you could tell both stories right now. That's really the problem. And because, and you've seen the change in Washington and the national security team in Washington, they have to hedge against the fact that he will go. And so they're lining up allies to impose tough sanctions. And by the way, will that royal oil and gas markets, will the price of gas go up if there are swift sanctions, which take the Russians out of the banking system,

you're going to, in fact, strengthen the relationship between Russia and China, who are already building, you know, alternative financial system that goes around the United States. So where there are big global consequences, and that's the story. This is much, much bigger than those two provinces in Ukraine. And all of that could unfold.

he's got the capability. That's the third thing that's important to recognize here. Putin has rebuilt that lumbering, creaky Russian army. It is now a modernized force. It moves. It has been able to integrate advanced precision weapons. It is not your grandmother's Russian army anymore. It's a credible story.

So, you know, I can imagine. are members listening to us, Roger, and we see this certainly among Canadian experts. Some are very much on one side of the argument. Putin's agreed. NATO should never have bumped up against his borders versus Putin has been, you know, inherently aggressive expansionist, been waiting for the moment, and the moment is now. And we stand up and be counted now, or we will only encourage further regression. This is, by the way, the classic story of the last 70, 80 years.

And we go back to one single incident in our modern history, Munich. What's the lesson that you draw? If you negotiate, I would say, and you find a diplomatic off-ramp to that, oh, my goodness, what a victory, right? somebody else would describe that as appeasement. It's the same behavior. It all depends on where you start from on this one. I mean, two quick comments.

I think, you know, Vladimir Putin's not a nice guy, but he's not Hitler. This is not a deeply irrational, frankly, insane leader with utterly bizarre ideas about, you know, Russian society. and its role in the world. This is a, yes, a nationalist, a xenophobe, somebody who has, you know, deep-help beliefs about Russian civilization and its need to be protected and its kind of role in the world in the 21st century. But there's a myth, there's a methodological madness to Putin that was missing. from the other great tyrants of the 20th century.

And my final comment before we go on to our next topic is, you know, think about inflation. Think about what we're all dealing with now. It's been a big story this week about central banks and how they're going to respond to what is not transitory anymore, it was increasingly persistent inflation. If you have a large great power conflict in the heart of Europe, that is a highly, inflationary event. Desstabilizing Roger Lutz, and that's why,

if we can find a diplomatic off-ramp for this, we should be looking very hard. We have not had a major ground war in Europe since the end of World War II. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, listeners, sobering conversation. Indeed, when we come back from this short break,

we're going to talk about truckers what is going on here in canada we've got convoys rolling we've got hot rhetoric across the political spectrum is this can i canada's populist moment surging uh as omicron hopefully wanes are we trading off in a sense a pandemic of viruses and pathogens for a pandemic of politics and ideology. We'll get into it 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.munkdebates.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.