The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Members-Only Pod: Season 2, Episode 9

Episode Date: February 25, 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 episode of the Munk Member's podcast features a one-on-one interview between Janice Gross Stein and the former U.S. Supreme Allied Commander for Europe and NATO, James Stavridis. Janice and James discuss the latest developments in the war, the respective strategies of the Russian and Ukrainian militaries, the posture of NATO forces in Europe and the threat of cyber attacks by Russia on the United States. Their conversation was recorded in front of a live audience in Toronto, Canada on Thursday, February 24. James Stavridis participated in discussion remotely via video link. 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, our regular Friday Monk members-only podcast. We're going to do something a little bit different this week. Historic events unfolding in Ukraine, the first major war, ground invasion, on the continent since World War II.

To mark this exceptional event and to hopefully provide you with some new analysis and insights into this fast-paced global crisis. It's our pleasure to bring to you right now an exclusive interview that Janet's a lot of Gross Stein, my co-host on this program and the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs conducted just last night with Admiral James Stravetus, the U.S. Supreme Allied Commander for NATO in Europe from 2009 to 2013. Admiral Stravetus is the past dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts. It currently serves as the vice chair of Global Affairs at the Carlisle Group. He is a PhD in international relations and has published 11 books, including the recent bestseller,

a fictionalization of a possible war between the United States and China over Taiwan called the Next World War, 2034. So what you'll hear next is Janice's voice opening up her conversation with Admiral James Trevetus. I hope you enjoy this special edition of the Month Members Only podcast. Thank you and welcome to you, Admiral. It is really a special treat for all of us to have you with us tonight. I think everybody in this room would say this was an awful, awful day. Just tragic day.

So let's start off, Admiral. Help us understand what Putin's strategy is. Let's get above the battlefield for a moment and walk us through what his strategy is. What's his endgame here? To understand what's going on, you have to kind of go from the inside out. And what I mean by that is you need to begin with Vladimir Putin, the man, the biography. You need to understand his background. He is an angry, bitter, deadender who was a lieutenant colonel,

in the KGB during the Cold War, stationed in East Germany. The East Germans finally got their neck out from under the boot of the Russians. That annoyed him. He watched the collapse of the Soviet Union that enraged him. And he has carried that bitterness, that anger, that truly, deeply, madly felt hatred, in particular for my nation, for the United States of America, but also for NATO, for all of us, because he felt that was the, I'm quoting here, the greatest tragedy of the 20th century. Oh, really, a century in which we saw 80 million people killed in the

First and Second World War, a Holocaust, too many atrocities to describe. But the worst thing that happened was the end of this evil empire. I don't think so. But that's his mindset. And he has spent his life, clawing his way to the top of the greasy pole of Russia, and to find himself in a position where he can, in his view, reconstitute what can be done of that shattered Soviet Union. So the movement on Ukraine is about that strategy, but in many ways it's about Vladimir Putin solving his own demons. And you've seen this again and again. And as we all know, this isn't the first time or the second time we've seen this playbook. Arguably, it's the fifth time, if you kind of count Moldova in Kazakhstan most recently, but certainly 2008 in Georgia, 2014, first bite of the

apple in Ukraine, and now, of course, the third time in Ukraine. So you start with Vladimir Putin, his insecurities, his needs. Number two, regional. He's trying to, again, reconstitute what he can of the former Soviet Union. Thank God, in my view, the nations of Eastern Europe, the Warsaw Pact, sought to join NATO and thank God we let them into NATO. But a few were left out of the fold, including Ukraine. But he's also putting these pressures on Ukraine, on Moldova, on Georgia, on Armenia, on Kazakhstan, and the rest of Central Asia. So there's a regional audience and strategy at work. And third and finally, Janice, he seeks to impress and to strut on the global stage.

And he is really playing in many ways to President Xi. And he wants to create this idea in the mind of President Xi that Russia is the consummate partner for China. I think it's a flawed strategy. And at the end of the day, Vladimir Putin ought to be very careful what he asks for in terms of a partnership with China, because China looks north at Russia and sees Siberia, this vast, empty space full of gold, diamonds, water, rare earths, arable lands, oil and gas above all. China looks at that like my dog looks at a rib-eyed steak. It looks really good. Putin's on his way to being the junior partner in that arrangement. That is a very motivations at work here. This is a very, very grim picture that you are painting

of great power politics back with a vengeance and great power rival. and we're coming to China because you wrote this thriller that I want to talk to about. But before we go there, how far does Putin go now? What's the plan for Ukraine in this particular invasion that started yesterday? A good way to approach anything when you're dealing with an opponent is to stop and listen to what they're actually telling you. We put up with two to three months of dead lies. I'm not going to invade Ukraine. I have no territorial ambitions.

This is all Western hysteria. NATO is whipping up these fears. The lying lasted for two to three months, kind of got through the Olympics. By the way, congratulations to your women's hockey team. But through the Olympics, you knew I had to say that. through the Olympics in obeisance to President G. And then, and then the lies stopped. And we saw the true Vladimir Putin over the last 72 hours.

He gave two borderline deranged speeches, laid out a huge pattern of lies about the relationship between Ukraine and Russia, and then invaded. And he has told us his objective. is going to demilitarize Ukraine. That means kill many Ukrainian military, destroy their command and control, destroy all their aircraft, destroy all their tanks, destroy their ships such as they are. He's going to defang Ukraine completely. Number two, he's going to affect a regime change. How is that going to find and kill? How does that unfold? Or put on a show trial, President Zelensky. And he is going to then,

put in a puppet government, think repeat of Yanukovych, who got run out of town on a rail in the May Don and the Orange Revolution. There'll be a new Yanukovych. It might even be Yanukovych, who will be the puppet. Putin will be the puppet master, and he will then seek to completely dominate Ukraine. I think it's a losing strategy, but clearly his objective is 100% control of Ukraine, probably through a puppet government. You know, for everybody in the room, President Yanukovych was the pro-Russian president that was expelled in 2014, which begins this latest version. Admiral, we have two students in the room from the Monk School who are from Ukraine.

One from they're here with us tonight. One is from Odessa. one is from Kiev, and one of their families has already left for Poland. Talk to us about Ukraine's strategy. I saw empty highways this morning with no IDs on them. What's Ukraine's strategy? Is it to let the Russian Army roll forward, pull back to the forests, and launch a campaign of resistance from the forests and the cities?

Step one will be to fight with what they have. And we have, we the West, have put a moderate amount of weapons. I wish we had started earlier and brought more capability to the Ukrainian armed forces to attack the Russians. But they will fight with what they have. And President Zelensky, I thought in a superb speech, in contrast, to the speech of Vladimir Putin, President Zelensky said, when you come for us, you will see our faces. We will fight you.

You will not see our backs. And I think the Ukrainians will fight. They're tough. They are Slavic people. They have their own nationality, language. They have their own culture and history. Ukrainian soldiers fought under my command in Afghanistan, and they are brave and true-hearted.

They will fight. However, the Russians have a great deal more technology, more combat power. And I think, unfortunately, there is a strong chance because overall Ukraine will not have air superiority. And Russia will. And that is a key factor on a moderate battlefield. I think the chances are the Ukrainian military will not succeed in fully resisting or turning back. the Russians. Therefore, your point, Janice, what's next? I think the Zelensky government initially will go to Levev in the far west of Ukraine, establish its seat of government there, hope that the

distance between the Russian advance in Leviv is in some way sufficient for them to reconstitute their own armed forces and block Russia. The further Russia goes into Ukraine, the further west the air force to go, the longer their supply lines come, the more vulnerable those are to insurgencies, the more they will be challenged, the longer those Russian troops are dragged away from their home bases, the harder it is to sustain that campaign. So I think the Zelensky government, if it has not already done so, will be moving to LeViv. in the far west. And then if the Russians seek to come all the way to that border, I think they will then simply step across the border, the Zelensky government into Poland.

There are U.S. troops there. There are Polish troops there. Believe me, Vladimir Putin will not cross a NATO border in anger. It would be a massive military mistake. He's about to make a massive economic mistake. Crossing a NATO border and anger would bring the full military force of this alliance against him. So I think the Zelensky government will be well positioned, go to Leviv, and if they have to simply come across the border, government in exile, the polls will welcome that. The rest of the alliance will support it. And then, like Charles de Gaul in the Second World War, you create kind of a free Ukraine government. The West will fund the ambassadors,

fund the embassies, fund the seat at the United Nations, we'll do everything to continue to support it. And I think at that point, that's when Vladimir Putin's problems really begin. Admiral, let me ask you about two other dimensions of this war before we talk about NATO. Let's talk first about the war. or at sea, the Ukrainian Navy, the Russian Navy,

this is something that you know intimately. How will that play out what happens to the Russian capacity to export by sea? And then just briefly, cyber. How worried should all NATO members be, including Canada, that there will be retaliatory cyber attacks for the sanctions that we join with other NATO members in announcing today?

Yeah, these are very smart questions. So much of the analysis is focused on the land war, and that's appropriate and understandable. There's a lot of, I would say in my trade, flash bang going on ashore, but it's the electrons and it's the sea that I'm watching, particularly on the sea. This is where Russia dominates completely.

the Ukrainian Navy, much of which was already taken in 2014, has never seriously been reconstituted. NATO has the Turkish Navy, the Romanian Navy, the Bulgarian Navy, and the U.S. Navy often deploys to the Blackfeet, as does the French Navy and the British Navy, among others. So there's a significant NATO presence in and around, but are immediately around Ukraine. in that 10 to 50 kilometer range off the coast, those are Russian waters at this point. And frankly, this is a big part of Vladimir Putin's motivation because the Black Sea itself is full of hydrocarbons and is crucial in terms of Russian access to the eastern Mediterranean. So watch for that Black Sea fleet of Russia to continue to dominate those waters to the South.

to blockade this portion. Now, again, Ukraine can still continue to get logistics and supplies from the west through its western borders, but from the sea, not going to happen. And to your student there in Odessa, you're going to see a lot of Russian warship activity in those waters. So that's a zone that Russia will be quite dominant in, and they will use it effectively to blockade Ukraine from the sea. And if the Russian offensive is slowed or stopped in central Ukraine, look for Russia to use an amphibious assault to put troops ashore behind the lines of the Ukrainians.

So unfortunately, that zone I would have to cede to Russia, and they have a lot of options to use it. cyber. Here, I've been surprised. The assault, as I mentioned, was kind of a textbook, take out the air control, create the refugee streams, knock down the command and control, send the shock troops in. But what's missing thus far has been a cyber attack, particularly on the electric grid. This is something Putin has the capability to really switch off. He has not done that. I think he doesn't want to show that to the West, show that technical capability. We would learn a lot on our side of the cyber divide watching. And then secondly, it's a human rights violation, a pretty clear one that I think he is less likely to conduct

unless he absolutely has to. So cyber for the moment, the frame is frozen. you'll see some minor DDoS attacks, but Putin is holding those cyber cards back at the moment. Now, Janice, here's what's important. Once those sanctions go into effect, Putin will be consolidating control over Ukraine at this point, perhaps. We'll see. But let's assume for the moment that he is, then the massive sanctions hit. He's out of the SWIFT system.

He's out of the banking sector. He's out of hydrocarbons. There are secondary sanctions imposed across the board by U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan, Australia. He feels the walls closing in economically. That's the point when I think he will be very tempted to use cyber to conduct horizontal escalation. And where will those attacks go? I think Canada probably less so simply because you're not, if you will, the face of the alliance. I think they will come to the United States, probably to the United Kingdom.

Those would be the two sort of obvious targets. Britain, because of its role within the continental NATO structure, United States, for all the reasons we normally end up as the target. sometimes our fault, sometimes the fault of our opponents. And so look for him to come at, particularly UK and U.S., this is probably two to four weeks from now, and how will he do it? I think it is less likely that he will go after the financial sectors of U.K., U.S., because they're very well defended.

I think more likely he will go after consumer. food chain, gasoline sales, maybe refineries. What he will want to do is make the Biden administration look weak and antagonize voters and try and create divisions here in the United States. So he'll go after popular consumer food chain, things that impact Americans in very real and present ways. Again, I think it's unlikely he'll go directly at Canada, but as is so often the case, your nation tends to get scooped up due to behavior to your South.

I know what you're talking about here. I think it's worth being concerned about. 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.