The Munk Debates Podcast - Turbine Politics – News Sources

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

Munk Members Podcast provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the 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 Europe’s looming energy crisis and how the debate over Canada’s return of a critical piece of machinery for Russia’s gas pipelines into Europe has exposed new and fast-evolving risks related to the Ukraine War. What should the West’s strategy be to counter the Kremlin’s increasing weaponization of energy resources? In the second half of the program, Janice and Rudyard discuss the news sources they are turning towards to try and understand current events. Both recommend their top picks for news sources outside the mainstream which can help broaden our perspectives and enrich our conversations about fast-changing international and domestic politics. 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.   Janice's Picks: The New York Times The Globe And Mail The Financial Times The Hub Canada Persuasion   Rudyard's Picks: Bloomberg TASS The Global Times The Hub Canada The Logic MediumBecome 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.wmunkdebates.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. Reddier-Grifis here, your host and moderator. this, the monk members only podcast. This is our weekly program where we dig into the big issues and ideas in the news, hopefully leaving you with some original analysis and insights.

We do this each and every week with Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs, an international acclaimed author and scholar Janice. Great to be in dialogue with you in the dog days of summer. The thermostats are plunging as we seek out air conditioning and the temperatures outside are soaring, it finally feels like summer has come to Canada. But no dog days because that would mean this is going to end in the foreseeable future. We don't even want to talk about that. Summer is starting.

Yeah, and it does feel like, you know, whether it's inflation, Europe, unfortunately, the war in Ukraine, the news cycle just has not let up. this year. It really is remarkable. And that's where I want to begin with you, Janice. I want to try to build on some positive feedback. Thank you, everybody, for the emails of last week's show, where we tried to kind of purposely go a bit bigger picture with you, play a little three-dimensional chess when it came to trying to understand Canada's summer of discontent on health care, your Rogers wireless connectivity and a whole bunch of other issues. I want to kind of extend that approach to a discussion about Europe. And instead of approaching it in the usual way, I think the

media has covered it, which is the kind of struggles of European governments to adjust to inflation and rising energy costs, I'm going to bring it back to Canada. And what we might characterize as kind of bizarrely as turbine politics, Canada has now been thrust into the center of I want you to unpack this for us, a really urgent crisis that Europe is facing that is about energy, it's about their economy, and it's about some predictions, Janice, of a potentially really, really difficult fall and winter coming up for the 500 million plus citizens of the Eurozone. Let's just set the scene here for the story. Who would think that we would be at the center of a story about a turn?

turbine. The turbine is apparently, the Russians say, apparently. They really need this turbine back. It had been sent to Montreal to be repaired with sitting in a warehouse, sanctioned, could not send it back, or we would have violated the sanctions law. And then that pressure starts to man on that gaj in the turbine. And back comes to Canada, a message from Germany, look, could you please return that turbine to Russia? Because the Russians have played one of the most skillful games of coercive diplomacy. They have sent just enough gas to Europe to allow the Europe

to continue supplying your markets, but not enough to stockpile it. And Europeans are fully aware if they do not stockpile some gas for the fall in the winter when it gets colder, you will have Europeans shivering in their homes spread. We've not had that since World War II and the aftermath of World War II, frankly. It would be a political catastrophe for the Europeans. So here is Canada in the horns of a dilemma, give it back or not. So, Jess, what's your view on this? Because again, this is a turbine for the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.

So just a reminder, Nord Stream 2 is going nowhere. This was the new pipeline that was built just before the outbreak of the war. But this is the existing big conduit artery of natural gas into Europe, Germany in particular. It powers, as you say, not only home heating, but a lot of Germany's manufacturers, their factories run on natural gas coming from Russia. So what should Canada do here? Because Germany is an ally, you know, a NATO, a fellow NATO member. I mean, do you just have to do what your allies want you to do?

Or is it a bit hypocritical for Canada here to say, okay, you know, we're, you know, hand in glove with Zelensky, or complete solidarity with the Ukrainian people. Zelensky is saying to Canada, do not return this turbine. You are aiding the Russians. You are fueling, literally, financially their war machine by allowing this pipeline to reopen. What's your take on it? First take, buddured, I am very glad I am not in the cabinet and have to make that decision. So let's just enjoy the fact that we don't have personal accountability for the

these kinds of really tough calls. This is a tough one. I don't think Canada really had much of choice. We had to return the turbine. And that is a very contentious view to take. And there'll be hearings, by the way, this week in Parliament, by a committee led by the opposition parties that want to rake the government over the calls on this.

So why did I say we had no choice but to return it? This is all about short-term, this is long-term thinking in support of Ukraine. In order for Canada and Europe and the United States to stay in the game and support Ukraine over the long term, this coalition has to stay together. If it cracks and Germany is a linchpin in that coalition, this is not some small minor partner, Germany is absolutely, key. If the pressure builds on Germany, and that's exactly what the Russians know, if the pressure builds and the German public opinion cracks or the German government cracks, game over, frankly, for the coalition and game over for Ukraine.

But Janice, is there another way to look at this, which is, you know, we could have said to the Germans, you know, we're not returning this. We are standing with Zelensky here. There are sanctions. You know, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. We can't pick and choose here. The Germans have an opportunity that they have politically, because of their coalition government and the power of the Green Party in that coalition, they have bizarrely decided not to restart their nuclear power plants. They have multiple plants that have huge megawatt electricity capacity. and for a reason of ideology and therefore choice, Germany has, again, you know, staring at safe, secure, reliable energy source in the form of, you know, uranium that they can source from all kinds of countries other than Russia, including Canada.

They have decided not to go that route and again to increase their dependency on Putin, as you can see, who you just said is brilliantly toying with them. I just don't understand this, Janice. Can you explain to me why the Germans are not diversifying their energy inputs immediately by restarting their large-scale nuclear power generation capacity? I think it is a terrible decision by Germany. It starts with Angela Merkel, who shut them down after the explosion in the Japanese nuclear plant. She was a very important. She was a very important. completely spoofed. I think it goes down as one of the worst decisions that she made, frankly. And when we look back, we will see Angela Merkel as the architect of this extraordinary

dependence that Germany has on Russia for gas. Never mind. Well, it is the gas supply that is so important. That is not going to help them tomorrow, Richard. You know that to restart those plans is it's not a turnaround on a dime kind of problem. It will not get them through a cold fall and an early winter. So you are right that the pressure is coming from the Green Party. It is coming from the Foreign Minister who's a member of the Green Party. And she was the one who most strongly said to the Canadian government, you give that to her mind back or we will crack under pressure. It's so bizarre, isn't it? The greeds are basically saying, let's not turn on nuclear, which is, you know, pretty much zero carbon. Yes, there's some life cycle issues around the construction of the plants and the storage of the waste.

I get it, Fukushima, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, you know, there's a history here, but the technology has improved. Yep. So they're actually going to increase Germany's greenhouse gas emissions by importing large amounts of new natural gas that they are sourcing other, or elsewhere from the United States and Canada, and then remain reliant on Russian natural gas. Again, less carbon intensive than crude oil, but still a source of greenhouse gas emissions. It just seems like, I don't know, magical thinking, a kind of bizarre adherence to ideology over common sense.

You know, Canada cannot influence Germany's energy policy. Just cannot. We don't. We don't. We have, by the way, if we could, we could choose not to bring, not to give them the turbine back. But, you know, let me put it this way. We can't positively influence them. If we were actually able to supply them when some gas over the Atlantic, that would be a different story. But we are actually not in that position to meet any demand for increased supply. So what's the problem for Canada, frankly? Keep the coalition together on Ukraine or not? So it was actually stunning to me that the Ukrainian-Canadian Congress came out, la basted the prime minister, outwashed by the fact this turbine went back,

when in fact the goal here is don't shatter this coalition in the short term, because for all the reasons you and I have just said, Germany is the weak link here. It's astonishing, but it is. It's the weak link. But what if, you know, what if the Zelensky government is right that, you know, Putin, while he's reduced capacity to 30%, as you say, beautifully calibrating to allow enough gas to be sold because the price of that gas due to the war has gone up eight or ninefold.

So he's selling one third the capacity of the pipeline that he used to sell, but he's actually generating in terms of total revenues more than before the war. So this is just let's stop there. Let's just stop there for a moment because those are astonishing numbers. Don't we have to ask ourselves, have sanctions worked the way the designers of sanctions thought this was going to work? You know, sanctioning Russian oil and then gas as we move along has inflated the price of these commodities.

It has allowed the Russians to sell less for more. do we have to go back to the drawing boards and say, hey, maybe this kind of heavy hammer on a crucial commodity is really not the way to go. And we learn something from this? Because frankly, this is not a good story, the one you just told. It's not. Because, you know, the Zelensky government, the Canadian and Ukrainian Congress, this is the war machine. This is what's funding Putin's ability to convince his people and keep his population on side in

terms of the war effort because, you know, there are pensions that need to be paid as small as meager as they are to Russians that the government, you know, relies on to, in a sense, have the tacit support for this war. So, you know, I think Zelensky has an argument. There could be a more, look, if you're in for a pound, you're in for a penny. And if you really, as you say, we've implemented these crushing sanctions. So why stop halfway? Why not say, okay, We're going to shut it all off. We're going to restart our nuclear program. Yes, it's going to be a challenging fall and winter.

But the alternative is a compromise that will do nothing to slow the war effort. And maybe as an indication of this, Janice, this week, Putin's foreign minister Lavarov saying somewhat ominously that Russia's war aims now extend outside of the Dombas region, that they have specific strategic objectives in the south. of Ukraine to close off the entirety of the Zelensky-led Western-oriented government in Kiev from the Black Sea and to open up a land bridge not only to Crimea, but to their, I don't know what you call it, satellite statelet, Transnistia. In Moldova. On the border of Moldova. Yeah.

Look, if you actually look at how this turbine, the politics of turbines. played out on the ground. It is really frustrating. The Canadian government takes the hit pressed by the Germans and we have a fantastic German ambassador to Canada. I know her well. She's, I think,

you know, at the very top of the diplomatic coroner when she came out this week and said, oh no, no, no, no, no. We didn't threaten the Canadian government. They did. The tone was close to apocalyptic, frankly. The pressure

on Canada. So where are we here? The Russians, the turbine is in Germany, Russians haven't taken a back. Apparently, it wasn't all that critical to Nord Stream 1. They're in a position now. They've got their hand on the spigot. They have tremendous capacity to coerce, as you say. They just dial it down a little bit. The pressure builds up, and we haven't seen anything yet, Reddard, wait till October and November when the weather gets colder. I can't help but look at that and worry. And so sending the turbine back, no impact, frankly, none. And then marry that with this newly aggressive state that came out of Moscow this week,

which says, really what we want to do is leave a rump state of Ukraine. Kiev, Leviv, to the West, but a very small, isolated, rump state. And functionally, they said, you haven't seen anything yet. Wait till we get going. You really get a sense of the grip that Russia has, big chunks of Europe. It is a worrying story from beginning to end, frankly. I mean it's maybe something out of a ludlow novel, but you think why wouldn't Zelensky and his intelligence services, you know, send commando teams to try to blow up the pipeline in Europe and force the issue. You know what? If the Europeans are going to sit here and do truck and trade and send hundreds of millions of euros into Putin's war machine as our country, Ukraine, is dismembered. You know what? The gloves are off. You know, thanks guys. Thanks for the weapons. Thanks for you know, the good words, but at the end of the day, you're leaving us to the bear.

And the bear, the Russian bear is savaging our country. It's savaging our best and brightest. It is, this is a dangerous existential war for Ukraine. And I'm very sympathetic to the pressure that they've applied to the Canadian government to say, you know, what, you've got to walk the talk. I put it this way, Richard, when, you know, just the image that you paint to send some commando teams in. And I just, I shuddered in horror as you were saying it. I wish our listeners could have seen my face as you were talking there. Look, Ukraine absolutely needs advanced weaponry,

so-called defense weaponry that's coming from the United States and Britain and the UK, which is going through yet another change in government. And we don't have, we have a government in Germany that we've just talked about. Italy has resumed normal Italian behavior the last 18 months under Draghi. We're a wonderful exception, but we're back to a government every nine months. So if the coalition, and really it's Europe

and the United States and Canada, that's what it is, if they can't continue to supply advanced weaponry to the Ukrainian, say they will really be savaged by the Russian bear. And you know, Western stocks are running down. You're hearing conversations. You know, we depleted our stocks, which is astonishing. It shows you how low the stocks were.

Yeah, because nobody ever thought there was going to be a war, a land war again in Europe. So I listened in on a conversation where Americans were talking about high mars, which are listeners have read about, highly, highly mold. advanced rocket systems, which have been sent to Ukraine in the single digits. And Ukrainians are asking for hundreds. And this American turns to me, said, we don't have them. We don't have them in anything like that. So Zelensky has a political problem here.

He manages his relationships with the European allies and pushes, but only pushes up to a point because he cannot threaten that flow of weapon. So I think your options off the table, Richard. Still make a good spy novel or a Netflix documentary. Just final question, Jen, before we go to break. It's clear what Putin's going to do here, isn't it, that he's not allowing them to stockpile. And then come October, he's going to drop the boom on them, right? He's not going to increase capacity beyond what it is currently.

and that will require, require all these governments to engage in acute rationing to try to keep their economies going, which means factories operating, which means European citizens, voters are going to have gas shutoffs. I don't know. Like, you know, we're going to flow gas to your apartments between midnight and 6, 6 a.m. and then it's cut off for the rest of the day. I mean, Europe sees this coming. We see this coming. So how do we anticipate what he's going to do? And is there, frankly, any way to respond to it in the months that are left between now and, you know, falling temperatures across the northern hemisphere? That's clear the strategy. That's exactly how Putin is trying to break the will of Europeans. Now, let's just understand the worst scenario here is 15% reduction

in gas consumption. So let's flip your. numbers here. It's not that the gas, you're going to get gas between 12 and 6 at night. That would be 75%. It's between 12 and 3 in the morning, you won't get gas. And that's, in fact, this is much more livable than the apocalyptic visions that the German government. I mean, the I EA came out, the international energy associations came in the last 25 hours and said, you know, cuts up or 20% are going to be required. And I think it's to understand just, factories have to run 24-7. You cannot, if you start shutting down factories for portions of the day, you're going to have supply chain chaos. You're going to have another inflationary factor beyond the rising energy costs. You can imagine what

natural gas is going to cost if supplies are only at 30, 40 percent of historical norms going into a winter. I don't know. I think this is pretty apocalyptic. And I'm just surprised that all of us, we're kind of sleepwalking towards the autumn and winter. And there seems, just maybe there's very little to do other than, you know, they should have started, restarted the nuclear power plants, you know, two, three months ago to have some hope of a power supply coming on. Because at this point, Janice, you know, it looks like we're just, we're headed towards, an energy reckoning in Europe of a kind, as you say, that we haven't seen since the Second World War. Yeah. You know, that explains, by the way, why Joe Biden went to Saudi Arabia.

The story we just told, that is why he, despite all the criticism that he got for going, that explains why he went to Saudi Arabia. So there's some hope that a little more will trickle into Europe, but not a lot. And I don't think so much the picture. people shivering in their homes all night is the right one. I think that's too apocalyptic. But where I completely agree with you, we have central banks all over Europe and North America raising rates to bring inflation under control. And then just think about a fall in which the price of energy goes up.

That is one of the biggest drivers here. And some cut back in production happens. just described Rudyard where we get one more round of even smaller supply shocks feeding into the system. That does not sound like we're going to have happy holidays in December. So everybody should enjoy the dog days of summer. This is not a good story that we're talking about. And again, a big step back strategically. You can't make yourself vulnerable, which is what the Germans did And that's why I go back to Angla Merkel. Yeah, no.

You cannot make yourself vulnerable to a supplier. And she did it because she was convinced that you could do business with Russia. That was her argument. She was wrong. Yeah, it's going to be history may have a hard verdict when it comes to ultimately to Angla Merkel's chancellorship. Janice, let's take a break. And when we come back on the other side, we're going to talk about information and news

sources. Where are you gathering your information? Who do you trust? Who do you like these days? And maybe more importantly, what news and information sources are kind of disappointing us? We're going to try to provide listeners with some places maybe to go, some places to check out, to kind of expand all the inputs that we're getting. So hopefully we're more informed, more fact-based, making better decisions.

Back 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.