Yesterday Fareed Zakaria was joined by David Milliband, Anne-Marie Slaughter and former diplomat, Kashore Mahbubani to discuss and attempt to answer the questions, in Zakaria's own terms, "What is the West's long game plan to secure peace in Ukraine and Europe?[And]What should it be?" I have included a link to the approx. 7 min. video up on the CNN's website, but have also selected excerpts from the discussion here. Note on names: AMS = Anne-Marie Slaughter; DM = David Milliband and Kishore Mahbubani. FZ is, of course, the host, Fareed Zakaria.
FZ: Anne-Marie, what should the long game be?
AMS: So the first part of that game has to be simply to stop the
fighting. We're going to see the complete destruction of eastern and
southern Ukraine. And if you look at what happened after 2014 when they
took over part of eastern Ukraine and Crimea, it can just go forever,
the fighting. So we have to stop the fighting.
Second, however,
we actually need a geopolitical configuration that is not Russia and
China, Europe and the United States, and the rest of the world. And if
you look at what happened with the human rights vote, you saw India,
Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Egypt, Indonesia all abstained. That is
not a good geopolitical configuration.
So the United States
actually wants not to isolate Russia and push it closer to China for the
long term. And then longest of all, the United States needs to think
about what is a European security architecture that makes Europe
actually whole and free and safe? I don't think we get there with Putin
in power. But Putin's not going to be in power forever and we actually
have to think about the next couple of decades where we can protect
Ukraine but Russia is once again integrated into Europe.
DM: I think Anne-Marie is absolutely right to herald or to point out that while the West is more united than it was before, the world is equally divided and the votes that she's referred to at the U.N. should be fundamental. I'm sure Kishore will come in on this. But from my point of view, the strategy has to be about more than a Europe whole and free, it has to be a world that has some rules to govern the way in which it's run.
FZ: Kishore, let's get to precisely this issue, why is it that, you
know, when people think about democracy versus autocracy, the problem
with that formulation, as David very well put it, is some of the world's
largest democracies are at best sitting on the fence? India, Indonesia,
Brazil, even Mexico. What do you think is going on from your
perspective?
KM: Well, I think, as you know, when Russia invaded Ukraine, most
of the world was horrified. It was terrible. And there was a great
global consensus against it. But now I share the concerns of Anne-Marie
and David that clearly the West, as you know, represents 12 percent of
the world's population, 88 percent lives outside the West.
And if the perception of the 88 percent has shifted in the last three
months at all, and what they see now is on the one hand, and I agree
with David, that the legal moral dimension here that Russia is wrong but
the rest of the world can also see that this is a geopolitical game
where the West is trying to weaken Russia and not really searching for
peace in Russia. And that's why the rest of the world saying, OK, if
that's going to be your game in Ukraine, if you want to weaken Russia,
you want to weaken Putin, that's your agenda, that's not our agenda.
Our
agenda is to create a better world of rules and predictability, and
that's what the rest of the world will want to see, some kind of a fair
idea of where are we going with all of these, you know, moves in
Ukraine? What's the destination?
ZM: But, Kishore, it's Putin who doesn't want to negotiate and until the Russians feel that they are forced to the negotiating table, you're not going to get a peace deal. Zelenskyy has from day one offered to negotiate and has offered major concessions publicly, like Ukrainian neutrality and no NATO. It is Putin who is not doing it because it appears he wants greater control over Ukraine. What do you do then?
MB: Well, you know, I was a diplomat for 33 years, Fareed, as you know. And in diplomacy it's not what people say publicly that is their position, it's what they're prepared to negotiate privately. And as you know, our good friend Henry Kissinger suggested a formula in 2013 in this "Washington Post" article* and I truly do believe that what Henry Kissinger proposed in 2014, of course it's got to be amended because we're in 2022, the basic outlines where Ukraine is free to choose its own destiny, free to join the European Union but not join NATO clearly and explicitly, and also work out some kind of compromise between the eastern and western sections of the country-- don't ban Russia from the country, for example. So there are ways and means of achieving a diplomatic settlement, and that's the tragedy of Ukraine. Because the outline of a settlement was given by Henry Kissinger 8 years ago.
ZF: David Miliband, you know, again, it feels to me like
Zelenskyy has proposed variations of what Kishore is talking about.
DM: I think you're right. Remember George Kennan said 50 or 60
years ago, Russia's tragedy is that it can only see Ukraine either as a
vassel or an enemy**. And what he said then is actually Russia's crime
today because what they've done is invade and they bring state. And the
challenge that you're laying down I think is absolutely right, the
Ukrainians are not the aggressors here.
The unspeakable scenes
that we're seeing in Mariupol that I fear are going to be repeated in
other parts of the east of the country, whether it's more besiegement to
come. What we have here is a classic scissors effect, where the greater
and greater misery within Ukraine is going to find ripple effects
around the world because remember the impact on food prices, the impact
on energy prices, the impact on -- at a time of a global debt crisis
that's looming for too many emerging economies. Those are forces that
have been unleashed by this invasion***.
But it's not an invasion
that has been precipitated by any actions on the part of the Ukrainians.
And that's why I come back down to this question, but the choice lies
in Moscow. If it insists on seeing a vassal or enemy next door in
Ukraine, it's a recipe for the kind of pulverization obliteration that's
going on at the moment.
FZ:Anne-Marie, the point David was making about the agency of the Ukrainian
people, they have a voice, they have a vote. Well, now you have the
Swedes and Finns saying they want to be part of NATO. Not for sure but
they seem to be moving along that track. What should NATO do in that
circumstance?
AMS: NATO should take its time above all.
There's a real opportunity here to think much more creatively about
European security architectures and Western security architectures that
do not simply expand NATO ever further to the Russian border, which
honestly, it's not at all clear that NATO will accept, that the American
people will accept; but more importantly you can have the United
States, Canada, Germany, Britain, with a guarantee, a security guarantee
for Finland and Sweden, for really the Nords.
You can think
about a security architecture that works but then allows, again, over
the course of decades for a far more flexible set of European security
architectures that eventually would include Russia. Russia is part of
Europe, right? Russia is part of Europe. If you think about Western
literature, music, art, math, all of that, that is the Russian people.
And
we're not going to have security in this century, nor are we going to
be able to work on the global problems that menace all of us unless we
can at least imagine a security architecture that includes Russia. This
moment of possibility expansion of NATO should be a trigger for
rethinking, not for simply, mildly expanding.
(The conversation then turns to the Marine Le Pen/Emmanuel Macron runoff that took place yesterday, and which Macron won).
****************************************************************************
Notes and Remarks:
* Kissinger's 2014 article on peace in Ukraine can be read here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/henry-kissinger-to-settle-the-ukraine-crisis-start-at-the-end/2014/03/05/46dad868-a496-11e3-8466-d34c451760b9_story.htm
**David Milliband here misquotes George Kennan, and takes the inexact quote out of its original context. As FAreed Zakaria writes of the original quote in a NYT article: "In 1944, having dinner with the Polish prime minister, who had received encouraging words of support from the Russians for the country’s independence, Kennan was sure that no matter what anyone said, the Poles would end up badly. “The jealous and intolerant eye of the Kremlin can distinguish, in the end, only vassals and enemies, and the neighbors of Russia, if they do not wish to be one, must reconcile themselves to being the other.”
The "jealous and intolerant eye of the Kremlin" Kennan was referring to is, of course, that of Joseph Stalin who then had an iron grip on the Soviet State, and had shown this "jealousy and intolerance" in the then-recent Molotov-Ribbontrop Pact Stalin made with Hitler. In that pact (later broken by Hitler thus plunging the USSR into the 2nd World War) the two tyrants agreed to maintain peaceful relations with one another. The treaty also contained a "secret protocol" that carved German and Soviet spheres of influence up across Eastern Europe including Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland and Bessarabia (where "Transnistria" in Moldova is today). Kennan's "jealous and intolerant eye... seeing only vassals and enemies" in its neighborhood had nothing to do with post-Soviet Russia. When asked in a PBS interview if he agreed with Henry Kissinger's assessment of Russians as being "by historical nature expansionist and imperialistic," Kennan said, "No. That's a dangerous formulation, and a dangerous way of thinking," adding that "our differences in the Cold War were with the Soviet regime" and not Russian "National Character" conceived in terms of an imperialistic stereotype. (see: https://www.scribd.com/audiobook/375659791/George-Kennan-At-A-Century-s-Ending )
It is not surprising that Milliband, a "third way" New Labour man and avid interventionist ala Tony Blair, would-- perhaps accidentally-- confuse Stalin's Kremlin of 1944 with Russia in the 20th and 21st centuries.
*** It is, of course, true that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has not only devastated the people and land of Ukraine, but as DM says, had an "impact on food prices [and] energy prices...at a time of a global debt crisis
that's looming for too many emerging economies." What he doesn't mention is the manner in which those impacts are greatly amplified by an unprecedented sanctions regime whose effects are shouldered disproportionately by the so-called "Global South"-- basically the poorer countries. The Biden Admin has responded to their reluctance to get on board with the sanctions with moralistic pressure and threats. In a speech just before the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Washington last week, Treasury Sec. Jessica Yellin warned all countries that any attempt to "undercut sanctions" would be met with "serious consequences." From the speech:
"Let me now say a few words to those countries that are currently sitting on the fence, perhaps seeing an opportunity to gain by preserving their relationship with Russia and backfilling the void left
by others. Such motivations are shortsighted,” she said at the Atlantic Council. “And let’s be clear, the unified coalition of sanctioning countries will not be indifferent to actions that undermine the sanctions we’ve put in place." https://www.wsj.com/articles/yellen-warns-nations-staying-neutral-in-russias-war-with-ukraine-11649879113?mod=saved_content
Press Sec. Jen Psaki added the following:
"In this moment where you have a dictator invading another country targeting civilians, you have to contemplate what side of history you want to be on. And that is true for any country around the world."(ibid)
What none of these people address is the unmet needs (e.g. food, energy and medical supplies) that sanctions disrupt in these already significantly impoverished nations (if you use, say GDP per capita as an indicator). Yes, the war itself is will cause, as Zelensky warns, a global food crisis with humanitarian effects if the fighting doesn't stop-- if Ukranians can't sow and reap. But the sanctions augment such problems greatly.
Just to take one of many examples-- one country in Africa, and not even the poorest one-- Egypt. Russia and Ukraine account for about 30% of the world's global wheat exports. Before the war, the 2 countries supplied more than 80% of Egypt's wheat needs, according to the USDA. Not only has the war made agriculture in Ukraine all but impossible, but the sanctions have disrupted supply chains by cutting off access to affordable wheat from the Black Sea. To ship most of these commodities, they have to pass through Odessa and other ports on the Black Sea that have been closed to commercial use since many European countries imposed sanctions on Russia over its invasion. In addition, the rise in oil prices caused by sanctions has driven shipping costs up. The inflation gets passed on to the people who want to buy bread in Egypt (and many other African countries that will are expected to undergo severe food shortages this summer). Zelensky has emphasized this consequence of the war (potential famines), but has not emphasized the role of sanctions in accentuating the problem. I understand why, and I understand the purpose of the sanctions regime. But the collateral damage of this economic warfare falls, as usual, disproportionately on the shoulders of poor nations rather than those like Switzerland, UK, Canada , Japan and the like, who at least have a better chance of braving the coming storm of austerity due to sanctions.
This is just one example of the collateral damage that will result in many countries from the prolonged use of unprecedented sanctions designed to force Putin "to the bargaining table." As, Zakaria and his guests acknowledge, there's no clear "long game plan" for a peace agreement even if the Russians were driven by sanctions to try diplomacy in earnest. Some political economists sympathetic to the emergency need to use sanctions to stop the fighting have proposed more precise ways of conducting this "economic warfare" that considers the kind of collateral damage I mention, and aims to minimize it. Right now sanctions are broad and sweeping and cause unpredictable and unintended consequences of great magnitude across the globe. Since it seems clear that this approach to warfare will be used not only in the months ahead, but in conflicts down the road in the world, there need to be rules, just as there are international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in military war. Here's political economist, Kaushik Basu's preliminary sketch of such a framework https://www.livemint.com/opinion/online-views/the-new-art-of-economic-warfare-and-the-global-need-to-regulate-it-11648659394026.html Basu was chief economist for the World Bank from 2012-16 and is a professor of International Studies and Economics at Cornell U.
Here is a link to FZ's discussion with the 3 guests at CNN: https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2022/04/24/exp-gps-0424-panel-the-west-and-ukraine.cnn
Here is a link to the transcript of the show: https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/fzgps/date/2022-04-24/segment/01
