Expert Panel: The Future of NATO

KEREN YARHI-MILO: Hello, good morning, everyone. It's actually good afternoon, I should say. I'm Keren Yarhi-Milo. I am the Dean of the School of International Public Affairs here at Columbia and the Adlai Stevenson professor of international relations. And more importantly today, I'm the former director of the Saltzman Institute. And I'm here to briefly welcome you all and thank Saltzman and Peter, especially Peter Clement for hosting this event, The Future of NATO. I just want to say a few words about the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies which is truly, truly one of the jewels in SIPA's crown and has been my intellectual home since I was an undergraduate here at Columbia. Its roster of experts on international security is really truly unmatched by any other institute in the world. And its event like the one today on the pressing security challenges we face form really the foundation of the SIPA's experience, of generations of students who've come through the school. At the beginning of the year, we set out to reorganize the school around big-- five big global policy challenges. And one of those is geopolitical stability. And no other event has disrupted the global order more in recent memories than Russia's invasions of Ukraine. And I have to say that since the invasion, the faculty experts at the Saltzman Institute stepped up and provided-- offered repeatedly in numerous events, webinars, workshops, they offered timely analysis to the entire Columbia community and much beyond. And today's event is really a continuation of that and really indeed cannot be timelier. It is really hard to believe that only four years ago, SIPA hosted NATO's Secretary General for an event titled NATO's Place in the Future. And you could have always-- almost put a question mark at the end of this, is there a future? At the time, it was really unclear what that future was. And nobody would have predicted the turn of events since. Two weeks ago, Finland, a country that has become a byword for neutrality and non-alignment joined the alliances, expanding NATO's border with Russia by over 800 miles. Sweden will soon follow, making it the 30th member. Now the war in Ukraine has literally redrawn the map of Europe and given NATO a new lease on life. But it also-- and with this recent events, it also opened a host of new questions for us, scholars and practitioners, to wrestle with as well as you've seen in the past year, re-examination of the past of NATO and how we got here. So there's a lot to explore and a lot to debate. And it cannot be more timely. And it cannot be come at a more opportune time as I was just informed at 45 minutes ago, the United States has informed that it is sending the tanks and much sooner than anticipated. And we could not have gathered a better set of panelists today to discuss the current state of geopolitics facing NATO. So I want to thank everybody for coming. I want to thank-- I want to welcome our distinguished panelists who Peter will introduce in a second. I want to really thank the Saltzman Institute staff for putting this together. There's a lot of work that goes into producing an event. And we're live stream with lots of people watching us. And I especially want to thank Peter Clement, the Saltzman Institute's interim director for all the hard work this year. Peter will be unfortunately stepping down as an interim director at the end of the year to work on a book. And this was a promise I gave Peter, just help us, lead us for a year, and then we'll let you work on your research. And I have to say personally but also on behalf of SIPA and the institute, we cannot be more grateful for your leadership, for your hard work, for everything you've done this year leading Saltzman Institute in this particular time. And you are really truly remarkable and such a valuable member of our community. And thank you for all that you do and thank you for putting this together. Peter, the floor is yours. Thank you, everybody. PETER CLEMENT: Ostensibly, I'm the host. But I think Keren said everything I was supposed to say. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Keren. I've had the best time this year. There are pluses and minuses to being an interim director. But I had so much fun really immersing myself in the academic culture here, and learning a lot about the way things work, and the challenges of getting a room like room 1501, like this room. There isn't enough money in the world to get some of these rooms. You have no idea. It's almost-- actually, it's worse than it was at the agency where I used to work. Getting a room is really, really hard. Anyway, today is about NATO. And I'm delighted to have this panel of serious senior experts, practitioners, and just very, very smart people to talk about the challenges that NATO faces. Keren already stole my thunder about Finland and Sweden. And some of you who know me know I'm kind of a big time Russia watcher. And so we're not going to talk about Putin a whole lot today, I don't think. So I have to say one or two words. I'm still recovering from the fact that Putin chose to do this. And in my view and this is my view alone, to me, this is one of the biggest geopolitical blunders of all time. This is a man who actually, for out of ostensibly fear of NATO, chose to invade Ukraine. And in the process, in my view, he has made Russia far more less secure than one could imagine. A, we've got NATO's enlargement now coming to Finland and Sweden. B, as a guy who actually like to look a lot at demographic issues and I look at the demographic challenges that have been facing Russia for decades that Putin acknowledges all the time in many of his speeches. He helps 200,000 or 300,000 or more young Russian men decide to leave the country after his September call for a draft. And even worse in my view, he has made himself essentially a supplicant to China. When you make yourself so dependent on one other country, both economically and politically, I don't consider that a great boon to one security, end of my speech. It's killing me that I can't be on this panel. But we have so many much better people here. I get to introduce Gideon Rose, your moderator. It's a hard job by the way, being the moderator. I guess I'm lucky I'm not the moderator. Gideon, I suspect it's well known to all of you. He's the former editor of Foreign Affairs, a long time member of the Council on Foreign Relations. And I didn't actually fully know Gideon 10 years as the editor and 10 years prior to that as the managing editor. So that's like 20 years of editing. That's a lot of work. A prominent author in his own right, written many articles but I think the one that just jumped out at me is this book How Wars End that Gideon wrote. It might be worth rereading that book at this moment in time, because I think that's a question that all of us are wrestling with as we think about Ukraine and Russia. Gideon holds the VA and classics from Yale, a PhD in government from Harvard. And I can't think of a better moderator. So at this point, I will turn it over to you, Gideon, to do the other intros. Thank you. GIDEON ROSE: Thank you very much, Peter and Keren. Thank you. We have a fabulous panel tonight-- today. And I'd love to have you guys come on up. We have General Curtis M. Scaparrotti, a former Supreme Allied Commander of Europe. We have Sandy Vershbow, a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former NATO Deputy Secretary General. We have Mike O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at Brookings a longtime author and defense policy expert. We have Mary Elise Sarotte, one of the country's leading diplomatic historians and the leading expert on NATO in what you might call the inter-Cold War period. And this panel-- in Passover, we talk about-- we sing the song "Dayenu." That would have been enough. If God did this [INAUDIBLE]. To have a military expert of General Scaparrotti stature, dayenu. To have a diplomatic expert added to it of Sandy's stature, dayenu. To have a defense policy expert of Mike stature, dayenu. To have Mary as the historian, dayenu. We have literally-- how much are we to be thankful for to the Saltzman Institute for providing us with not just a military expert but a diplomatic expert, and a defense policy and strategist expert, and a historical expert. With that, let's get right to some of the interesting questions. Peter said I have a background in classics. And one of the things we learn in classics is to start in media rests, right in the middle of things. Peter said that he was surprised at the invasion. Many of us were. And clearly, there were a dramatic series of misunderstandings and faulty estimates on the part of the Russians. They dramatically overestimated Russian military strength and capability. They dramatically underestimated Ukrainian skill and will to resist. And they dramatically underestimated the United States, Europe, and NATO in terms of our willingness to supply and support Ukraine. As a result of that, what the Russians seem to have expected to be a relatively quick easy victory turned out to be a long slogging effort which has now bogged down after lots of different moves on the battlefield. The Russians seem to have exhausted their operational offensive momentum and capabilities with their recent offensive, not having gained all that much at great cost. And we are awaiting the Ukrainian counteroffensive which will occur at some point in the spring and summer. We've just heard that there are going to be US Abrams tanks as potentially part of that-- interesting question of why those weren't released earlier. But that's a separate question. And the point of this war right now, it's very interesting one, because the Russians having failed to achieve their objectives seem to be counting at this point on an exhaustion of Western and Ukrainian will and capacity to continue to fight. Now that they are not going to get a quick victory, they seem to be trying to hold out for a longer term exhaustion and relying on their massive reserves of manpower, and stamina, and willingness to suffer. And so the really interesting question that I want to go first to General Scaparrotti and our distinguished diplomat Sandy Vershbow, too, is will Russia be able to outlast NATO as they seem to be counting on, or will the NATO and Ukraine be able to sustain its effort enough to bring this war to something resembling a positive outcome for the West? So General, you want to start with that and then have Sandy chip in. CURTIS SCAPAROTTI: Sure. Thank you very much. It's an honor to be a part of this distinguished group here. Peter, I appreciate the invitation. Good to see many of you that have served with and met in the past, particularly Sandy who I've served with. And Mike, you were a part of my education as an officer coming up, and I appreciate all of those times you tried to make us a little smarter as we were growing up in the military. With respect to Cannae outlast, I think you said it correctly. I think Putin has-- amazingly, when you hear him speak, he hasn't really changed his overall political objective of eventually taking Ukraine and having control of it despite all of the difficulties and the present circumstances that he sees. And I do believe that he intends to outlast the West. And if you look at how that's worked for him in the past, there is some historical precedent that would tell you that he's been trained that way. He's seen that he can outlast sanctions, et cetera. The West would get tired. And soon, he would be at least in a place where he had gained some of his objectives. So I think he intends to try and do that. I don't believe he can outlast the West. It's certainly not a sure thing that NATO will stay unified and the West will continue to support this. And I say that because I see the will when I travel Europe. It's very strong. The statements are strong ones as I travel to European capitals. I think the populace is in support of Ukraine as a majority of the Americans are here in the United States. But in Europe, this is becoming more difficult. You can see the energy, and the economic challenges, as well as their defense challenges because what they've given to Ukraine has come out of their own homeland defense. And they have to replenish that, and they know it. So these things could weigh on them. What needs to happen to ensure that we outlast them, in my opinion, is that we in the West, the United States leading has to make sure that our populace understands the importance of Ukraine being successful, the importance of us defeating Russia's aggression, not their state but Russia's aggression, that it is a vital interest to the United States. I'm not sure we've done as good a job as we should in the West in making that argument. And then secondly, the other thing I think we need to do, to ensure is that we need to be clear about what the objective is. And I'm also not sure-- I don't believe the United States has stated a clear objective with respect to our support for this Ukrainian campaign. And I'll stop there. GIDEON ROSE: Oh, actually, let me take you for 200. What do you think the objective should be? CURTIS SCAPAROTTI: I think it should be to defeat their aggression. We've said that Ukraine supports this, I think certainly the clearance of Ukraine. Crimea obviously is the most difficult area. And I think that's something that we look at as we approach that but certainly the clearance of the Donbass, the restoration of Ukraine itself. And I think a statement that Ukraine win or that Russian aggression is defeated is important in this and much more descriptive than for as long as it takes, the difference, yeah. GIDEON ROSE: I'm sorry. Sandy, you served with General Scaparrotti or both of you served in Korea. A, how will-- what do you think the prospects are of NATO managing to summon the will to outlast Russia in the current conflict? And B, do you agree that in effect we should be pushing for some kind of Korean situation in which the goal is officially a status quo ante position? SANDY VERSHOBOW: Well, first let me address the original issue. And even before that, let me thank Salzman Institute for inviting me to this panel. I'm a SIPA graduate, class of '76. A lot has happened since then. But it's good to be back. I think Putin still is indeed counting on outlasting us. And he has good reason to believe he can. This is the first time he's made such an epic miscalculation. But he's read us correctly after 2008 when they invaded Georgia and after 2014, after the annexation of Crimea, where in both cases, our reaction was pretty weak. And it emboldened Putin to think he could continue to get away with this sort of thing, salami tactics stuff. So he did underestimate our resolve, the Ukrainians' will to fight. And I think we're already showing him that he's wrong if he thinks he can outlast things, outlast us in this case. But I do worry first of all about the shaky domestic political foundations of this war effort and the open split that's emerging among Republicans about whether this is a war worth fighting. And in Europe, I think there's a tendency on the part of some countries to push the Ukrainians towards premature negotiations which would only play into Putin's hands. So I don't think he can outlast us. But we could make enough mistakes where he could feel that he's vindicated the time is on his side. And that's what we have to avoid. I think one aspect of that is, as General Scaparrotti said, being much clearer on what our objective is. We talk about standing by the Ukrainians for as long as it takes. But we don't say as long as it takes to do what. Is it just to kind of keep the lid on things until we can get a negotiated solution which I don't think is possible. There's no willingness to negotiate on Putin's part. Or are we prepared to set the goal of Ukrainian victory? And I think that's what we should be doing, not literally that they're going to route the Russians and run the Ukrainian flag up on Kremlin, as pretty a picture as that may be. But conflicting with the administration sometimes talks about as a strategic defeat of Russia sufficient to the point that the war could end on terms relatively favorable to Ukraine. It may be a cease fire or an armistice like in Korea. I don't think the wherewithal is there yet to actually negotiate a full fledged peace agreement. Putin is not giving up his original objective of erasing Ukraine from the maps. So a cease fire or an armistice may be the best we could achieve. And that would only be a pause unless we do other things to ensure that the Ukrainians have the capability going forward to deter and defeat the Russians if they try to invade a third time. So hardening the Ukrainian defenses becomes a test, not just to help them win the war but to deter further aggression after this phase of the conflict is over. GIDEON ROSE: OK. Let me press you for 200 on that which is you have-- do you say we should set a goal of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia and the Ukrainian victory? Clearly the impression there is that it's not where we are right now. And it clearly doesn't mean going into Russian territory. So it's somewhere between here and February 24 lines and the 2014 line. What do you think a Russian strategic defeat looks like? How do you operationalize that? SANDY VERSHOBOW: Well I think we should support the Ukrainians declared war aims which is to route them or drive them out of Ukraine, including the portions of Ukraine that they annexed after 2014. Now that may be a tall order in terms of the capabilities required to literally take back Crimea. But I think as long as the Ukrainians have the will to fight, we can give them the means to gain further ground in this upcoming counter-offensive. We shouldn't be dumbing down their war aims. As I said, this may end up without a final conclusion to the conflict. But I think that's all the more reason to first let's see how the Ukrainians can do in the next phase of the fighting and at the same time, see whether there's any change in Moscow in terms of readiness for a genuine political solution rather than Ukrainian capitulation which is the only thing they put on the table so far. GIDEON ROSE: OK. Mike, I'm going to turn to you and also General. In the '50s, the Eisenhower administration put forward what it called a new look strategy, trying to basically come up with a strategy that would be cost effective of the long term. They didn't want to rely on conventional forces. They wanted to rely on nuclear forces, including tactical nuclear forces. I wonder now whether we're at the exact opposite point of things in which this conflict seems to have shown the disutility or inutility of a lot of high level nuclear forces, including even the tactical nuclear forces which haven't been used and yet, the crucial importance of conventional forces, ammunition, tanks, artillery, the things that have made the difference on the ground along with new things like drones. As we go forward, first of all, what does this show us about the importance of conventional weaponry and the defense industrial base and our ability to supply that in the war in Ukraine and going forward? And second, do we expect nuclear weapons to be used in this conflict in any capacity? And if we're not going to be dominant-- if we're going to be increasingly dominant in conventional weaponry, can we actually move forward with a no first use pledge on nuclear stuff going forward? But let's talk about the role of what is actually making a difference on the battlefield now. Do you expect nukes to be used. And if not, what is the conventional military situation? MIKE O'HANLON: Thanks, Gideon and thanks, everybody, for the chance to be part of this amazing panel. Let me also give my thanks and admiration to General Scap, and to Sandy who have done so much, and to Mary Elise as well but in a different domain with General Scap and with Sandy. You've done so much to build an alliance that had a response that a lot of us have been impressed by and didn't necessarily see coming at quite this level of resoluteness. And I think that's a reflection of years and decades of effort institutionally, not just because the individual countries are freedom-loving democracies, but because the institution itself has become so strong. And we didn't necessarily know that when we watched NATO's struggle in certain missions like the Afghanistan operation, and the headlines of newspapers always be debating burden sharing of allocations, and whether we're all being good allies towards each other. But it's really been impressive. I'd also like to give a shout out to the students at SIPA, a bunch of whom are here today. And I'm lucky like you, Gideon, to be an adjunct here. And it's just an amazing place. So thanks for being such a center of intellectual activity and for coming today, those of you who are here or watching. But to get to your questions, I think the first thing I would say-- you asked a couple of questions about conventional, and about nuclear forces, and also the interaction. And in the interest of being brief, let me just say, one thing I've been struck by about the conventional fight that's sort of an age old truth is that this doesn't look that different from World War I most of the time in terms of the last six, eight months in particular, the slow movement of forward lines, the difficulty of using artillery bombardments to soften the enemy and then try to advance a few hundreds of meters or a couple kilometers. To me, it's evocative of World War I which is a testament to how in many ways, material as well as mental, and emotional, war doesn't always change that fast over the decades and centuries. But a couple of things that I have been struck by in terms of new dimensions of the conventional fight, one of them is that Ukraine's cyber systems have held up so well. I thought they would be toast. I thought that we had gotten so used in the West, including in the United States, depending on command and control systems that we've always-- what's Bill Gates' latest software, let's take it in now, and upgrade our capabilities, and worry about its resilience to attack later. And that was the attitude in the military as well as in broader society. And we had all these holes, all these gaps, all these vulnerabilities. And even in peacetime, we'd see the North Koreans or Iranians take advantage of our command and control vulnerabilities whether in the infrastructure of the country, commercial sector and/or even military. But apparently, we've gotten better at this than I expected, because in the weeks and months before the invasion, we did a lot to help Ukraine put its command and control and cyber systems onto a higher level of security. And they've held up remarkably. I did not see that coming. And I've been very relieved and encouraged by that. Also the use of drones has been very important for battlefield targeting and also naturally for attacks on Ukrainian cities. But in both cases, I don't think drones were game changers. They changed things for a while. The enemy adapted. So on the tactical battlefield, both sides realized how to jam communications, how to camouflage better, how to disperse, how to make any one drones reconnaissance efforts or any one drones attack a little bit less lethal. And in the cities, the Ukrainians did a great job of withstanding this winter when it didn't look good for a while. But they figured out how through a combination of defenses and just dogged perseverance to get through the danger. So that's my quick conventional analysis in a nutshell. And of course, I'll recommend Steve Biddle, as I always do on any topic in defense, who wrote a very good paper on military lessons in Ukraine a couple months ago. So I would Google that if you want more. On nuclear threats, first of all, if there's even a 1% chance that Putin would-- or a 5% chance that Putin would consider escalating, still we have to take that seriously. So I'm never going to be a person who says that nukes are irrelevant to this conflict. One more thing I learned, and I know you know it very well, everybody on this panel, because I just dabbled in history and my first real book on history recently, wars take unexpected turns. And we learn history looking back. So we tend to think that there was a certain degree of pre-ordained quality about many conflicts. It's really not true. And in real time, people know it. And common sense tells us that. But we have to remember that this war ain't over yet. And I don't put it past Putin to figure out if there's a point at which a limited use of nuclear weapons probably more for psychological than for direct physical effect could be in his advantage. I don't put that beyond him for a second, certainly not at a moral level, certainly not because he cares about no first use or anything else. And I'm not sure I see how he could win the war in a battlefield sense with nukes without so ostracizing his country that it would be a hollow victory. But I do think that he may consider more limited and targeted usages in the future if he gets to a point where let's say, everybody else wants a peace negotiation, but Zelensky still wants the last 10% of his territory that Putin's holding on to after the spring offensive partially succeeds. And who knows where the psychology of this whole battle is going to be at that point. Putin would probably realize that he's going to make most of the world angry if he uses nuclear weapons. But if he can do it in a limited enough way that it looks more like a test than an attack, doesn't kill many people but makes us all fear that the next step could really get out of hand, he may convince himself, rightly or wrongly, that that's a worthwhile change in the international psychology at a moment where he's trying to get the peace process to an end state and cement whatever gains he might have had. So I don't put that past him. We could go on with scenarios at greater length. But I think I'll just leave it at that for now. GIDEON ROSE: So General, I'm going to go back to you on the nuclear question. Same question which is do you think-- do you see any scenario in which Putin actually uses nukes in this conflict? And well, let's just leave it at that. CURTIS SCAPAROTTI: Well, I would say that I agree with what Mike just outlined. I think that Putin in certain circumstances would use it. We know that their doctrine-- they developed the low yield tactical weapons that were the source of our angst about the INF treaty. They developed and deployed those for a specific reason. And that was to have a low yield weapon system that they could use if they needed to, to dominate a situation with the idea that the United States has nothing like that really, and that we would have to go to a much larger system in order to respond i.e. the idea that we just wouldn't have in the West or the US the will to trump that. So because they developed it for a specific purpose And it was a conventional one, I fear that he might in a certain circumstance. So I think it's something that we've always got to consider. Having said all of that, I think that his his threats of the use of nuclear weapon to date have been largely to deter us. And they've been successful at doing that in terms of our metering of weapons systems, et cetera, which I believe we should have moved much faster on. GIDEON ROSE: So that-- OK let me get you on that. On the one hand, you could look at the US and Western aid to Ukraine and say, wow, we've managed to actually give a whole lot. And Germany has switched its position. And the US has said, oh, gee, we're going to give many, many tens of billions of dollars this quickly. We would not have expected that. On the other hand, it seems to have been dribbled out a little bit, doing enough to keep Ukraine from losing rather than allowing Ukraine to win. And the gradual approval of systems which were denied earlier has, again, dribbled out things, making it-- we were told that it couldn't possibly be useful to send Abrams or and now that they're being sent and-- what accounts for the pace and extent of US sales and the relative slowness compared to what you just suggested might have been optimal for the battlefield? CURTIS SCAPAROTTI: Well, I think we stated publicly that at each of these major weapons systems that we've debated, there's been a public statement of a concern about an escalation about Putin's response in a way that is not desired or unexpected. And Putin is actually at each step if you've watched, he's actually at those time periods threatened a response, some of them nuclear. So I think it's a response to his deterrence message. Secondly, I'll go back again about what I said and what Sandy said about setting an objective. If you set an objective and allow the military to determine and the diplomats, it's the entire structure, but to determine what needs to take place to reach that objective, then your response is in line with that. What we've done is we've done this in steps by system needed or by presidential decree of drawdown authority, et cetera. And within warfare, that's just my personal opinion, that's not the way you fight an adversary. You have to determine what's needed to reach that objective and then supply those assets. So we've drugged this out I think more than we needed to as a result. GIDEON ROSE: Do you think that is going-- and this is good to all of you-- do you think that will actually change now that the future of the war seems to be in the balance? CURTIS SCAPAROTTI: I don't have an indication that it's going to change now. We haven't seen any-- we haven't seen an announcement of objective yet. We had the debate about the tanks, the one about whether or not we should supply aircraft is still ongoing, jet fighters for instance. So I think this is the way that we've chosen to support Ukraine. And by the way, it's representative in a certain way the way that we fought Afghanistan for instance, incrementally. GIDEON ROSE: That was a big success. MIKE O'HANLON: Just to back up that point with General Scaparrotti, to my mind, I think the answer is no. It won't-- the policy approach won't change for two reasons, one of them better than the other, leaving aside the issue of deterrence and Putin's threats. It is difficult to train up even a military as adaptive and entrepreneurial as the Ukrainian armed forces on all these different weapons in real time in the space of a 15-month battle or 14 months so far. But on the other hand, the argument of gradualism, it made sense for a lot of 2022 because there was always a dire threat to Ukraine at any given moment, first to its cities in Kyiv then to its ability to withstand this Russian artillery bombardment. And so focusing first on javelins, and stingers, and also communications security, and then moving from that into other battlefield tactical defense systems, and then HIMARS artillery, there was a logic to that. And we were always doing the most urgent next thing. And it wasn't easy. They've sent tens of billions of dollars of equipment. This is the fastest effort to arm another country I think in the history of warfare. So we shouldn't lose sight of that. On the other hand, the wintertime, this past winter was the time to help really arm Ukraine for this much touted spring offensive which is now maybe beginning, about to begin. Many case, it's too late to have a big new debate on new capabilities for this spring offensive. It's not too early for next year's spring offensive which I would predict will occur. I think the odds of the war ending this year are modest at best. But I think it would have been-- it would have moved us to take stock of where we were by about November of 2022 and say, maybe it's time not just for the tanks, maybe even for somewhat longer range missiles, and maybe attack helicopters, and maybe even start training people on F-16s, even if we're not yet clear that it would be useful to give Ukraine those weapons. By the way, I didn't write this myself at the end of 2022. It's become clearer in hindsight. So in fairness to the administration, they were making policy in real time. And I have some sympathy. But I think we probably could have and should have pushed harder over the last few months because now, we're a little bit delayed in helping the Ukrainians really make best use of the spring offensive of 2023. GIDEON ROSE: Having started with the present, I want to go back to the past and then go to the future. So Mary and Sandy, in those distant bygone ages a generation ago after the Cold War, NATO is facing a crisis of purpose, a question of what's going to come next. No one really knows the future. Sandy, I was on the NSC with you where you were thinking through this stuff. Mary, you're the-- you've written the book-- written several books on this. In retrospect, did what NATO chose to do in the '90s ultimately drive-- or '90s and aughts, let's say, ultimately drive what Russia has done recently? You first and then-- MARY ELISE SAROTTE: I would appreciate what the master has to say. SANDY VERSHOBOW: OK, I'll My short answer would be no. But of course, some of the things that we did in the '90s in terms of trying to build this integrated Europe with an expanding NATO on the one hand and a strategic partnership with Russia on the other hand, some of those things clearly didn't pan out well. Some of the problems, we may not have understood how important it was to actually show your addressing Russian interests in some of these things. But I think the basic concept was a good one. And it did deliver some results for several decades. We had Russian troops on the ground in Bosnia helping us implement the Dayton Accords. We did a lot of things on counterterrorism. I think the most promising thing that we worked on with the Russians was to integrate our missile defense systems which would have been a real game changer in terms of showing that NATO and Russia are able to work together to meet a common threat from ballistic missile proliferation. But I do think that it was premature, to put it diplomatically, to push the issue of Ukrainian and Georgian membership in 2008 at the Bucharest Summit and to go into that summit without having it already wired in advance. So we guaranteed a divided NATO, disappointed the Ukrainians, but antagonized Putin at the same time. And in that sense, we're still dealing with some of the consequences of that hasty push for a membership action plan for Ukraine and Georgia in 2008. GIDEON ROSE: OK, so Mary, was it the '90s OK and the aughts the problem? MARY ELISE SAROTTE: Actually, since I haven't had a chance to talk, just briefly two things. I just want to say how great it is to be here. It's wonderful to be part of a community from which I've learned so much. I can see in the back Kim Martin, Steve Sestanovich. I think I see Jacques Levy. So it's great to be here and honored in particular to be on this caliber of a panel. It really is wonderful. Secondly, this panel, hats off to Peter Clement, it could not be more timely, The Future of NATO. I say that because of the breaking news of this morning which is that the M1 Abrams tanks will, in contrast to showing up in a year or years, will be showing up shortly and perhaps be a factor on the battlefield this year. And this news just came out. I mention this because until two hours ago, I was part of a team of people hosting the German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius in Washington. In fact, if you Google my name and Pistorius, one of the event announcements will still come up. But about two hours ago, I got an urgent message from Germany that Minister Pistorius was canceling his visit. I thought, well, that's interesting. People usually-- German defense ministers don't usually cancel visits to Washington on no notice. And then about 45 minutes later, I saw the New York Times announcement that the tanks are going-- the Abrams tanks are going to the Ukrainians in a matter of weeks as opposed to in a matter of years. And one of the reasons I have my computer here is-- this is actually a breaking story-- the Ukraine contract-- the Ukraine contact group is meeting in Ramstein, Germany as we sit here. And I'm trying to monitor the news from it. Earlier today, the New York Times said the tanks will be available for a 10-week training program since this event has started. There has been a stars and stripes has reported that the US will deliver Abrams tanks next month. So that's now even shorter than 10 weeks to the army sprawling base in Gothenburg. So this topic really is very timely. It was very far sighted. It was great for you Peter to get them to hold the tank announcement until this morning, just excellent, excellent, never cross Peter. So third, to get to your question, so yes, obviously, I'm the historian here. And by the way, I strongly recommend Michael's book, Military History for the Modern Strategist. I read it on the train up. It's terrific. I'll be giving it to students. My own background is in the history of NATO's expansion. And I wrote this book, Not One Inch. There's a separate question from the actual historical narrative versus your question which is, is NATO to blame for what Russia is doing, if I've understood it correctly. What I think you really mean by that is NATO to blame for what Putin is doing. If you wanted a yes to that question, you should have put John Mearsheimer on this panel. I am not John Mearsheimer. Did you try? [LAUGHS] He was not available. GIDEON ROSE: But you're more critical of NATO expansion in the most recent book than most. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: Well, OK, so to be perfectly clear-- GIDEON ROSE: And Mearsheimer questioning. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: My book is not a critique of NATO enlargement. I am not an opponent of NATO enlargement. For that, as I said, you need John Mearsheimer. I think that the emerging democracies, emerging market economies in Central Eastern Europe had every right to apply to join NATO. I also think NATO's had every right to take them on board. My criticism was with how enlargement happened. So that is my criticism. I think that there were other ways of expanding NATO known at the time that could have caused less damage to US-Russian relation. That's not to say everything would be perfect now. That's not to say we would be on a timeline, a different timeline from the '90s to a present where everything was still wine and roses. But I think there were policies at the time that could have put us on at least a better timeline, because the timeline we're on right now is pretty damn frightening, frankly. It's hard to see much worse unless we start having a war. And then we are in a worst case scenario obviously. So [INAUDIBLE]. But finally, to get to your question, I think we need to look at Putin's decision making process. As far as I can tell, during the pandemic, Putin had the worst work from home experience ever. He basically was surrounded by too few people and had too much time on his hands. And he decided to obsess about history. And we know this because he published articles-- he either wrote them himself or at a minimum, allowed his name to be attached to them-- about history. He published a long-- a long stomach-turning article about how Russia and Ukraine had to belong together. There was a unity there. He also published remarks about the end of Second World War. And he repeatedly made comments about NATO enlargement. So he is clearly obsessed with history. I also heard internally that he besieged archivists. He basically wanted copies of documents, post-haste sent to him, which sort of amazed them because the archivists involved, because they thought, isn't he running the country, doesn't he have other things to do? So he was clearly obsessed about history. And he clearly, at some level, wants to rerun history, only this time with Moscow getting what it wants, right? And that includes both the '90s and the 2000. And he's gone back and looked at these specific events and is insisting on a do over. He's insisting on a do over on Ukraine splitting away from Russia. He also, as far as I can tell, has gone through NATO enlargement documents in detail, some of which I got declassified and wants to go back to certain points in that process and have Russia get what it wants. This has all been, for me, a slightly surreal experience. Obviously, the people who have had the most surreal experience have been the Ukrainians. And I'd like to express my strong admiration for them and for what they have been suffering. What has been surreal for me has been seeing Putin fixate on historical events that I've written about. I was getting a sense already in 2021 that, that might be the case because I could see in my research that Putin likes to mark birthdays and anniversaries with violence. This is a truly awful-- one of his many truly awful traits. For example, the extremely brave human rights activist, Anna Politkovskaya, one of the few people brave enough to go down to Chechnya and expose the war crimes there, which we now unfortunately realize we're a precursor to places like Russia, Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead by a professional killer while carrying home her groceries on October 7, 2006, Putin's birthday. The emails hacked from the Hillary Clinton campaign were dropped on October 7, 2016, Putin's birthday. In fact, the entire hacking campaign took place in the 25th anniversary year of Soviet collapse. More recently, Putin has gone and given a speech and what he for the day renamed Stalingrad on the 80th anniversary of it. He also gave a speech on a birthday of a tsar, talking about how he needs to recreate unity. He really obsesses over these anniversaries. And so as I was working on my research and saw that, there's many more episodes that I could give you. I was doing my research in 2015, '16, '17, '18, '19. I thought, when shall I actually publish this book? And I thought he's not going to let the 30th anniversary of Ukraine splitting away from Russia go unnoticed. I just don't see that happening. And so I decided to publish my book Not One Inch in December 2021 for the 30th anniversary of that split which is also 30th anniversary of the Soviet Union collapsing. And so I had to give the manuscript up in summer 2021 for the publisher to prepare it. So I thought I'll try to sound an alarm about this because I'm just seeing this clear historical pattern in fall 2021. And I put together an op ed with the title, Deadly Anniversary of a Divorce, A Deadly Anniversary of a Divorce. And the punch line to the op ed was on the 30th anniversary of the divorce from Kyiv, Putin is acting like a violent ex who's willing to use force to get his stuff back. This op ed was turned down by every important publication in the English speaking world. I still have all these emails. It got to be very frustrating. After about five of them, I stopped sending it out. So this is late fall 2021. Fast forward to February 24, 2022, when every important publication in the English speaking world emails me and says, did we say no? That was a misunderstanding. We meant yes. Could you please write that immediately? And you can google my name and see the result and see all the op eds that followed. So I think that the historical component of this is hugely important. When people ask me, why time, and why now, why do you do this now? I say because of the 30th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union, because the 30th anniversary of Ukraine splitting away. I genuinely believe that the historical factors drive Putin's decision making which is not quite your question but does show the importance of the history to the outbreak of these events. GIDEON ROSE: I sympathize with those editors. I remember very distinctly at one point getting a call on a Friday morning from Charles King, a wonderful regional expert many years ago saying, you know, Gideon, I think that Putin-- the Russians are about to do something in Georgia. And you need to write something. I want to write something about this. And I was like, oh, come on, there are so many things coming. If it-- it's highly unlikely. It's August. Nothing happens in August. Don't worry, we'll get to you when it gets a little closer. Then sure enough, like literally days later, it happened. You always look stupid when you call-- when you are like a soccer goalie on a penalty. If you jump to one side and you're right, you look prescient. And if you jump to one side and nothing happens or the ball dribbles in the middle, you look stupid. So editors had to be cautious. Let me stay with history for another question. The Budapest, back in the day, we thought Soviet loose nukes were the biggest problem. And we pushed to get that problem wrapped up. We pushed to get the nuclear weapons on Ukrainian soil taken back. And we assured the Ukrainians that we had their back and that everything would be OK. And we signed this thing called the Budapest Memorandum. In retrospect, if-- in retrospect, was the decision to purge Ukraine of the nukes on its soil and give them a not particularly hard guarantee in return, was that a mistake? To anybody. Anybody want to defend the policy or explain why it wasn't a mistake to remove the possibility of nuclear deterrence. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: Let me just-- let me just put it in a context. Ukraine-- I have debated this point many times with my friends here, the history of Ukraine at Harvard. And obviously in hindsight now, I believe even President Clinton has said it was a mistake to compel Ukraine in essence to strongly encourage Ukraine to give up nuclear weapons. The problem at the time was that the Ukrainian economy was in freefall. The Ukrainian economy, what was happening there, made the Great Depression look like a minor incident. And so the question was did Ukraine want to have-- did Ukraine want to be a nuclear power or did it want to be a country, because that was the choice, because it was going to need so much support from the international community simply to feed people. And the international community was saying in order for us to give you that support, you have to give up your nuclear weapons. That was the existential choice that Ukraine faced. Now that doesn't answer your question. But I just want to say, this wasn't something casual. People said, well, should be a nuclear power-- no. It was, look, Ukraine have a choice. You can either be North Korea and your people will starve, or you can give up these nuclear weapons and we, the international community, will open doors to you. You will be showered with funding. You will be able to feed your people. So that was the order of magnitude of choice that Ukraine was facing. SANDY VERSHOBOW: There is also a strong nonproliferation rationale and I think made it, in principle, the right decision to take. But I think we blew it in terms of how we actually framed the Budapest memorandum itself. We didn't give the Ukrainians any meaningful guarantees of their security even though the document talked about the guarantors renouncing any claims to Ukrainian territory to respect Ukrainian sovereignty. But these are only security assurances. They weren't binding. And we saw, sadly, in 2014 how the Russians basically just blew it off, even misrepresented whay they had agreed to and trashed the Budapest memorandum. I think a better solution at the time might have been to urge them to dismantle their nuclear weapons but not to give them back to Russia, might not have changed the course of history. But I think there was a reasonable case to be made with the breakup of the Soviet Union. We don't need to build up Russia even further as a nuclear state. But that was I don't think an option that was considered at the time. GIDEON ROSE: We do a digression on proliferation. After Ukraine, after Libya, is it realistic to expect anybody who has nukes, even if they're hostile and under pressure, to give them up given the pattern of what happens to countries and the vulnerability of being invaded and getting screwed if you give up your nuclear weapons? Would anybody in their right mind, with the Iranian-- would the North Koreans ever give up their nuclear weapons after what happened to Ukraine and Libya? SANDY VERSHOBOW: No and they made pretty clear that they're never going to give them up, denuclearization which was agreed to the North Koreans as late as their summit meeting with Donald Trump. Since that time, they basically said that we're never giving them up. And I think that's a fact of life. We have to deal with this as a new reality that the experience of Gaddafi, of Saddam has shown the Ukrainians and anybody else that giving up nuclear weapons is a big mistake. It's sort of the ultimate insurance policy. GIDEON ROSE: Many people here were part of a conference in Bob Jervis' memory a few years ago. And I think that one of a-- few months ago, one of the interesting things that will come out of this, the war and the lead up run into the war, is we are going to learn-- we're learning more about what nuclear weapons are and aren't good for. And they seem to be good for definitely a certain kind of minimal or existential deterrence but not necessarily good or positive coercion or actual battlefield use [INAUDIBLE].. OK, so let me fast forward to the more recent history. There have been some suggestions that the Russian attack was a failure of deterrence on the part of the Biden administration, that the combination of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the failure to supply Ukraine with a whole lot of weaponry right before the invasion allowed Russia to think that it could get away with invading and succeed. Do any of you and I would include General Scaparrotti on this, do any of you think that a different set of policies in retrospect in the last couple of years before or the last year before the war could have averted the invasion last February? Anybody want to tackle that? CURTIS SCAPAROTTI: I'll take it on next. On the one hand, I don't believe over the last couple of years that a better deterrent might have deterred his thinking. He has been since about 2008 pretty clear in his thinking and as Mary said that her research shows that he focused on that. On the other hand, I think in the run up to the war as Russia brought forces around the borders of Ukraine, we should have been more forceful in terms of the use of military component of that as well in the sense that you're trying to cognitively influence Putin's thinking. And in my view, Putin very much is about power. The sanctions didn't really scare him. That's what we're using fundamentally. We took off the table the fact that US forces or NATO forces would react. And I think in that respect, although we thought we were deterring him, we obviously weren't successful. And I think it's because we didn't understand what he valued in terms of what would influence him. GIDEON ROSE: What realistically-- let me just-- I'll get to you Mary on this. What could we have done that we didn't do that might have changed his mind? CURTIS SCAPAROTTI: I think we should have moved forces to the flanks. We should have moved forces to the Eastern flank of Europe in a deterrent for NATO but also a clear indication that we were standing with Ukraine. Now whether or not we employ them, as he said we would not employ US forces, that could remain the same. But that didn't need to be stated publicly in my view. SANDY VERSHOBOW: I agree. That was the critical factor that we made clear we were ruling out any US boots on the ground, even as a deterrent, which would have been legitimate. Ukraine invited us to put troops in, maybe just as a training mission, something that didn't look like a combat mission. It might have given the Russians some pause. And maybe we'll stand up for Ukraine to a greater degree than we did for Afghanistan. But we didn't do that. I think the deterrence was inherently going to be inadequate to prevent him from doing what he did. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: I also agree. There's the question of what could we have done militarily, and then as a scholar, I think what could we have done conceptually. And that's an appropriate point here because, of course, the Dean here, Keren, wrote this great book, Knowing the Adversary. And I think a big part of the problem was so many Western leaders, particularly in Germany, thinking that great power competition was gone forever. I was at a conference in Warsaw in December. It was a meeting of military officers, academics, and politicians. And one of the military officers there-- it's Chatham House rules, so I can't say his name-- but one of the military officers there had said something that I thought was really insightful and striking. He said until February 24, 2022, there were three tribes in NATO. The first tribe countries bordering Russia or very near to it thought they lived in a zone of existential threat. The second tribe, countries in southeastern Europe, thought they lived in a zone of acute threat because of migration issues. And all of the rest of NATO thought it lived in a zone of eternal peace. And these three zones were incapable-- these two tribes are incapable of talking to each other. And so when you have that just firm belief, it's not-- nothing's going to happen. Ultimately, the policy comes out of the intent. And this is why Keren's work is important, because Keren's work talks about the discrepancy between intelligence, community assessments, military assessments, and political leaders, right? The people I knew in the military said, I see the Russians basically ticking off every box on the pre-invasion checklist. This is going to happen. People in the intelligence community were saying the same thing. If we had a checklist of things Russia would do or invade, this would pretty much have tick boxes on all of it. So people close to the details are saying this is going to happen. But I would go to event after event where I was sort of looked at as the slightly hysterical woman saying, there's going to be a war, because I would just talk to people particularly in Germany who just simply would not accept that. And so when the war actually started, it was-- obviously, it was a horrible, tragic day above all for the Ukrainians. I don't, in any way, want to say that my experience in any way parallels theirs. But it was an awful day for me personally because I was gratified as an analyst that my analysis correct. But I was obviously sickened by the unspeakable violence. And I was genuinely shocked by how shocked people were. My friends in Germany just-- I lived there for four years. I speak fluent German. It was just incomprehensible to them that there could be war in Europe. To me, as a historian, it is not incomprehensible there can be war in Europe. There's been a lot of war in Europe. There's been a lot of great power war in Europe. This book came out from Bob Kagan called The Jungle Grows Back. As a historian, I'm here to tell you the jungle never went away. We just weren't really paying attention to it. So the fact that people were so shocked, that's why we really had a failure of deterrence. We had a failure of imagination, a failure of understanding that history doesn't go away. That's why I'm a historian. GIDEON ROSE: OK. So on the exact point, I was actually going to bring up Bob. Bob Kagan has a new book out. And he talks in this book about what he calls the American trap. And the American trap is this posture precisely because you don't expect war to happen and because you send a Pacific notion. And your enemies think they can get away with stuff. Whether it's Hitler, whether it's Korea, whether it's Saddam, whether it's Putin, there is a traditional pattern of sending a signal that we're not going to defend this. We're weak. We're not really belligerent. And then when the attack happens, replying with greater force, greater determination, and defeating the enemy who thought they could steal a march on you and get away with it. In some sense-- I'm going to be very provocative here and take a devil's advocate role, because granted that this war has been an absolute tragedy for Ukraine, granted that this war has caused extraordinary suffering in Russia, self-inflicted, in Ukraine, not self-inflicted but still happening and ongoing. For NATO, in many respects, this has actually been a positive thing and even to a certain extent for US foreign policy. You couldn't talk-- you couldn't get Europeans to take the threat seriously. Now not only is the threat less because Russia has self immolated, but the Europeans are all head up about it. You have a NATO that was shrinking and without purpose. Now it's already expanded in ways that could not have been imagined with Finland and Sweden about to come in. And yet, the idea-- we spent much of our earlier lives worrying about some Soviet troops coming through the Fulda gap and tanks. I think the idea that Russia could take over Europe now seems just ridiculous. It can't even take over much of Eastern Ukraine. And the alliance belatedly is much more energized. So in many respects, what we're seeing a sort of tradition of American failure to send the signals about deterrence but then in effect entrapping its enemies and delivering an even greater defeat than anybody could have expected. Isn't Europe more secure now than it was in 2021, even though the war has actually happened? MIKE O'HANLON: Gideon, if I could start, I don't disagree with what you said as a plausible analysis. The problem is we can't really know yet. We don't know how desperate Putin is going to become. But even though, I think you're probably right about Europe. The far more consequential issue for me is how China is learning from this war. And if the chances of a Chinese attack against Taiwan are going down because China is learning the right lessons that the West is capable of unity, that war in the modern era is still hard that the United States is not a paper tiger. China is learning those lessons. It could be, in fact, a net benefit for our grand strategy. China is not learning those lessons, if they're thinking, look, the West is still wanting to buy Russian oil and gas, they just want to have somebody else do it so they can keep their own hands clean and feel morally separate from the decision, but they really don't want even Russia to be cut off from the world economy. Or they're having debates in Germany in the United States already about whether we should slow the flow of weaponry and support to Ukraine. And who knows what will happen in 2024 if Donald Trump is the nominee. And if the Chinese are looking at it from that point of view and if we waver fundamentally, then I'm afraid this won't be a net plus above and beyond all the humanitarian tragedy. And the last point is that I think this is hurting our ability to connect better with the Global South, to use an unfortunate term. But in general, because of the grain crisis, food crisis, this coming on top of COVID, the West being seen as insufficiently responsive to the needs of the developing world at this juncture in history. I think this crisis by making us obsess about Europe is actually harming that agenda in ways that we're going to have to recover from some other way. So I like your argument as far as it goes. But I think when you take a more global perspective, the answer is either we don't yet know, or it is in some other ways a big net negative. GIDEON ROSE: Well, let's actually turn to that larger question of the global context. One of the things many people have been surprised that a seeming act of wanton aggression has been met with a certain degree of unity in the West. But there have been a camp that's actually enabled Russia and a lot of bystanders seeming to reveal the reality of a multipolar world. What is-- we're talking to this panel is technically on the future of NATO. How does China's involvement in this conflict affected and what is the role of-- does NATO's have a role out of area going forward or now that it's prime function of defending Europe is actually being mobilized-- you talked about the implications others might draw from this for other conflicts elsewhere. Does NATO have a role to play in the world at large beyond Europe and what if anything does this conflict say about that? General, how about you? CURTIS SCAPAROTTI: Yeah. Thank you. I think they do have a role to play. And I think if you looked at their most recent strategic concept, they affirmed that indirectly addressing China. If you look at the way they address that though, they said the words were China is a challenge to NATO's interests, security, and values, I can assure you and I think Sandy would say that when you write a sentence like that in a strategic concept, it probably took a lot of work to come to that. But it is one sense remarkable that, that statement's in there. And then the other it, to me, signals a balanced approach. So they admit, as Jens Stoltenberg has said, China has come to Europe. But it also recognizes that for NATO, there is a balance in their response. I happen to believe that NATO recognizes and should focus on the Transatlantic or the Euro-Atlantic defense. That's their purpose. But they do have a role to play in with partnerships which have existed for a long time with those in the Indo-Pacific. They do have a role to play diplomatically information-wise and through their nations economically to support the rules-based order. I think militarily, their focus will remain Euro-Atlantic. And simply their military resources will limit the ability to which they can support otherwise. GIDEON ROSE: Sandy, does NATO have a role outside Europe? SANDY VERSHOBOW: Clearly, it does. NATO has already shown since the end of the Cold War that it has an out-of-area vocation. And I think it was successful in the case of the interventions in the Balkans. Now we're seeing that security challenges are not just in the military domain. And the NATO is trying to, both for its own sake but also as a means of dealing with the Chinese factor, broadening its concept of security to include issues such as supply chain, security, and resilience, and critical infrastructure that the Chinese are trying to buy up which could affect our ability to mobilize forces. So the different dimensions of the Chinese challenge I think clearly affect us globally, affect Europe. You can't compartmentalize threats in the Asia-Pacific and those in the Euro-Atlantic region. So NATO I think is already moving in the right direction. And I think there are some differences of view with differences of emphasis, Macron continues to turn this into an issue of how can we liberate ourselves from American domination. But I think in practice, there's increasing convergence on the part of most of the European governments that this is an important new dimension for NATO. And I think it's likely to continue in the future, even though, dealing with the Russian military threat will be the most immediate challenge which isn't going to go away anytime soon. GIDEON ROSE: In terms of the lessons the Chinese are drawing for a potential conflict in Taiwan from what's happening in Ukraine, it's a fascinating question that Mike raised. If I'm Chinese and I'm looking at what's going on in Ukraine, one of the things I'm thinking is, these guys don't have the defense industrial base to have enough weapons, or missiles, or shells to be able to fight any longer. And so I don't have to worry about a protracted conflict in Taiwan. If I can get past the first couple of weeks, they'll just run out of shells. Has this conflict sent the message about the decline of the Western defense industrial base sufficient to restore our capacity before a conflict with Taiwan and therefore sustain not just the conflict but maybe the deterrence that could prevent a conflict? MIKE O'HANLON: Well, this is I think why your earlier provocation could well turn out to be true and persuasive in the end, because we clearly are worrying about this issue a lot more than we did before. Of course, the Chinese are aware we have this problem more than they were before. So it's a race against those two competing perspectives. But I think there is a decent chance that not only on the defense industrial base side of things. But the broader economic resilience of the West and diversification of supply chains getting to Sandy's and General Scap's point about the importance of NATO, it's not just the military tools of NATO. But it's the ability of the Western block to think about how to make our economies more robust in the face of Chinese punishment so that China can't think that we would all buckle quickly in an economic war. And we're at a policy school. And we all figure out which concentrations to take and which courses to teach. I think economics and military tools are becoming part of the same broad set of capabilities in ways that maybe wasn't always true, at least not since the world wars. And we're going to have to think about any kind of deterrence of China involving not just military instruments but Western economic resilience so that China knows we're not just going to be a paper tiger and want to quickly concede in a crisis because we want to get back to business, as usual, with them. GIDEON ROSE: Let me follow up on that point. That's a great one. The modern field-- what I'm struck by is the modern field of international political economy and security studies emerged during the Cold War when they were completely separate from each other because the issues were completely separate. We traded with other capitalist powers who are our allies. And we had security competitions with generally poor states that didn't factor into the world economy. And so the IPE specialists and the security specialists, they may have occasionally met in the cafeteria. But they didn't take each other's classes. They didn't talk to each other. And we now find ourselves, particularly with regard to China but it's already happening with Russia, in a situation in which we have an ongoing strategic security competition with a major-- with major powers who are deeply involved in the global economy that we have connected with. And we have no set of overarching theoretical frameworks with which to govern those kinds of relationships. And I think that this is actually directly relevant to SIPA because the development of intellectual frameworks to understand and structure the responses to the policy challenges of this new world in the 21st century, it should be and needs to be I think a first order problem. It's an ongoing one. Did anybody-- OK, let's take the sanctions on that. When the war has-- when the war took off, we managed to get the ability to put together an unprecedentedly strong set of sanctions on Russia which some people felt would be dramatically effective. It does not seem to actually have had as much impact as many felt. And as you say, the Chinese-- one of the lessons the Chinese are probably learning is we need to be able to protect ourselves from financial sanctions in a way so that we don't lose what the Russians lost early on. What is the role of sanctions in conjunction with the military effort? How do people comment on the role of sanctions and economic warfare in this particular conflict and its implications for the future of those tools? MIKE O'HANLON: Can I start with a quick comment, because I'm looking right at Peter Clement. And I want to quote him from what he said at the beginning of this session which is Putin made a huge mistake of historic significance because long term, long term, the demographic drain, long term, the Western disengagement from Russia, long term, the significance of our pulling back on high technology collaboration and investment is going to matter a lot, not just for Russia today and next year but for the Russia of the 2030s '40s and '50s. It's why my Russian friends who are young are sad about what Putin's done to their country. They may be mad at us, too, because they think we helped produce the Putin effect. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: Well, not just sad, they're leaving. MIKE O'HANLON: Yeah, they're leaving, exactly. But this is not going to be enough punishment to make Russia end the war. That's the bad news. In fact, it's all bad news, because in the short term, the sanctions are not really going to sway Putin I think in 2023, '4 or '4, at least not centrally. And in the long term, it's going to make Russia or/and weaker. And I have no interest long term in the Russian people suffering because of this mistake of their current leader. GIDEON ROSE: Anybody else want to comment on the economic side of this conflict? MARY ELISE SAROTTE: Maybe we should do all they're doing even if it only helps marginally. But it's only helping marginal. SANDY VERSHOBOW: The sanctions have hurt the Russians significantly. But they had this energy loophole in the first months of the war where they're making scads of money, continuing to sell oil and gas at two to three times the average market price of recent years. That advantage is going away now with this price cap on oil. I think the most important part of the sanctions has been the technology transfer restrictions which have prevented the Russians from getting microchips and other components to continue to equip their military to continue this war as it goes into its second year. So we clearly have to look for possibilities to tighten the sanctions even further. And I think that won't be that difficult to get a consensus within NATO and the EU on that. But sanctions have never been a panacea. They take time to work. And there are companies that are evading them. And we need to prosecute them to the full extent of the law. But overall, I think sanctions are going to have increasing effect as this war goes into 2024. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: Also I think it's important to differentiate between sanctions as an ideal and sanctions as implemented. I was talking to Dmitri Alperovitch who founded CrowdStrike now runs a think tank in Washington, DC. And he also has contributed to sites where I work. And he was saying, my contacts in Russia when I say to them what impact does the sanctions having on you individually, the answer was I can still get everything I want, I just have to pay 20% more. So basically, I'm paying a surcharge for things to come in via indirect routes. So for example, countries bordering Russia have suddenly had a huge spike in buying iPhones because they're not for domestic consumption in those countries. They're being smuggled into Russia. So he reeled off all these statistics of countries that can still trade with Russia having massive spikes in computer equipment purchases and so forth, not because everybody there suddenly wants to own five iPhones, but because that's how it's going in. So it's important when we're talking about this to understand that the sanctions as implemented have lots, and lots, and lots, and lots of loopholes. So it's a little bit of a separate question if we say what impact is it having now. I guess what we're really saying is in an ideal world where the sanctions were being implemented to the letter scrupulously would that have an impact. That's not the situation we have. GIDEON ROSE: I'm trying to think-- OK. In Afghanistan, the Russians pulled back after far fewer casualties than they've already suffered in Ukraine. In World War II, they kept going after far greater casualties than they've suffered. As we try to figure out the Russian stamina, obviously, Putin is trying to project that he has endless reserves of will and manpower. But they're already, in many respects, scraping the bottom of the barrel. They've tried to-- they managed to get the fodder for their human wave attacks in this spring by draining prisons and going to provincial poor demographic sources that wouldn't tap the main bases of Putin's power. But how much longer can the Russians manage to hold out if they couldn't even manage to push the Ukrainians back this spring at the cost that they did? How much longer can they continue their war effort at this level? MIKE O'HANLON: So you said that World War II and Afghanistan cancel each other out. Let's go back to World War I before communism in Russia, when they had a czar like they do today and when-- maybe their population was roughly comparable. And we know that it took them about three years to break. But in that war, they were also suffering casualties at a rate of roughly three to five times higher per year. So obviously, no single war is a perfect analogy or antecedent. But I would say they can take probably 5 to 10 times more punishment before that particular point of reference would suggest that they might crack. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: Actually, if I can push back against that, you said Russia scraping the bottom of the barrel. Russia is not scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of number of men they can force to the front. Let me-- just to illuminate this point, it might be worth thinking for a minute. And I'd be very interested in what the General has to say about this and why the Russian Air Force has played relatively little overall. Russian military doctrine, if Putin had followed it, he would have basically bombed Ukraine for six weeks before moving in. But that didn't happen. And the Russian Air force is sort of the dog that's not barking. And I was listening recently to Dara Massicot of Iran. And she said, I hate to be cynical, but it's hard to avoid the conclusion that there's 25 million men in the reserve. They're easily replaceable. What's not replaceable, our high end airframes. So I think that Russia doesn't at all feel like it's scraping the bottom of the barrel. I think Russia feels like it can force pretty much endless number of people to the front. That's not a factor that's driving the decision. But I'm interested in what the General has to say about that. CURTIS SCAPAROTTI: Yeah. Thank you. I tend to agree. I'm on a track, too, with four US retired generals and four Russian generals. And we're still meeting. And I can tell you their resolve is, is that-- they in fact said, bluntly, you Americans are underestimating our resolve and our ability to continue this fight. We will not-- we will not give up on this. We're going to attain our objectives. And secondly, when they talk about it, it's a sense of just their national spirit. Within the country itself, there's a certain national will that Putin's been able to maintain primarily because he owns the media, obviously. But it's the story that he tells. And I think he still has a good deal of resolve within the country to support what he's doing. Last thing I'll tell you is not in the one that I set in but in a former track, too. The discussions of sanctions came up. And one of the Russians generals said to one of our generals, we will eat grass before we give in to your sanctions. I think that quote is an indication of just how-- how serious they are about driving on. GIDEON ROSE: So again, I'm going to push you guys on this because that seems to me to make sense in the context of an existential war. The Ukrainians are fighting an existential war. The Russians are not. They're fighting a kind of imperial war on another country's territory. Their troops don't seem particularly motivated. The troops don't seem to want to eat grass. And there seems to be an aversion to pushing towards full mobilization. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: Inside Russia, the Russian media is telling the Russian people this is an existential war against NATO. Now I'm not agreeing with this-- GIDEON ROSE: They're not calling it a war. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: Right. Exactly. But this is an existential-- GIDEON ROSE: It's existential special military operation. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: Exactly I'm not agreeing with it. I'm just saying from inside Russia, that is exactly how Russian media is describing whatever this is. And so then you get into the very tricky question of the very tricky question of how much do people believe that? And I think the uncomfortable answer is quite a bit. GIDEON ROSE: On this point, OK, so if you can get the rushing people to believe anything, does that actually create the flexibility for Putin to end this war if he so chooses? Let's talk about war termination. Let's talk about where this goes. Does this war end with Putin out of power? Does this war end with Putin making a choice to cut losses? How does this thing wrap up? Mike. MIKE O'HANLON: I'll just take a piece of that, because we're going to learn more about territorial holdings in the next few weeks and months. And that's going to be partly-- it's not going to be settled I don't think this summer. But it's-- we're going to learn a lot about the realm of the possible as to whether Ukraine can really get all of its land back and whether there's got to be some other more creative arrangements like shared sovereignty, or deferred referenda, or just failing to acknowledge Russian annexation but not undo it in the short to medium term. That's one set of issues. The set of issues that I'm interested in is security architectures. And by the way, on your last point, that's why I chose World War I, because World War I also is-- from Russia's point of view, they started in the East. And it was an imperial war. And it became existential because they fought so hard they destroyed their country and it collapsed. But I think, again, Putin does have a lot of leeway here in how he manages this. But on security architectures, I would just like to very quickly put out a broad thought that Professor Lise Howard of Georgetown and I have been trying to write about, which is that the two concepts that are most prominent in the debate right now, either Ukrainian membership in NATO or the so-called porcupine strategy where we expedite arms to Ukraine, try to give them the special military edge that we've tried to give Israel over the years. These are insufficient as concepts in the debate. And what we need is to think about a way to get some Western military presence on Ukrainian soil long term but not under the imprimatur of NATO, because that's just guaranteed to be waving a red flag at Russia, and the non-negotiable as part of any peace, and probably a guarantee to further and bitter Russia over years and decades. So Lise and I are talking about this concept of an Atlantic-Asian security community that would essentially oversee a long term training mission. The training mission is largely a tripwire. But it's designed to be much more substantial than the small numbers of special forces that we had from 2014 through 2021 on Ukrainian soil. And so I'll just put that idea out there for now. I think it's too soon to predict whether that could really be part of an answer. But I think we need to have options in the debate that are different from just the polar extremes of NATO's membership for Ukraine in the near term and just a porcupine. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: And this corresponds to my historical analysis. So these are the grounds on which I criticize NATO enlargement, because there were alternative known at the time that-- there were somewhere between put nobody in or absolutely Article V or nothing. There was some-- there was a way to have ambiguity in enlargement. And these were policies that were known at the time. And that would have among other things given options for Ukraine. GIDEON ROSE: Like PFP? MARY ELISE SAROTTE: Like PFP among other things, mainly PFP. Let me put this way. The big play at the end of the Cold War in the 1990s was to accomplish three things. Number one, to enable Central and Eastern Europeans to fulfill their dream of joining NATO and the European Union Western institutions. Number two, to define a berth for Ukraine which was a massive country at the time, the third biggest nuclear power in the world, over 50 million people, geographically huge, clearly a major European country to define a place for it, and also to define a place for Russia while keeping strategic nuclear disarmament going. There was this brilliant moment in the '90s where Moscow and Washington were united in destroying nuclear weapons. It was the greatest progress in disarmament since the dawn of the nuclear age. So the big play was to do all of those things. And instead, we only did one. Instead, we only did one. We got Central and Eastern Europe into NATO. But the way that we expanded it which was an all or nothing expansion, Article V or nothing, that left Ukraine in the lurch, because we were not going to give Ukraine Article V. So that left this major country in the lurch. And it also eroded cooperation between Moscow and Washington at a time when we were making massive progress on nuclear disarmament. And for that reason, Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, a man I respect greatly strongly opposed to the way NATO enlargement happened. He repeatedly went to his boss, President Bill Clinton and said, President Clinton, I have huge admiration for the Central and Eastern Europeans. But I am the Secretary of Defense of the United States of America. This is Bill Perry speaking. My job is to make this country as safe as possible. And I am currently doing an amazing job, because I'm working hand-in-hand with Moscow to destroy strategic nuclear weapons pointed at the United States. And anything you do with NATO enlargement that makes them in the least bit hesitant to work with me is not in our interest and indeed is not in global interest. So let us please not push this all or nothing NATO expansion now. And then when Clinton decided otherwise, Perry came this close to resigning and later said in his memoirs, that was one of my biggest mistakes. I should have resigned. Now that I know how dangerous that all or nothing premature NATO expansion was. So instead of the big play accomplishing those three goals, enlarging NATO, Central Eastern Europe, defining place for Ukraine, keeping nuclear cooperation going, instead, we only have the first. obviously relations with Russia have completely collapsed. And we don't have the flexibility towards Ukraine that I think you're rightly calling for. GIDEON ROSE: Sandy, you were there at that time. SANDY VERSHOBOW: I have to say I was there at the time. And it didn't look the same as you just described it from the inside during that period. Yes, we were trying to achieve justice for the Central and East European countries who had been sold out at Yalta and give them the opportunity to join the West, become part of the Democratic community. But the second pillar of the strategy, equally important and very important to Bill Clinton, was to try to place a strategic place for Russia coexisting with an expanding NATO. I don't think anybody including within OSD working for Perry gave serious consideration to the idea of some kind of NATO light without the Article V. There was a sense that if these countries are going to join NATO, they have to have the full protection of NATO, or NATO will cease to be the guarantor of our own security. Ukraine, on the other hand, was perhaps less central to the debate. There was always a tendency to say, we're going to do this for the Central Europeans. We're going to have a strategic partnership with Russia. We're going to have a charter or what became the founding act. We're going to collaborate with them on as many issues as we can think of to show them that this is actually worth their while. It was not just window dressing. But then the next, Perry would say, we've got to do something similar for Ukraine. And maybe we should have taken Ukraine more seriously back in the day. But I also think that what we were doing with Russia was quite significant before, particularly in the '90s, even going into the early years of Putin. He was considering raising the issue of NATO's membership for Russia when he first came into office. NATO did respond with this Rome declaration, tried to beef up the NATO-Russia partnership. I think it was developments in the former Soviet Union that undermined Russian interest in working with NATO more than anything else. It wasn't-- even though the Bucharest Summit was diplomatic malpractice. It wasn't the decisive factor. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: With respect, I'm going to disagree with part of what you said. I understand you were in the NSC and in the State Department. And obviously, I know none of this personally. I'm a personal nonentity. Everything I know, I know from my research, my interviews, and so forth. What I've just described was taken very seriously inside the Pentagon. And there is obviously a discrepancy between the views of the State Department, the national security, and the views of the Pentagon, and of Secretary Perry in particular. And I think when I did my research, I ultimately came down on the side of what the Pentagon was trying to achieve by creating ambiguity rather than having all or nothing expansion, where all you can do is give people Article V or nothing, which leaves Ukraine in the lurch, which was known at the time inside the Pentagon to be a concern, that then once the Pentagon lost that battle, that was when Perry thought, well, I think I should resign. He didn't but he later regretted it GIDEON ROSE: General, why don't you take us out? How will this end? And what is the relationship with Russia and NATO look like afterwards? CURTIS SCAPARROTTI: Well, could I make a comment on the discussion you just had quickly first? GIDEON ROSE: Yep. CURTIS SCAPARROTTI: I think one of the things that we, and I'd be interested in Mary's thought on this, is that we generally look at our adversaries or even our allies at times, through our own lens as opposed to through their lens. And what I learned is the [INAUDIBLE] is that we were looking at Russia through our lens often. And if you looked at it in the way that they saw their country looking out for Moscow, if you looked at it in the way that they understood their military doctrine and what they call, "defense of the homeland," it is different than defense of homeland in any Western view. That helps educate us as to why Putin and his leaders think the way they do. Why we see as aggression in the Black Sea for instance, or aggressive acts, to them is a part of their defense. I'm not saying it's right. I disagreed with all of that. But I think that would have helped us much earlier on to get ahead of where this was heading because we really didn't take the time to fully appreciate their view of what it took to ensure their security. And this goes back to the, "do we understand what they think strategic stability would be?" As Mike said, we need to understand that if we're going to move forward for the future and bring Russia back into our nations here in the future. To the future, I think in the shorter term, I don't see this ending soon. I think it'll be a war of attrition that'll go on for another year or so. I don't think Putin is going to back out until he can bring it to a place where he can sell that what he did was successful to his people, that he has to be seen as successful. And short of that, he has no other place to go. So I don't see this ending soon, and I don't see an early negotiation being something that he would agree to at this point. He doesn't have the conditions he need, nor do the Ukrainians have conditions set to be successful in a negotiation on their part. MICHAEL O'HANLON: Does the author of, "Tell me how this ends?" That's not quite the title of your book, but does the author of that book have an opinion? GIDEON ROSE: So when I came away from studying war termination is that wars tend to be like chess matches, and they have three phases. There's the opening game. There's the mid-game, and there's the endgame game. Opening game is when you sort of engage and deploy your forces. And the mid-game is when you try to fight it out. There's a great deal of inertia. And at a certain point, it becomes pretty clear what the broad characteristics of the trends of events are going to be. Both sides recognize that. And then you get into an endgame where you're fighting over the details. I think, as the General just said, we're still in the mid game because each side has not yet decided that it has to accept the general contours, the outcome. Each side still thinks that it can manage to achieve something of its original goals or affect the other side's view of the outcome by their own efforts. And you don't-- that's a recipe for continuing the fighting. At some point, the war will either get to a place where it's a clear stalemate that can't easily be shifted as happens in Korea, or the trend will go decisively in one direction, and both sides recognize that. And then you'll have the endgame in the negotiations. But until then, as the General just said, if we need to make the Russians feel they have a strategic defeat and the Russians feel that they can still achieve something resembling victory, that's a recipe for a continued conflict rather than an endgame any time soon. One of the great virtues of being at SIPA, at the Saltzman Institute at Columbia is you have audiences that could easily be panelists. And I want to bring our wonderful audience in to ask questions of our panelists and to engage the discussion. We have one microphone. So wait until you're called upon and will be asked. We have a Russia expert back in the day. [INTERPOSING VOICES] MARY ELISE SAROTTE: Soviet expert. Soviet expert. GIDEON ROSE: --who will ask the first question. Wait for the microphone and identify yourself and ask a question or make a comment [INAUDIBLE].. Tell us why they're wrong. AUDIENCE: Thank you, Gideon. I remember your reference to the title of the panel being technically, The Future of NATO. But I'd like to try to make it a little more the, Future of NATO. And I think this means going beyond a focused, just in-- SANDY VERSHBOW: Hold up the microphone. AUDIENCE: A narrow focus on Putin himself. I mean, one effect of the war has been to unify Russian opinion in support of Putin's claim that this is an existential war, that the West is determined to destroy Russia. So my question is, in the future of NATO, should it be a goal of the alliance to try to divide Russia to weaken that view, and how to do so? Is it-- SANDY VERSHBOW: Weaken the view of the? AUDIENCE: Weaken the view of the-- SANDY VERSHBOW: People? AUDIENCE: The national security establishment, but what has become, I think, more broadly public view that there is an unavoidable, permanent conflict between Russia and the West. You know, is there a way to revive a Russian interest in fixing its relations with Europe, which are now a complete disaster? Barely exist. Maybe this support is too weak in Russia. Maybe this idea that you have to create a viable relationship with Europe-- a workable relationship. But if not, is there any way for NATO to try to shape it? Because depending on the nature of Russian opinion, you can end up with different kinds of NATOs. And the future, it seems to me, of NATO is going to depend a bit on the way this war ends but also, on the way the Russians act afterwards. Not just Putin himself. Maybe not Putin at all. But how does that effort-- is that effort, should that be part of the future of NATO? GIDEON ROSE: Mike. MICHAEL O'HANLON: Just to start, Steve, with one piece of it, and I admit it's only a piece, this idea that these Howard and I are trying to propose would offer a post Putin-Russia membership at some point or the prospect of membership. We go back to the Yeltsin-Clinton conversation. It didn't last long. And the whole idea of having an Atlantic-Asian security community would be that someday, the goal would be that Russia would be part of that. Whereas, just asking Russia to join NATO seems like whistling at the graveyard. I mean, Russians hate NATO, and they've got a lot of reasons to do so. They may not be good reasons, but they're deeply entrenched. So part of the logic of what we're proposing is to get deterrence of another Russian attack on Ukraine in the short term but to also, offer a longer term, vision for a Europe whole and free. And by the way, it's always a little bit unfair to quote people, who aren't here and aren't alive any longer to defend their views. But Zbig Brzezinski, his last book, Strategic Vision in 2012, talked about trying-- this was of course before Crimea and everything else. But he, even a hawk like Brzezinski, talked about envisioning a European security order someday that would include Russia. And I think we need to, at least, have that vision. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: That's a good point. Even Zbig is talking about it. SANDY VERSHBOW: I agree with that. I mean, that certainly, was what we were trying to do in the '90s. And yes, we try to do it again. The discussion of Russian membership is probably, not going to get you very far unless you have fundamental regime change of pro-NATO for Western people to regain influence. But I think that we should be trying to influence Russian opinion. I think NATO should do that. Maybe not as its highest priority, but find ways to push back against the notion that NATO is out to destroy Russia, to weaken Russia, to deny Russia a significant place in the world. I think the support for the war is broad but not deep in Russia. Mean, we don't know enough about public opinion in Russia, given the massive censorship and criminalization of even questioning the war. But Putin, I think is not only using shameless propaganda, but he's also deliberately not drafting a lot of ethnic Russians from the big cities. And he may run out of space to continue to do that. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: Yeah, it's a good point. SANDY VERSHBOW: So there may be a lot of things that could happen as this war goes into 2024 that could more significantly, erode Russian popular support for the war and create a target audience for us to get the message across, that this isn't a war to destroy Russia, but a war to stop aggression and violation of international law and all that. But that we do, when this is over, want to go back to having some kind of normal relationship with Russia. But clearly, they're going to have to stop violating every rule in the book, every pillar of the rules-based order to get there. But I think, we don't do enough in terms of the information war dimension of this. We don't invest enough. We don't get people with real skills who could begin to affect Russian opinion. And the fact that more and more Russians are buying VPNs from the Apple Store suggests that there's a thirst for more information with different points of view. So we should be doing more to find ways to get our views work with these emigre media outlets in Meduza, TV Rain, to the extent that you can get Russians rather than Americans and other NATO members making some of these points-- could help crack the foundation of Putin's public support. Certainly worth trying because I think this is going to go on until 2024. Into 2024. Maybe longer. I don't see highly likely-- it does depend as Mike said on how things go over the next couple of months in terms of Ukrainians ability to regain territory or not. It's probably going to end up somewhere, where they make some significant gains, but it does not represent a game changing development in Putin's point of view. So thinking of other ways to erode the political base for this war in Russia, I think, is something that we need to get more attention to. GIDEON ROSE: Next question. Yes, over here. AUDIENCE: Thank you for speaking. I'm a first year student at SIPA. The US and USA specifically is spending $13 billion per year reconstructing Ukraine-- this is not humanitarian aid money. This is actually helping them build a better country than they have before. And this is comparable to what we saw spent in Afghanistan during the height of the war. Are you seeing signs that we're creating political economies similar to what we did in Afghanistan? And how can we learn better lessons from what we created both with the defense industry here and with the local stakeholders in the country? GIDEON ROSE: Anybody want to-- CURTIS SCAPARROTTI: I'll take-- GIDEON ROSE: Yep. CURTIS SCAPARROTTI: I'll take you to that if I can. What's encouraging in this respect is that there are both NGOs and business within the United States in the West that are already taking a look at the rebuilding of Ukraine. And they begin to think about how it should be done, what the parameters ought to be, who should be involved, et cetera. And the State Department is also a part of that. I think that's encouraging because it gives us time to think about it deeply. And secondly, it gives us time to look at the lessons we weren't learned, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. And so I'm encouraged by that. If anything though, we're moving somewhat slowly because the conflict is still hot, and there's many that believe to include Ukraine for the most part that we shouldn't really begin this until we get to a place where we believe that the initial part of this construction can begin and it won't be damaged again. Finally, from experiencing Afghanistan and Iraq, I think we should be very cautious about the amount of money we pitch into a country. That tends to be the way we react. And in a country that is in the situation that Ukraine will be in and with a populace that's not been used to those levels of economy, I think this in itself just creates the corruption that we've seen. Or if not that, then at least, so much money that it's not well managed in terms of its outcome. So I think those are some of the things that I've thought about. We need to have a much better management system, and we need to be a little more conservative in just what we want to get done and how fast. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: If I could make a comment. Actually would link your question and our earlier war termination discussion that we were having, Gideon, I just want to report a discussion I've been hearing inside policymaking circles. I'm not going to comment on whether I'm favor favorite or not. But a conversation that is happening is about the connection between war termination and reconstruction funding. Or put differently, we obviously have the land for peace discussion with regard to the Middle East. This is a money for peace discussion, right? Nobody really wants to talk about this openly because it's sort of putting a price, right? On getting Ukraine to give up. But the idea would be something like, well, Ukraine, if we'll give you all the seized Russian assets that are currently frozen, will you stop saying, we want to go back to the borders of 1991? And can we end this conflict? Right? I don't know how that will shake out. I don't have a firm personal view. But I do know that this discussion of reconstruction funding and war termination-- those discussions are merging and looking at ways to see whether that money might be used to get the Ukrainians, at least, to accept and end because I agree very much with what's already been said. Right now, both of the parties that are currently bleeding believe it is in their interest to keep fighting. And as long as that is the case, I think you're absolutely right, Gideon. You're still in mid-game. So the question is, can you at least move one party toward an end game, and could the reconstruction money be a way to encourage that? SANDY VERSHBOW: The one pitfall is if we ever get into the business of telling the Ukrainians what they have to give up territorially-- MARY ELISE SAROTTE: More than one. SANDY VERSHBOW: We're asking for asking for trouble because this is going to be basically ratifying a certain amount of territorial conquests with all the brutality and war crimes that have gone into it. And that sends the message to China, to other autocrats that the rules of the international order are ones you can observe selectively. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: Or once you can-- if you write a big enough check, you can get out of them. Kind of like Fox News just discovered. Again, I'm not agreeing with this. I'm just saying this discussion is happening. GIDEON ROSE: Next question. Yes, over here. AUDIENCE: First of all, hello. My name is Ihor. I'm a ninth grade student here at York City. I came here to United States from Ukraine 9 months ago. Yeah, so first of all, I want to thank you on behalf of children of Ukraine. With my friends, we want to thank you for helping, for supporting our country in hard times. Thank you very much. Yeah, and my question will be, as we all know, Hungary right now is a face of opposition to NATOs and use policies and sanctions against Russia and Putin himself. Do you consider that threat seriously? And what can be done by NATO as an alliance in long term to oppress a real dangerous pro-Russian movement in the crossroads of Europe? MARY ELISE SAROTTE: Are you asking me? GIDEON ROSE: No, who wants to take that? SANDY VERSHBOW: I didn't fully understand. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: You talk about the role of Hungary? AUDIENCE: Yeah, I'm talking about that Hungary right now is the face of opposition to NATO's policies against Russia and Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Yeah. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: I think Viktor Orban-- first of all, thank you for the courage that you and your people have shown. AUDIENCE: Yeah, thank you. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: And thank you for your kind words just now. I think I would slightly phrase your concern differently. Viktor Orban-- I wouldn't call him the face of opposition. I would say, he is a roadblock and a very sizable one. I was actually just looking as part of-- because I'm trying to keep on top of the news today. While we've been sitting here, it's come out that Viktor Orban is pushing back against what Jens Stoltenberg said yesterday in Ukraine. Yesterday, Jens Stoltenberg said, Ukraine's rightful place is in NATO. And Orban today tweeted, "What!?!" Exclamation point, question mark, exclamation point. MICHAEL O'HANLON: He beat me to it. Sorry. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: So I agree with you that Orban is a significant roadblock. There is no means for expelling him from NATO. On the other hand, there is a lot of different kinds of leverage. And Orban, when it has suited himself, he has gone along for example, with Finnish membership. Also, there used to be, prior to February 2022, very tight relationship between a Polish and Hungarian leaders, right? Both of whom are-- I don't know how to phrase it-- pushing their countries away from democracy. That relationship has really started to decouple, to use a trendy word, because Poland now is standing so firmly with its NATO allies, which leaves Orban more isolated than he was. So I think Orban is obviously a problem, but I think he is a problem that can be managed. It's just unfortunate because it takes time, money, and resources away from the front line fighting in your country. But I think that is not the insurmountable problem. I think it's a problem but not insurmountable problem. GIDEON ROSE: Actually, let me follow up on that with a two finger. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: Yeah. GIDEON ROSE: As the alliance expands even further to get to 30 countries with so many different interests, is it actually workable? Does the alliance end up becoming a sort of lowest common denominator that can't do anything? Or do we need-- are there possibilities for procedures that essentially will be able to make the alliance workable even if there's one person trying to throw up the work? You know, throw something-- MARY ELISE SAROTTE: I would argue it's been working pretty well in standing up to Russia recently. And it shows that if you have an enemy to concentrate minds, you can get 29 or 30 or 31 people to agree. What's harder is if you don't have that great power competitor to concentrate minds. SANDY VERSHBOW: But it's not only that that makes NATO work even with the expanded numbers. I've often been asked this question. Is it unwieldy to have 25, now 31 countries around the table? And it's never been a question of numbers. The only thing that affects is the length of the meetings since everybody has to say something. You could spend hours in the conference room, but you could be better doing something else. But it's usually the case of an individual country that chooses to abuse the consensus rule. That is an inescapable part of how NATO's works. You're not going to go to a qualified majority voting when you're talking about security. But it does put a premium on both leadership and skillful diplomatic behind-the-scenes activity by the Secretary General, by the US Ambassador to NATO who has an unusual role-- both representing the US but also being kind of a troubleshooter with the Allies. It just requires a lot of effort. And sometimes, you just have to stand up to the country that's bullying the Alliance. I think that was pressure that led turkey to at least, agree with this annex to Summit declaration's contract that they signed with Finland and Sweden on what they're going to do to address Turkey's concerns. But ultimately, the Hungarian block on having meetings of the NATO-Ukraine Commission was broken by Stoltenberg. Simply saying, we're not going to put up with this Anymore. And he said, we're going to hold the meeting. And Hungarians swallowed it. So you have to deal with it through a behind-the-scenes diplomacy. Choose the moment to be firm. Choose the moment to see if there's some kind of accommodation possible. But at the end of the day, Allies recognize that NATO needs to work. The consensus rule can't be altered. And when security is on the line, it was too big to fail. GIDEON ROSE: Let's hope that-- from your lips to God's ears. SANDY VERSHBOW: You asked about the question related to also other special mechanisms. There's been talk about having a code of conduct that is raised in NATO 2030 Study. But I'm not sure that would make a huge difference. But it still would hurt to get the Allies to pledge that they will respect other's interests and not abuse the consensus principle. But I don't think you can get much farther than that. GIDEON ROSE: Take one more question. Yes, over here. MODERATOR: We have a couple of different questions online. And for the sake of time, I'm going to be condensing. We have a few questions on the topic of military instruments and economic concerns. There are growing economic concerns domestically in many NATO countries. We've seen a standard of living crisis in Canada, protests in France, and in the US, the average American taxpayer paid about $1,000 this year just to military industrial contractors as part of their taxes. We've seen the Republican response to that and protests in other countries. If Russia continues on its path of aggression in Ukraine or even moves on to Belarus or elsewhere, at what point do you think domestic constituencies in these "eternal peace countries" to use a quote from Mary, would cease to support an exhaustion of Russian stamina? Could that constrain NATO's pledge to defend its allies? Thank you. GIDEON ROSE: OK. So will domestic concerns in the West force us to sell Ukraine out? We'll start-- CURTIS SCAPARROTTI: I've said no earlier. I still stand by that. And I go back to something General Mattis or Secretary Mattis said-- is we can afford our defense. And I think it's important that we do. And we see the cost when that deterrence fails, when we're not strong enough to deter a conflict. MARY ELISE SAROTTE: I think actually what the General just said is really important because the key is, we can afford our defense. So the challenge is going to be continuing to make clear to people that defending Ukraine is our defense, because there will start to be domestic voices that will try to decouple that. GIDEON ROSE: I don't understand why they haven't done a better job of that since it's such actually in that exact context. It's so incredibly cheap. The advantages that are being bought with the money that has been expended is far better value for American defense than the [INAUDIBLE] usually are, if that makes any sense. MICHAEL O'HANLON: Make sure that-- SANDY VERSHBOW: It's a real bargain. We're getting this [INAUDIBLE]. The Russian military has been decimated. I don't know what fraction of it still stands, but it's a bargain at twice the price. But I think the bottom line, of course, is to avoid the sort of domino effect of more and more countries losing heart. We have to defeat Putin. It may not be possible just this year. But he cannot be allowed to slip out of the net, or else, it will only embolden other despots and other autocrats to follow in his footsteps. And it will encourage Putin, after he regroups and rearms, to go after Moldova and go after other former Soviet states. This could go on for a while. And he's been very clear that his ambitions don't stop with Ukraine. MICHAEL O'HANLON: I was hoping to make that the last word because I have a point that's slightly more nuanced. And this would have been a better inspirational last word. But I'm going to make my point anyway, which is to say, yes, while we're fighting, we're supporting Ukraine to help them survive as a nation. We will keep at it. But if and when that starts to look like a slog World War I style over who's going to move a front line by 5 kilometers the next year and their big spring offensive, and that's the way the Western Front looked in World War 1 for three years, I don't know that it's unfair of MAGA Republicans or anybody else to ask if we should modify our ambitions as a country, and even without telling Ukraine, which pieces of territory it has to give up. Nonetheless, to start to throw a little bit of cold water, as apparently has already happened as we know now from Discord that the United States is already telling Ukraine, you're probably not going to get at all. So I think it's actually not an unfair question. I might come down on the more hawkish side of the answer. But it's not an unfair question to say, how many years we want to pump $50 plus billion into this fight if it starts to look like it's an exercise in futility? That won't happen this year. But it might happen next year, which by the way, happens to be 2024 Presidential Election. GIDEON ROSE: You know, Mary talked about how Bill Perry is saying, I'm destroying Russian nukes by these deals. We're doing the opposite side. We're destroying Russia's conventional capabilities. It seems to me a cheaper twice to price as Sandy said. But with that let me, thank our panelists, all of you, and turn things over to Peter Clement to take us out. PETER CLEMENT: Thank you so much, Gideon. I'm entirely blown away this has been the most thoughtful thought provoking can I say fun and very candid exchange of views among really smart, talented people. And on a personal note, I will say I've had a chance to work with some of the people on this panel. I just met Mary today for the first time, and what an amazing group of well-informed, articulate, smart and nuanced analysts. You could not have gotten a better panel to talk on these issues today. So a debt of gratitude to all of you. Gideon, you've played a masterful job, not only as moderator but questioner and commentator at the same time. General Scaparrotti, thank you for taking the time remotely, and it's a pleasure to see you again. Thank you so much for joining us today. I want to thank the audience for being here today. I know you're all busy writing papers and getting ready for final exams. So thank you all for being here. My Thanks to Keren for all of her kind words earlier and for helping contribute to all this. My thanks to our staff at Saltzman, and Ingrid, and the team, and the folks in SIPA IT who we got here really early. They set everything up to make sure everything worked. Thank you all, and have a great weekend.

Channel: Columbia SIPA

Views: 838

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Id: yx0Wmm_qz34

Length: 119min 18sec (7158 seconds)

Published: Mon May 08 2023