All right am i uh am I on here oh okay great um good afternoon everyone welcome to the
uncommon core lecture uh the causes and consequences of the ukraine crisis my name is michael volchak
i attended the university from 1986 to 1991 i got a bachelor's in political science and
a masters in international relations Professor Mearsheimer was a tremendous influence on
my life um completely revolutionizing my worldview changed how i looked at international relations
politics just everything in fact he was such a big influence on my life that
whoops
that when i went home for the summer between one of the school years leaving my college
girlfriend here she gave me a little keepsake picture book and she said here to remember
the people you love and inside was a picture of her on the right and a picture of professor
mearsheimer on the left
that's true story um uh when i was here the two biggest things that for me were uh military
affairs and the model united nations of the university of chicago the student organization
that i co-founded in 1988 and at that time i discovered that you need a faculty advisor
in order to have a registered student organization um so of course i thought for about two seconds
and then i went to see professor mirsheimer and i'm not sure if he remembers this but
i asked him will you be our faculty advisor and he said i will sign the piece of paper
if i never have to do anything else after that so i had found my faculty advisor so
uh without further ado i would like to introduce the r wendell harrison distinguished professor
of political science Professor John J. Mearsheimer
Thank you very much for that kind introduction thanks all for coming out to hear me talk
uh the subject i want to talk about is the causes and consequences of the ukraine crisis
which of course has been in the news in a really big way since uh february 2014 and
indeed there was a big story uh on the civil war in eastern ukraine in the newspapers this
morning the outline i'd like to follow is i'd just like to make a number of preliminary
comments to give you some background on this crisis then i'd like to give you my thinking
on what caused the crisis then tell you why i think the conventional wisdom is wrong talk
a little bit about the west's response so far to the crisis which is just in my opinion
making a bad situation worse and tell you what i think should be done and then finally
wrap up with some discussion of the consequences so let me start with some preliminary comments
first with regard to america's core strategic interests for me core strategic interests
are areas of the world where you're willing to fight and die and in my opinion outside
of the western hemisphere which is of enormous strategic importance to us there are only
three areas of the world that really matter one is europe two is northeast asia and three
is the persian gulf and it's very important to understand that since this country got
its independence in 1783 europe has been the most important area of the world even though
the japanese attacked us at pearl harbor we had a europe first policy going into the war
and we had a europe first policy throughout the war and it's in large part because the
great powers in europe are more important than the great powers in northeast asia over
time of course the persian gulf was an important area because that's where the oil is and oil
is a critical resource that matters greatly in the international system so those are the
three most important areas outside the western hemisphere and again since the beginning of
this country europe has been number one you want to understand that we're undergoing a
fundamental shift shift of great importance asia because of the rise of china is going
to be the most important area of the world for the united states the persian gulf because
it's inextricably linked with asia oil flowing to india oil flowing to china the persian
gulf will be number two and europe will be a distant three we're basically leaving europe
in the rear view mirror and of course you want to keep this in mind because the ukraine
crisis is in europe and it involves nato
just had to think about the geography of europe this is a simple if not simplistic way of
thinking about it but here's a map you can see where ukraine is let's see where poland
is you can see where russia is the way i think about european security is there's france
germany poland ukraine and russia of course we're moving from west to east these are the
big kahunas these are the big countries that matter and of course the two countries that
matter the most historically are germany and russia or for most of the 20th century germany
and the soviet union and i put them in red because as you well know both germany and
the soviet union fought bitter wars in poland in ukraine and we could add in belarus as
well if need be but as we go along here you want to keep in mind that ukraine is right
next to russia and poland is right next to ukraine and then out further west is germany
and france take this a step further this is the ethnic breakdown of ukraine i'm going
to show you a number of maps all of which are designed to show you that ukraine is a
badly divided country and what's taking place inside ukraine today is in good part a civil
war and to that extent it doesn't have that much to do with what the russians or the west
are doing there and as you can see in red uh are mostly ukrainian-speaking people and
then as you move further east you're talking about lots of russians and certainly lots
of russian speakers uh this is the ukraine election of 2004. this is the election in
the wake of the famous orange revolution which i'll talk more about uh as you can see the
country is badly divided between the east and the west the russian speakers in the east
and ukrainian speakers in the west this is the 2010 election which resulted in yanukovych
getting elected i'll talk about president yanukovych as we go along he was elected in
2010 and you can see there the voting patterns in the 2010 election look a lot like the voting
patterns in the 2004 election and then these are two recent surveys that came out from
the international republican institute that's here in the united states this one says if
ukraine could enter only one international economic union which of the following should
it be and of course the blue is the eu and the light blue is the customs union or actually
the red is the customs union of russia belarus and kazakhstan and the cities up at the top
are in western ukraine and the cities down the bottom are in eastern ukraine so you can
see very clearly that people in the west would like to join the eu people in the east have
little interest in joining the eu those are the eu numbers hear the nato numbers i mean
these two charts look virtually the same but all of this tells you that you have a badly
divided country and the conflict between the west and russia over ukraine is played out
in the context of this situation this is a simple little view graph that shows europe's
dependent on russian gas it's quite clear from that view graph that many of the countries
in eastern europe and even countries like germany are heavily dependent on russian natural
gas and of course that gives the russians lots of political leverage in this crisis
and it makes it very difficult for us to put pressure on the russians okay those are just
a number of preliminary comments i wanted to throw out just to set this up let's talk
about the causes of the conflict i think if you're going to talk about the causes of the
conflict you have to come at it from three different perspectives first of all you have
to ask what are the deep causes of the crisis what are the structural factors that underpin
this conflict then you have to talk about the precipitating causes because the crisis
broke out on february 22nd 2014. things were not terrible until february 22 2014 and that's
when everything went to hell in a hand basket and the question is what caused it then if
you focus on deep causes it can't tell you why something happened in february 2014 but
the precipitating causes are designed to get at that and then what we want to talk about
is the russian reaction why the russians did what they did with regard to crimea with regard
to eastern ukraine we want to talk about exactly what they did and then why they did it so
let's start with the deep causes my argument is that the west is principally responsible
for this mess not the russians this of course is not the conventional wisdom in the united
states and in fact except for steve cohen who's now at princeton i mean now at nyu he
used to be at princeton henry kissinger and maybe a handful of other people there are
not many people who agree with me but i i think the facts are quite clear on this that
the west is responsible and my aim is that the main deep causes the aim of the united
states and its european allies to peel ukraine away from russia's orbit and incorporate it
into the west our basic goal has been to make ukraine a western bulwark on russia's border
and russia says this ain't happening period end the story and we will do everything we
can to make sure it does not happen that's the deep cause now take it a step further
there are three key elements in our strategy the first is nato expansion and in many ways
the most important and i'll talk in some detail about that in a second but as you all know
since the cold war ended starting with the clinton administration we have been moving
nato eastward toward russia's border and the russians have said this is an absolute no-no
and i'll walk you through the story in a minute second is eu expansion eu expansion is all
about integrating ukraine economically into the west the way we are in the process of
integrating polling the czech republic slovakia the baltic states into the west and of course
we're doing that with nato as well these are two sets of institutions nato military institution
the eu and economic institution and the idea again is to take ukraine peel it away from
russia make it part of the west the third part of the story is fostering an orange revolution
this is all about promoting democracy in ukraine and in other places as you all know the united
states runs around the world trying to topple regimes and put in their place democratically
elected regimes and for almost all of you me included it's hard to be against promoting
democracy we all love democracy but if you're vladimir putin or if you're part of the leadership
in beijing when the united states talks about democracy promotion that means toppling your
regime and you won't be surprised to hear this they don't like that in beijing and they
don't like that in moscow right they do not like that
the chinese believe that we're behind the protests in hong kong you go to beijing you
talk to chinese elites the idea that we're promoting democracy around the world and especially
in east asia just drives them crazy because they think they're in the crosshairs and you
know what they are in the crosshairs because our basic strategy is to topple regimes all
over the world not simply because we like democracy but because we believe that whoever
gets elected will be pro-western so we're killing two birds with one stone we're promoting
democracy and getting leaders who are pro-american but again you can see the strategy here nato
expansion eu expansion and promoting democracy say a bit more about nato expansion because
it's so important uh nato expansion took place in two tranches the first one was in 1999
that's when you get poland the czech republic and hungary incorporated into nato the second
big tranche was in 2004 and that's when the baltic states you can see estonia latvia and
lithuania up top romania bulgaria these are the light brown countries that's the second
tranche of nato expansion now the soviets made it clear from the mid-1990s they were
adamantly opposed to nato expansion but number one they were too weak to do anything about
it and two it didn't involve the states that were right on their border i mean there's
no question as you can see from the map that latvia and estonia are on russia's border
and lithuania as well if you want to include that little enclave between poland and lithuania
but but the fact is these were very small states it was early in the game and the russians
were willing to live with it but then the big trouble starts and it comes in the famous
bucharest summit uh nato's bucharest summer in summit in april 2008 where at the end of
the summit a declaration is issued which says nato welcomes ukraine's and georgia's euro-atlantic
aspirations for membership in nato we agreed today that these countries will become members
of nato so the soviets the russians made this perfectly clear this was unacceptable russia's
deputy foreign minister said george's and ukraine's membership in the alliance is a
huge strategic mistake which will have most serious consequences for pan-european security
putin himself said georgia and ukraine becoming part of nato is a direct threat to russia
you all remember that there was a war between russia and georgia in august 2008 that war
was a consequence of this because the georgians thought we were sending them a signal that
they could get uppity with the russians and we would back them because they were going
to become part of nato that's not what and you know what happened the russians clobbered
the georgians and georgia is in deep trouble today because it thought it beca it could
become part of nato so you want to remember that april 2008 summit very important that
declaration very important and then what happens is you have a war so those are the deep causes
those three strategies nato expansion eu expansion and promoting democracy what about the precipitating
cause
key events leading up to the coup it's the coup of february 22nd 2014 that's of enormous
importance that's what really throws the crisis into gear just think about that word coup
orange revolution promoting democracy the coup february 22nd 2014. so the question is
what causes the code it all starts in november of 2013. at that point yanukovych president
yanukovych who's the head of ukraine is negotiating with e with the eu to form an association
agreement that brings the eu and ukraine much closer together it's a step in the direction
of incorporating ukraine into the european union or to put it in slightly different terms
incorporating ukraine into the west the russians make it clear that this is unacceptable russians
are willing to do a deal that involves the eu russia the imf and ukraine but the idea
that ukraine is going to do a deal exclusively with the eu and the russians are going to
be left out in the cold it's not something that putin is willing to countenance he puts
significant pressure on the ukrainians he offers them a terrific deal and as you can
imagine the eu is not offering ukraine a particularly good deal because you know how much corruption
there is in ukraine and the eu wants ukraine to eliminate that corruption which the ukrainians
really don't want to do so what putin does is not only make it clear that that deal is
not going to happen but he often just offers a sweetheart deal of his own so yanukovych
on november 21st says no to the eu this leads to a series of protests the ukrainian government
truth be told under yanukovych overreacts to the protests which causes them to spiral
out of control and in january of 2014 you can see there january 22nd 2014 you have your
first two deaths in the protest these are the maidan protests and then in the february
18th through february 20th time period lots of people die it's really messy and what happens
is that a number of european foreign ministers the german foreign minister french foreign
minister they fly to kiev and a deal is worked out to have elections that will in effect
remove yanukovych from power
but the protesters refuse to accept the deal and there are significant fascist elements
among the protesters who were armed right there's killing on the maidan and as a result
yanukovych flees for his life to russia and this all happens on february 22nd and
oh did i not have that slide on i'm sorry one of the problems with this lectern is you
can't see i'm sorry there is that's the slide that has all the key events oh gosh sorry
i have two slides up here so i lost track of the fact so here are the key events after
the coup on february 23rd parliament votes to repeal minority language laws in the east
this is basically the russian language and then on february 27th russian units begin
seizing checkpoints in the crimea on the 28th additional russian forces begin moving into
the crimea the russians didn't conquer or invade crimea actually the russians didn't
invade crimea they were already there because they had a leasing agreement there's a naval
base at sevastopol and the russians were leasing that naval base from ukraine so they had military
forces there so when it says russian units begin seizing checkpoints on the 27th those
were russian units that were already there then additional russian forces begin moving
in on the 28th and then on the 6th the 16th and the 18th you have a scenario you have
a handful of events that lead to russia incorporating crimea and then of course shortly after that
conflict breaks out in eastern ukraine and although we do not have a lot of hard evidence
that the russians are physically involved in eastern ukraine i think it's quite clear
that they are physically involved that there are russian troops there how many is very
hard to tell from the outside and i think it's very clear that the russian government
is going to great lengths to make sure that those pro-russian forces in eastern ukraine
are interest are are capable of maintaining a certain amount of independence and i'll
talk more about this in a second okay understanding the russian response
what is the russian response two parts first is they took crimea and they're not giving
it back crimea is gone second is what they're doing is not trying to conquer ukraine there
are many people who say the russians are going to go on a rampage they're going to try and
reestablish the soviet union or a greater russia and so forth and so on uh that's not
going to happen uh putin is much too smart for that you remember what happened when the
russians invaded afghanistan you remember what happened when we invaded afghanistan
you remember what happened when we and reid invaded iraq you remember what happened when
the israelis invaded southern lebanon you want to stay out of these places in fact if
you really want to wreck russia what you should do is encourage it to try and conquer ukraine
putin again is much too smart to do that what putin is doing is he's basically in the process
of wrecking ukraine and he's telling the west in very simple terms you have two choices
you either back off right and we go back to the status quo ante before february 22 2014
where ukraine is a buffer state or you continue to play these games where you try and take
ukraine and make it a western bastion on their doorstep in which case will wreck the country
and they are of course now in the process of wrecking it right and they're going to
keep this conflict going for as long as they have to that's the basic game here again two
steps one took crimea no way they're going to ever let crimea become a nato base and
remember the name of the game here is to make ukraine part of nato not happening and they're
not getting crimea we've taken crimea we're keeping it number one and number two you want
a frozen conflict or you want to wreck ukraine so that it can't become part of the west question
number two here is what motivates this what motivates this is that russia is a great power
and it has absolutely no interest in allowing the united states and its allies to take a
big piece of real estate of great strategic importance on its western border and incorporate
it in to the west this should be hardly surprising to the united states of america as all of
you know we have a monroe doctrine the monroe doctrine basically says that the western hemisphere
is our backyard and nobody from a distant region is allowed to move military forces
into the western hemisphere i can tell from looking at the audience that most of you are
old enough to remember the cuban missile crisis like i am you remember how we went stark raving
crazy at the idea of the soviets putting military forces in cuba this is unacceptable nobody
puts military forces in the western hemisphere that's what the monroe doctrine is all about
can you imagine 20 years from now a powerful china forming a military alliance with canada
and mexico and moving chinese military forces onto canadian and mexican soil and us just
standing there and saying this is no problem we're all 20th 21st century people and worrying
about chinese forces there is with 19th century people like vladimir putin worry about of
course that's not going to happen we're going to maintain the monroe doctrine with regard
to china just as we did with the soviet union during the cold war so nobody should be surprised
that the russians were apoplectic about the idea of us putting ukraine on the western
side of the ledger and by the way they told us i gave you the quotes in the wake of the
bucharest summit i told you what happened in august 2008 with the georgia war the presidents
were there the rhetoric was there they told us but we did not stop our efforts to make
ukraine part of the west
and the russians responded was it surprising for some reason president obama and virtually
all of the elites in the west were surprised i guess this is because they're 21st century
people right and they think that balance of power politics doesn't matter anymore if you
think these people in washington and most americans are having trouble dealing with
the russians you you can't believe how much trouble we're going to have with the chinese
i'm very popular in china i go to china quite often and i usually start my talks by saying
it's good to be back among my people because when i'm in china i'm intellectually much
more at home there than i am in washington because in beijing much like in moscow you're
dealing with 19th century people like me whereas in washington you're dealing with 21st century
people i think the chinese are going to eat our lunch right
talk about the conventional wisdom conventional wisdom is that putin is the main cause of
the crisis some say he's either crazy or irrational angela merkel was making this argument for
a while he's bent on creating a greater russia and he bears marked resemblance to adolf hitler
say a few words about each of these uh i know a great deal about adolf hitler i've written
and i teach extensively on nazi germany's behavior in the 30s and during world war ii
the idea that he bears any resemblance to adolf hitler is laughable in the extreme it's
hard to believe that serious people make that argument the idea that he's bent on creating
a greater russia i think if he could do it he'd do it he can't do it russia is a declining
great power and as i said to you before if they were to try and create a greater russia
by invading ukraine and by invading the baltic states they'd be jumping into the briar patch
in fact again if you want to wreck russia what you should do is tell them to try and
create a greater russia it will lead to no end of trouble i think putin is much too smart
for that and he is in the process of wrecking ukraine i want to make that clear and he's
wrecking ukraine because he's basically saying to the west you can't have it and i'll wreck
it before you take it is he crazy or irrational i don't think so i think he's very strategic
and i don't think he's the main cause of the crisis as i said to you another set of arguments
associated with the conventional wisdom this is that the united states is a benign hegemon
seeking to promote european stability seeking to promote stability in asia all over the
globe and so forth and so on there are some countries like japan and germany for sure
poland who view the united states as a benign hegemon there are many countries out there
who do not iran is one china is another and russia is a third they just don't see it that
way and because they don't see it that way you should understand that when you take measures
you mean in the united states that you think are going to be interpreted as benign the
other side will not see them that way they will see them as threatening this gets back
to my point about democracy promotion we believe democracy promotion is an unalloyed good and
we can't understand why people like putin and the leaders in beijing don't understand
this but they don't understand it and if you don't recognize what other people think you're
incapable of putting yourself in their shoes you're going to get yourself into a heck of
a lot of trouble and of course that's exactly what happened here and then another argument
is that putin's behavior proves that it was wise to expand nato eastward to try to include
ukraine and georgia right what's very interesting is that there is no evidence that we thought
putin was aggressive before the crisis there's no evidence that we thought that there's no
evidence that we were talking about expanding nato because we had to contain the russians
because again nato expansion was driven by 21st century men and women they believe balance
of power politics is dead that's what happened here do you understand putin is a 19th century
man right he does view the world and balance parapoli in terms of balanced power politics
as do we when it comes to the monroe doctrine in the western hemisphere but in this case
in the case of europe we were thinking like 21st century men and women and we thought
that we could just drive right up to his doorstep and it wouldn't matter right we did not think
that russia was aggressive what happened here is that after the crisis broke out on february
22nd we then decided that russia was aggressive we then decided that russia was bent on creating
a greater russia it was after the fact by the way this is why president obama and virtually
all of washington was caught with their pants down when this crisis broke out after february
22nd because they did not see it coming
talk a little bit about our response we're basically doubling down uh we're getting tougher
and tougher with the russians that's our strategy and that's exactly what you'd expect if you're
going to blame them given that we're incapable of blaming ourselves because we never do anything
wrong you all know that all the problems in the world are caused by everybody else never
by the united states because we're a benign hegemon well if we're the good guys and they're
the bad guys and they're misbehaving they're bent on creating a greater russia oh my god
this is the 1930s all over again any sort of concession to putin is munich october 1938
can't do that so what you do is you double down you get tougher and tougher then this
brings us to the question of whether we can succeed or not my argument is you're playing
a losing hand right and the reason you're playing a losing hand is because this is a
competition between economic considerations and security considerations the basic mindset
of people in the west is that you can punish the russians economically and they'll throw
their hands up my argument is when security considerations are at stake when core strategic
interests are at stake and there's no question ladies and gentlemen in russia's case this
is a core strategic interest countries will suffer enormously before they throw their
hands up right so you can inflict a lot of pain on the russians and they're not going
to quit and they're not going to quit because ukraine matters to them and by the way ukraine
doesn't matter to us you understand there's nobody calling for us to fight in ukraine
even john mccain who up until recently has never seen a war he didn't want to fight okay
is not calling for using military force in ukraine what john mccain is saying is not
is that ukraine is not a vital strategic interest for the west that's what he's saying it is
a vital strategic interest for the russians they've made that perfectly clear and not
just putin right so in terms of the balance of resolve it's all on their side and i showed
you that slide up there that depicted how much economic leverage the russians have because
of all that natural gas going westward so we're playing a losing hand here but let's
assume that i'm wrong let's assume that we're playing a winning hand and that we are capable
of backing putin into a corner and we're getting close to pushing them off a cliff is this
good you're talking about a country that's got thousands of nuclear weapons and the only
circumstance really under which states use nuclear weapons is when they're desperate
when they think their survival is at stake so what you're talking about is putting putin
in a situation where he's desperate and if you go home and google putin and nuclear brinksmanship
you'll be reading all the articles that come up for the next two years right because he's
making it clear that you're fooling around with his core strategic interests and again
he's got thousands of nuclear weapons so you're putting yourself in a position right you're
putting yourself in a position where you're willing to risk a possible nuclear war over
a piece of real estate ukraine that is that is not a vital strategic interest to the united
states again it's not a vital strategic interest to us
by the way this will be my final point on this what's truly amazing about all of this
is that we were talking about incorporating ukraine into nato when we have now acknowledged
by not taking military action over ukraine that it's not a vital strategic interest you
understand that when you incorporate ukraine into nato you're giving them an article 5
guarantee which says you'll come to their defense if they're attacked you only give
article 5 guarantees to countries that are a vital strategic interest like germany during
the cold war what were we doing giving an article five thinking about giving an article
five guarantee to a country that's not a vital strategic interest it just shows you how discombobulated
american foreign policy is these days and of course the ukraine crisis is just one of
many messes that we've made as you know we have the midas touch in reverse there's nothing
that we do that doesn't go south afghanistan iraq libya ukraine i could go on
so the point i'm making to you is i do not think that this is going to work but if it
does work i'm not sure it's a good thing uh i had some quotes from the new york times
that really capture what we're doing i won't leave them up there but they make it very
clear that we're playing hardball with the russians this was times piece last year that
gave a good synoptic version of the obama administration's thinking on how to deal with
this crisis now what should be done my view is we should create a neutral ukraine which
is a buffer state between nato and russia basically what i'm talking about is going
back to the status quo ante before we got this foolish idea in our head that we could
peel ukraine away from russia and make it part of nato make it part of the eu make it
more generally part of the west we should work to create a situation where ukraine is
neutral and it's a buffer state just to go back to my simple or simplistic graphic depending
on your views right this is how i think about european security this is what you want you
want nato to include france germany and poland you want ukraine as a buffer state and then
you want russia on the eastern flank of that border state and this is not what you want
you do not want a divided ukraine where western ukraine is in nato eastern ukraine is in russia
and the russians and the americans who hate each other at that point are eyeball to eyeball
on the nepa river not a good idea how do you get to this end very simple explicitly abandon
nato expansion by the way nato expansion is dead i've talked to countless policy makers
who say this it's dead but what we have to do is explicitly abandon it say it is not
happening we have to fashion an economic rescue plan for ukraine that includes russia the
imf and the eu this of course is what putin wanted to do in 2013 and the eu said no foolishly
we want to go to great lengths to guarantee minority rights especially language rights
in ukraine this gets back to those maps that i was putting up that show that this is in
very important ways of civil war and what we have to do is dampen down the conflict
inside ukraine we have to give the people in eastern ukraine a lot of autonomy and we
definitely have to protect minority rights
are we going to do any of this no and i'll talk more about that in a second consequences
and this is my last slide will there be a new cold war no russia is not the soviet union
and as i said to you before we have a potential pure competitor on the horizon who could be
of proportions we've never seen before the chinese threat once it materializes is going
to be something like we've never seen we're going to have our hands full in asia europe
is not going to matter and russia is going to be with us the balancing coalition against
china is going to be south korea japan vietnam taiwan singapore india and russia the russians
will be with us and that's another reason this whole policy is so stupid right what
we're effectively doing is driving the russians into the arms of the chinese there's a great
strategy we need the russians on iran we need the russians on iran we drive the russians
close to the iranians just so they just sold the iranians has 300 anti-aircraft missiles
we need the russians on syria we need the russians on all sorts of issues we don't need
to have a fight with the russians now we don't we're not gonna have a cold war will the united
states still pivot to asia yes all we need is one big crisis out there it's common probably
in the south china sea sooner rather than later if you've been reading the newspapers
and once that happens we will focus laser-like on asia because that's a pure competitor russia
is not a pure competitor what are the implications for nato this gets back to the previous question
i think that nato is in serious trouble and will disappear as a functioning alliance over
time in large part because i think we're going to pivot to asia
what are the implications of all this for our asian allies it's a very interesting question
i was in japan in december of 2014 and the japanese like a lot of people in asia number
one wonder whether we're going to be there for them right because they see us causing
trouble over ukraine they see us picking a fight with isis and they say if the united
states is fighting isis dealing with the russians over ukraine they're going to be able to pivot
to asia and then furthermore they say even if the united states does pivot can we trust
them if you look at how this gang operates in washington it does look like the gang that
can't shoot straight do we want to depend on them if you're japanese and you're depending
on the american security umbrella especially the american nuclear umbrella don't you scratch
your head and say can i rely on washington in a crunch with the chinese over the cincaco
or diao islands not clear so i think this has not been good for our relations with our
asian allies what are the implications for iran and syria as i said before remains to
be seen we need the russians on iran we need the russians on syria and you take a stick
and you poke the russians in your in the eye and you continue to poke them in the eye they're
going to look for ways to retaliate and i wouldn't be surprised if somewhere down the
road they don't play ball with us on iran we don't get a deal with the iranians be interesting
to see what the russians then do see if they're interested in maintaining a sanctions regime
and syria is a total mess as you know and if there's any hope of resolving that the
russians are going to have to be involved and again it's going to be hard to get a lot
of cooperation given what's going on over ukraine is crimea lost to russia for good
yep it's gone gone what are the implications for ukraine this is in many ways the most
important part of my talk and i'll just take two or three minutes now we can go to q a
when i give this talk many people in the west think that there's sort of a deep-seated immoral
dimension to my position because i'm blaming the west and not putin who certainly has authoritarian
or thuggish tendencies there's no question about that but i actually think that what's
going on here is that the west is leading ukraine down the primrose path and the end
result is that ukraine is going to get wrecked and i believe that the policy that i'm advocating
which is neutralizing ukraine and then building it up economically and getting it out of the
competition between russia on one side and nato on the other side is the best thing that
could happen to the ukrainians what we're doing is encouraging the ukrainians to play
tough with the russians we're encouraging the ukrainians to think that they will ultimately
become part of the west because we will ultimately defeat putin and we will ultimately get our
way time is on our side and of course the ukrainians are playing along with this and
the ukrainians are almost completely unwilling to compromise with the russians and instead
want to pursue a hardline policy well as i said to you before if they do that the end
result is that their country is going to be wrecked and what we're doing is in effect
encouraging that outcome i think it would make much more sense for us to neutral to
work to create a neutral ukraine it would be in our interest to bury this crisis as
quickly as possible it certainly would be in russia's interest to do so and most importantly
it would be in ukraine's interest to put an end to the crisis thank you
i'll be happy to take questions i'll just ask people if you would stand up and just
identify yourself quickly ma'am oh you have why don't we get this woman right here with
the peach colored coat on
they have a microphone they have they have a microphone for you and there stood hands
morgenthal right before you for those of us who knew okay so many questions or points
first point of information when you talk about the gang in washington you need to make it
clear hopefully that you don't mean only the present gang you mean from at least 2008 forward
right yeah i mean the whole washington
republicans democrat as far as i'm concerned the republicans and the democrats on foreign
policy are like tweedledee and tweedledum right right i mean for anybody who thinks
it matters whether you get hillary clinton or some republican you're living in a dream
world there's just no meaningful difference between them they both have the midas touch
in reverse that leads to my second question is anybody listening to you and stephen cohen
and partial um what's the one i want uh the kissinger partial kissinger stephen cohen
and you is anybody listening that we could hope to vote for or support i don't i don't
no no no one no one so and i'm gonna i'm gonna give this up in a moment no but um so there's
no one so we're really doomed that's it right okay i mean there's no enlightenment in store
we can't even say something just in response to your question i believe that since 1989
the united states has been by far the most powerful state on the planet and for those
of you who believe we live in a unipolar world you're effectively saying that we are the
only great power in the system and given that tremendous amount of power that we have we're
really free to go out and do all sorts of foolish things because it doesn't blow back
on us in any meaningful way the united states is a remarkably secure great power so we're
allowed to pursue these foolish policies and in that context it's very hard to make arguments
against the establishment that carry the day i think what will happen if china continues
to rise is that it will force the united states to think more strategically because when you
live in a serious threat environment the point i'm making to you is that the united states
does not live in a serious threat environment we're an incredibly secure country we're the
most secure country most secure great power in the history of the world and we're more
secure today than we have ever been in our entire history despite all the the rhetoric
that you hear from washington and in the media about how dangerous the world is this is just
not a serious argument it's not a dangerous world right we are incredibly secure we have
a pure competitor it will force us to focus the mind much the way happened when the soviet
union was there nazi germany was there imperial japan imperial germany really enjoyed your
lecture i have two questions briefly uh it's hard to take issue with the goal of a neutral
ukraine but some years before the crisis broke out i used to listen rui which was radio ukraine
international on shortwave and they were fairly open about the cultural crisis within the
country leading back a few years before this as i look at say the former czechoslovakia
do you see a possibility of two neutral states formerly known as ukraine as non-viable and
if so why yeah if you look at what happened in europe after world war ii yugoslavia broke
up into a series of remnant states czechoslovakia as you pointed out broke up into a series
of remnant states and the soviet union itself broke up into a series of remnant states and
that's because inside of those territorial boundaries you had different nations that
wanted their own states serbs croats in the case of yugoslavia czech slovaks in the case
of czechoslovakia and we know that there were probably 15 or 16 different groups inside
of the former soviet union so the question is inside ukraine do you have a similar situation
between the people in the east and the people in the west i think if you look at the survey
data it still shows that the majority the clear majority of ukrainians in both the west
and the east want to maintain the integrity of ukraine they don't want to split ukraine
in half i think we should do everything we can to maintain that attitude among the ukrainian
people my great fear is that as time goes by and the animosity continues to grow that
you may reach a point where there is a lot of sentiment to just break eastern ukraine
and western ukraine off from each other and end up with two ukraines but i don't see that
happening now second and final question as we look at parts of our recent additions to
nato hungary romania bulgaria and look at where their political systems are careening
has nato lost the moral imperative for its reason to being well i mean what we tried
to do with nato expansion uh and with eu expansion and with democracy promotion was to turn all
of europe into one giant security community in which all of the member states were liberal
democracies that were hooked on capitalism and deeply embedded in these institutions
and would therefore obey the rules that define the institution and we would all live happily
ever after that was the goal and i think everybody understood that western europe looked terrific
on all of those dimensions and what we're going to try and do is expand extend these
institutions eastward and consolidate democracy in countries like hungary and poland and we
were going to make them look more like western europe over time we had some success and there's
some failures and if you talk to most people who study europe today and spend lots of time
over there they're quite pessimistic about where europe is headed not only regarding
eastern europe but also with regard to western europe uh and i'm not sure in you know 25
years what it'll all look like i mean in my opinion the biggest issue is demographic and
that is that europeans have not been making lots of babies for a long time and as a result
they're going to have to import lots of people and these are countries that do not have a
rich history of integrating people in a smooth way much the way the united states does and
it's no accident i think that you're now beginning to see the rise of far-right parties all across
europe because of all of the immigration so one could paint a pretty bleak picture about
europe's future but the counter to that would be we've now got all those countries like
romania right like the czech republic like slovakia embedded in these institutions and
these institutions will go to great lengths to combat those tendencies and in maybe a
more incremental way uh facilitate the spread of liberal democracy and capitalism we'll
see whether that happens or not but people today are nowhere near as optimistic as they
were in the early 1990s when it looked like we had the wind at our back and uh everything
was going to play out over time in favor of the west and especially in favor of the united
states you all remember frank fukuyama's very famous piece the end of history right which
i think reflected that optimism when the soviet union was losing the cold war and about to
collapse but times have changed
you said quote we're going to have our hands full with china and so just two questions
what kind of a time frame are you thinking things might start to really happen in that
direction and can you just paint a few scenarios of the sort of things that you think might
happen when we have our hands full with china so we know what what we can look forward to
yeah yeah
uh i think when you think about china at this point in time there are three uh situations
that stand out one is taiwan two is the south china sea which has been in the newspaper
a great deal over the past few months chinese basically claim that they control all the
south china sea and as you know they're building airfields on reefs in the spratly islands
and we've told them that's unacceptable and their neighbors the vietnamese the philippines
think that's unacceptable so the south china sea is a potential flashpoint taiwan is a
second flashpoint and the third flashpoint which was in the news earlier this year and
for much of 2013 and 2014 are those rocks in the east china sea the japanese call them
the senkaku islands the chinese call them the diao islands and as i was saying to you
folks before i was in japan in december of last year december 2014 and it's really quite
amazing how worried the japanese are about china and part of it is sort of for realpolitik
reasons but it's also because the chinese say those islands which the japanese consider
to be sacred territory really belong to china and the japanese are greatly fearful that
as china gets more powerful it'll take those islands so those are the three main flash
points at the time there are other possible scenarios that we worry about the korean peninsula
is one because the chinese are allied with the north koreans we're allowed allied with
the south koreans china and india they have a border conflict so we go on and on but those
are the big three now your question about the time frame is an excellent one i used
to say that it'll take another 10 15 years before china becomes powerful enough for this
problem to manifest itself i'm not sure about that i think it's it's possible it's not likely
i'm choosing my words carefully i think it's possible that you could have a conflict involving
the united states and china over the south china sea or over the cincaco slash diago
islands uh in the next year or so uh i mean those those problems are on the front burner
and it's basically a zero-sum game i mean either the chinese owned the senkaku diago
islands or the japanese do so we could have trouble out there much sooner than i uh have
anticipated up to now
you talked about this from the point of view of illogical international relations what
do you think of the internal pressures on these countries putin has a historically restive
population highly nationalistic and in major economic troubles now he may be responding
to pressure from his own population to deal with this on a smaller scale we see netanyahu
responding to his population settlers and so on and disrupting part of the middle east
do you see that happening here with the radical right say and the neocons influencing uh washington
policy
uh i think just with regard to the united states and the neoconservatives i think the
neoconservatives have been one of the principal driving forces behind america's foolish foreign
policy since 2001 but as i made as i said before when i was talking about the republican
party looking like the democratic party there's not a lot of difference between the neoconservatives
and the liberal imperialists the liberal imperialists are the aggressively oriented democrats and
neoconservatives are the aggressively oriented republicans but they look a lot like tweedledee
and tweedledum so the neoconservatives matter for sure and they mattered during the george
w bush administration because he was a republican president but it's not just the neo-conservatives
right and the fact is that you have a foreign policy establishment here that is interested
in intervening all over the world you have a foreign policy establishment that's filled
with people who believe that we have a right and a responsibility to intervene all over
the planet and that leads to unending trouble when you don't have the magic formula for
winning the wars that you get into see the problem that we have is we have this interventionist
foreign policy that leads to us losing all the time it's really quite remarkable but
but just with regard to your point about ideology uh i think you do not want to underestimate
how important nationalism is both in the chinese context and in the russian context you're
alluding to the russian case but let me just say a few words about the chinese case and
this is why getting back to this gentleman's previous question i worry so much now about
japan and china getting into a shooting war over the rocks in the east china sea the problem
that the chinese face is that communism which is the governing ideology no longer has much
legitimacy and they've had to find the substitute ideology and by almost all accounts the substitute
ideology is nationalism right and at the core of chinese nationalism is what's known as
the century of national humiliation chinese nationalism emphasizes that between roughly
1850 and 1950 that hundred year period china was humiliated and it was humiliated by the
european great powers the united states with the open door policy and especially by japan
and the chinese are really just angry about this and because nationalism is so important
for legitimizing the rulers in beijing right this whole theme of national humiliation is
front and center well if you have a crisis over some islands in the east china sea and
that crisis involves japan mainly but also the united states and you're talking about
the two countries that have humiliated china during that hundred year period the potential
for trouble is great and i know a number of scholars in china who are quite dovish who
really worry about a crisis in the east china sea spinning out of control because of the
confluence of chinese nationalism and japanese nationalism which i've not talked about so
nationalism is a very powerful force not just in the russian case but in the chinese japanese
case as well
hi i'm uh adam chekhov actually i just graduated last year and could you talk a little louder
sorry hi i'm adam chekhov i graduated last year also thank you for signing the piece
of paper that allowed for molly one to exist as someone who participated in mun for all
four years but uh uh two questions one uh this is pretty quick you talked about like
russia offered ukraine a deal involving uh russia the eu the imf uh ukraine can you like
lay well the specific terms of that deal and in 2013 2013 when they offered them the deal
and two this is a little more in depth what's the first question though or the terms of
the deal exactly the terms of the deal russia outline the terms of the deal yes if you if
i i don't know i honestly don't know what the terms of the deal were okay well then
we'll just skip that one but okay i guess the impression that i've had is that like
you do have several well certainly the us is trying to back rush into a corner you do
have several like uh people in germany like i especially uh mostly in merkel's a coalition
partner of the s b day like a in their cabinet think sigma gabriel is one who is pushing
for like a more diplomatic solution towards the ukraine crisis so in the long term can
you see like potentially germany which is at this point europe's one of their most powerful
states potentially like serving in this crisis medically speaking as the yeah sort of the
good cop to us's bad cop so to speak yeah this is this is a great question as you all
know germany is the most powerful country in europe uh and i showed you the map where
i told you that germany and russia were of enormous importance for thinking about ukraine
so the question is how do the germans think about this initially when the crisis first
began after the february 22nd coup i thought the germans would prevail on the americans
to behave smartly and to slowly but steadily just back off and work out some sort of deal
very importantly you remember i told you about the famous april 2008 bucharest conference
and i told you what was said in the final declaration that ukraine and georgia would
become part of nato it's very important to understand that the reason that we did not
take concrete steps during the bucharest crisis to move to include ukraine and georgia was
because of german and french but mainly german resistance angela merkel angela merkel said
bringing ukraine and georgia into nato is a prescription for disaster the united states
though prevailed on getting that statement in the final declaration that i read to you
so based on that i thought the germans would play a key role in tamping down american enthusiasm
for doubling down i proved to be wrong and uh if anything angela merkel has been a bit
more aggressive towards the russians than president obama has it's really quite striking
and therefore i don't hold out much hope for the germans one final point i would make about
this i've actually spoken on this subject in germany in early march i was in germany
i was in frankfurt and i was in berlin talking to different groups and my view of the germans
is that as a consequence of world war ii the germans don't want to be out front on any
issue the germans to put it rather crudely are afraid to look at themselves in the mirror
right and the idea of them taking the lead it horrifies them across the entire political
spectrum so my message to the germans when i talked to them was they should be more [ __
] when they talk to the americans they should tell the americans more emphatically that
they're wrong and we should be doing this instead of that and that line of argument
gets remarkably little traction because again the germans just they don't want to get too
far out front on this so i don't see much hope uh that things will change final point
i'd make on this what i find very striking about this whole situation as i was saying
before i think you know steve cohen henry kissinger me and there are a handful of other
people my friend steve walt who've kind of been arguing the position that i laid out
for you here today but we're definitely in the minority a tiny minority and what i find
very interesting is the extent to which the media here and the media in europe parrot
the conventional wisdom and the extent to which it's very difficult for people who represent
the position i've staked out to be heard right so in europe you have this situation it's
especially true in germany i don't read german but just talking to people when i was there
about you know how the media is dealing with this the conventional wisdom that i laid out
for you is omnipresent in the media and and that makes it very hard to turn this one around
so i'm not optimistic that there's any chance this is going to change our policy is going
to change which i think is a tragedy as i said before and also it contradicts my earlier
enthusiasm about angela merkel which is what you were getting at
oh i'm sorry i'm nell smith uh class of 85 college hey julius see you later um um about
the bucharest directly i have a friend that was teaching in russia this summer and said
that people were just for those i speak russian and been to soviet union and and and then
post i mean suddenly it's not you're no longer a rock star now apparently if you're american
and you're on the streets of moscow like we we're used to people my age um she said people
were coming up to her saying what are you doing why you and the germans have caused
all of this you got all these rebels and ukraine you you know you organized them secretly in
kiev and it was kind of but now listening to you it's like that's actually not that
far off it sounds like i mean not we didn't organize them but basically we kind of told
them yeah go ahead because we're going to help you right is that okay well let me make
a couple points very important points with regard to my response to the gentleman who's
directly behind you about nationalism this is russian nationalism coming to the fore
and a lot of what you see in the american case is american nationalism coming to the
fort you've all heard the famous saying or infamous saying my country right or wrong
right and uh they're just all sorts of russians you know who are furious at the west and they're
rallying around putin one of the reasons that many people think that putin started this
whole thing was because
it so improved his standings in the polls or with the russian public because people
behaved the way you said so people said he started this crisis for that reason but my
point to you is we should be hardly surprised and this gets back to the china japan example
you know and this is a very scary dimension to a lot of these conflicts but i just want
to say one other thing i teach i've done all the research for a book on the german killing
machine in world war ii i know a great deal about who the germans killed how they killed
them and so forth and so on uh some of you here have probably taken my course war on
the nation state where i talk about the origins of the holocaust the origins of the war on
the eastern front killing of soviet pows and so forth and so on but my estimate is that
hitler murdered this is not killed in combat hitler murdered 22 million people uh and if
you look at how that war played itself out in places like ukraine
there were people in ukraine who sided with the germans and the vast majority of people
of course fought against the germans but the consequences of that war are inextricably
bound up with what's going on now and the mere fact that there are you know some reasonably
small number but nevertheless some fascists real fascists involved in kiev just spooked
the russians like you would not believe right and a lot of those fascists and people on
the far right hate the soviet union for all the obvious reasons see the soviet union slash
russia as largely responsible for all the killings that took place in ukraine on the
part of the soviet union not the germans right war history coming in so what's going on inside
ukraine is inextricably bound up with world war ii and then the point that i tried to
make to you although i didn't develop it at length is that nato which is a cold war institution
right is inextricably bound up with the cold war and from a russian point of view this
military alliance moving up to its doorstep which was a mortal foe for 45 years is gonna
spook you and if you have a coup in kiev and some of the people who come to power have
fascist tendencies or are fascists however you want to find that term it's going to have
really huge consequences right so this is this is an incredibly messy situation and
in the context of all this what we've done is doubled down and we do not pay much attention
to history because it was not a history that concerned us in any meaningful way because
it was on the eastern half of the european continent but the potential for trouble here
is just very very great
One more no more i can't take any more questions so you'll have to ask me afterwards i'll answer
your question afterwards Mike told me that.