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Ukraine War | Munk Debates

SEASON TWO - EPISODE #69

Ukraine War

Be it resolved, NATO is partly responsible for Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Guests
Barry Posen
Stephen Rademaker
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About this episode

Prior to Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine, talks between Vladimir Putin and Western leaders largely centered around NATO’s eastward expansion: the Russian leader demanded that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization deny membership to Ukraine and Georgia and roll back troop deployment in countries that joined after 1997. These demands were ultimately rejected, and Russia’s response was a military assault on Ukraine that has shattered longstanding peace in Europe and weakened the post-soviet liberal international order. Some experts argue that the US-led NATO expansion in the late 1990s and early 2000s must bear some of the blame for the current crisis. Welcoming the likes of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, all once part of the Soviet sphere of influence, was an unnecessary provocation towards Russia when it was still reeling from a humiliating defeat. The Russians viewed this expansion near their border as an existential threat, made worse by Ukraine’s decision to pivot westward towards the EU in 2014. The west, especially the US, must be held partially responsible for the current disaster.

Other foreign policy experts argue that NATO expansion is a deflection of the real cause behind this conflict: the machinations of a paranoid autocrat with imperialist ambitions who is using war to deflect from domestic political and economic unrest. Putin, these experts warn, is using the threat from NATO to distract from the real reason he started a bloody war with Ukraine: a ruthless desire to strengthen his power at home and re-establish waning influence in the region. All blame for the current crisis must rest on Putin’s shoulders, and his alone.

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Guests

Barry Posen

“For 20 years, we’ve basically dismissed Putin. We've treated Russian security interests as essentially a problem to be waved away. And we've continued in the direction that brought us here right now.”

Barry Posen

“For 20 years, we’ve basically dismissed Putin. We've treated Russian security interests as essentially a problem to be waved away. And we've continued in the direction that brought us here right now.”

Barry R. Posen is Ford International Professor of Political Science at MIT, Director Emeritus of the MIT Security Studies Program, and serves on the Executive Committee of Seminar XXI. He is the author of Restraint: A New Foundation for U.S. Grand Strategy, (Cornell University Press 2014), Inadvertent Escalation: Conventional War and Nuclear Risks (Cornell University Press 1991), and The Sources of Military Doctrine (Cornell University Press 1984). The latter won two awards: The American Political Science Association's Woodrow Wilson Foundation Book Award, and Ohio State University's Edward J. Furniss Jr. Book Award. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2016 he was appointed Henry A. Kissinger Chair (visiting) in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress, John W. Kluge Center. He is the 2017 recipient of the International Security Studies Section (ISSS), International Studies Association, Distinguished Scholar Award, and in 2019 received the Notre Dame International Security Center's Lifetime Achievement Award.

He has been a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow; Rockefeller Foundation International Affairs Fellow; Guest Scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow, Smithsonian Institution; Transatlantic Fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States; and a Visiting Fellow at the John Sloan Dickey Center at Dartmouth College.

Stephen Rademaker

“What changed in Ukraine was a consequence of Russian policy, Russian bullying, and Russian mishandling of the relationship with their closest neighbor. That is not America's doing, that is not NATO's doing, that is Russia's doing.”

Stephen Rademaker

“What changed in Ukraine was a consequence of Russian policy, Russian bullying, and Russian mishandling of the relationship with their closest neighbor. That is not America's doing, that is not NATO's doing, that is Russia's doing.”

Stephen Rademaker is Senior of Counsel at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Covington & Burling. Before joining the firm he held a variety of positions in all three branches of government, including as an Assistant Secretary of State responsible for arms control and nonproliferation, as Chief Counsel to House Committee on Foreign Affairs, as an Associate Counsel to the President, and as National Security Adviser to the Senate Majority Leader.  

While at the State Department, Mr. Rademaker directed the Proliferation Security Initiative, as well as nonproliferation policy toward Iran and North Korea, and led strategic dialogues with Russia, China, India and Pakistan. He also headed the U.S. delegation to the 2005 Review Conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. As a House staffer, he had lead responsibility for drafting the legislation that created the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.  

At Covington & Burling, Mr. Rademaker’s practice centers on advising clients about compliance with various U.S. sanctions measures and other international trade controls, including those directed at Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela. 

He also maintains an active pro bono practice, which has included representation of Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, a journalist who faces criminal charges in the Philippines, Xiyue Wang, a Princeton graduate student who was held hostage in Iran, and Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian opposition politician who was twice poisoned and nearly killed by agents of the Russian government.

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