Podcast: NATO’s Russia problem: the increasing danger of military confrontation between nuclear powers

TRANSCRIPT: Podcast: NATO’s Russia problem: the increasing danger of military confrontation between nuclear powers

Ivo Daalder:

The possibility of a military confrontation between two nuclear armed powers is larger now than it's probably been since the Cuba missile crisis in 1962.

Ian Bremmer:

Hello and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. This is where you'll find extended versions of my interviews on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer, and this week Russia, the West, and the country's caught in between. There's a bunch of them. We've spent a lot of time on this show talking about Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, but today we are zooming out to look at the big picture of Russia's role on the global stage.

NATO just added 830 miles of really cold territory on the Russian border, and countries like Brazil, India and South Africa are trying to walk a geopolitical tightrope through the middle of it all. Is this the beginning of a new Cold War? And surely, actually, it's worse between Russia and NATO, and how much room is there in the messy middle? We'll talk about all that and more with my guest, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and former US Ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder. Let's get to it.

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Ian Bremmer:

Ambassador Ivo Daalder joins us. Good to see you.

Ivo Daalder:

Great to be here, Ian.

Ian Bremmer:

So much talk about. NATO, to start, since you've got a little bit of experience there. How significant, not just symbolically, but in real operational terms, is it that Finland is now a member, over 800 new miles of border of NATO directly with Russia.

Ivo Daalder:

It's extraordinarily significant. It's probably the most significant new member to of NATO, at least since Poland joined, but possibly even since the end of the Cold War, when you really think about it. Here's, if you are a Russian military planner, you all of a sudden have to think about a border that you didn't really worry about, 830 miles long, twice as long as any other part of the border that Russia has with current NATO members, it now needs to defend that border. It needs to think about how do we make sure that NATO doesn't come anywhere near some of the most important strategic assets that Russia has in the Kola Peninsula way up north. It is a submarine base. It has nuclear weapons capabilities there, and they're now within striking distance of NATO ground forces in Finland. So that's one big thing.

Second big thing is that Finland is an incredibly capable military. These are people who have been armed in their neutrality. They've never skimmed on the ability to defend their territory, and they have been part of NATO military operations in Afghanistan and Kosovo, in Libya, around the world in many ways for the past 30 years. They're pretty integrated. Their capabilities are real. They have a ground force that is not only very capable today, but they can massively bring in reserves over time. So you're adding real military capability to the alliance.

And then finally, one of the most exposed elements of NATO are the Baltic countries who are close to Russia. Small, not very large when it comes to their own military capability. Well, right across the Baltic Sea now has Finland, and so the Baltic Sea is becoming a NATO lake with St. Petersburg and and Kaliningrad the only Russian entry points, but the rest of it is now all NATO, particularly once Sweden, of course, joins as well. So it's really significant.

Ian Bremmer:

Now I understand, of course, everything you just said. And yet when NATO speaks about their integration of other countries, they talk about it as a defensive alliance. Now, if it's a defensive alliance, then why would Russia be so concerned about all these things you just mentioned?

Ivo Daalder:

It is a defensive alliance, but Russia is looking at its military capability in its own defensive terms and in its own offensive terms. If it goes to war against any part of NATO, NATO goes to war against Russia. Would NATO, when it is at war with Russia, say, "Oh, our military capability is going to stop at the Russian border"? Or is it going to be penetrating parts of Russian territory in order to undermine Russia's capacity to continue its aggression? So the offense/defense is a question of who starts the war. But once the war is started, things change. Then you have to think about how deep can you strike into Russian territory in order, the goal being, to restore the borders as they are. And now having Finland part of a potential war theater is real. Doesn't make it an offensive alliance. It just says, "If you attack, now you have to worry about that part of your geography when before you didn't."

Ian Bremmer:

Now, when I think about the relationship between NATO and Russia today, we can't quite just call it a Cold War. The economics, of course, have been cut off, the gas is no longer flowing, the oligarchs have been sanctioned. The sovereign assets of the Russian Central Bank have been frozen. Larry Summers was just on this show saying that they should be seized and given to Ukraine. What do we call that? What is the state of relations between NATO and Russia today?

Ivo Daalder:

It's adversarial to the point that Russia now sees NATO as its enemy, and frankly NATO sees Russia as an enemy. Not just a threat, but an enemy, a country that is determined to find a way to exert influence through use of military force, possibly including against NATO territory. That's something that we haven't thought about, in the NATO parlance, since the end of the Cold War. And frankly, even during the Cold War, the likelihood of a Russian military attack, certainly towards the end of the Cold War, was discounted.

But here we see it in real life. Every day, Russian military force is crossing a border in order to enlarge their own territory. Imperialism and aggression in real time. So the relationship is not one of partnership. When I was NATO ambassador in 2010, we talked about the potential of a strategic partnership with Russia. No one in NATO today talks about the potential of a strategic partnership with Russia. It is the most important military threat, and that's very different.

Ian Bremmer:

So the Soviet Union collapses, and now what had been 15 republics is now basically one, sort of, plus Belarus. But in terms of the actual relationship between the West, NATO, and Russia, or Russia plus, really you can take away those interim 30 years. What we're saying is that the military confrontation today of the global order, leaving aside any other threats, is absolutely not just as bad as when the Cold War was in place, but in some ways it's worse.

Ivo Daalder:

In some ways it's more dangerous.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah.

Ivo Daalder:

Because during the Cold War, since the mid-to-late 1960s, there was an attempt by both the United States and the Soviet Union to find ways to coexist, to talk to each other. There was arms control. There was the hotline. There were a whole series of agreements that said, "Let's manage our military competition in a way that we know that the only reason we will ever have a war is if somebody decides that that's what they want to do. No accidents, no escalation, none of that." We even had arms control agreements. We had a European conference on security and cooperation that led in 1975 to the Helsinki Final Act to define the relationships of all countries in Europe and North America.

All of that's gone. Russia has just walked away from the last arms control agreement that existed, the Start Agreement that limits the nuclear warheads of the United States and Russia are allowed to deploy. Russia has just said that they will no longer tell the United States when it tests ballistic missiles. We've been doing that for 50 years, telling each other, because you want to know if they're testing a ballistic missile that is not an attack.

That's all gone. So it's a very, very dangerous military situation with deep distrust of each other. The Russians of NATO, particularly the United States, the United States and NATO of Russia, is leading to the possibility of a confrontation. The possibility of a war beyond Ukraine, the possibility of a military confrontation between two nuclear armed adversaries is higher now than it's probably been since the Cuba missile crisis in 1962.

Ian Bremmer:

Russia just announced that they're going to put tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. That hadn't existed since the days of the Cold War. On the one hand, there's so many times that we've seen Putin talk about his nuclear arsenal that it almost is getting normalized. And yet, in the context of all of these fail safes that are being taken away, this does feel like an intentionally endangering move.

Ivo Daalder:

Yeah, clearly, Putin is becoming used to rattling to his nuclear saber in ways that frankly we haven't seen for a very long time, maybe since Khrushchev was banging his shoe at the UN and, of course, the Cuban Missile Crisis. The way that Putin talks, and the people around Putin talk, about nuclear weapons, Medvedev is Deputy National Security Chief, talks about nuclear weapons as if they're the same as conventional weapons but just a bigger bang for the buck. It's really worrisome. The actual movement of nuclear weapons potentially to Belarus as long as they remain under firm Russian control, I actually have less concern about. I don't think that is leading to the first step to nuclear war. I worry about whether the Belorussians are going to be trained to use those weapons. But even so, we have NATO countries that train to use nuclear weapons even though they don't have them so I'm not particularly concerned about the tactical and technical details.

I'm worried about the strategic impact. What are you trying to do here, Mr. Putin? Are you trying to send a warning that we, the Russians, are willing to defend our gains in Ukraine by threatening and possibly using nuclear weapons? That, I'm worried about. I think it's real. I think he's trying to do it to deter the West, and he's been very successful in doing so. So far, the West has provided arms, intelligence, training, but not troops, but not troops. Ah, no-

Ian Bremmer:

But everything else. And of course, everything else from the Russian perspective, they see themselves as at war with NATO, which is part of why I'm framing this so much in terms of the broader Russia relationship with the West, because that's truly a step.

Ivo Daalder:

Yeah, and to be frank, although NATO is not at war with Russia, and in fact NATO, all the kinds of things that are happening in support of Ukraine is being done bilaterally by individual NATO countries and others, it clearly is that the situation today between NATO and Russia is completely different, certainly than I was there 10, 12 years ago, but even different than it was before February of 2022 when at least you thought you could talk to them in some way. Remember, Putin and Biden had a summit meeting in Geneva in the middle of 2021. There was this idea that you could establish guard rails around the relationship. All of that's gone, and it's gone on the NATO side. And frankly, it's gone.

Ian Bremmer:

Biden's relationship with Putin was never as connected as mutually respectful as it has been and remains personally with Xi Jinping. But nonetheless, at least they were treated as a normalized country. It wouldn't have been bizarre for the Russians to show up at the G20, for example the way that even Mohammed bin Salman after the Khashoggi assassination was seen as a bit of, and called by Biden at the time, a pariah, though of course he's been completely re-accepted. Now on that front, the fact that the International Criminal Court, okay, not recognized by the United States as legitimate, but by most other countries they are directly referring to Putin, finding Putin, a war criminal. There's no way to come back from that in terms of Western institutions, is there?

Ivo Daalder:

No, I think it's pretty difficult. And remember, it's happened before. Milošević was a war criminal. It changed the relationship between the West and Serbia in a pretty fundamental way to point-

Ian Bremmer:

Gaddafi, I think, was as well.

Ivo Daalder:

Gaddafi was a war criminal.

Ian Bremmer:

Bashir.

Ivo Daalder:

Bashir, Charles Taylor in a different way. But in thinking through who did the West have a direct confrontation with and what happened when they became war criminals, there was no way back. Milošević had to go through The Hague. Frankly, of course, Gaddafi didn't survive. The relationship between the United States and the West and Russia is going to be forever painted by this reality that Vladimir Putin is now wanted as a person who committed heinous crimes, credible crimes, taking children away from their parents and putting them in other foster families or whatever you can talk about. It's extraordinary. That doesn't happen normally. He now is accused of that crime. And the ability for the West to have normal relationship with him after G-20 or anywhere else is going to be virtually impossible. It's going to be very interesting to watch if he comes, which is a big if, and if he does come, what the West will do.

Ian Bremmer:

On the big other side of that question is you, I mean, a war criminal is someone that you intend to defeat, someone you intend to remove, obviously not someone you can work with. Well, every other person that has been painted as a war criminal, you could defeat. There's really no way for the West to defeat Putin.

Ivo Daalder:

Well, there is ways at a price you're not willing to pay. So the question then is what's the relationship between the West and Russia going forward?

Ian Bremmer:

Right.

Ivo Daalder:

Is there a possibility of sitting down at the table with Vladimir Putin to negotiate an end to this war, even if the Ukrainians want to? How do you do that? Are the Ukrainians willing to sit down with Vladimir Putin at some point? They may be willing to sit down with Russians, but are they willing to sit down with Vladimir Putin? Are other countries going to host Vladimir Putin? Some will. Well, no doubt. Chinese will no doubt host Vladimir Putin.

Ian Bremmer:

Of course.

Ivo Daalder:

After Xi Jinping came two days after-

Ian Bremmer:

That was a state visit.

Ivo Daalder:

... as a state visit. The South Africans are indicating that they will welcome Putin in the BRIC Summit. Modi hasn't, as far as I know, said anything about the G20. Very unlikely that they're going to say no. So there are countries that are going to sort of say, "Yeah, we understand, but the realpolitik, the way of the world means we can't ignore that the leader of Russia, indicted war criminal or not." But we, in the West, I don't see von der Leyen, or Scholz, or Macron, or Trudeau, or Biden, or Sunak sitting down with Vladimir Putin. Now, after all of what has happened, and the ICC, the International Criminal Court has put its stamp on this, he is a war criminal.

Ian Bremmer:

Now there is, of course, an enormous difference, and you started to get at this, between the way the collective West feels about Putin and everyone else feels about the West, everyone else feels about Russia, feels about the war because you weren't just talking about China and Iran and countries that are considered also in various ways adversarial to the West. I mean, India, is a strong member of the Quad, partner in many ways of the West, but their relationship with Russia is virtually identical to China's relationship with Russia. South Africa's perspective is very aligned, Brazil, Mexico.

So as soon as you get out of "the collective West," as you just described it, suddenly it's not talk about war crimes, it's not talk about Ukraine has to be redressed no matter what. It's, "These sanctions are hurting us. We need to keep doing business with the largest country geographically in the world with all their resources, and you guys are hurting us." What do we do about that?

Ivo Daalder:

It's a real problem. And I think people in the White House and in the Chancelleries and the Elysees, and other places, are spending a lot of time thinking about how do we change not only the narrative, because the narrative is important, and clearly the Russians were very good at saying everything that you're suffering as a consequence of this war: higher fuel prices, less food, and therefore higher food prices, and everything else came from it is because of the sanctions that the West has inflicted." As opposed to, "Well, wait a minute. Why did these sanctions get imposed in the first place? Because you invaded another country." And I think the West believing that because they had a pretty darn good vote in the UN General Assembly, 140-plus countries-

Ian Bremmer:

In condemning the invasion.

Ivo Daalder:

Condemning the invasion.

Ian Bremmer:

But not in supporting the sanctions.

Ivo Daalder:

No, but in condemning the invasion, they thought, "Well, everybody of course understands this is a terrible thing and we have to do something. We're not going to war directly, so therefore we are imposing sanctions. And by the way, we will allow, of course, food and other agricultural products to be exported." We didn't think that people would see the sanctions as the problem as opposed to the invasion. And in fact, that is the reality.

The reality is when you're a man or a woman on the street in Brasilia, or in Johannesburg, or Franklin, and Delhi, and your fuel and food prices have gone up, you're going to say, "Wait a minute, where's the problem here? It must be the West, it's not Russia." And so trying to figure out a way to start talking about this in a different way is one part of it.

But the second part of it is it puts pressure on finding a solution to this conflict, and that it's not a surprise that at the G-20 meeting in Indonesia, the intervention by the Ukrainian president was to lay out a 10-point peace plan. And there is a question, at what point does military confrontation start to compete more effectively with diplomatic engagement? And in terms of how to talk about this war, we're not quite there yet. There's a pending Ukrainian offense-

Ian Bremmer:

But it feels closer, doesn't it?

Ivo Daalder:

It does feel closer. Yeah. I think people know that the war is starting to hurt the image, but more importantly that there isn't a lot of juice left in the war in the sense that there was enough material and enough manpower to continue with the high intensity that we currently have. Lower intensity, probably for months, if not years, possibly even decades. For all this war at a low intensity point has started in 2014, it's been going on for almost nine years. But at that point, you start thinking about, "Well, is there a way that we can start talking about it today?" Can't say that.

Ian Bremmer:

Now before we close, I do want to ask you a little bit about NATO, since it's an area you've known an awful lot about. Stoltenberg Secretary General is nearing the end of his term. And so there's been a lot of talk about who might that replacement be. You and I know many of the names: von der Leyen from the European Commission, Chrystia Freeland, the Canadian Deputy PM, a number of others that have been discussed. Without talking about who you think is going to get it, I'm wondering how much you think it matters. Does it? Does the person running NATO really make a difference at a time like this? And if so, how?

Ivo Daalder:

So in a time like this, yes, because that person does represent the collective voice of the now 31 countries. 31 countries speak in some ways all the time but if you want to know what does NATO think, you talk to the Secretary General. Although the secretary general has no power, no vote, no ability to move a machinery that depends on the member states, he does have soft power, as we would put it. He has the ability to persuade, to make the argument. And Stoltenberg has been very good at this. And so having someone who can be the interlocutor with the outside world or even with allies, was very important to help the Turks understand why they needed to move on Finish, and hopefully Swedish soon, membership of NATO. That's one part of the role.

The other, and Stoletenberg was very good at this, is when you have a recalcitrant member, just mentioned Turkey, but for four years, the United States led by Donald Trump, finding someone who can stand up to, but also collaborate with that recalcitrant member to make sure that the alliance as a whole survives is really important. And as you think about who is going to be the next secretary general, some people will no doubt start thinking about, "What happens if there's a change in leadership in an important country, not least in the United States? Can we have a NATO secretary general who can make the case for NATO to a NATO skeptic and do so in a way that at least keeps the alliance together?" Which, to Stoltenberg's credit, he was able to do.

Ian Bremmer:

So what I'm hearing is that strong leadership is very important.

Ivo Daalder:

Strong leadership is important. And it's more important now than it was perhaps in the past.

Ian Bremmer:

Okay. If you had to bet on someone, it would be who?

Ivo Daalder:

Oh, I think von der Leyen would be a terrific leader if she were available on-

Ian Bremmer:

You think she's likely to have it? Because, of course, a lot of people are very happy in her present position.

Ivo Daalder:

Well, that's the dilemma.

Ian Bremmer:

Especially the Germans.

Ivo Daalder:

The dilemma is will she be reappointed as EU commissioner? President. Because she's been terrific in the job. She's probably the best person in this job in a very, very long time. But for that reason, she'd be very good as NATO Secretary General. So it's this balancing act.

Ian Bremmer:

And she was defense minister in Germany, of course.

Ivo Daalder:

She was defense minister in Germany, and she was, contrary to many in her own party and indeed in their own government, pushing for more defense spending.

Ian Bremmer:

Not that Germany had defense capabilities back when she was doing it.

Ivo Daalder:

No, but she was at least pushing for it.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah, absolutely. That's true. That's true.

Ivo Daalder:

She did have a chancellor, the leader of her own party, wasn't particularly interested in that. So she understood that basic reality and the importance of being a good ally.

Ian Bremmer:

That's who you want. Who do you think is most likely to get it?

Ivo Daalder:

I think the fact is that we don't know yet, means that we might well be where we have been for a long time. Why don't we just keep Stoltenberg for another year? 75th anniversary in Washington next year. Let's see how the European leadership thing shakes out. They have to start really soon, get to a conclusion. Vilnius NATO Summit in July. That's the time.

Ian Bremmer:

Okay, final question for you. It is at least possible, maybe even reasonably likely that Erdoğan loses in May, his election. He has been, without question, the most recalcitrant, the problematic NATO ally. I've had Richard Haass on this show saying they should be taken out of NATO. They shouldn't be an ally. How much will it matter? What will the impact be if Turkey is post-Erdoğan?

Ivo Daalder:

It don't matter a lot because not only-

Ian Bremmer:

For NATO.

Ivo Daalder:

... certainly matter for Turkey.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. I know that.

Ivo Daalder:

But it don't matter for NATO, in part because the opposition is today campaigning very much on the platform to lean more to the West. And so it has an interest once it does come to power, once you have a new parliament and a new president, to demonstrate to its allies, to the United States but also its allies in Europe, that it is and will be a good ally. First thing it will do, presumably, is allow Sweden to come to NATO, but more importantly it will start talking in a way that Turks used to talk. Yes, still an interest in the Middle East, still as a country that can be a translator of Arab and Muslim sentiment to the West, and vice versa, of Western sentiment into the Middle East. It'll always be there. It's a strategic country in that region, but we won't doubt anymore where its bona fides lie, and it won't start using the power it has of saying no, which is the real power that countries have in NATO, of mucking up the works, which is what Erdoğan has done so effectively.

Ian Bremmer:

Ivo Daalder, thanks for joining.

Ivo Daalder:

Always a pleasure, Ian.

Ian Bremmer:

That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World Podcast. Do you like what you heard? Of course you did. Well, why don't you check us out at gzeromedia.com and take a moment to sign up for our newsletter. It's called GZERO Daily.

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