Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Russia’s top oil companies, but the United States still can’t stop the war in Ukraine. NATO’s goals cannot be met, as the world is increasingly multipolar and Western power is declining.
To discuss in this episode of Geopolitical Economy Hour, geopolitical economist Radhika Desai analyzes the conflict with journalist Anatol Lieven and China-based economic geographer Michael “Mick” Dunford.
You can find more episodes of Geopolitical Economy Hour here.
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(Transcript by Utkarsh Bhardwaj)
Intro highlights
MICK DUNFORD:
In the recent past, Xi Jinping has spoken of great changes unseen in a century. And some people speak of the end of 500 years of Western domination. For the last 70 years at least, the United States has enjoyed a position of unchallenged dominance once setting aside the impact of the Soviet Union on the world order. It projected military, financial, cultural power across continents, which allowed it to dictate global norms, control international institutions, and impose its own economic model on other parts of the world. I mean, if you, Russia, Russia and China to some extent share a vision of a new world,different world.
RADHIKA DESAI:
The Europeans are invested in this war, it seems to me, primarily for internal reasons. And that’s another sign, I would say, of the decline of the West is that everything Trump is doing has very little to do with international diplomacy and very great deal to do with playing to the gallery, primarily domestic and to some extent, as I say, to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee and such like things. So in a certain sense, the conduct of foreign policy is no longer serious. And the Europeans are committed to this war because without this war, they have no legitimacy for the domestic agenda they would like to put through essentially a neoliberal militarist Europe in which ordinary Europeans have nothing, have nothing to gain. And being at war allows them to repress the inevitable protests that will occur.
ANATOL LIEVEN:
There is a genuine feeling in Europe, with some reason, if you look at the state of our armed forces, that we have let our armed forces decline to a level where they’re barely usable, actually, now, and that they, they have to be built up again, to some extent. But the result of this, of course, is that on the one side, the military and the intelligence services absolutely shamelessly play up the Russian threat, exaggerate, to an almost comical level, every incident. But also, as you have indicated, there is this extraordinary and central feature whereby, on the one hand, Russia is so weak that it’s on the point of collapse, its economy is on the point of collapse, its territorial gains can be rolled back, but on the other hand, it’s so strong that if it isn’t completely defeated in Ukraine, it will invade and defeat NATO. I mean, how honest people, well, assuming they are honest, can keep these two thoughts in their heads at the same time, I simply do not know.
Full program
RADHIKA DESAI:
Hello and welcome to the 51st Geopolitical Economy Hour, the show that discusses the fast-changing political and geopolitical economy of our times. I’m Radhika Desai. The long-running Ukraine conflict seems to be back on the Trump White House agenda, and so are the flip-flops, the swaggering bravado, and the chickening out. In less than a week, Trump has gone from proposing to meet Putin to imposing sanctions on the two big Russian oil companies, Lukoil and Rosneft. They include secondary sanctions under which entities trading with them expulsion from the US dollar-denominated international financial system.
Even the Biden administration had refrained from imposing such far-reaching sanctions, fearing that by sending oil prices soaring, they could backfire, helping rather than hindering Russia’s war effort. And oil prices did rise with the announcement that Trump recently made. And it seems as if Trump is betting that the rises will be limited and that the sanctions won’t have to be in place for very long because they will hurt Russia just enough to bring it to the negotiating table and agree to some sort of peace deal.
Of course, Trump is nothing but a chancer, and this is another in a long series of gambles that have been his administration’s trademark. But will this gamble succeed? What would success look like? Equally importantly, with anything that involves Trump, how much of any success will be appearance and how much will be reality? And what might we expect from Russia? What about the other actors, Ukraine, the European Union, the UK? Where will China and India, the two most important importers of Russian oil, stand? With me to discuss the current conjuncture in the Ukraine conflict, which has evaded solutions for three and a half years, are two good friends of this show.
Anatol Lieven is, among other things, visiting Professor of War Studies at King’s College London and Senior Fellow for Eurasian Studies at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Welcome, Anatol.
And Mick Dunford, also among many things, but is certainly Professor Emeritus at Sussex University, Editor of the Journal Area Development and Policy, and Visiting Professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and is currently here joining us from Beijing. Welcome, Mick.
MICK DUNFORD:
Thank you. Thank you very much, Radhika. It’s very nice to be invited.
RADHIKA DESAI:
Great. So in addition to assessing Trump’s latest game against the first nine rollercoaster months, sorry, latest gamble against the first nine rollercoaster months of his administration, we will assess Russia’s position, particularly as revealed in President Putin’s annual landmark speech at the Valdai Club earlier this month. As people will know, his speech at the Valdai Club is usually regarded as a major statement of foreign policy. And two of us, Anatol and I, were present there, and Mick, I know, always follows very closely the Valdai speeches and more generally Putin’s pronouncements, and as he did this year as well.
Putin’s speech this year did not disappoint. The President spoke in sanguine tones about a polycentric or multipolar world order. Indeed, the theme of the conference was effectively the polycentric world, a user’s manual. Putin conveyed at once that it was a result of the US’s failure to assert its control and domination over the rest of the world, that is what sometimes people call its hegemony, and that Russia, for one, had contributed to that failure. And he spoke essentially from a position that was quite at home in this new polycentric world, comfortable, content, hopeful. Things had stopped going against Russia and were beginning to turn in its favour. So what sort of a peace would such a Russia agree to, especially considering the acceleration of Russia’s gain on the military ground in Ukraine recently?
However, let’s start with the Trump administration, which often reminds one of Macbeth’s words about a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing. On Ukraine, he has gone from rolling out the red carpet for Putin to yelling, “Vladimir, stop, let’s get this peace done”. He has gone from dressing down Zelensky for gambling with World War Three to promising to send him to Mohawks and then, after a phone call with Putin, cancelling the idea.
However, if one could abstract from all this detail, one could say simply that on foreign policy, Trump has been indulging in magical thinking, desperate as he is to show his domestic constituency and the world, particularly the Nobel Peace Prize committee, that as a businessman, he is a natural peacemaker and dealmaker. Of course, he is oblivious of the real world difficulties of arriving at any such deals. That’s why he fails so often, as he famously did in the case of North Korea in his first term, which is also what Gazans are finding out today about what these deals that he comes to really mean on the ground.
So, Anatol, perhaps you can start us off on this. What do things look like to you from Washington? You’re joining us from there today. What is the Trump administration up to with his new oil sanctions move, which seems quite serious? What are the cards that Trump holds to use one of his favourite metaphors?
ANATOL LIEVEN:
Well, I mean, the key sticking point now is that Russia is still categorically demanding the whole of the Donbass. That is to say, actually, it’s not much territory. It’s about 2,500 square miles in the northwest of Donetsk province, and that the Ukrainians withdraw from there as a key part of a, well, as a precondition of a peace settlement, whereas the Trump administration wants to basically end the war along the existing battlefront. Now, I was told by everybody in Russia that the Russian government has nailed itself so completely to the idea, in their words, of liberating the whole of the Donbass. This was, after all, the key reason or stated reason why they went to war in the first place,but they cannot withdraw from that. If they withdraw from that, Putin would no longer be able to present this to the Russian people as a victory.
On the other hand, while I don’t think that Trump would mind, only my own thinking, but from people I’ve talked to, that Trump would mind at all if Russia captures the whole of the Donbass, he cannot order the Ukrainians to withdraw because the Ukrainians won’t do it. Zelensky cannot voluntarily give up any more Ukrainian territory, which, after all, does also include about a quarter of a million people, but especially this territory for which the Ukrainian army has made enormous sacrifices, and I have been told by my Ukrainian interlocutors that even if Zelensky were brought or forced to give such an order, the Ukrainian army would refuse, would mutiny, and at that point you would risk the meltdown of the entire present Ukrainian state and regime,and Trump would be held responsible. On the one hand, Trump undoubtedly does want a peace settlement.
On the other hand, from everything I gather, he and his advisors are very scared of being seen to repeat Biden’s failure in Afghanistan and the collapse of the regime and state there, especially because, of course, they’ve spent the last three years, four years now, attacking Biden over this. So this is something that Trump will not do. So this is now the key sticking point. Now, there are ways around this in terms of, wider security deal on European security, in terms of arms limitation agreements, and also in terms of creative thinking about the Donbass itself, whether Russia would agree to, and Ukraine, of course, agree to a referendum in the whole of the Donbass on where the whole of this province should belong to, which undoubtedly would go for Russia, given that Russia controls by far the greater part of it already. Or another idea that has been raised is to, as part of the peace settlement, turn the rest of the Donbass into a demilitarized zone under UN control. But any of this would require really concrete and detailed and positive proposals from the US side, from the Russian side.
And something that has really astonished me is that in the six months now since negotiations began in the spring,the two sides do not seem actually to have grappled with many of the detailed issues involved. They keep coming back, as Trump indeed has said, they keep coming back to this map, to who controls what on the ground. But of course, to get either side to compromise on what happens on the ground, you need two things. You need imaginative thinking about what could legitimise a territorial change while saving face on both sides. But you also need to really think about what concessions and compromises can be made in other areas that would shift the Russian position.
On the Russian side, I fear that the reason may be that Putin still thinks that the Russian army can capture the whole of the Donbas. And, maybe they are now close to capturing Pokrovsk, but this has taken them almost 15 months to capture this small town. On the American side, I fear it is simply that they have not put together a professional negotiating team. Trump has done lots of this himself. And of course, he is very impulsive. He genuinely wants a peace settlement, but he has no concrete idea how to go about it.
Witkoff is not a professional diplomat or an expert in this field. The administration is riven with different factions who want different things, some of them who remain very hawkish vis-a-vis Russia. And because they distrust the foreign security establishment so much, and I have to say with good reason, but even the limited number of people who are actually sympathetic to a negotiated peace in Ukraine have not been called upon actually to play a central part in the negotiating process. So the whole business is being handled, it seems to me, in an absolutely chaotic and incompetent fashion, unfortunately.
MICK DUNFORD:
Okay, I want to respond in two parts. I mean, I want to say something about the context. Because, I mean, to me, multipolarity and multiple crises of the collective West are the critical context. Now, the Valdai theme was a polycentric world. And, Putin outlined his views about what is happening in the world, about the role of Russia in the world, and about Russia’s own development prospects. In the recent past, Xi Jinping,has spoken of great changes unseen in a century. And some people speak of the end of 500 years of Western domination. For the last 70 years, at least, the United States has enjoyed a position of unchallenged dominance, once, setting aside the impact of the Soviet Union on the world order. It projected military, financial, cultural power across continents, which allowed it to dictate global norms, control international institutions, and impose its own economic model on other parts of the world.
Russia and China, to some extent, share a vision of a new world, different world. I mean, Xi Jinping speaks of a community shared destiny for mankind. When he launched that project in 2017 at the United Nations headquarters in Geneva, he started by asking five questions. The first question was, what’s wrong with the world? And he went on, he went on to identify four deficits. He said there are deficits of peace, Deficits of development. That’s absolutely clear. Deficits of security. But he spoke specifically about indivisible security, which are the words that Lavrov has used in speaking about the way in which NATO enlarged in a way that did not respect the security interests of another country, in which the security of one country was increased without paying attention to its impact on the security of another country. And he also spoke about a deficit of governance. And since then, a whole series of initiatives have been put forward. The last was the global governance initiative in Tianjin, earlier this year. The others, a global indivisible security initiative, a global civilization initiative. And of course, Russia is one of the world’s major civilizations, and a global development initiative.
For the U.S. and Europe, these initiatives are a profound challenge, basically, to their ability to dominate. And without domination, the rest confronts profound challenges. It faces new concepts of a world order, a declaration of sovereignty by many other parts of the world, new international institutions it does not control, new payment settlement systems. So it’s a very, very profound challenge. And to some extent, I’ve always seen this conflict in Ukraine as part of that wider set of challenges.
In relation to Ukraine, essentially, to me, the Trump regime is, if you like, closer to economic nationalist elites and maybe more distant, from a kind of rentier, financialised global elite, which has a strong presence in the U.S. deep state, which to some extent may explain some of the vacillation that one’s seen on the United States side. Originally, I think their goal was to incorporate the whole of the Ukrainian former Soviet Socialist Republic into the Western orbit. And that included, recovering Crimea. At the same time, I think the aim was achieving regime change in Russia.
But I think, that Trump saw that that project was not making sufficient progress. And I think that that was one reason why he started to think about a change, of course. Because to me, Trump and some of the people close to him see China as a much greater challenge and want, to divert their attention to China. Whereas I think Biden, and of course, some of the individuals, who were prominent in that administration were specifically concerned with Russia. And they had historical reasons in some cases for wanting to see a weakening and possibly even a fragmentation of Russia. So I think, Trump started wanting to freeze the conflict. And he wanted to reopen Russia and Ukraine to U.S. capital and finance. And maybe he even wanted to persuade Russia to join the U.S. against China, because he certainly has a view that it’s possible to divide the two because at present he’s thinking about trying to use China to divide it from Russia.
Obviously, there are important reasons for that. I mean, remember, Glasgow pointed out that one trillion left the left the former Russian Federation after 1991. And another one trillion left the other former socialist countries in Eastern Europe. And Katasanov has estimated that 100 billion were leaving every year. And on top of that, 2.5 trillion left but in the shape of shares, dividends, profits and so on of U.S. corporations. With a large part of the outflow, of course, occurring in the 1990s before Putin came to power.
Now, basically, after that first one and a half hour meeting, it seems that Trump agreed to discuss the proposals that Putin put forward, which were about European security and about the root causes of the conflict. And in the end, he accepted that an immediate cessation of the conflict, an immediate ceasefire was not possible. Went away agreeing to discuss it. Now, I think it’s very important to emphasise that every stage, every stage, Russia agreed and was prepared to negotiate. You know, possibly not least, looking at its BRICS partner. But I mean, as has just been pointed out so very clearly by Anatol, these negotiations have failed to generate, to yield much fruit.
So, Trump then vacillated, as negotiations started, but didn’t make much progress. And then he stated that he was considering providing nuclear capable missiles, Tomahawk missiles, at which point Putin asked for a phone call, which lasted two and a half hours on the 16th of October. And I think in that, I mean, one assumes that in that discussion, Trump was told by Putin what was at stake, was asked not to transfer Tomahawk missiles. And he probably tried to explain that Ukraine was losing. But, you know, Trump clearly misunderstood the discussion because he seems to think that Putin agreed to a ceasefire and a freeze if Ukraine withdrew from the Donbass. After that, he suggested to Zelensky that he accept, but Zelensky refused. The Europeans refused. And I think US elites in the deep state also refused because they want the conflict to continue. And the justification in part is always centred on these narratives, these narratives, that Russia faces imminent defeat.
I think another problem there is, of course, that close confidence, such as Kellogg, tell him, tell Trump that the Russian economy and military will collapse, as do the Europeans frequently. And it’s interesting, the day after that, the day after the telephone call, the Financial Times published an article in which they said that Putin was actually mistaken about the position of the Russian military because his military leaders were actually lying to him about the actual state on the ground. But I think, I mean, I think the point is that the investment, the United States has made is not delivering expected returns. Trump wants to refocus on China, but other groups are actually concerned to keep the conflict going. And to me, I mean, for Putin, the aim is not simply the Donbass. It is also Zaporizhzhia and Kherson because these have taken part in referendums and they’re now a part of, the Russian state. So these are embodied in the Russian constitution. So those are, in a sense, the minimum terms, but those minimum terms are unacceptable to the West. So what is happening is that basically the Europeans, especially, are seeking to escalate because they know that they cannot continue effectively, without the US presence. And you’ve seen these constant escalation.
So you had these strikes with storm shadows and ATACMS deep into Russia. And after that, Russia issued a warning. You know, the warning was an Oreshnik. And now, speaking of Tomahawks, the Russians have announced a new nuclear-powered missile. It’s not a ballistic missile. It flies in a lower orbit. And again, that is, in a sense, I think, a warning of the stakes. So, to some extent, there are minimum terms for Russia. And unless those minimum terms are accepted, the conflict will continue. And in a while, I can say something about my view of what the state of affairs is on the front lines, but only, of course, from reading material that I have access to.
RADHIKA DESAI:
Yeah. So many critically important points both of you have raised. And I think I’ll just mention them in no particular order. This whole question of Donbass versus the four provinces that have been integrated into Russia, at least as far as the Russians are concerned, I think it would be great, Anatol, if you would return to that. Why do you think they’d be willing to give up this Donbass thing? Secondly, when you said, Anatole, that Ukraine will not withdraw, this actually raises a really important set of points, because once again, maybe I’ll preface this by registering just a slight, but friendly disagreement with Mick, and he knows this. I mean, Mick said, that we are coming to an end of 500 years of Western domination. I’d say more like 200 years. But anyway, nevertheless, there is domination.
But I’ve always argued that the United States has been trying since the beginning of the 20th century, but never fully succeeded in its domination. And I find it, what I find really interesting when I found really interesting, when I was reviewing Putin’s speech at Valdai, the one that he gave earlier this month, is how astonishingly close his analysis is to what I’m calling geopolitical economy, because he also says that the Americans never succeeded, that they could not possibly succeed because attempts at domination invariably elicit a response, counter to that, essentially.
But nevertheless, to come back to that, you see, the decline of US power is also manifest in the fact that it can no longer control its proxies. The US is not entirely in control of Israel. It’s not entirely in control of Ukraine. And of course, there, there is the whole question of Europe again. And of course, we can talk about this, why is Europe taking such an impossible position, also self-destructive position in many ways. And then it seems to me that,the more, to me, what’s become more and more clear is that the only explanation of why the Europeans are sticking to this impossibilist position, supported, as you bothpointed out, by these narratives about how Russia is bound to lose. On the one hand, Russia is incurably aggressive.
On the other hand, Russia is bound to lose. And I think, Anatol, the Quincy Institute put out some really interesting stories about how the Western narrative exaggerates the West’s strength and exaggerates Russian weakness, something that, Mick, you also pointed out. And the possibility that the West may be facing an Afghan scenario is another really interesting take on what happens to those who side with the West is that they are left hanging high and dry. So the Europeans are invested in this war, it seems to me, primarily for internal reasons.
And that’s another sign, I would say, of the decline of the West is that everything Trump is doing has very little to do with international diplomacy and very great deal to do with playing to the gallery, primarily domestic and to some extent, as I say, to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee and such like things. So in a certain sense, the conduct of foreign policy is no longer serious. And the Europeans are committed to this war because without this war, they have no legitimacy for the domestic agenda they would like to put through, essentially, a neoliberal militarist Europe in which ordinary Europeans have nothing to gain. And being at war allows them to repress the inevitable protests that will occur.
So that’s another really interesting point to which I’d like you both to come back to. I also would like both of you to address, if possible, what explains the slow progress of Russia on the military ground, so to speak. I think that this is also a really interesting question. And to me, it seems from what I could surmise, it has been primarily because on the one hand, obviously, Putin does not wish to have too many casualties and domestic unrest as a result. But also he wishes to avoid, essentially, a conscription within Russia so that there is no way that he can go for the kind of offensive that many Russians criticise him for not undertaking.
Also, Mick, this was your point. You were trying to explain Trump’s positions by saying maybe he realizes that the Biden goals cannot be won, so he’s changing tack. But I personally think that there is no strategy in Trump’s thinking. I think Trump is battered about by all the different forces. If Europeans say this one day, he will go that way. If Putin says something else another day, he goes that way. All he wants to do is create the appearance of having achieved a deal. And if that includes the Nobel Peace Prize committee giving him the prize, all the better.
And then finally, maybe just one last point. I have a few others, but I won’t go into it. But what really struck me as well, again, as Mick, you were speaking, is that China and Russia have a very similar trajectory vis-a-vis the United States. I think in both cases, in the Chinese case as well as in the Russian case, what the United States would have dearly wished to see is to see both of these giant countries as pliable subordinates in a wider world order dominated by the United States. And the moment it became clear, in both cases in the new century, in the 21st century, the moment it began to become clear that neither of these countries have any intention to playing a subordinate role, that’s when you see the aggression against both of these countries increasing.
But I’ll end there. I’m sure there’s so much being said, and I’m sure, Anatol, you’re probably frantically listing all the points you want to make. So please go ahead.
ANATOL LIEVEN:
Well, I think that one absolutely disastrous feature, indeed key feature of the Ukraine War, is that two things have come together. One is indeed Russia’s pushback against the European and US attempt to monopolize security and indeed economics on the European continent, excluding Russia, and basically taking into NATO and the European Union every country in Europe except Russia, leaving Russia as a kind of source of raw materials, something like the Gulf States. And that was always totally unacceptable to, I think, the great majority of the Russian people, but certainly to the Russian establishment, even under Yeltsin or the later years of Yeltsin, certainly under Putin. So that’s one aspect of things.
But this, you see, has come together with what in other respects, I have to say, is a rather typical post-colonial battle over territory, over identity, over frontiers, which we’ve seen in so many places. We’ve seen it in Kashmir, we’ve seen it in Cyprus, we’ve seen it in Northern Ireland, and we see it in Crimea and the Donbas, where you have Russian historical claims against Ukrainian historical claims, though I have to say in the case of Crimea, Ukraine has no historical claims.
But then again, I mean, look, as you well know, the question of who has ultimate legitimacy depends on how far back in history you go. And yes, you have two post-colonial states, one of them, of course, the biggest coming out of the Soviet Union, just as India was the biggest coming out of the British Empire, fighting over these disputed territories and these minority rights, minority populations and so forth. Now these are, these issues have become enmeshed as a result of the Western expansionism after the end of the Cold War, and so any peace settlement has to basically resolve them both, but they can’t be resolved separately. They have, and this is a key part of the deep complexity of this, which I feel that most people making policy in the West simply do not understand. They have not grasped this, largely, of course, as a result of having so completely demonized Russia over the years. I mean, that brings me to Europe.
Once again, I mean, various things have come together. Undoubtedly, as we have seen in establishment propaganda across Western Europe, but also as we’ve seen in a much harder form, of course, in Romania and Moldova, the accusation that opposition forces are Russian agents or working in favour of Russia has been immensely useful to the defence of the existing, in a broad sense, liberal establishments in Europe. They’ve used this against the left, against Corbyn in Britain, against Mélenchon in France, but of course, a much bigger threat now, if you look at the opinion polls and elections, is the populist right. And so from that point of view, there is, an establishment motive to keep this fear and hostility going, but other factors are also involved. There is what I would have to call, irrational or at any rate, entirely historically derived ethno-nationalist hatred of Russia on the part of the Poles and the Poles.
I mean, no doubt with historical reasons, but then every such hatred or the great majority of them can find historical reasons for this. But this has actually, instilled in, well, certainly in European thinking, an element of hysteria, I would almost call it, which was absent in most European establishments during the Cold War. I mean, if you contrast, you know, I mean, at the height of the Cold War, but the attitude of Helmut Schmidt to Russia and contrast it with, the attitude of recent German governments, astonishing contrast. But then there is also the factor that, well, it’s partly that all the European militaries see a magnificent opportunity to extract more money from states. But also, there is a genuine feeling in Europe, with some reason, if you look at the state of our armed forces, that we have let our armed forces, decline to a level where they’re barely usable, actually now. And that they have to be built up again to some extent.
But the result of this, of course, is that on the one side, the military and the intelligence services absolutely shamelessly play up the Russian threat, exaggerate, to an almost comical level, every incident. But also, as you have indicated, there is this extraordinary and central feature whereby, on the one hand, Russia is so weak that it’s on the point of collapse, its economy is on the point of collapse, its territorial gains can be rolled back. But on the other hand, it’s so strong that if it isn’t completely defeated in Ukraine, it will invade and defeat NATO. I mean, how honest people, well, assuming they are honest, can keep these two thoughts in their heads at the same time, I simply do not know.
But anyway, I mean, the point is, of course, that you have a military with a tremendous and still more important intelligence services with a tremendous institutional motive to exaggerate the Russian threat, and establishments, including journalistic establishments, who are primed to accept this nonsense uncritically. And this creates this mood of, paranoid hysteria and hatred, which makes sensible discussion of policy in Europe extremely, extremely difficult. It’s much easier by now, actually, to have a calm and sensible discussion in Washington than it is in London.
Okay. Sorry, just one more thing. Sorry, I forgot to say the situation on the ground. In the first year, numbers were critical. Now, it is a combination of drones and mines. This combination makes, it enormously strengthens the defensive. It makes the concentration of troops for rapid advances or breakthroughs, not just difficult, but almost impossible.And, the Russians are proceeding very, very slowly, something that is causing more and more concern in Russia. And now, for the future, we just don’t know. So the Russian generals, it seems, believe that if they can just keep going and keep going, the Ukrainians will collapse, and Russia can make great advances. And that may be so, but nothing like this has happened so far. And, if it’s taken them 15 months to capture Pokrovs, which I think they probably will capture pretty soon now, but still, how much longer is it going to take them to capture the rest of the Donbas?
And a line you now hear, which is very different from, what Western hawks have been were saying previously, but which is echoed in Russia, is that as things stand now, the Ukrainians win by not losing. In other words, if they can simply hold their existing lines, they won’t recover any of the territory they’ve lost, but that they have a chance of forcing Russia eventually to accept a peace settlement that Putin would find very difficult to spin as a true victory after the, immense loss of life that Russia has suffered in economic damage. That would be far short of a complete Ukrainian victory, but it will also be very far short of what I think Russians could see as a victory either. So yeah, I mean, that is, I think, the dominant assumption now. The Ukrainians win by not losing.
MICK DUNFORD:
Can I go back momentarily to the issue of the root causes? In 1991, I found the quotation that Soviet President Gorbachev told U.S. President Bush that Ukraine in its current borders would be an unstable construct. It broke away as it only came into existence because local Bolsheviks did not have a majority in the Rada (assembly or council). They had added Kharkov and Donbas and Khrushchev later passed Crimea from Russia to the Ukraine as a fraternal gesture. So, I mean, it was evident at the outset, in fact,the CIA was involved for nearly 20 years in the destabilization of the Soviet Union via Western Ukraine. It was quite clear that what emerged, was potentially unstable. And I think you have to pay attention to what happened, with the Maidan when ethnic nationalists, essentially fired on police and demonstrators. And the way in which the agreement that had been made was on the 21st, February, it was overturned the next day when these people attacked government buildings.
So you effectively had a coup d’etat and the first action of the new government was to abolish the Russian language and that started a civil war that basically continued until the start of the special military operation. So I think, this is one of the profound causes of the conflict. And it’s a cause that one, has to pay considerable attention to and trying to think about how one actually resolves it.
As far as the Russian side is concerned,these processes of negotiations with the West have gone on for a long time, but basically,the Western leaders led Russia down the garden path. So the Minsk agreements, 2015, 2016, Istanbul 2022, which were all basically rejected. And now, I think the view that they can get Russia to back off is an impractical one. Basically, Russia has a 20-year lead in hypersonic missiles as a strategic partnership with China and Iran, whose productive capacity alone exceeds that of the Western world. They have the support of much of the Global South and much of the global majority. They’re building, these infrastructure, they’re basically strengthening their industries, they’re strengthening their trade relationships.
So there are very sort of powerful forces, but obviously, the critical issue is avoiding, an intense nuclear conflict. I mean, that in a sense is the fundamental problem. As far as the conflict is concerned, Russia has been conducting a war of attrition. One of its aims is the demilitarisation of Ukraine. So it is effectively, it has held lines and allowed the Ukrainians and allowed Western weapons to come to those lines. And when they arrive at those lines, they are destroyed. The Ukrainians have gone through a whole series of mobilizations and it’s thought they’ve lost over, one million dead, which is extraordinary, incredible.
ANATOL LIEVEN:
No, no, no, that’s a gross exaggeration.
MICK DUNFORD:
Okay. Well, you think that’s an exaggeration.
ANATOL LIEVEN:
A million casualties, perhaps.
MICK DUNFORD:
No, there’s about 1000, one more than that in casualties, very, very large. The rate, the difference. I have some friends who monitor this and they produce regular statistics until recently. Okay. So, I mean, they’ve incurred incredible losses and they’ve had enormous amounts of their weaponry destroyed and they’ve significantly reduced the weapons stocks of NATO countries, along with other conflicts in which they’ve been engaged.
So that’s the first thing. It’s basically been a war of attrition in which, Russia has allowed the Ukrainians to come to them and then being basically destroyed as they approached.
ANATOL LIEVEN:
But that’s not what’s happening now. It’s the Russians who are attacking.
MICK DUNFORD:
The Russians are now advancing, but basically they’re not advancing very fast. They’re moving very slowly, basically, largely in order to minimize losses.
I mean, Gerasimov spoke about two days ago and in that speech he actually said amongst other things. He said amongst other things that the mission is that they’ve been assigned the task of liberating Kursul and Zaporizhia. And then he said, he said 31 battalions have been blocked in Pokrovsk.
Now, the figure that was given was about 5,000 men, but actually, 30 battalions should be in the region of 10 to 15,000, which indicates,that the Ukrainians are significantly under-forced.
ANATOL LIEVEN:
But look, I’m really sorry, but if Gerasimov told me that the sun rises in the east, I would look out of the window before agreeing with him.
RADHIKA DESAI:
What’s your estimate of the losses, Anatol, on the Ukrainian side and on the Russian side?
ANATOL LIEVEN:
Well, the BBC, which has done a pretty, you know, and, well, the thing is that they’ve stopped assessing…
MICK DUNFORD:
Changed the methodology, yeah.
ANATOL LIEVEN:
…But when they were looking in detail, and it seemed quite honestly, at the Russian and Ukrainian casualties, they were reckoning Ukrainian dead at somewhere in the region of two-thirds, perhaps a bit more than two-thirds of the Russian dead. And at that stage, the casualties that they were, sorry, the dead that they were estimating, were in the region of around 90,000 Russian dead to about 65,000 Ukrainian dead. Now, that was last year. It will obviously have gone up. And they admitted that there would be, considerably more than that, that they hadn’t been able to record or identify, but obviously on both sides.
Now, certainly, given the much larger Russian population, these are unfavorable odds for Ukraine. But on the other hand, of course, as we have heard, and quite rightly, Putin has not resorted to mass mobilization. He’s using a very well-paid volunteer army. The problem about that is, though, that at a certain point, you run out of suitable volunteers. And the reason why, the Russians are proceeding so slowly, it’s not a decision. The point is that it’s the only way you can go. They are putting forward their forces in groups of six men, four men, anything bigger than that will be identified by drones and destroyed, or will blow itself up on minefields. You can’t clear the minefields because with drones overhead. Now, I mean, yes, I think attrition is working for the Russians, but it’s working very, very slowly.
You also actually do need, certainly if you’re going to convince your population that you are winning, you also do need to make visible advances. Well, we’ll see. We’ll see how long it takes them to capture Pokrovskaya. I mean, the point is, if you look at Russian television, as I did, you know, there’s all this stuff, yes, coming out of Gerasimov, coming out of the Kremlin on television all the time about how Russia is advancing on every front. But, Russians are educated people. They can look at a map and see, oh, well, yes, maybe, but this, great advance over the whole of the past year has been 10 miles. And the incursions into Kharkov have been not remotely enough for Russia to try to do a territorial swap. Look, I mean, the thing is, I’m not saying you’re wrong. Maybe the Ukrainian front will collapse, but there is no certainty to that. It very much depends, of course, well, totally depends also on whether the U.S. continues to sell the weapons to the Ukrainians, or to sell the weapons to the Europeans to supply to the Ukrainians.
I mean, given, you know, I don’t know. I’m making no confident predictions. I’m just saying it could, the Ukrainians could collapse or this could go on a very long time. Of course, the longer it goes on, as you’ve said, the more risk there is of this escalating into something much wider and much more dangerous, because we should also talk, I think, about some of these extremely dangerous suggestions from Europe about shooting down Russian planes and seizing Russian cargoes on the high seas, which you remember, Radhika, Putin described as piracy. And everyone in Moscow said that if that happens, Russia will hit back immediately against the West in military terms. So then we really would be looking into the abyss. But sorry, I just wanted to throw that in because we haven’t really come to that.
RADHIKA DESAI:
Absolutely. Mick, You can take it back now.
MICK DUNFORD:
Well, I mean, yeah, the figure I stole, from the BBC earlier on for Russia was about 70,000. The problem is that for the Russian side, the figures that are used are the figures that are provided by the Ukrainian government, which are utterly unreliable. So, I mean, that’s the fundamental issue there. I mean, as far as the fronts are concerned, there’s Bokrovsk, Konstantinovka, Severus, Kupyansk, all potentially going to fall relatively quickly. I mean, because Gerasimov said that also Kupyansk is encircled, and Beskov said there are 5,000 troops in there. And Gerasimov said that on this occasion, the aim will not be to allow them to escape, which they have in the past, you know, because it eases taking somewhere.
But Putin actually said the other day that it is absolutely vital that these people be given the opportunity to surrender, rather than simply be annihilated. But if they fall, then basically the Russians can basically disrupt the defence of Slavyansk-Kramatorsk, which is really essentially the end of the Donbass conflict.
So, I mean, our assessment of the military situation, obviously, is somewhat different. And the sources we use obviously are, probably rather different. But, I think, a sort of 1000 kilometre front line without the main fortified areas that Ukraine has been building up since 2014, will be very, very difficult to hold. But obviously, the nature of war has changed very radically. So, I think that was the second thing that I wanted to say, about the state of the conflict.
RADHIKA DESAI:
Yeah, sure. I mean, maybe we should probably be drawing the conversation to a close anyway. So, maybe what we should do is just maybe each of us say how we think it might end, if at all, or maybe it won’t end. I mean, what’s the end game here? And it seems to me that, and maybe I’ll start off, it seems to me that while, of course, the two of you have been deferring a great deal on, exactly what the situation on the ground is and how the war is going for Russia versus Ukraine, et cetera. I mean, and I probably would side slightly more with Mick.
I mean, I’m not following this as closely as the two of you are, but it seems to me that Ukraine has many, many deficiencies. I mean, obviously, financially, it is completely reliant on the United States. You yourself said, Anatol told that the population of Ukraine is, of course, a fraction of the population of Russia. Russia has not had to have so far at least conscription. Ukraine has had to. Ukraine has been reaching into the younger, ever youngest people and older people as well in order to continue the conscription.
On top of that, it seems that one of the things we’ve completely forgotten to mention is the presence of these essentially fascistic or fascist, however you want to call it, units in it, which tend to, fight to the last man, et cetera. And it seems that has probably contributed to the greater casualties on Ukraine. So I think Ukraine is not really equipped to fight for a very long time.
Having said that, of course, as long as the Europeans keep supplying the Europeans and Americans keep supplying them with weapons, and as long as both the Americans and certainly the Europeans need to keep up the appearance that there is a war being fought by Ukraine against Russia, I think some semblance, and I had underlined the word semblance of the war will continue. And it seems to me that in this situation, particularly given what we’ve all said about the European situation and their attitude to the war.
Oh, and I should add, of course, Zelensky’s domestic, the fact that there haven’t been elections and people have said, oh, it’s a bit like Churchill. Churchill didn’t have elections during the war. Well,Churchill had a national government during the war. Meanwhile, what’s his name? Zelensky has essentially banned most of the opposition. This is not at all the same thing. But anyway,so Zelensky is politically vulnerable as well from, again, some reports I read are about pervasive sense of, disappointment, opposition to Zelensky within Ukraine. So these are all factors.
But it seems that one key way in which the regime, this conflict would end is if if the deepening unpopularity of European governments among European voters reaches a point where there are important changes of government in the major capitals of Europe. I think that this is another and I should say, by the way, that, in his speech, put in both in reference to the United States as well as Ukraine, he did not name individual in the last speech. He did not name individual leaders. But what he did do is emphasize more than once, indeed several times to the speech, the point about the discontent on the ground of voters against their against their governments, both in the United States, which has already led to the election of Trump, which which was his meaning anyway, I think there is also increasing dissatisfaction against Trump and against, of course, the various European leaders.
So I think this is one possible way in which this could end. It seems to me that as long as Western capitals, Trump may be half, on a wavering basis, but the Europeans on a really committed basis. And so as long as these governments exist, the war in some form will continue. And one final point I’ll make is that, in Eastern Europe, I mean, I agree with you that there is, of course, a certain historical legacy of Russophobia in Eastern Europe, but there are also opposing voices. I think the only reason why we only hear the Russophobic voices is that they are the ones that are encouraged by Western governments and Western media. So I think that, again, that could shift as well. So that’s I’ll confine myself to that for now.
But yeah, go ahead, Anatol.
ANATOL LIEVEN:
If there are sensible voices in Poland, as far as Russia is concerned, I have yet to hear them. There are, of course, sensible voices when it comes to Poland not sacrificing itself for the Ukraine, because the Poles dislike the Ukrainians only slightly less than they dislike the Russians. But nonetheless, I mean, the impact of Poland on Western policy has been disastrous.
Secondly, you know, do not underestimate Ukrainian nationalism. This is what Gerasimov did and Putin did at the start of the war with disastrous results. They completely underestimated the willingness of a great many ordinary Ukrainians to fight and die and volunteer with the result that the Russians found themselves heavily outnumbered and failed to achieve most, though not all of their key objectives. Now, the West or the Europeans vastly exaggerate the extent to which Ukraine has to be involved in all negotiations. For example, the issue of NATO membership is not up to Ukraine. It’s up to NATO and the existing members of NATO. But it’s also never going to happen because, there will be countries which will simply veto it.
Indeed, Trump has said that under him America is against NATO membership for Ukraine. But I mean, there are other issues where, by definition, the Ukrainians do have to be involved. Obviously, this comes to, a ceasefire and any voluntary withdrawals, which I don’t believe is going to happen. But also the issue of Russian rights in Ukraine. And, well, demilitarization, of course, a question of what the West provides to Ukraine, that’s up to us. But you’re not going to get any Ukrainian government to agree to reduce its armed forces to a point where they can’t defend the country. That is not going to happen.
So do not forget, the Ukrainians also do have a say, because we have, there is always this tendency. I saw this in Afghanistan for, God, how many years? Ever since I first went out there in the 1980s. One side or the other is always saying, oh, you know, we can negotiate this between us. The people involved on the ground have no say. And again and again, it turns out they do have a say, if only in a negative fashion. I mean, that is one.
I mean, on the issue of changes in government, yes. And I mean, I think in the long run, that is why, indeed, the whole Western position in Ukraine will probably collapse. But it is some way away. You know, the French elections are not until ’27. And the odds now are, yes, indeed, that Rassemblement nationale will win. But if the example, both of what they have been saying and of Meloni in Italy or anything to go by, they will defer in the end to Washington. So then we’re looking at 2028 and the question of whether Vance wins in America.
Because if the Democrats win or indeed Rubio wins, you will not see a policy of reconciliation. Vance, yes. And now, if Vance wins, then I think you will see a situation in which, Farage in England, if he wins, God forbid. But, you know, don’t forget that when we’re talking about a new European configuration that will favor peace, we are talking about the victory of the populist right.
RADHIKA DESAI:
We are sorry, just to clarify, I was not, I am very aware of the Meloni thing. So just to briefly clarify, I meant a government that properly represents the interests of ordinary Europeans, not these right-wing forces which are only manipulating European electoral opinion.
ANATOL LIEVEN:
No, they are, you know, they are gaining more and more votes and they are far ahead in the opinion polls. I say this with deep regret, but it would be a miracle if Mélenchon wins in 2027. What will happen in Britain, God alone knows, but it would, by the look of things, it would take a coalition of all the other progressive forces, and not just coalition, but a pre-election agreement.
RADHIKA DESAI:
No, I agree with, I entirely agree with you. And in fact, I was projecting a much longer period, which will, and in which this war will continue, but sorry, yes.
ANATOL LIEVEN:
Well, that may well be the case. I mean, my nightmare is that it will, my hope is that it will be like Cyprus and that the territorial issue will never be finally resolved, but you will have no return to war and more or less, you know, more or less normal relations between Russia and the West as between Turkey and the West, more or less. My nightmare, of course, is Kashmir, where you will have an unending low-level conflict interspersed with outbreaks of full-scale war, with the difference being that whereas in the case of Kashmir, the West has managed to distance itself, here we will be constantly being dragged back in again. That’s my nightmare, and I fear it’s a plausible one.
I should say, by the way, that, one shouldn’t attribute all the nightmares to the Western side. I had dinner with one Russian ultra hardliner while I was in Russia and I actually did have a very, very unpleasant nightmare later that night. It wasn’t directly about nuclear war, but you could certainly feel the shadow of nuclear war in the background. So I basically woke up screaming at three o’clock in the morning with good reason, I think.
RADHIKA DESAI:
Mick, you get the last word, I think.
MICK DUNFORD:
Well, I’ve actually, you know, sadly the first person in relation to the Ukraine conflict to raise the prospect of nuclear conflict was the French defence minister, who on the first day pointed out that NATO had nuclear capabilities. I mean, obviously that is something that absolutely an absolute red line that has to be avoided at all costs, although it’s deeply disturbing.
I mean, I remember Liz Truss being questioned about whether she was prepared to carry out a nuclear strike, even if it meant annihilation. And she said yes. I mean, it’s absolutely horrifying, absolutely horrifying, to hear people make statements, statements of that kind.
You know, I mean, Russia has reduced the payments, for people who sign up. So that clearly indicates that it’s getting enough volunteers, to meet its needs at the present. You know, in relation to this conflict, I often, wonder why for Europe it seems so existential. I mean, obviously at the outset, the Europeans were convinced that Russia would collapse.
And I think, for the West, I mean, I seriously think that the problem is these countries are indebted, you know, 38 trillion in the US, budget deficits annually, two trillion. The US has seven trillion to refinance. They have trade deficits, immense trade deficits. The attempts to re-industrialise in the case of the United States by resorting to bullying are not proving especially effective.
So, these economies, by embarking, in the 1970s on this path of neoliberalization, which is an essentially a kind of rentier-led strategy, allowed themselves to be de-industrialized and weakened. And it’s now extremely difficult, it seems to me, for them to reverse that, in relation to Europe, by gambling on defeating Russia, they’ve actually committed economic suicide.
I mean, the German economy is de-industrializing, just so that Porsche, has just announced what huge losses, large numbers of German companies are laying off workers. So, the industrial heartland of Europe, is basically being de-industrialized. It’s very difficult to see prospects of actually reversing that, given the hostilities to countries such as China, but also given the way in which, in a situation where there’s fewer resources to share, the United States is seeking to subordinate its allies.
I mean, I don’t know if you know, the new Japanese Prime Minister went to South Korea and the news is that when she arrived in South Korea, she said that she had spoken to the CEOs of Japanese companies who said they cannot cope with another trade war. So, she said that they are looking into the possibility of trade integration of South Korea, Japan and China. This means, the economic center of gravity of the world is moving very, very radically, very, very radically.
And at the same time, Europe in particular, continues to be weakened. And if it continues to try to support Ukraine, it’s going to find it very, very difficult to do so. I mean, as far as this conflict is concerned, I envisage that it will basically continue until Ukraine probably collapses because the Ukrainians and the Europeans refuse to negotiate the one thing that they could negotiate essentially at this point in time in order to preserve an independent Ukraine, if you like, a viable independent Ukraine with Black Sea access.
But I think the negotiations that they enter into, even in that situation, will be very hard because Russia will want certain guarantees for the Russian people to live, in Nikolayov and in Odessa and so on. So, what will that mean? Will that mean referenda? Will they be allowed referenda to decide which way to go? Or will you have a federal constitution so they can, to some extent, choose their course?
Because I agree with Anatol, absolutely. I mean, there is a very, very powerful Ukrainian nationalism, especially in West Ukraine, a part of Ukraine that was for a long time a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.So, there is a division that was mobilized by the West. It was mobilized, basically through two color revolutions and then especially the Maidan. And in retrospect, that seems as a catastrophic error. I mean, to me, a catastrophic error.
So, it’s very striking, that Russia and China over trade are both standing up to the United States, because they want a new world based on the equality and sovereignty of nations. They want every nation to choose their own path, not one nation to decide what development path other countries should choose, what economic and social model they should choose. So, it’s a struggle over this.
And, the terrible thing is, I think it’s as Gramsci said, we live in a kind of interregnum, and in these interregnum, all sorts of terrible things happen. So, all I would say to finish, what is absolutely essential is that we avoid nuclear conflict, short of that, short of that, I hope, I mean, I think we’ll see the emergence of a new world order. And I hope that in the course of time, the Europeans and indeed the United States see fit to join it on an equal basis and to help, to help build, peace, development, security and Governance as well.
RADHIKA DESAI:
Yeah. I think that that’s really great. Thank you both. I think we’ve been going actually a little bit over an hour now, and I think we should probably bring this to a close, but this has been a really interesting conversation. It seems to me that we are agreeing that this war is going to go on for a long time, but I think also agreeing that multipolar world is going through an extremely difficult birth.
And in this course, the course of which there are all sorts of morbid symptoms appearing, whether this is a multipolar world that is emerging out of the decline of something we may call US hegemony, or whether we agree with President Putin when he said that, and I’m quoting this here because I happened to make a note of this one. He said “the power of the United States and its allies reached a peak at the end of the 20th century, but there has never been, and there will never will be a force capable of ruling the world, dictating to everyone how to live, et cetera. Such attempts have been made, but every one of them has failed””.
And that’s always been my point, certainly vis-a-vis the US attempts at so-called hegemony. It never succeeded. So what we are looking at is a situation in which US’s ability to keep trying is now diminishing. And that’s what, it’s not the hegemony that’s diminishing, but its ability to keep trying to impose something like that on the world is diminishing very rapidly. And in the course of this, both the United States and Western countries are also themselves in a spiral of decline with social and political implications, which are being worked out as well. So this is going to be a very rough ride.
Mick, please go ahead.
MICK DUNFORD:
Yeah. I mean, on that point that Vladimir Putin made, I mean, I just want to say a word or two about China. You know, if you look at China, China was an international peace for 500 years. East Asia was an international peace for 300 years. There was no hegemon. It was a kind of symbiosis system, in which large and small countries all found a place, centered on tributary trade and trade.
The Chinese, have a different, they have a different vision. They oppose hegemony, the governance through, if you like, the exercise of power over other countries. You know, in 1971, Mao Zedong, at a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, modified some advice that was given to the first Ming emperor. And he said, store grain everywhere, dig deep caves and never seek hegemony.
So the idea is that you operate in a world of equals, and you negotiate outcomes. And it’s because of that, Asia was for so long at peace, whereas the West was so often at war. So the point is that a different type of world is possible.
I think China, which is probably the strongest, economically of the powers who are emerging at the moment, has no intention, whatever, of seeking hegemony. It wants to coexist peacefully. It wants a mutual respect, civilizational respect, you know. So the Galician should respect the rights of the Russians. I mean, everyone should respect the rights of others. And only in that kind of world can we live in peace and promote development.
RADHIKA DESAI:
Well, I couldn’t agree more. I would only replace the West with capitalist, but that’s my, that’s my hobby horse. But thank you guys so much. This has been really an interesting conversation.
I think that, and I’m sure we will reconvene to talk further about this at other critical moments in the unfolding of this extremely tragic, I think, conflict and others, of course, going on in Gaza, Sudan and so on. But thank you very much. And yeah, see you next time.
Bye bye.
