Throughout the debate Stephen F. Cohen repeatedly hammered home the idea that adopting a policy of isolation toward Russia would undermine the West’s interests: “Ukraine has already cost us in terms of our national security. We have lost a security partner in the Kremlin, not just Putin, but perhaps for generations or, at least, years to come. It is splitting Europe against American leadership and possibly undermining the transatlantic alliance and plunging us into a new Cold War. It is bringing us closer to an actual war with nuclear Russia than we have been since the Cuban Missile Crisis. These are the facts.”
Garry Kasparov’s many contributions to the debate focused on Putin and how his status as an all-powerful leader made him a dangerous and unpredictable opponent who would only respond to isolation. In Kasparov’s opinion as a keen observer of Russian politics: “If Putin is not stopped in Ukraine, he will continue to move further outside of Russia. He will start provocations in the Baltic countries in order to undermine NATO because he needs chaos and muddy waters. That is the way for him to survive politically. It is all about domestic politics, because he has nothing else to offer besides foreign policy expansion.”
These statements by four outstanding debaters provide a snapshot of what was a rich, sophisticated, and fiercely argued debate that ranged over topics as varied as the future of Russian democracy, the evolution of “hybrid wars” as a new and dangerous international phenomenon, and the existential dangers of atomic weapons in conflicts that involve nuclear powers such as Russia.
The Munk Debate on Russia deservedly stands out of one of the series most successful contests to date. We hope readers enjoy the debate transcribed here in its entirety with additional commentary and analysis by each of the four debaters.
Rudyard Griffiths,
Chair, The Munk Debates
Toronto, May 2015
Should the West Engage Putin’s Russia?
SHOULD THE WEST ENGAGE PUTIN’S RUSSIA?
RUDYARD GRIFFITHS: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. My name is Rudyard Griffiths and it is my privilege to both organize this debate series and to serve as your moderator. I want to start tonight’s proceedings by welcoming the North American–wide radio and television audience tuning into this debate everywhere from CBC Radio’s Ideas to CPAC, Canada’s Public Affairs Channel, to C-SPAN, across the continental United States. A warm hello also to our online audience, watching right now on munkdebates.com; it’s terrific to have you as virtual participants tonight. And finally, I’d like to welcome the over 3,000 people that have filled Roy Thomson Hall to capacity for another Munk Debate.
Tonight represents a milestone for the Munk Debates: this is our fifteenth semi-annual event. We’ve been at this for seven-and-a-half years, and our ability to bring the brightest minds and the sharpest thinkers here to Toronto to debate the big issues facing the world and Canada would not be possible without the foresight, generosity, and commitment of our series hosts. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in an appreciation for the co-founders of the Aurea Foundation, Peter and Melanie Munk.
Let’s get this debate underway and our debaters out here on centre stage. Arguing for the resolution, “Be it resolved the West should engage not isolate Russia,” is the Emmy Award–winning journalist, top-rated Russian TV broadcaster and bestselling author Vladimir Pozner. Pozner’s teammate tonight is Stephen F. Cohen, a celebrated scholar of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia and a contributing editor at The Nation magazine, who’s here from New York City.
One team of great debaters deserves another and arguing against the resolution is the Warsaw-based, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum. Anne’s debating partner tonight is Garry Kasparov, the prominent Russian dissident and chair of the New York–based Human Rights Foundation. He is, however, probably best known as the world’s greatest living chess player.
Before we call on our debaters for their opening remarks, I need to go over one housekeeping point: our countdown clock. This clock will appear on the screen at various times during tonight’s debate, including for opening and closing statements, and for timed rebuttals. When you see it count down to zero, please join me in a round of applause. This is going to keep our speakers on their toes, and our debate on schedule.
Let’s review how the audience voted on tonight’s resolution before this debate. You were asked, “The West should engage not isolate Russia.” Interesting results: 58 percent agree with the motion and 42 percent disagree. This debate could really go either way. And to get a sense of how much of public opinion is in play tonight we asked you a second question: Are you open to changing your vote depending on what you hear during this debate? We have an indecisive audience: 86 percent of you could go either way. So, things are very much in play.
Let’s welcome all the debaters to the stage.
We agreed beforehand to the order of opening statements. Vladimir Pozner, your six minutes start now.
VLADIMIR POZNER: Ladies and gentlemen, I have not come here to argue Russia’s case. I have come here to argue the case that isolating any country is not only counterproductive but dangerous, especially if the country is as big, as wealthy, as powerful, and as unpredictable as Russia.
Allow me to share with all of you a bit of history: When the Russian Empire crumbled in 1917 and the Bolsheviks came to power, the West refused to recognize first Soviet Russia and then the Soviet Union. Isolation and non-engagement were the words of the day, and so, for about a decade, the country was portrayed as an evil power by the Western media and left to stew in its own juices. The prediction was that it would inevitably fall apart — that it was economically dead in the water — and that its people would rise up and destroy the regime.
As we all know, none of this happened. In 1929, the West was hit by the worst economic crisis in its history. Meanwhile, in 1929, the U.S.S.R. announced its first five-year plan of economic development. Over those years of non-recognition and isolation, the Stalin-led Soviet leadership conducted a massive bloodbath throughout the country: it physically wiped out all political opposition; destroyed millions and millions of peasants who had refused to adhere to the collective farm system; and starved to death millions of Ukrainian farmers who would not bow to the draconian demands for wheat and flour. It was in the process of annihilating Russia’s most precious human resource, the intelligentsia, and was in the process of creating a new human entity, the so-called Homo Sovieticus. The Great Terror of 1937 and 1938 lay just ahead.
The West’s policy of non-recognition, non-engagement, and isolation — non-interference, if you will — and the absence of any united outcry, all played a role in allowing the Soviet system to evolve the way it did.
It would be remiss of me, on the eve of the seventieth anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany, not to mention the fact that by the end of the 1930s, the West — in particular Great Britain and France — refused to engage the U.S.S.R. in an alliance against Hitler. The consequence was the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 between Hitler and Stalin that contained a secret protocol that sold off the independent Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as a part of Poland, to the Soviet Union in exchange for a commitment to non-aggression between the two countries.