Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey, it's Elise Hu. You're listening to TED Talks Daily. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has already led to previously unthinkable changes in geopolitics, seemingly overnight. On today's show, geopolitical analyst Ian Bremmer assesses the greatest risks ahead, discusses what this conflict means globally, and helps us understand the lasting changes that could come about.
His insights are from a TED membership conversation with TED's global curator, Bruno Giussani, with questions also coming in from the digital audience. It's difficult to think clearly of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, because wars, while they unfold, they're kind of shrouded in a sort of fog.
Information is abundant, the millions of refugees, the shocking suffering and destruction, the politics, but sense is lacking.
Chapter 2: What geopolitical shifts have occurred due to the war in Ukraine?
And that's going to be the focus of this membership conversation as we enter the third week of the war. We won't talk about the events of the day, but try to project a longer arc, a broader context. Our guest is geopolitical analyst Ian Bremmer. He's the founder of President of Eurasia Group.
And we asked him to lay the scene by talking first about the geopolitical shifts that have already been brought by the war in Ukraine. And after, we're going to have a conversation, including questions from TED members who are participating in this call. Ian, welcome. Thank you very much.
I'll start by saying that in my lifetime, the most important geopolitical artifact is the fall of the Berlin Wall. I mean, you see it if you go into the new NATO headquarters in Brussels, just built a few years ago. And anyone that has a piece, something they're very proud of, they know it affected their entire life. I think that in 30 years' time,
And I fear that in 30 years' time, if we look back, a second most important geopolitical artifact will be a piece of the rubble of the Maidan in Kiev. I believe that the war that we are seeing right now is no more and no less than the end of the peace dividend that we all thought we had. when the wall came down in 1989.
The idea that the world could focus more on globalization and goods and services and people and ideas going faster and faster across borders, leading to unprecedented growth in human development and a global middle class, I think that this is a tipping point. It won't end globalization, but it does end the peace dividend. It does mean that the Europeans overnight
will and must prioritize spending on defense, policy on national security, coordination on NATO. And the speech that was given by Olaf Scholz, the new chancellor, two weeks ago, in my view, the most significant speech given by a European leader in the post-Cold War environment, precisely because it's now the post-post-Cold
Cold War environment, sending weapons to the Ukrainians, committing to over 2% of GDP spend on defense, investing in a new fund for defense infrastructure, but also recognizing that the way that the Germans and the Europeans as a whole looked at the world and looked at themselves was unfortunately for all of us outdated. A few other points I'd like to raise just to kick off this conversation.
One, one of the reasons I'm pretty negative about this, and I'm not usually very negative. I'm usually an existential optimist. I'm someone that's just happy there's water in the glass. But when I look at this conflict, I'm much more concerned.
And that is because I do not see a scenario, a plausible scenario in the foreseeable future where Putin emerges from this war in anything less than a radically weakened position. compared to where he was before he announced the invasion.
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Chapter 3: How is NATO responding to the conflict in Ukraine?
It was as much of a non-event as the three preceding negotiations of more junior representatives of their teams on the Belarus border. The one thing that has been accomplished to a small degree has been humanitarian corridors extending out of a number of Ukrainian cities that are being pounded by Russian military.
That's because the Ukrainians are interested in protecting their civilians and the Russians are interested in taking a lot of territory without necessarily having to kill so many Ukrainians. That could cause problems for them internationally as well as domestically inside Russia. But that is nowhere close to a negotiated settlement.
No, I mean, everyone I know that's involved in the negotiations right now responds that President Putin himself is hell-bent on taking Kyiv and on removing Zelensky from power. And by the way, they're getting quite close to being able to accomplish that militarily on the ground. I think within the next couple of weeks, certainly it looks very likely. A couple of points here.
One, there is no reason to put any stock in anything that the Russians are saying publicly in terms of their diplomacy. They lied to the face of every world leader about the invasion that they said they were not going to do into Ukraine. And then just today, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov publicly said, well, the Russians didn't attack Ukraine. I mean, this is Orwellian stuff, right?
So first of all, do not report on Russian public statements as if they bear any semblance to reality on the ground. Secondarily, this looks like a huge loss for Putin right now. He understands it. And I think he would have a hard time, even with his control of information, spinning this.
to his public without removing Zelensky, without the denazification, as he calls it, which is an obscenity in an environment where the Ukrainian president is actually Jewish, the disarmament of Ukraine, and, of course, the ability of the Russians to change how they feel about Ukraine as a threat to the Russian homeland.
What level of support can we give Ukraine militarily, intel, economic, before Putin considers taking a strike on a NATO country? Well, it's interesting the way you framed that, Bruno, because, I mean, I think that Putin is already considering strikes on NATO countries.
I mean, there were massive attacks, cyber attacks and disinformation attacks by Russia against NATO countries with reckless abandon over the course of the past years. And in fact, when President Biden met with Putin in Geneva back in June, it seems like years and years ago at this point,
Biden set the agenda, Ukraine was largely not discussed, but what was discussed was cyber attacks on critical infrastructure, because you may remember, Bruno, that meeting came right after the cyber attacks against the colonial pipeline. And the Russians after that indeed pulled back on supporting those attacks by their criminal cyber syndicates.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of energy politics in the Ukraine war?
I think it's permanent. I believe the UK is in that camp as well. I'm not so sure the United States is going to be as committed for as long a term. It doesn't affect the Americans as much economically. It doesn't affect the Americans as much in terms of a direct security issue. None of those refugees are coming to the United States.
But also American inequality, American political polarization and dysfunction is so much greater than what you experience on the continent in Europe.
So the potential that in six months' time or in two years' time, as we're thinking about the 2024 election, that the Americans have largely forgotten about this Russia issue, instead are focusing once again on domestic political opponents as principal adversaries, which deeply undermines NATO much more than anything that would come from the Europeans. I think that is a real open question
going forward that is perhaps as significant as the question of where the Chinese go? Let me pick up on the point you made about energy, because Putin's calculus could be really changed if Russian oil and gas stops flowing to Europe, if it becomes part of the sanctions, right? And this war indeed can kind of be read as a war about energy. Selling energy funds it for Russia.
Being dependent on Russian energy makes the European response more constrained. Rising energy insecurity, rising energy costs may or probably will destabilize European politics and the economy in the coming months. How do you look at this from the perspective of energy?
And is there any likelihood that Russian oil and gas is going to stop flowing, either because Putin cuts it or the Europeans sanction it? Yeah, or because it's blown up in some of the transit in Ukraine. I mean, keep in mind, so much of the gas transit is going through large pipeline networks, which have some redundancy across all of Ukraine.
But there's a big war that's going on right there, and lots of people that could have incentive to create problems. The Americans, of course, the Canadians have said that they're cutting off oil import from Russia, but those are nominal numbers, so they don't matter very much to the markets. The Europeans, as I said, want to decouple themselves as quickly as possible.
But they believe that doing that this year would be economic suicide. So there isn't, despite everything we see from Russia, they're using thermobaric weapons now against the Ukrainian people. The Americans are warning that they could use chemical, biological weapons against Ukraine. I mean, you know, you even have some people saying, what if they use a tactical nuclear weapon?
I mean, God willing, none of these things come to pass. But it is very hard to see a military scenario in Ukraine that leads the Europeans to completely cut off their inbound gas from Russia this year. It's very hard to see. And also, I would say it's very hard to see any level of economic sanction
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Chapter 5: How is the war affecting global economic dynamics?
And Xi Jinping knew very well where Ukraine was heading at that point and also knew that the likelihood of an invasion was coming. Didn't stop him from making that announcement in the slightest. And then after the invasion, and it's going badly, I mean, if you watch Russian, Chinese social media, the fact is that the censorship is all about Ukraine.
I mean, the Chinese media space is pursuing a relentlessly pro-Putin policy. They have media embedded with Russian troops on the ground in Ukraine. Now, publicly, the Chinese government wants to be seen as we're neutral. We like the Russians. We like the Ukrainians. We still want to work with everybody. But the fact is that China feels no problem
being publicly completely aligned with Putin, despite the fact that they are invading a democratic government with 44 million people in the middle of Europe. That's a pretty astonishing statement from the Chinese. And there's no question that they have learned that they're in a vastly better economic position than they used to be and that gives them influence.
They are a government who projects its power primarily through economic and technological means as opposed to Russia that projects it primarily through military means. And the Chinese believe that there is a level of decoupling that is already going on as the Americans focus on more industrial policies. They focus on America first for American workers.
A US foreign policy for the American middle class, as Biden put it, is one that really pushes a lot of capital to leave a country like China, which had served as the factory for the world, but at the expense of a lot of labor coming out of advanced industrial economies.
And now, yes, there are definitely some dangers that come from the Chinese being perceived as too close to Russia, and they won't want that. And they'll want to make sure that they're engaging diplomatically with the Europeans to try to minimize that damage.
But I thought it was very interesting, and I'm not sure this is public yet, that the Chinese ambassador to Russia recently, in the last few days, organized a meeting of a lot of the top investors, Chinese investors in Russia, saying this is a unique opportunity. The West is leaving. We should be going in and doing more because they're going to be completely reliant on us going forward.
That is not a message that the Chinese ambassador delivers unless he is told directly to from Beijing. Yeah, I'm going to jump from topic to topic because there are several questions in the chat. Nancy is asking about whether Putin can be removed from power.
There's been a lot of discussion lately about regime change in Russia, either endogenous like a palace coup or provoked by sanctions and other policies. And so she asks, how likely is it that Putin will face a challenge from inside Russia, whether a popular uprising, a coup or other? It's very, very unlikely until it happens.
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Chapter 6: What role does China play in the current geopolitical landscape?
But that's the point, is we're now in a situation where the conflict that we're going to experience needs to be actively managed because of the danger of nuclear confrontation. So it now becomes a risk on the horizon that we must be continually aware of, even if only at a low level, as we take and consider further actions as we consider diplomacy, as we consider escalation.
It is now on the table in a way that, frankly, is so debilitating. I mean, as human beings all on this call, one of the most painful things to think about is the fact that we still have these 5,000 nuclear warheads in Russia and 5,000 in the United States. They're still pointed at each other and they still have the potential to destroy the planet. And we haven't had...
Any real lessons that we've been able to learn institutionally from 1962? 5,000 being a generic figure, not the exact figure, but we are kind of in that order of magnitude. Then, of course, there is the question of civilian nuclear. So the two power plants, nuclear power plants, have been seized by the Russians. One has been slightly damaged by a bomb. The other has been turned off.
But those are also potential gigantic nuclear problems just waiting to happen. Chemical weapons, biological weapons. I mean, look, we have had 2 million refugees from Ukraine in two weeks. As this continues, you're looking at 5 to 10 million refugees. I mean, it is hard just to take a step for a moment, just as a human being.
Imagine what it would take for a quarter of your country's population to say, I am not living here anymore. I am leaving everything because of the condition of the country, because of this unjust war that has been imposed upon you by your neighbor. That's what we're looking at.
And again, it's important for us to not lose the humanity of this crisis and the extraordinary hardship that is being visited upon 44 million Ukrainians that have done nothing wrong. They have committed no sin other than their desire to have an independent country. One other country that has not yet taken a very clear position is India.
Well, they're a member of the Quad, and their relationship with China is pretty bad, and that's mutual. But in terms of Russia, there's been a longstanding relationship, trade relationship, defense relationship between India and Russia. that the Russians are not going to jettison and they see no reason to jettison it.
And as long as you've got a whole bunch of other countries out there that are substantial, that are willing to say, we're going to keep playing ball with the Russians, then the Indians will too. And that's why you got the abstention in the United Nations vote. And that's why you've had very careful comments as opposed to overt and strong condemnation coming from the Indian leadership.
Phil in the chat is asking, will this cause a fragmentation of the financial system with kind of a Western system and an Eastern system? So two different SWIFT-like systems, two different credit card systems. Crypto, what's the role of crypto in all this? I hope not.
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