ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュのA Conversation with Congressman Mike Turner on Ukraine

Ken Weinstein:
Welcome to Hudson Institute. I’m Ken Weinstein, the Walter P. Stern Distinguished Fellow at Hudson, and I’m absolutely delighted to welcome back to Hudson Institute Congressman Mike Turner of Ohio. Congressman Turner needs no introduction here at Hudson or elsewhere in Washington, he’s an important voice in Congress on transatlantic security issues. He’s the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, he’s a long-time member of the House Armed Services Committee. He has also been quite involved in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, which is a consultative body of parliamentarians from 30 NATO member states, and about a dozen other NATO partners and associate nations. Having served as president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, he chairs today one of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s five standing committees, the Defense and Security Committee.
So honored, delighted to welcome you back. Let me begin, Congressman, first of all, by getting your assessment of how we got to the situation. Reports are from the U.S. Chargé d’Affaires in Kyiv that there are now approximately 150,000 Russian troops amassed along Ukraine’s borders. How did we get here?

Congressman Mike Turner:
I think that’s an interesting question, because to talk in the context of the passage of time and Ukraine, you of course start with the Budapest Memorandum, of where the nations had come together after the fall of Soviet Union. And the Ukraine had resident within it, as it declared its independence, a number of legacy nuclear weapons in the Soviet Union that they agreed to surrender to Russia in exchange for the territorial integrity guarantees from both United States and Russia. The agreement didn’t have an obligation for the United States to defend that, but it had an assertion by both nations that they would not violate the territorial integrity of Ukraine. And then you fast forward to when Russia began its invasion of Ukraine and annexed Crimea, and the scene of Ukrainian President Poroshenko on the House floor addressing a joint session of Congress, where the Obama administration was denying them lethal aid to defend themselves, and Poroshenko saying, “I cannot defend my nation with blankets.”
And think from the Obama administration forward, that we haven’t done enough to give them legal aid and to give them the lethal aid and the assistance, and basically the democracies of the world coming together in identifying Ukraine as important, that has left it in this vulnerable situation, as Russia now looks to be on the verge of perhaps an invasion, but is threatening the very existence and sovereignty of Ukraine.

Ken Weinstein:
You talked about the situation in 2014, and I’m sure you were in Kyiv then, I was in Kyiv then with the Radio-Free Europe Board, which I served on, and there was a sense in Ukraine at that point, there was utter frustration with the Obama administration on a number of counts, partly outsourcing things then to Angela Merkel to handle the Ukraine account, the president’s slow realization of the so-called “little green men” and what was going on, the president’s unwillingness to take action, in part because he didn’t want to disrupt the apple cart of the Iran negotiations.
But one of the things that I very clearly remembered talking to Ukrainians was their sense that in the administration, that Joe Biden was their friend, that he was kind of the president’s point person on Ukraine. But the frustration with the president has been deep in Ukraine these days. You hear it, not just from President Zelensky in frank moments, but you hear it elsewise from the population.
I want to get your sense of how President Biden has handled the situation in Ukraine, what should he have done, how has he contributed to the situation we now face, how has his performance been?

Congressman Mike Turner:
Well, and I think when you look at the current situation of the Biden administration and Putin’s response, you of course have to look to Afghanistan and the chaotic withdrawal, where Biden told the world we would not run for the exits, but in fact they did, and in the middle of the night. Where they abandoned Bagram, where they abandoned Americans, where they abandoned our allies, they abandoned Kabul and left the country to the ruthlessness of the Taliban, and an unbelievable amount of military equipment that they left behind, seemingly unable to not only project what would happen, but even respond as it was.
So Putin last year marched his troops up to the border of Ukraine. He received no response, basically, from Washington. There was no efforts by the Biden administration to fortify Ukraine after Putin had shown this visible military presence on the border of Ukraine. So in looking back to what Putin had experienced with the Obama administration, I believe in the chaos of the Biden administration, he considered that Biden as vice president would continue the policies that Obama had of just looking the other way. And we know during the Trump administration, if this had happened, there would be a significant amount of effort to fortify Ukraine.
In this, Ukraine has asked for lethal weapons. There’s a number of things that could have been done. They were very slow to respond, and certainly not in a way that would give any weapons that could be a deterrence. If Ukraine had surface-to-air missiles, if they had an ability to take down a plane, even just a plane, if they had a significant ability to deter tanks and to sustain a ground war if an invasion had had occurred, it would be a significant deterrent for Putin to be thinking twice. But the fact that the West was slow to respond, Biden administration was slow to respond, didn’t give them the types of weapons, has helped create the situation.
Now you couple that with the Biden administration continuing to say that NATO is unified, while we all know that it’s not. Germany has the legacy from Merkel, and her constant claim that the Minsk Agreement was going to result in Putin standing down in Ukraine, remaining sovereign, which it was not, and it was never being abided by by Russia. You see now them, even Germany, blocking other nation’s ability to send weapons. Lithuania wanted to send surface-to-air missiles through NATO, Germany blocked it. We had to do a bilateral between the United States and Lithuania to get the missiles, and I don’t even know if they’ve made it yet, because there were continued delays, they were on their way.
And then of course you had Estonia requesting to send German-made weapons, and Germany, because of its legacy ability to control its weapons that it has sold, blocked that. Germany has been so unwilling to stand with the democracy of Ukraine that the UK, when they went to send weapons in aid to the Ukraine, didn’t even ask for overflight rights, just flew around, and told NATO and its allies that they understood that Germany was not likely to be supportive. So as they give this fiction of “we’re together, but we’re not,” and our NATO allies, with Germany as a big dissenter, are not being able to act with the type of consensus that NATO requires, it really shows an opportunity for Putin and it shows our weakness.

Ken Weinstein:
And the German story in particular is really quite interesting, because as my Hudson colleague, Peter Rough, has noted in an op-ed he wrote before Chancellor Scholz came to Washington, that Vladimir Putin knows Germany well. He spent time, obviously, in the KGB, speaks German, would interact regularly with Chancellor Merkel during her time in office. And there was some sense when the Biden team came in, their argument was, “We’re going to work with the Europeans in order to now focus on Asia together.”
And when Chancellor Merkel made her last visit to Washington, the Biden team had the opportunity to really put pressure on Chancellor Merkel to kind of just, particularly on the question of Nord Stream, they had either the opportunity, if you want the sanctions off, to ask something that German, that Bundestag members who visited us here at Washington said, “Look, there’s a real opportunity here. You can ask the Chancellor to do something for Ukraine’s defense, you can ask her to either send money, to send equipment if you’re going to take the sanctions off on Nord Stream 2,” which was the direction the Biden team wanted to go. But instead they literally asked for nothing in exchange for lifting the Nord Stream 2 sanctions, the tough sanctions that President Trump put in place.
And just want to get your sense, you’re about to leave for the Munich Security Conference, your sense of what Germany is up to, what message you’re going to deliver to German officials, whom you will certainly see, certainly meet with in Munich. Are you frustrated with the Germans?

Congressman Mike Turner:
Right. So as you mentioned earlier in the introduction, I’m very active in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. I still sit as a ex officio vice president, having chaired their Defense Committee and having been president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and I can tell you among the membership, they are very upset and very antagonistic in their interactions with the German delegation because they’re being disingenuous. It’s not just that they’re being un-unified, if you will. I wouldn’t say they’re being anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia, but they’re certainly being anti any intervention or any ability for others even to support Ukraine. What we’re seeing with Germany obviously is almost a betrayal of their past. I mean, NATO came together not just to support the nations in Eastern Europe and embrace them coming out of the Warsaw Pact, but because of the division in Germany and the unification of Germany as an ultimate goal, to look to other nations like Ukraine and say, “Well, Russia’s occupying you. We don’t want to assist you,” well, then we would never have assisted Germany if we followed their own logic of, “Well, they’re Russians and so therefore we cannot unify Germany.” People also are offended by the fact that they think it’s an economic relationship issue, that Germany, because of the natural gas, because of Nord Stream, because of there being an economic powerhouse in Europe, that they’re unwilling to challenge Russia, even when they’re challenging democracy, but this goes to basic values.
I mean, this is an authoritarian nation that’s showing up with tanks on the border of a validly elected sovereign democratic nation. They’re not showing up on the border with ballot boxes and saying, “All these people want to be Russian.” This is not even where there’s a split in the society or even a split in the political structures of the government. This is an absolute authoritarian regime seeking to invade and annex a nation that is a democratic country. It’s the basic violation of sovereignty.

Ken Weinstein:
Are you sensing any sort of a change in Germany’s willingness to assist Ukraine? Germany does a lot on the ground in terms of building civil society. They’re quite present through NGOs, with the [inaudible 00:12:13] and the like. But obviously on the defense issues, they have refused to engage in the most modest way, only providing 5,000 helmets, which led to Twitter and Ukraine blowing up and then most of the western world as well. I want to get your sense from what you’re hearing from members of the House. Obviously, President Trump in particular was deeply skeptical of Chancellor Merkel. Chancellor Merkel was called by some, the leader of the free world. Whereas President Trump consistently honed in on the Germans and said, “Look, you’re not meeting your NATO obligations in terms of defense spending, Nord Stream 2, you’re giving cash to the Russians, and you’re asking us to defend you.” There’s a sense now I’m hearing from people on both the left and the right that Trump was right about Germany. I’m wondering, are you hearing those kind of messages? You’re hearing that kind of talk?

Congressman Mike Turner:
Oh, absolutely. I mean, when you look at what their policies are and you just mentioned the failure to reach the 2% of the commitment for NATO spending. This was the Wales Agreement at the Wales NATO Summit. It was by consensus, which means every NATO nation agreed that they were going to go to the 2%. Germany has a thriving economy. They have surpluses in government coffers. They have an ability to undertake the spending. They also have a military that has very, very little capability. The assessments of their ability to even operate the equipment that they have or their military to operate shows a very low readiness. So they have a gap both in their own defense, and then they have a gap in their contribution to NATO. All of these things are achievable by them and they have, through excuses, tried to say, “Oh, well, as you indicated, we do other things.”
Well so do we, thank you. We’re very active in all areas of soft diplomacy, including military diplomacy, but there used to be this sense among Germans that they don’t have to invest in military spending because they’re in NATO, meaning we’re going to defend them. That comes from the legacy obviously of when they were occupied by Russia. But they have been reunified and they have a strong economy, they have the ability to invest. So I think, especially if you look at the Eastern European countries, they’re very suspicious of Germany because they believe Germany has looked at them as almost expendable and we can contract back to our former native NATO boundaries, as Putin has requested. If that is their view, it’s obviously it’s very offensive to the other members who’ve joined NATO sense.

Ken Weinstein:
Let me turn now to the French. We’ve done enough asking about the Germans here, but then you’ll certainly get enough face time in Munich. President Macron, his attempts to find an off ramp on the crisis with Russia, what do you make of it? Do you think this is being coordinated at all with—how closely coordinated with the Biden administration? Is this being done? What’s your sense of what President Macron is up to with his recent trip to Moscow and his attempt to try to reengage the Russians in the Minsk framework?

Congressman Mike Turner:
I think it’s genuine. France, for all of their frequent independence in international crises, in this one, I think they see it as an issue of democracy and sovereignty and that there are basic principles that we need to stand for. France is one of those nations that invests in its own defense, including having its own nuclear weapons capability, its own aircraft carrier capability, and its deployment capability. When they have this interaction with Russia, they come to that with credibility because they’ve stood for consistent values, they have military capability, they’ve stood strongly in the west, and I think certainly United Nations, they’ve stood for what we think are the principals of self-determination, which lead to democracy and human rights. So I think it’s a genuine effort now. Obviously, as with the Germans, are always going to be tensions between our two nations as we try to formulate together what our foreign and international security posture would be. But this is one, I think, they’re on the right side.

Ken Weinstein:
Let me ask you now about one place where there’s a real big disagreement between U.S. and our NATO allies and Europe in particular is on the intelligence assessments of Russia’s imminent invasion. The White House was going around saying, “Look at February 16th.” The date has now passed. Why are European allies so skeptical, at least our Western European allies, about U.S. intelligence? Here, you’re going to be ranking member, you are ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, where the House elections held today, you certainly would be chair of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. Why is this happening? Is it because of our intelligence? Is it because of their intelligence? Is it the way our intelligence is read? What do you make of such a massive divide on a very basic question, that the intelligence should be able to give you, you would expect, greater coherence within the alliance on this.

Congressman Mike Turner:
Yeah. Obviously, we’re sharing intelligence with them, so it’s not as if they don’t have access to the information that we have or that they’re uninformed. Some of it, I think, may be cultural. I mean, we tend to call someone out when we say they’re going to do something. Culturally, they deny that someone’s going to do something with the hope that they’re not going to do something, but at the same sense, when you look at what Germany’s posture has been, and you have to wonder whether or not they’re saying that they don’t think they’re going to do it because they don’t care if they do, which is a little bit different than trying to dissuade someone. I think that’s the part that is probably the most disconcerting is that, not only the United States, but Europe and our NATO partners are really getting a sense from Germany that if tomorrow Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Ukraine, that you wouldn’t have the sense of outrage from Germany.
Even as we begin to have discussions with them as to what the overall, supposedly, crushing sanctions that the Biden administration is saying that they want to put in place, that they’re not even certain that they have full buy-in from the Germans for that. So you have to take it to the next step. If they’re not for supporting Ukraine to defend themselves, if they’re not for punishing Russia for taking this action, then what are those basic values that they stand for? Then that causes a shaking of NATO, because those have been the unquestionable values of NATO.