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Debate: The West Should Seek a Compromise with Russia Over Ukraine

Foreign
Policy

Should the West beef up its support for Ukraine or exercise restraint and focus on a diplomatic solution to the crisis?

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The stakes could not be higher. As Russia amasses tens of thousands of troops on Ukraine’s northern and eastern border fears are mounting that President Putin plans to invade the country and install a puppet government in Kyiv. In response the US has placed 8,500 troops on heightened alert to deploy to Europe in case of an attack. There are good grounds for alarm. Putin has argued that Ukraine is not a state and that the Russians and Ukrainians are one people. And he has form, having invaded Georgia in 2008 and annexed Crimea in 2014. Many experts believe that the West should beef up its support for Ukraine. Failure to act would not only put Poland and the Baltic states at risk, they contend, but would be a signal to China that it could invade Taiwan with impunity. The bully boys of geopolitics would prevail. 

That’s the argument of the hawks in this debate. But others claim that the West should resist the neo-imperialist reflex to meddle in far-off conflicts. It’s all too easy to be led into a spiral of confrontation and war. Do we really want to find ourselves mired in another military intervention overseas that is likely to be as messy and inconclusive as our forays into Iraq and Afghanistan? Xi Jinping is no doubt watching events closely: what better time could there be for China to invade Taiwan than when the US is embroiled in a European conflict? Far better for the West to exercise restraint and focus on a diplomatic solution to the crisis – one that respects Russia’s historic and cultural ties to the region. 

Which side is right? Join the debate on February 15, hear the arguments and decide for yourself.

Speakers for the motion

  • Anatol Lieven

    Senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington DC and author of Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry

Against the motion

  • Chris Miller

    Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of We Shall Be Masters: Russian Pivots to Asia from Peter the Great to Putin

Chair

  • Larisa Brown

    Defence Editor for The Times and also covers security and diplomacy for The Sunday Times.

Speakers

Speaker for the motion

Anatol Lieven

Senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington DC and author of Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry

Senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington DC. He was a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar from 2014 to 2021. He is a member of the academic board of the Valdai discussion club in Russia.  He also serves on the advisory committee of the South Asia Department of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. His latest book is Climate Change and the Nation State. From 1986 to 1998 he worked as a British journalist in South Asia, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and is author of several books on Russia and its neighbours, including Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry. His book Pakistan: A Hard Country is on the required reading list for American and British diplomats serving in Pakistan.
Speaker against the motion

Chris Miller

Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of We Shall Be Masters: Russian Pivots to Asia from Peter the Great to Putin

 Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on Russian foreign policy, politics, and economics; Russia and Ukraine; Russian-European relations; and Eurasia. He also focuses on semiconductors and the geopolitics of technology.  Concurrently, he is assistant professor of international history at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and codirector of the school’s Russia and Eurasia Program. He is also the director of the Eurasia Program and a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI). His books include We Shall Be Masters: Russian Pivots to Asia from Peter the Great to Putin; Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia; and The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR.
Chair

Larisa Brown

Defence Editor for The Times and also covers security and diplomacy for The Sunday Times.

Defence Editor for The Times and also covers security and diplomacy for The Sunday Times. She previously covered defence for the Daily Mail and was also their Middle East Correspondent based in Beirut, covering conflicts in Syria, Libya and Iraq. She won campaign of the year in 2019 for her work on the plight of Afghan interpreters left behind in Afghanistan.