Foreign Affairs Committee on April 7th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), our study is on the situation in Ukraine.

We have a couple of witnesses today. Unfortunately, one of our witnesses from Ukraine is not on the screen yet, but they're seven hours ahead so maybe there's a little challenge with timing.

However, we do have Ms. Janice Stein, who is the director of the Munk School of Global Affairs. Welcome. It's great to have you with us today. Thank you for rescheduling with us because of conflicts during the last couple of weeks.

Ms. Stein, since you're the only witness we have right now, we're going to turn it over to you. You have an opening statement. I will let you know if our other witness appears. Then I would also encourage the members to address the questions to the individuals.

Ms. Stein, thank you for taking the time to be with us. We're looking forward to your testimony. I'll turn it over to you now.

[Prof. Janice Stein, Director, Munk School of Global Affairs, As an Individual]

Thank you very much. It's my pleasure to be with the committee.

I don't have a formal opening statement, but what I would like to do is make a few remarks to set the scene, and then I would invite your questions so I can address issues that are top of mind to you.

To take a brief step back from the events of the last several weeks, there are some hard facts that confront us, the most important of which is the borders of Ukraine have been changed unilaterally by the Government of Russia. That is a fact we all have to deal with.

What is in dispute are the motives the Russian government has for acting unilaterally to absorb Crimea into the Russian Federation. I think it's important to recognize that we can only speculate. There is no hard, good evidence that we have at this point in time which would distinguish some fairly benign interpretations of Russia's motives from much darker interpretations of Russia's motives. I think this makes it very difficult to deal in an optimal way with the challenge we now face.

I think it's important, given this uncertainty, that we craft strategies that still leave room for a range of interpretations of Russia's motives, and we have the capacity to respond quickly and nimbly to events as they unfold on the ground.

This morning, clearly, there were concerning developments in the region of Donetsk, developments that look very familiar to what happened in Crimea. From that perspective, clearly there is cause for alarm, but again I want to assert that we do not have good evidence that can enable any of us to say with confidence at this moment in time what motives are driving Russian behaviour toward Ukraine.

Now I would invite your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

To the committee, in the event our witness from Ukraine comes online, we'll give them an opportunity to present. I would ask the members to identify themselves with their questions to Ms. Stein at this point in time.

I'm going to start with Mr. Dewar. The floor is yours, sir.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you, Ms. Stein. I was glad to be hosted by your school more than a week ago, with friends from Germany. I appreciated the opportunity to discuss foreign policy there.

You identified the most recent activities. It is difficult to understand the inner workings, if I can use that phrase, of what's motivating these actions. You put the key question out there, how to respond.

Could you go over some of the tools, if you will, in our diplomatic tool kit? We're doing a report, and we would like to have recommendations to put forward to government. What we're all trying to do is get the attention of Moscow to reconsider, obviously, Crimea, but also there's concern about, as you just mentioned, the events of yesterday.

Can you enumerate from your expertise some of the diplomatic tools available to us that we should consider for our tool kit?

[Prof. Janice Stein]

Thank you very much, Mr. Dewar, and it was a pleasure to have you at the Munk School. It's always a pleasure to welcome members of Parliament.

I think we have quite a broad tool kit which we want to use in a calibrated way to send a very strong message to Russia that this country opposes any unilateral change in borders, which is fundamentally what did happen in Crimea. The referendum that occurred did not, in fact, embody a process which any Canadian would really recognize as legitimate, and I think that's a position that crosses all of the different interpretations right now.

What then can we do? Well, we want to preserve the capacity to move forward and increase sanctions should events on the ground in fact worsen from our perspective. So the place where we've started is in fact the correct place to start. That is what we'd call now smart or targeted sanctions. We've learned a lot over the last decade about how we make sanctions smart. The fundamental part of smart sanctions is that they punish individuals who we think are making decisions that are illegitimate from our perspective, but we try to avoid for as long as possible inflicting punishment on the broader population. Why do we do that? There are two reasons. One is we've learned that broad sanctions often punish the most vulnerable in a society and that's not something which I think Canadians would want to do. The second reason is when we do that, that actually strengthens the support of a population behind a beleaguered government.

Very broad sanctions and broad embargoes are not effective tools of foreign policy. We began, as did most of our allies, with a very narrow set of sanctions. Should events for instance in Donetsk deteriorate over the next 24 to 48 hours in ways that would create alarm, there is the capacity, first of all, to lengthen the list of those who are sanctioned. As we move forward, we could include heads of many of the state-owned enterprises on a targeted sanctions list, for example. It's reasonable to expect that these people who do a great deal of business outside of Russia's borders and who are dependent on hard currency to transact their business will become increasingly disconcerted by the foreign policy their government is pursuing.

First of all, we can broaden the list. Second, we can deepen the list. These are all options we have not yet used that are still available to us. There is a whole series of steps we can take down that road.

I think the message we should be sending to the Government of Russia is that we will respond to their behaviour and we have the capacity to do so, obviously not alone, but in concert with our allies, particularly our allies in the United States and in Europe.

Also, should the situation become significantly worse, there are a series of political sanctions as well. Some of these have been talked about. We have not used them. There is of course the membership in the G-7/G8. There are, in fact, diplomatic sanctions that we can impose. Those kinds of sanctions are much further down the road.

We would want to stay diplomatically engaged for as long as we can, because we would want to be sending a message over and over to the Russian government, in as many ways as we can, that the key issue for us is respect for the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine, and that we've passed the moment in European history where borders are changed unilaterally or through illegitimate processes.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I have a couple of quick questions.

One is with regard to that engagement you speak of. I agree it's a balancing act, really. It's about having the smart sanctions—and I couldn't agree with you more about what we've learned and why we should apply them in the way you've suggested—but also figuring out ways that we can stay engaged.

Would you send our ambassador back to Moscow to stay engaged and to keep our voice heard directly by the government there?

You had mentioned recently that you don't want to back a bear into a corner, an apt metaphor. What did you mean by that?

Also, there's that balance I spoke of between on the one hand very clear language, absolute clarity in terms of the transgressions as not acceptable, but on the other hand, this form of engagement that we require.

[Prof. Janice Stein]

You're quite right that it is in fact a careful balance that we're looking for.

With respect to your first question, whether this is the moment to send our ambassador back to Moscow, we want to do that, clearly, in a context where we're rewarding some kind of behaviour from the Government of Russia, where we see some progress, some willingness to recognize that we need a political solution to Crimea, and that we want a referendum process, an election process, that is genuinely open and fair and doesn't take place under the shadow of guns. From listening to the news last night and this morning, I don't think we've arrived at that moment. If anything, events seem to be going the other way.

If it were up to me, I probably would not right now send our ambassador back, because I think that message would be misinterpreted.

I do think, though, that there is a danger of poking the bear in the eye, as I said. Here we're going to get into some question of interpretation of Russia's motives. As I said, there are some very dark interpretations, and some of those are credible, frankly, and they deal with the group of people who are most closely advising President Putin right now. Many of them have come from a similar background in the security services and are not particularly open to the west, and these are the stories that concern.

There is also a second theme, and we're manoeuvring between the two here, of a Russia that was humiliated by the loss of the Soviet Union; that was angered as a result of the UN action over Libya, where the government feels, rightly or wrongly, that it was misled; and that is deeply uncomfortable, despite all the reassurance they've been given, and they have been given reassurance, with the extension of NATO very close to Russia's borders.

Those two explanations don't have to be mutually exclusive; in fact, both can be true at the same time.

A good strategy would do two things, it seems to me. One, it would try to avoid any additional humiliation of Russia, because governments react very much like people: when they're humiliated, they lash out. But we also have to send a very clear, firm message that this is unacceptable to Canadians. across the board, in a non-partisan way, that the behaviour, regardless of what the motive is, is simply unacceptable, and that Russia can have its interests, which is the protection of the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine, and those interests can be met through peaceful means.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We're going to move to Mr. Anderson, for seven minutes.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you, Ms. Stein, for being with us today.

I'm glad you started talking a little bit about motives. I was actually going to ask you what would be the benign motive behind basically disrupting someone's country, annexing it, invading it, and then using your Parliament to declare it part of your country. I don't think there are a lot of benign motives. We might talk a little bit about protection for the Russian language there, but I don't think any of us would suggest that justifies the kinds of actions that Russia has taken.

I don't know if you have any comments on that.

The other question I was going to ask you is if there is a difference in how we should act, between motives that are benign or motives that are much more aggressive than that.

[Prof. Janice Stein]

Let me make clear that there is absolutely no justification for the actions Russia has taken with respect to Ukraine. I think that has to be the starting point for any strategy we develop in concert with our allies. The behaviour of the Government of Russia toward Crimea and toward Ukraine more generally is simply unacceptable and illegitimate. We consider it illegitimate and unacceptable, regardless of what was driving that decision. That's why I started with the behaviour, not the motives.

Is it credible, Mr. Anderson, that there are in fact...? We in the academic community who study this kind of behaviour would talk about defensive motives versus offensive motives. And yes, that is credible. I can't tell you it's true, and it doesn't justify the behaviour, but it is credible.

We heard from the Government of Russia, especially after the operation in Libya, that the Russian government felt misled, that it had authorized an operation that then went far beyond what was authorized, that it felt the promises that were made were not kept. This has been a consistent theme, along with a significant proportion of the Russian elite who look back to the Soviet Union with nostalgia and bemoan the break up of the Soviet Union.

Those currents are present in Russia; there's no doubt about it. Again, they don't justify the behaviour, but once we understand that they're present—they're present in the press, they're present among people who are advising the current President of Russia—I think it's important we avoid any unnecessary humiliation as we move forward with sanctions if this behaviour continues. It's that point that I'm making.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Part of that seems as though there's an ability to humiliate the Ukrainian people or an interest in doing that, and taking part of their territory certainly would fit into that category. I understand what you're saying, but I'm also concerned that we don't think that somehow trying to deal with the aggressor is in fact humiliating them at all.

You talked earlier about the necessity to have the capacity to respond quickly. You talked a bit to Mr. Dewar's questions about what some of the possible moves might be. What does the capacity to respond quickly in this situation look like internationally? I think there's been a certain amount of frustration among people or nations who maybe should have been organized a little bit better than they have been to deal with this. Could you just talk about your perception on what that would look like?

[Prof. Janice Stein]

Let me reiterate that Ukraine is the victim in this situation, that is, Ukrainians who have borne the price of this, and that what is happening in Ukraine is illegitimate, wrong, alarming, and a terrible precedent for Europe, where we thought this period of European history had come to an end. I think, as I said, that's indisputable.

Coordination with our allies; sanctions really only work when they're strongly concerted with others. No one country, even a country far more powerful than we, can have an impact through sanctions if it acts alone. The big challenge is to concert with the United States and with the European Union a series of sanctions that increase in breadth and depth if events on the ground change in ways that we consider even more unacceptable than those that have happened.

I think, frankly, were there to be any Russian movement in eastern Ukraine or southern Ukraine, any referenda that were sponsored within a period of two weeks, again under the pretext of protecting Russians, would be such an alarming development, such a flashing red light that certainly NATO, the United States, the European Union would probably, unfortunately, find it easier to work together than they have up until now.

There are, however, differences, as you well know, inside the European Union, and of particular importance here is Germany. Germany is a large trading partner with Russia; it imports gas and it exports heavy machinery to Russia. There's a significant economic relationship there. Chancellor Merkel has been the one who has held back beyond the first round of sanctions. She has been in constant contact with President Putin. But thus far, frankly, her efforts to urge restraint on the Russian government, to urge a diplomatic solution have not been effective. So the critical government we will have to work with is the government of Angela Merkel.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

At what point do you think that those disparate interests on this side of the equation come together? Is it when Russia moves further into Ukraine, because they're clearly trying to disrupt the eastern part of the country right now, especially over the weekend. At what point will the west, NATO, and the EU come together? Will they do you think?

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Ms. Stein, just a quick response because we're out of time, but I do want you to answer the question.

[Prof. Janice Stein]

I certainly think that there is growing concern in Europe and in Washington, and I'm sure that our diplomats are now working together very actively with those governments so that if any of what we've talked about occurs, they are ready to go on a dime with broader and deeper sanctions than we've currently seen. And if they're not doing it, they certainly should be.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Anderson.

We're going to Mr. Garneau, for seven minutes please.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Good afternoon, Ms. Stein. I'm Marc Garneau from the Liberal Party.

I take your point about Libya. I believe that the Russians felt that they had been misled, and I think that certainly played into the position they took in Syria. I'm not 100% sure that it translates onwards into Ukraine, but of course the whole issue here, as you raised it yourself, is what is their motivation for doing what they have done so far.

I would like to have your opinion on whether you think that part of this could be Mr. Putin's aspirations to grow Russia's sphere of influence and that he's looking at Ukraine in a sense as a test case where he must show himself to be strong because of other countries where he has interests, such as Moldova and Belarus, and other adjoining countries.

[Prof. Janice Stein]

Thank you very much for the question, Mr. Garneau.

This is a really difficult question to answer, as I said. Let me say again we have no evidence. Evidence matters, and we have no evidence.

Let me just say there is a dark and then there is a darker interpretation. The interpretation you just put forward is dark in the sense that it's that President Putin has never accepted the loss of Ukraine and Belarus from the greater Russian sphere of influence, and that this is an opportunistic moment to reassert Russian influence, to construct a greater economic zone, particularly to keep Ukraine from joining or affiliating with the European Union, and that he seized the opportunity when it became apparent.

A darker version even than the one you just put forward is about the so-called Eurasianists, who are increasingly prominent in the Russian media, and if you're prominent in the Russian media today that's because you are allowed to be prominent by the government. There is in fact a group who articulate a position that Russia needs to reassert and re-establish its borders. It needs to turn its back on the west, the western model of democratic government, human rights, that these are all strategies used as spheres to undermine the Russian government and to inflict further damage on Russia. These are voices actually that we're hearing. There's no question we're hearing these voices inside Russia.

The big question is how influential are they, how much access do they have to the president, and is this in fact the strategy that he's following?

For us as Canadians I think we have to stay focused on what Russia is doing rather than on the why of what they're doing. We have to be unambiguous in demonstrating our own resolve and in underlying that this unilateral change of Ukraine's borders is unacceptable, that any further dismemberment of Ukraine, south and eastern Ukraine, would in fact provoke a new round of much broader and much deeper sanctions, and that this crosses all party lines within this country.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

Thank you.

Given what has happened in Donetsk and to a lesser extent in Luhansk and Kharkiv in the last 24 hours, to what extent do you think this is ethnic Russians in east Ukraine, perhaps emboldened by what's happened in Crimea, expressing their desire also to join Russia, and to what extent do you think it's being fed by Russia itself?

[Prof. Janice Stein]

One of the things that we know, for instance, from studying even the recent history of Yugoslavia in the 1990s is that your friends are sometimes the most difficult people to control. So it's not inconceivable that those in eastern Ukraine see the opportunity, understand that they can destabilize, and create an opportunity where the pressure inside Russia on President Putin from some of the groups that I've talked about will grow and they will [Inaudible—Editor]. You know, you can ensnare a government in this way, and we've seen it done in the past. That certainly was done in the Serbian part of Bosnia with respect to the Government of Serbia, so what you're describing is not unknown.

I think in this case, though, what we're seeing is a concerted action that the process starts by the engagement of Russians. There are some 150 in Donetsk right now who are agitating for a referendum, and what we really need.... Again the message that we need Angela Merkel to convey and that all of us need to say is that any referenda of that sort are unacceptable; they are not legitimate; there is not a fair process; they are being undertaken in a shadow of insecurity, and we would utterly reject any such referenda. We need to be saying that now, frankly. I think our governments are saying that in the west.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

On the issue of economic sanctions, is it your sense that as we progress, if need be, the European Union and Germany in particular have the resolve to get tougher on this one?

[Prof. Janice Stein]

I hope so. I understand that there are dilemmas that Angela Merkel faces. I know our Prime Minister has been in touch with her on this subject. She will be pivotal; she will be absolutely pivotal in this next stage. I think she is shocked by what has happened. Anybody watching the news over the last 24 hours has to be alarmed, frankly, at what might unfold in the next 48 to 72 hours. Unfortunately, the more alarming the situation gets, the more likely the European Union will come together.

One of the unfortunate facts of life is that there are 27 governments in the European Union and it takes time to coordinate action together. That can prove beyond frustrating in an environment that is changing rapidly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Garneau.

We're going to start our second round, and I think we'll have time for a full round.

We'll start with Ms. Brown, for five minutes, please.

[Lois Brown, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Ms. Stein, for your insights into this.

Following up on the question that Mr. Garneau posed, you talked a little bit about political sanctions, the G-7, the G-8. I know we don't want to poke the bear, as you said, but is there a point that we come to and say that we can't go any further?

My time for questions is not long, but I have a second question.

Over the last while, Canada has contributed election observers. In the last election in Ukraine we sent 500 observers. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how we prepare for that. I don't know how many we will send this time, but I'm sure we will send a robust contingent. My question really is, how do we prepare them? The situation is so complex there now, maybe it's not quantity, but it's quality. Are there things we should be doing to be preparing those observers for the May election?

[Prof. Janice Stein]

There are two questions. Is there a point beyond which we say, “No more”? I think that point would be any authorized referendums in parts of eastern Ukraine or southern Ukraine that would allow a vote on whether to break away from Ukraine and join Russia.

In other words, were there to be a referendum of the kind that was held in Crimea in any other part of Ukraine, that would be a point at which we would say, “No more”. We'd move much more forcefully with respect to the G-7 and the G-8, for example. As you know, right now Russia is suspended but not excluded. Again, I support a strategy that allows us to move forward step by step.

With respect to the training of our election observers, we have very skilled election observers. They are trained by Elections Canada. We have a superb record of performance and I am sure that we will be sending a [Technical Difficulty—Editor].

We seem to have been disconnected there.

As I was saying, with respect to election observers, they are trained by Elections Canada. We have a large community of Ukrainian speakers who will staff this. I think we will send a team of the highest quality. I have no worries whatsoever about the quality of the observers that we will be sending.