Thank you very much for inviting me. It's an honour for me to be here.
I want to walk through a few framing points about how I think we need to be looking at the situation in Ukraine, and how we need to be looking at the options we as a transatlantic community, as a democratic community, should be pursuing.
The first thing I would say, and I had planned to say this before getting the news this morning, but it's even more relevant now, is that we have to be very clear that the crisis in Ukraine and the crisis in eastern Europe is not over.
There has been a tendency in the past week to think, oh well, we lost Crimea, but now that's it, and things will calm down again. I think it's quite the contrary.
I think President Putin in Russia has put a lot of tools on the table now. He has taken the military out of the box. He has put his special operations forces to work at agitating demonstrations. He has poked in Transnistria in eastern Ukraine, in Crimea of course, in South Ossetia in Georgia, even a demonstration in Tblisi in favour of Russia which had been unheard of a year ago. He's put a lot of chips on the table now, and I don't think he's going to put them away very lightly, particularly if he feels there is no penalty for him to continue to try to push. This is not a crisis behind us that we now analyze. This is a crisis that is still unfolding in front of us.
The second point I would make is that the approach we have taken as a western community through the G-7, through the United States, the European Union, has been one of incremental escalation of sanctions or travel bans in response to Russian actions. Thus far, the level of sanction or the level of pain we've been willing to inflict has not been commensurate with the steps Russia has taken, and they are in no way strong enough to provide a deterrent.
In fact, I think a proper approach would be to do exactly the opposite, which is to immediately put enough painful sanctions, and travel bans, and sanctions upon companies, sectors, and energy on the table, before Russia takes the next step, so there is then an incentive for President Putin and Russia to negotiate away from those sanctions and penalties, rather than feeling, “There is nothing here now. I'll take another step, and then see what happens.” He can always back down a little bit from that further step, although we have already ceded every step he has taken to this point.
The third point I wanted to make is that this is not only about Ukraine. It is about the order of Europe we helped to construct together after the fall of the Berlin wall. You can see pressure points emerging already in the Caucasus, in the Baltic States, of course in Ukraine, in Moldova, even in the Balkans. Everything we had done to build freedom, democracy, and market economy, rule of law, and human rights in a secure zone for a wider transatlantic community is being put under test right now to see how committed we are to advancing that vision—and right now Putin is concluding we're not committed—and how committed we are even to maintaining what has already been achieved. I think that is something we need to be very conscious of.
The fourth point I would make is that we should not take military instruments off the table. Putin has taken the military out of the box already and he has used it. He has used it to acquire territory, and the absence of any resistance has made it a relatively smooth process, just one Ukrainian soldier killed today, and I think there was one injured previously, but there has been no real military resistance.
As long as President Putin feels there is no military pushback and no potential military pushback, he's going to see an imbalance in the forces at work here, with our being willing perhaps to put on economic sanctions or travel bans, which he'll view as temporary, negotiable, and eventually they will be lifted, versus the physical acquisition of territory geography which will become permanent, a permanent part of the Russian empire, and an asset to Russia in the long term. He's willing to risk the temporary sanctions in order to make these long-term gains. We need to put into his mind some doubt that maybe, in fact, there would be some military pushback at some point.
Now, I would separate the military question into two categories, defence and deterrents.
On the defence side we have to be absolute. There can be no encroachment on the territory of any NATO member, and we should put in place every mechanism at NATO's disposal today to send the signals to make clear we will protect that territory and protect that country.
We've done some of that already. I want to give some credit to NATO thus far, but we do need to go further.
We need to complete all the contingency plans for the defence of every NATO member state, and we haven't done that yet. We need to increase air defences along the area bordering Russia, particularly in the Baltic States. We made some progress in air policing in the Baltic States, but we also need some ground-based air defences.
We need to do exercises with countries bordering on the territory of Ukraine and Russia, particularly Poland and Romania. These exercises need to include ground forces that would be ready in the case of a decision to use them, so that Putin would know that there is a capability there, because at this point, he doubts that we have both the capability and the will.
We need to put an arms embargo in place against Russia. We also need to be doing everything we can to support the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence and the Ukrainian armed forces by providing, for example, better intelligence, advisers to the Ministry of Defence, and additional equipment, perhaps even on the basis of loan guarantees, so that we are increasing the potential pain that Russia would feel if there were to be any military incursion into Ukraine and to raise doubts about what the further western response would be should that happen.
That is a long list of steps that could be taken today, both on the non-military side, on sanctions, as well as on the military side. At this point, I believe that President Putin believes that he faces no real consequences and no real pushback, and that most of the steps I've just outlined will not be taken. As long as that's the case, I think we face a very dangerous window right now where Putin, having put all these pieces on the table, is going to be willing to use them to see how far he can get before he really needs to back down on something. Thus far, I think he thinks he can go very, very far.
I'll pause with those remarks. I would be delighted to take part in the questions and answers.