All eyes are on Ukraine (including ours). Steven Pifer, a William J. Perry Research Fellow at CISAC and former ambassador to Ukraine, joins co-host Tom Collina to discuss Putin’s motivations for Ukraine and more. 

Ploughshares Fund · Will Russia Invade Ukraine?

President Joe Biden will hold a secure video call with Russian President Vladimir Putin December 7 against the backdrop of a menacing Russian military build-up near Ukraine. U.S. intelligence believes the Russians may amass 175,000 troops near its western neighbor early in 2022.

Does Putin intend to invade Ukraine? He could be bluffing. In April, the Russian army deployed a large force near Ukraine but did not act. On the other hand, given the scale of ongoing military preparations and the hostile rhetoric pouring out of Moscow, Putin may mean it this time.

It is also possible that Putin has not yet made a decision. He likes options and might hope the threat of force will secure concessions from Kyiv toward settling the simmering conflict in Donbas in eastern Ukraine on Moscow’s terms. In any case, the Biden-Putin conversation may offer one of the last best chances to affect Kremlin calculations of the costs of an assault on Ukraine.

Biden has said he would make it “very, very difficult” for Putin to attack. He should lay out the potential costs to ensure his Russian counterpart fully understands what would follow a Russian invasion. Those costs are substantial:

• A West-Russia freeze. Small positive developments in the U.S.-Russia relationship have occurred since Biden and Putin met in June in Geneva, including a broadening of diplomatic contacts and a strategic stability dialogue that both sides report as constructive. Nothing would kill those prospects more quickly than a Russian invasion of its neighbor. The same is true of relations with other Western countries; Putin should anticipate pariah status.
• New sanctions. Biden should explain that military action would trigger new Western sanctions targeting Russian state-owned enterprises, bans on holding Russian state debt, and visa bans and asset freezes on individuals and their families (let Russian oligarchs explain to their spouses why they cannot make their annual shopping trip to London). Even expulsion from the SWIFT international payment mechanism could be on the table. Biden should add that, if Germany and the European Union do not shut down the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, he would not waive U.S. sanctions as he did in May, and that he would work with European countries in a concerted effort to expand their access to alternatives to Russian energy.
• Bolstering NATO’s defenses. Following Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014, NATO deployed battlegroups to Poland and each of the Baltic states. Biden should remind Putin that each battlegroup numbers less than 1,500 soldiers and that NATO still abides by its 1997 assurance that it would not permanently deploy substantial combat forces on the territory of new members. However, if the Russian military assaults Ukraine, then the Baltic states, Poland, and others in Central and Eastern Europe will request more NATO military power and infrastructure on their territory — and Biden would consider such requests sympathetically.
• Military assistance. Biden should note that individual NATO members have exercised restraint in the kinds and amount of assistance and equipment they have provided Ukraine’s military. That could change.
• A potential military quagmire. Lastly, some in Moscow apparently believe the Russian army would be welcomed in Ukraine. Biden should note that the Ukrainians will fight and, even if losing, would extract a price from Russia. He might recall the experiences of the Soviet Union and United States in Afghanistan: getting in proved relatively easy; the real casualties and costs came later.

Biden should also tell Putin that Washington is prepared to engage more actively on diplomacy. He should offer to join the German and French leaders in the Normandy format process aimed at mediating a resolution between Russia and Ukraine. He should also reaffirm the U.S. position supporting the Minsk agreements.

Biden might offer two qualifiers regarding Minsk. First, all parties must implement the agreements, including Russia. Second, U.S. support does not mean acceptance of Russia’s desired interpretation of undefined Minsk provisions. For example, “special status” for Donbas should not include the right to veto national-level policies.

Questions about Europe’s security architecture and how Ukraine and Russia fit in underlie the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Biden should offer Putin a discussion on those issues, while noting that they cannot solve the questions over the heads of the Europeans. The Ukrainians, in particular, need to be at the table.

Biden can tell Putin there is no enthusiasm within NATO for putting Kyiv on a membership track now. But the alliance will not reverse its “open door” policy. Doing so would require consensus, and not many members — let alone all 30 — would agree to such a reversal. “Not now but not never” for Ukraine would defuse the question by kicking it down the road. If Russia genuinely worked with the United States and NATO members to mitigate the tensions that now divide Europe, its relationship with the alliance could well change.

Biden can also tell Putin that he would be ready to take due account of legitimate Russian security interests. For example, Putin expressed concern about deployment in Ukraine of U.S. missiles that could strike Moscow.  Biden can tell Putin that, in the right context, Washington would assure Moscow that it would not deploy offensive missiles on Ukrainian territory.

The U.S. president should aim to leave Putin with an understanding that military action would have painful costs for Russia but that U.S. diplomacy is prepared to engage more actively to resolve the problems at the root of the crisis. That just might help stop a war.

Originally for Brookings

SPICE has been working with the Navajo Nation for ten years. SPICE featured Dr. Harold Begay in a webinar called “Indigenous Voices: Educational Perspectives from Navajo, Native Hawaiian, and Ainu Scholars in the Diaspora” on June 18, 2021. On the occasion of National Native American Heritage Day, November 26, 2021, SPICE invited him to share reflections on his life.

The Journey from a Community Trash Dump Scavenger to U.C. Berkeley

There was a youngster, a scavenger at an early age who had to rummage through the community trash dump for winter firewood and other discarded household items. This youngster from a single-parent home living on a traditional livestock economy on the Navajo Reservation, speaking only his Navajo language, entered school in his elementary school years and was able to attain nationally normed test scores on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills in the upper 80s and 90s. He initially spent his kindergarten and first grade years as a student running away along with other local school kids from a U.S. government boarding school. He was transferred to the local state public school, and beginning in second grade, his homeroom teacher stayed with him grade-to-grade (looping) through his high school years. He dropped out of high school but came back, graduated, and was recommended by an Arizona State Senator, as required for admission, and by his high school teachers, counselors, and principal, to attend the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He instead enrolled at Arizona State University with “Honors at Entrance.” He dropped out of pre-med, enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, and spent time in the Vietnam War before being medevacked out of Vietnam during the Tet Offensive in 1968. He spent some four weeks in the Naval Hospital in Guam, another month in the Naval Hospital in San Diego, and was honorably discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Depot Casualty Company and is a disabled veteran.

After Vietnam and work in construction as an iron worker, he returned to college, graduated in three years with a B.A. in psychology and earned an M.A. in counseling the following year from Northern Arizona University. He then earned a Ph.D. in school finance and education administration from the University of Arizona.

He began work at the University of Arizona for four years, then moved out to the most disenfranchised under-resourced rural school sites—school sites with the most persistent student academic underachievement state-wide. He began the local community college branch, then Navajo Community College, now Diné College, for his community and surrounding area wherein he taught for a couple years. He worked at the lowest achieving district with the second lowest per pupil wealth in the county. Within the past five years, in concert with Stanford University, his district high school exceeded all the eight school districts’ math achievement in the county, including the school district with the highest per pupil wealth.

He has been appointed as a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. He has published in refereed journals, and contributed chapters to two scholarly books. He has been honored by the Arizona State Department of Education with the “Certificate of Distinction Award” and “Stars of Arizona Education”; by the Arizona Gifted Education Association as “Gifted Administrator of the Year”; and by the North Central Association of Elementary and Secondary Schools with the “National Innovative Award.” He has turned down speaking engagements from several state education departments, school board organizations, and universities in countries including China, England, New Zealand, and Ecuador.

His school district has worked in collaboration with Stanford University for some 20 years and in the process has attained unprecedented academic achievement profiles for the school district. There is much more to this, but who is this person? The person is writing this brief bio for you so that you may get to know him a little better.
~Harold G. Begay, Ph.D.

Applications opened recently for the Spring 2022 session of the Stanford University Scholars Program for Japanese High School Students (also known as “Stanford e-Japan”), which will run from mid-February through the end of June 2022. The deadline to apply is December 31, 2021.

Stanford e-Japan Program for high school students in Japan
Spring 2022 session (February to June 2022)
Application period: November 15 to December 31, 2021

All applications must be submitted at https://spicestanford.smapply.io/prog/stanford_e-japan/ via the SurveyMonkey Apply platform. Applicants and recommenders will need to create a SurveyMonkey Apply account to proceed. Students who are interested in applying to the online course are encouraged to begin their applications early.

Accepted applicants will engage in an intensive study of U.S. society and culture and U.S.–Japan relations. Ambassadors, top scholars, and experts from Stanford University and throughout the United States provide web-based lectures and engage students in live discussion sessions.

“Participating in Stanford e-Japan has been one of the highlights of my high school experience,” reflected Fall 2020 honoree Allison Lin. “Through the course, I gained the opportunity to learn from intelligent and experienced scholars which I wouldn’t have had otherwise and found myself aspiring to be like them in the future.”

Stanford e-Japan is offered by the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE), Stanford University. The Spring 2022 session of Stanford e-Japan is generously supported by the Yanai Tadashi Foundation, Tokyo, Japan.

For more information about Stanford e-Japan, please visit stanfordejapan.org.

To stay informed of news about Stanford e-Japan and SPICE’s other student programs, join our email list or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

SPICE offers separate courses for U.S. high school students. For more information, please visit the Reischauer Scholars Program (on Japan), the Sejong Scholars Program (on Korea), and the China Scholars Program (on China).

Watch on Sky News Australia

On October 6, 2021, the APARC China Program hosted the panel program, "Engaging China: Fifty Years of Sino-American Relations." In honor of her recently released book of the same title, Director of the Grassroots China Initiative Anne Thurston was joined by contributors Mary Bullock, President Emerita of Agnes Scott College; Thomas Fingar, Shorenstein APARC Fellow; and David M. Lampton, Professor Emeritus at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Thomas Fingar also moderated the panel.

Recent years have seen the U.S.-China relationship rapidly deteriorate. Engaging China brings together leading China specialists—ranging from academics to NGO leaders to former government officials—to analyze the past, present, and future of U.S.-China relations.

During their panel, Bullock, Fingar, Lampton, and Thurston reflected upon the complex and multifaceted nature of American engagement with China since the waning days of Mao’s rule. What initially motivated U.S.’ rapprochement with China? Until recent years, what logic and processes have underpinned the U.S. foreign policy posture towards China? What were the gains and the missteps made during five decades of America’s engagement policy toward China? What is the significance of our rapidly deteriorating bilateral relations today? Watch now: 

For more information about Engaging China or to purchase a copy, please click here.