Podcast: Ukraine’s strength, Russia’s stubbornness - and the uncertainty of war to come

TRANSCRIPT: Ukraine’s strength, Russia’s stubbornness - and the uncertainty of war to come

David Miliband:

The response now is threefold. One is about survival, secondly is about recovery, and thirdly is about blame. And that's going to play out in technicolor in Turkey.

Ian Bremmer:

Hello and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. This is where you'll find extended versions of my interviews on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer, and on today's episode we are talking about the devastating earthquakes that struck southern Turkey near the Syrian border and the challenges in coordinating disaster relief. The region has been rocked by more than a decade of civil war in Syria, a brutal conflict that's killed hundreds of thousands, destroyed cities and infrastructure and displaced millions of refugees, many to southern Turkey. With aid routes severely damaged from the earthquakes and both countries dealing with extreme financial crisis, getting humanitarian assistance to the people who need it has been a daunting task and as you'll hear today, the real work still to come. My guest today, President and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, David Miliband. Let's get to it.

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Ian Bremmer:

David Miliband, great to see you on the show again.

David Miliband:

Great to be with you, Ian.

Ian Bremmer:

So a bunch of things talk to you about. First, 50,000 plus dead from these horrible earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. Talk to me a little bit about how aid is getting to the people on the ground that really desperately need it.

David Miliband:

Yeah, thanks for keeping some attention on this three weeks after the earthquake because the great danger is that the world moves on. You said 50,000 dead, it must be at least double that. I think that must be a huge undercount, the 50,000 figure because you'll have seen the pictures that the rubble is still there and I'm afraid there are bodies still there. But obviously there are millions still alive. Four and a half million in the northwest of Syria under the control of armed opposition groups, opposition to the Assad Regime in Damascus and 15 million in the affected area across southwestern Turkey, part of an 80 million population of Turkey as a whole.

How does aid get to those affected? Well, inside Turkey, it's pretty straightforward. It's within their own country, but in the northwest of Syria it's much more difficult. The Russian veto at the UN Security Council reduced the number of crossing points to just about one official crossing point. There were commercial crossing points, but for the United Nations it was down to one at the time of the earthquake. Two more have been opened on a three monthly rolling basis, one into the Northwest, one down to Aleppo, so a bit further east from Turkey.

There was also a promise of aid crossing the conflict line between the government of Syria and the armed opposition groups in the Northwest. That has not yet materialized. We, the International Rescue Committee, my organization, has about 450 staff on the ground in the northwest of Syria. We tragically lost two colleagues in the earthquake itself and they are still waiting for cross-line aid. And although there are two more cross border points, we haven't really seen an increase in the aid flows. We haven't yet had the full monthly figures, but the latest data I saw says that it's still very tough to get aid across the border.

Ian Bremmer:

And once it gets across the border, what sort of confidence do we have that the Assad regime will actually allow the aid to get to where it needs to go?

David Miliband:

Well, very low for aid that's going into Damascus. I mean, that's basically staying within government controlled areas. For aid that's coming cross-border into the northwest of Syria, then it's out of the control of the Assad regime and the question then is, are you sure it's going to reach the people who need it? And our experience, we've been in northwest Syria over the last 12 years, is that it does reach people in need and they make a real noise if it doesn't reach them. Our own tracking, but also our own client surveys show that what aid does get to come through does reach them. Obviously some of the aid we give is cash support, which allows people to purchase in the open market and there are commercial goods flowing across borders, but that doesn't really help you that much when it comes to medicines and some household appliances. So the humanitarian situation was in crisis before the earthquake, it's been doubled by it.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah, you referred to it as a "double crisis" in Syria and of course, I mean when you talk about the environment for the Syrian citizens, especially those in the North, you've had all sorts of difficulty just in creating conditions from normal day-to-day life. So it's hard to imagine what happened as a consequence of the earthquake.

David Miliband:

Yes, I mean if you're on the precipice and there's an earthquake, you're off the precipice and really you're in the lap of the gods, whether you survive. Frankly, survival is success for the next couple of weeks. It's still cold, so winterization is one of the major needs. There are enormous risks for some kids who've lost parents, obviously. There's the danger that the World Health Organization have warned of a secondary crisis to do with disease, not just untreated injuries from the earthquake, but cholera returning. There was a cholera outbreak in January in the northwest of Syria.

So it's a dire situation, and you will know as well as I that the overall politics for northwestern Syria are as dire as the humanitarian situation. It was a conflict zone as recently as January, bombing raids from Russian and Syrian aircraft, a shooting, 150 civilians were killed last year in border skirmishes. There's no UN process that's got leverage at the moment for the political situation, the so-called Astana Process that you've written about, Russia, Iran, Syria, and Turkey is really in control of the politics. And if you live there, it's very hard for people to keep up any hope at all.

Ian Bremmer:

So let's move to Turkey where of course, the majority of the casualties we know about, large majority, are actually located. Lot of politics around this, too. In part, I want to ask you how much of this do you think was preventable? There's been a lot of criticism of the fact that building standards were nowhere close to what they needed to be. Was this something that corruption played a big role? Poor governance played a big role in just how bad this crisis has become?

David Miliband:

Well, I'm not a structural engineer, so I'm not going to claim expertise where it doesn't exist. And I can't say to you that I've been through all of the different planning permits and building regulations, nevermind the architectural designs. What you are obviously speaking to though is that Turkey had experience in the late '90s of an earthquake, which led to all sorts of promises about building standards, but clearly from the...

Ian Bremmer:

Also led to the ouster of a prime minister at the time, right?

David Miliband:

That's a good point.

Ian Bremmer:

Before he handled it back then.

David Miliband:

That's a very good point. But you've obviously seen these buildings just absolutely cratering. And so what I can speak to from our... We work through partners, just to be clear, in Turkey where it's not direct IRC delivery. We're working through partner organizations, Turkish partner organizations through our office in Gaziantep, the center of the earthquake. What we know is that there's been an absolute meltdown of the urban environment and there's a lot of anger about that, understandable, as well as grief. But I can't speak to you about corruption in respect to the planning permit system. But what we both know is that Turkey is just a few months away from an election. An accident, an earthquake as grave as this and the response to it is going to play a big part in that. I'm presuming you think the election will go ahead as planned, but-

Ian Bremmer:

It does look that way, yes.

David Miliband:

... There are 10 million people whose who lives have been turned upside down. So it's hard to see how they're going to vote and participate.

Ian Bremmer:

No, indeed. And the election, of course, is going to be so much about this crisis. It just reminded me when we've seen earthquakes in China in the past, and you'll have a school and an apartment building that'll fall apart and you'll have a communist party building that's right next to it that stays standing. And it led to a lot of anger. And the first thing I thought of when I saw all of this outrage in Turkey is to what extent are we just seeing a government that just doesn't care the way it needs to about its own population? And again, as you see tens and tens of thousands that are probably still dead under that rubble, it's just hard not to ask those questions. The election's going to be very relevant.

David Miliband:

Yeah, I mean, look, they're all voters. So I think that the... And Turkey is a functioning democracy, albeit one that's been highly centralized over the last 20 years, increasingly centralized. But the response now is twofold, isn't it? Or threefold, in fact. One is about survival, secondly is about recovery, and thirdly is about blame. And that's going to play out in technicolor in Turkey.

Ian Bremmer:

I want to talk about another tragedy, this one playing out not just today, but over many, many years now, which is that of the migrant crisis in Europe, yet another boat, death toll risen to 64 right now, lost at sea off the coast of Italy, what's being called, and I quote, "The voyage of death." We know that smugglers were charging some 8,000 euros apiece to get a ride on that boat. And I'm wondering to what extent you agree with what we're hearing from European leaders that the most humane thing to do is to stop migrants from risking their lives in the first place. How do you respond to these tragedies?

David Miliband:

Well, I think that you have to respond before they happen is really the truth about this. Look, the big picture is not just a European picture, it's an American picture as well, which is that more people are on the move than ever before. And more people are on the move for if you like political reasons, not just economic reasons, political in the sense of they're fleeing persecution, they're fleeing war, or they're fleeing disaster. They're fleeing from man-made disaster. And that's evidently true in Europe for people fleeing from the Middle East and North Africa. It's true in the US for people fleeing from the northern triangle of countries, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, but also five million refugees from Venezuela, et cetera.

And both Europe and America face the challenge of richer countries, which is how do you distinguish between refugees on the one hand and immigrants on the other? A refugee is someone who has no home to go to. An immigrant is someone who's choosing to leave their home. How do you balance fairness with humanity in the operation of assessment systems to make sure that you are fulfilling legal as well as moral obligations for people who've been driven from their home? And how do you balance international responsibility with local responsibility? My recipe for that involves the following elements. And I don't want to pretend that this is easy, but here are some elements. Neither Europe nor America is getting it right at the moment.

Element one, you have to have fast processing of asylum claims. If you don't have fast processing of asylum claims, America's take as example, two, three, four years to process an asylum claim because there's a backlog of over a million people in the immigration courts. You can't do justice and you can't achieve fairness or humanity. So number one, you've got to process your asylum claims quickly. To be fair to Germany, they've done a very good job on that, partly off the back of 2015-16.

Secondly, those who are allowed to stay needs to be properly integrated into the society. Above board, given training, given language tuition, able to participate fully in society. Those who fail the test obviously can't stay.

Third element of this is to recognize there's a very strong criminal element that's exploiting the absence of legal roots to get into Europe or America. And in Europe, we've got very good evidence of this. There isn't an EU agreement on its asylum and migration package. And so there aren't safe and legal roots to flee from persecution or disaster. That just plays into the hands of the people smugglers. And I think they were, in your mind, in some of the way you phrased your question, any effective policy has to address that outsourced. There's been some examples actually in Turkey that we talk about in a previous context where some of the people smuggling that was happening in 2015-16 has been effectively attacked.

The fourth element that I think is important is that you have to have legal roots to asylum and to immigration. The Biden administration has made a nod towards this in its pledge that 30,000 people a month from Haiti, Venezuela, et cetera, four countries in total will be allowed into the United States if they're able to register before they arrive. And so those are some of the components that are necessary in addressing what I think is going to be the challenge for the rest of this century, frankly, because we know from the data, the econometric data, that in countries of less than-

Ian Bremmer:

The numbers are going way up.

David Miliband:

... $7,000 a head, people are going to want to leave.

Ian Bremmer:

But I want to play off of this for a bit. Tell me, in the context of these elements, what are the countries that are actually starting to get it right? Where are you seeing meaningful progress? You mentioned Germany specifically in terms of dealing with the backlog for processing refugees. Beyond that, give me some countries that are starting to make a more positive difference on this front.

David Miliband:

Well, interestingly enough, all European countries are doing well for Ukrainian refugees. They're integrating them and they're giving them, they've set the standard and they've set a standard that should be observed elsewhere. Now, they're not, that-

Ian Bremmer:

What message does that send, David, if you don't happen to be a white European?

David Miliband:

Well, exactly. Exactly my point, that you've got to do it not just for white Europeans. Now you ask for countries that are doing well, Uganda does well. I've just come back from Kenya. Kenya is studying what's happened in Uganda where Ugandans have the kind of rights to work, to land actually in Uganda, to educational services for their kids that exist for Ukrainians in Europe. And obviously very different GDP, very different sort of systems, but Uganda has a very successful refugee integration program. The reason I raise it is it's not just the matter that the richer countries do well and the poorer countries do badly. I'm afraid some of the richer countries don't do well at all on this. And this is a problem that doesn't get better if you ignore it, which I'm afraid has been a-

Ian Bremmer:

Is Uganda doing a better job, not only because they have to in the sense that these refugees could truly overwhelm their economy if they don't find a way to integrate them, but also because they see the upside to a greater degree in a sense that as a poorer country, they understand that they need the immigrants and they can't play politics with them in the same way that, for example, a United States or United Kingdom has more flexibility?

David Miliband:

I think a bigger point in the Ugandan case is that they know that other countries helped them when they were going through political trauma 20 or 30 years ago, and they feel a sense of commitment. That's certainly, if you look at Colombia, that's another country that's done quite well. They would say, "Look, Colombia and Venezuela were one country before." So Colombia is also an example where I think they've made a systematic effort to get refugees above board. What they've recognized, I think, Ian, is that the choice is not whether people come or not, it's whether they come in a planned, organized, regulated, legal and tax-paying way, or whether they come in a disorganized, unplanned, unregulated way and are out of the formal economy. And I don't want to oversimplify, but if you keep that in mind, you understand a lot of the difference between success and failure.

Ian Bremmer:

You mentioned that Ukrainians are being integrated relatively well in Europe. I'm also wondering, I mean, I've heard that several million that went to Europe already in the first year have returned to Ukraine. Do you believe that part of the success is because it's new and it's meant to be transitory? Do you think that you'll start to see a very different story if this goes on for three, for five years?

David Miliband:

Well, people were asking that six or nine month ago, and I think that the fears that as weeks turned into months and months turned into years, there'd be a backlash. That hasn't actually happened. I mean, it's a country like Poland, which is bearing a huge share of the responsibility. People are still living in each other's living rooms. There's still the support going on. One factor that this brings out, of course, is that if countries don't share the burden, that is absolute grist to the mill of those who would want to exploit the situation. And that's been a big problem in Sweden over the years, that Sweden has felt it's taking a disproportionate share compared to other countries in Europe, countries like France.

Ian Bremmer:

And it's affected Swedish politics. Absolutely.

David Miliband:

Exactly. And so you've got to share out the burden and you've got to share out the responsibility. The 27 countries of the EU did that in the Ukraine crisis. Now, you asked about people going back. We have IRC teams, International Rescue Committee teams in the east of Ukraine as well as in Poland and Germany. Here's what we are seeing. There were six, seven, even eight million people who'd crossed at one point, but two or three million then went back last July, August, September. However, some of those have now come back into Europe. And I think what we've got to get used to is people moving backwards and forwards as the war develops and as the front lines change. Obviously it's asymmetric. There's a intense trench warfare in the east of the country. There's missal attacks from Russia elsewhere in the country. And the trauma associated with that is real for the women and kids who are obviously not conscripted, they're the refugees. But there were, to answer your question directly, there were a couple of million people who did go back to Ukraine last year.

Ian Bremmer:

One final question on the refugee issue in Europe, which is the largest number of refugees of course are in Turkey, also one of the poorest countries on the continent. There's been efforts to create political deals with the Germans, with the Europeans essentially buying off the Turks to keep them there. How is that going, and how does that deal with this issue of equity, and if you don't accept your fair share, you are going to have greater costs to pay down the line?

David Miliband:

Well, it's a contribution to equity. And the truth is that the deal hasn't just been talked about, it's in practice. I mean, Europeans are paying to support the extra costs that Turkey is bearing as a result of hosting three and a half million Syrian refugees. Now, Jordan would say to you, "Well, who's supporting us to support a million refugees?"

Ian Bremmer:

With the millions of Palestinians that are there on the ground? That's right.

David Miliband:

Well, yes. But also 650,000, probably more than a million unofficial Syrian refugees in Jordan. In Lebanon, they say, "Who's supporting us for one and a half million Syrians who are in Lebanon?" So this speaks to a wider point. The hosting of the 45 million people who've crossed borders as a result of conflict and disaster, the hosting of them is a global public good. You are an economist or a political economist, you know that a global public good is something where the benefit is shared globally, not just locally. And the truth is that the poorer countries in the world are bearing a greater share of the responsibility of her delivering on this global public good than the richer countries. About 80% of the world's refugees are in poor countries, not in rich countries. And the figure's gone down as a result of Ukraine. But still, you've got countries like Bangladesh, Turkey, Uganda, Ethiopia, those are big refugee, Pakistan, big refugee hosting states. And they are bearing the load, but they're not being very well compensated for it.

Ian Bremmer:

I have to ask at least one question about Brexit. I mean, we're years through this process and finally there is a deal agreed to on Northern Ireland and trade with the continent. You in favor of the way that the UK PM Rishi Sunak has handled this? And can we finally actually close this chapter, this unfortunate chapter on UK history?

David Miliband:

Yes, I do support the new deal. It's not the first deal, it's a new deal. It's a more honest deal than the previous ones. But no, we can't close the book because Brexit is never over. It's a journey, not a destination. And it's forever in its impact. And it's still playing out because obviously Northern Ireland is, if you like, the apex of the problem because the Northern Ireland situation is so unique and because the Good Friday Agreement that we'll celebrate in April 25 years ago was based on the fact that both Britain and the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, were both in the European Union. And that's what allowed the Good Friday Agreement to say that those living in Northern Ireland could be British or Irish or both, and they could choose themselves. That's been interrupted by Brexit. But obviously there are sways of other aspects of national life where Brexit isn't working. And that needs to be addressed too.

Ian Bremmer:

So David, we here at Eurasia Group have been working with you, and I'm very proud to say it, on something we call the Atlas of Impunity. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about what it is and some of the big conclusions from the report.

David Miliband:

Yes, it's been a great collaboration. I've not become a Eurasia Group employee. I've been chairing the advisory board of the Atlas of Impunity, which is a co-production of the staff at Eurasia Group, supported by the Chicago Council and Foreign Affairs and funded by the Open Society Foundation. And it's really a unique global product that's been created by your team who've really worked very well on this.

Impunity is the idea of the exercise of power without accountability. In its most extreme form, it is crimes without punishment. And the case that I made to you two years ago in an email that recently we resurfaced, was that impunity, the exercise of power without accountability, was both on the rise but also undocumented. And that it wasn't confined to the war zones where the International Rescue Committee works, but that covered sways of national and international life. So the Atlas ranks every country in the world on five aspects of impunity, in conflict, human rights, governance, also though, economic exploitation and environmental degradation. Just to pause for a moment on the fifth of those, I think it's very important that we've included the environment. It's a new way of seeing the climate crisis, but we argue it's a site of impunity because current generations are acting without any accountability from future generations. And humans are acting with no accountability from the planet because obviously the planet has no votes.

Ian Bremmer:

So what we're talking about, these are either rogue actors or actors that are acting as rogue actors and nothing is being done. There is no accountability, there is no documentation. And we need to shine a light on these practices if we're ever going to be able to effectively respond to them.

David Miliband:

Well, there are rogue actors and there are not so rogue actors. And then there are quite good actors because every scale of impunity is balanced by accountability. And we rank these countries across the five indicators. There's no political judgment. Everyone around the world can look at the Atlas of Impunity. It's been built with no political judgments. It's 67 sources of data. Atlasofimpunity.com allows anyone to look at how their own country scores.

And here's the thing, Ian, that while you may have guessed that Afghanistan and Syria would be very high for impunity and that Finland and Denmark would be very poor, within those two extremes there's a lot of very, very interesting data. The US scores much worse than Germany. There are median level countries, the UAE, Indonesia, Malawi, that don't have much in common. Some are big, some are small, some are north, some are south, some are rich, some are poor. There are different ways in which the lens of impunity shows up, different ways in which countries are holding power to account across economic, social, and political domains. And it's intended precisely as you say, to be a tool for people around the world to use. It's been the subject of extensive press coverage, I most recently saw in North America. And our colleagues at the Chicago Council are all organizing a series of regional seminars with think tanks and universities to try and bring this out. So I think it's been a very productive process.

Ian Bremmer:

I couldn't agree more. I mean, I'm enormously happy that we're doing it. And the fact that you've been talking publicly about impunity for years now, something that comes out of a global order that's more fragmented, that's more leaderless. But you have to have the methodology, you have to have the actual research, the data that you can start to respond to. So I'm wondering, do you have any, and this is a bit of an unfair question, but any early thoughts on what some of the policy responses might be?

David Miliband:

Well, that's really where we need to take this. I think that the way to think about policy response, not just policy, but citizens' response, business response, is that if we are agreed that the abuse of power is an increasing danger in our world today, we need countervailing power to take it on. That countervailing power starts with transparency, but then it follows on to actions that governments, businesses, civil society needs to take. And I'm pleased that there's more exposure of the abuse of power, but we need much more because many of the political systems are blocked. But we also need to develop the leverage that can make people think again. There are huge discussions going on about international courts of justice. There are big discussions going on about the need to defend ESG, environmental, social, and governmental responsibilities of business. I think this is a productive debate and one that we should wade into.

Ian Bremmer:

David Miliband, thank you for joining the show and also thanks for taking the lead on this important project.

David Miliband:

Thanks ever so much, Ian. Take care.

Ian Bremmer:

David Miliband, we'll have you back. Got to keep talking about it. Thanks so much, man.

David Miliband:

Thank you.

Ian Bremmer:

That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World Podcast. Do you like what you heard? Of course you did. Well, why don't you check us out at Gzeromedia.com and take a moment to sign up for our newsletter. It's called GZERO Daily.

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