>> From WXXI News, this is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made 30 years ago with the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords.

The agreement marked the end of the Bosnian War and was intended to create the framework for a single sovereign state known as Bosnia and Herzegovina.

But it was complicated.

The new single state would be divided into two parts, one with mostly Serbs, another with mostly a Croat Bosniak population, and critics have come to view the accords as creating too much complexity or too weak a state, or opening the door to regional factions and ethnic cleansing.

Peace is messy, peace is complicated.

On one hand, Bosnia and Herzegovina remains a single sovereign state today, but peace without unity, peace with ongoing division.

Where does that lead us?

It's a question that matters deeply today, as Ukraine considers a 28 point proposal for peace from the Trump administration, there have been divisions within the Trump administration over their own offer, with some members leaking private conversations with the Secretary of state, Marco Rubio.

The critics of this proposal argue that it looks like a plan that only Vladimir Putin could love.

And yet, if it stops the bombing, if it stops the daily killing in Ukraine, is that enough?

We all want a stable world, a place where our children can confidently envision a healthy future.

Getting there is tricky.

Our guest this hour lives in Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina and has expertise looking at what democratization means around the world.

Senior associate at the Democratization Policy Council, Dr.

Valery Perry is back with us.

Valerie, nice to have you.

Thanks for being with us.

>> Hi, Evan.

Nice to be here.

So remotely with you.

>> How how is it in in Sarajevo this week with people marking 30 years?

I mean, does it feel like a celebration?

Does it?

I mean, what sort of the mood of that?

>> it's a good question.

there's a real difference between people who engage on these activities, like journalists, academics, diplomats, et cetera., who have been going to conferences.

And there have been some artistic presentations, et cetera.

but the vast number of people I know who aren't engaged in that kind of work aren't really paying much attention to it.

a lot of people have noted, you know, it's been 30 years.

We're living our life.

We want things to just be normal.

Do we need to keep reliving these issues?

How can we instead sort of look forward and try to make things work a bit better?

and so it depends on where you're sitting.

but this will continue for the next few weeks because November 21st was the anniversary of when the peace agreement was initialed in Dayton, Ohio.

And then on December 14th, the peace agreement was formally signed in Paris, France.

And so there's really this three week period where there's a lot of retrospectives and talking, and it is a bit ironic that November 21st was also the day that, as you mentioned this quote, unquote peace idea was floated for Ukraine.

>> And, you know, oddly, I'm thinking of one of my favorite folksingers, John Gorka, who wrote a song called All That Hammering, in which he says, I used to think Joy was just the break between sorrow and peace was the break between war and it.

It is not to me an effective peace.

If a population assumes that it is temporary, that the divisions are so deep that inevitably there will be more war.

And I can't ask you to speak for an entire population of the the country where you live now.

But in general, is there a feeling that the divisions are still very deep, or that war in the future is possible where you are?

>> I think a lot of people will.

>> Note that even though that there's been a lot of discussion about the weaknesses of the peace agreement and the things that they wish had been done better it has held, I mean, for the past 30 years, there has been peace.

I mean, there's been investment, there's been reconstruction.

People go on vacation, people go skiing, people get jobs, lose jobs, get married, get divorced, and they're living their lives and and they're not being shelled.

They're not being sniped at by snipers.

And so people are obviously glad about that.

the difference can be whether you're looking at really like a positive peace as opposed to a negative peace, which is something we talk about quite often in this academic realm.

And, and people would often note that it's really not as a positive peace because there's still a lot of space where the political elites are able to try to really sort of exploit past grievance try to keep an agenda of grievances and territorial, political or economic desires on the menu and to really sort of hold the country hostage in some ways to the maximalist demands of the formerly warring parties.

So the question is always needs to be, no, not just how do you sign a peace agreement?

How do you get to a ceasefire?

But how do you sort of create the framework for a country that can develop as a normal, accountable country that has a social contract that works for everyone and that really enables people to live with dignity and to thrive.

And and a lot of people would argue that they haven't gotten to that point, even 30 years later.

>> So just in general, Dr.

Perry, when you talk about the fact that the people are not getting shelled, they are able to go about their lives and live what we would say, quote, unquote, normal lives.

And the value of that compared to what preceded it.

I mean, it's hard to measure that, certainly.

And I have a lot of sympathy for the argument when it comes to Ukraine, that anything that stops the killing is what we have to do.

I get that.

I mean, I don't know that I that is not my expertise on what to do in Ukraine or what a peace agreement should look like.

And I know why people are opposed to sort of giving away the store to Putin, because it will feel like peace is just the break between war there if you do that.

But at the same time, for the people who are desperate to see the bombing, stop the bombing of civilian stop, I can sympathize with that viewpoint.

Can you.

>> well, with.

>> Regard to Ukraine or any other place, I think really it needs to be left up to that country and the people to determine, what they want.

And that's why it's so terrible that it seemed that this 28 point plan was drawn up without the involvement or consideration of the Ukrainians at all.

when you look at the case in Bosnia Herzegovina, one of the criticisms people often make when thinking about the peace plan was that it was completely negotiated and decided by elites, including elites who weren't even from this country, who were from neighboring Serbia and Croatia.

it was never put up to a referendum.

It was never given to the people of the country to discuss and determine whether or not this would be something that they wanted.

when you would speak to diplomats who were involved in Dayton and who were really involved in the day to day negotiations over an intensive couple of weeks in November of 1995, a lot of them will note, look, the most important thing to do was to simply stop the fighting.

And then as things move forward, then there will be a structure so that things can improve and that people can be more involved, et cetera.

and for a number of years, there was quite a bit of progress in that direction.

But then for a number of reasons that progress really did stall.

And we got into this frozen conflict situation where the, the main political elites and parties who are in power and who stay in power because of a very unique form of gerrymandering that was enabled by the peace agreement and the territorial divisions have really recognized that they can do better for, for their factions in many ways by continuing to have this negative peace instead of having a warm peace moving forward.

now, that being said, though, too, it is worth reminding that when you're in Sarajevo, when you're driving around the country, I mean, there's there's no checkpoints.

I feel safer, you know, in this country than I do in many cities in the United States.

When you think about street crime or social crime, et cetera., restaurants are full.

People are walking on the pedestrian zone and going out and drinking coffee, et cetera.

so people do learn how to adapt to anything.

And I think people, especially in countries that have experienced war learn how to do that.

but I think that it's extremely important that we don't forget that the elites don't necessarily always represent what people want to see.

And trying to close that gap is what's really important.

And we haven't been very good at that, to be honest.

>> This is just totally an aside unrelated to the conversation at hand, but when I look at pictures of Sarajevo today, I think Americans probably know Sarajevo through certain moments in history over the years.

the Olympics, 1984 or the Bosnian War.

The city looks beautiful today.

From what I can see.

Can you verify that Valerie?

>> No, it is.

I mean one of the things that really has happened over the past three decades is that there's been substantial reconstruction there's been in the past year, they've redone all of the sewer systems and underground infrastructure work, even though that was already functioning before.

There are these improvements happening.

You know, there's more shopping centers.

there's two Olympic quality ski centers nearby, and it's a great place to take a holiday.

I mean, every year we're seeing that more and more tourists from all over the world are coming to visit this city and this country.

And, you know, people who don't pay attention to politics would be it would be very easy for them to not notice that there's anything wrong, because you can you can live your life, you can be a tourist, you can spend a day or a week or two weeks and have a great time without seeing that there's anything really under the hood.

And I think that's one thing that I've really been reflecting on a lot as well is we've I mean, when we look at the past year in the United States, I mean, I think it's fair to say it's been a bit tumultuous and it's been a lot of political upset, a lot of frustration.

It's been interesting for me to be reading about a lot of reporters talking about how coming up to this Thanksgiving, you know, that a lot more people in the United States are like ghosting or sort of de-friending and are estranged from family members because of these political issues.

So I'm not saying that to make a comparison, but just to note that it there's always a lot of different nuance in societies.

And the question you need to look at is whether or not all of the different institutions in that society are pushing things in the right or the wrong direction.

And I think that's something that people have learned to live with here and try to improve where they can.

And I think that what we've seen in the United States since January in particular, but also over a number of years of increasing polarization, sort of shows that people learn how to adapt to anything and how to find normalcy in their, in their families and their apartment buildings and their streets.

And life goes on in some ways like that.

>> Well, when you talk about 30 years ago, the fact that the people who were drawing up the Dayton Peace Accords were not entirely even from the populations that would be affected, and that it was mostly elites and plenty of outsiders.

Joel feels the same way when he looks at Ukraine.

Joel writes, a listener writes to say, Evan, it seems as if the United States is doing quite a bit of the work on the so-called peace agreement, and sidelining Ukraine doesn't seem like anything new here.

Do you see it that way, doctor Perry?

>> unfortunately.

>> I do.

I mean, there's really a tendency consistently to sort of for diplomats, for politicians to rely on what I would call really big man politics, you know, get get the right men.

And it tends to be male politicians get them in the room, try to knock heads, try to make deals, have have a whiskey, you know, try to sort of head sidebar conversations and breakaways and try to push them to do something without thinking about the fact that it's not even necessarily the case that those people, that those people in the room represent everyone who's there.

I mean, how were how were they chosen?

Were there, were there elections?

Were the elections free if they happen, you know, during war, what were the circumstances that they were selected?

And so that's what's really difficult.

And and it is interesting that following the wars in the former Yugoslavia, that there were efforts by different organizations to try to figure out, you know, how can there be more voices around the table?

I was fortunate to work for an organization called the Public International Law and Policy Group for about three years here.

And one of the reasons that they were formed was to ensure that there would be sort of legal and political advice getting to people who who might not always be at the table, how to represent the voices of, for example, more minority groups.

there were some efforts to do that in Myanmar or Burma for some time, for example, as well as in other places.

And to be honest, it's never been perfect.

It's never been a perfect situation.

But there was progress being made in terms of trying to at least get more voices at the table.

Make sure that the voices of women and children were included.

Make sure that there would be a political electoral systems put into place that would begin to sort of try to ensure that more national minority voices were involved.

and what really worries me is this trend that we've seen towards sort of marginalizing the notion of liberal democracy, of the liberal piece of comprehensive security.

in and instead replacing it with this whole notion of really bully politics or might makes right and a willingness to give everything to the stronger party or the perceived stronger party, as opposed to recognizing that lasting peace needs to really be built on participation, accountability, and human rights.

>> So if you go back to 1995, to Dayton and there were more people represented in those negotiations, what is a different kind of agreement or what were some some things left out that you think might have three decades later?

Put the the population in a a healthier place?

And again, I want to honor what you are saying about the fact that there are a lot of positive developments some economic growth and people living normal lives, not getting shelling, not getting shelled, all of that certainly matters.

But with more representation.

Three decades ago, what might be different now?

>> Sure.

Let me.

>> Break that into two parts.

One is that there was a mistake made early on, even even before the war fully kicked off in the spring of 1992.

Here, whereby for a variety of different reasons, the the nature of the war, the nature of the political conflict here was allowed to be structured according to just three sides.

the side that was like the, the Muslim Bosniaks, the side that was the Catholic Croats and the side that was the Orthodox Serbs.

And this discounted a large number of people who did not affiliate with any of those three.

This fourth voice was never really allowed to be at the table.

And so already in some of the peace talks we saw in Geneva and elsewhere, that fourth voice was excluded.

And when you only have the narrowly defined groups at the table, then you shouldn't be surprised if you end up getting a narrowly defined outcome that only favors those three groups.

There was always a touching story I remember from a journalist who was reporting during the war and during the ethnic cleansing in particular, at the beginning.

And while a row of people were being ethnically cleansed out of an area that had been populated by a lot of people who, you know, were nominally or were practicing, you know, who were Muslim in terms of their ethno national affiliation.

the journalist asked, you know, well, what are you.

Because he wanted to understand.

And the guy apparently sort of looked at him and said, But I'm a musician, and I always found that to be quite touching because it can be very easy for academics, politicians, diplomats to sort of be like, well, which side are you on?

How do I label you as opposed to recognizing that people are human beings?

And so making sure that a fourth voice or another voice was at the table from the start would have made a big difference in terms of after the war.

it's my first trip here was in the autumn of 1997 which feels like a lifetime ago in many different ways.

And it was interesting because at that time there was a lot of positive energy.

The country was preparing for its first postwar local elections.

I was honored to be able to do some work on supervising those elections, to ensure that they were as free and fair as possible, and there were a lot of people here.

There were peacekeepers.

There were aid workers.

There were educators, and people were moving back.

People who had been refugees or internally displaced.

People were moving back and opening businesses.

And and really, there was an energy and a spirit that was palpable.

and I was I was very fortunate to have been able to see that and again, for a number of years, progress was moving in the right direction.

If I was going to look at what I think could have been done differently from the get go or in those first number of years two things always come to mind.

one is the nature of the election law in this country.

The election law that was ultimately adopted in about five years after the war, about five years after several rounds of elections, under an interim election law, unfortunately ended up being structured in such a way that it did not encourage moderate politics.

It did not encourage political actors to try to seek the votes of the other, whoever that might be.

And it really helped to encourage polarization.

And it didn't have to be that way.

The time period in which the election law was being discussed was one in which the international community had quite a bit of influence.

There was a strong sense that the country was going going to be able to move forward into European integration, whether the European Union or other European bodies and a number of election experts, including election experts who had worked in divided societies, had proposed different models of an election law that would have encouraged moderation, that would have encouraged people to be able to vote for more than like ranked choice voting and different innovations instead of just the I win, you lose binary vote system, which is tailor made for conflict.

And so that was a huge missed opportunity.

And we've been dealing with the consequences of those polarized politics ever since.

And again, when I think about some of the discussions happening about the quality of democracy in the United States right now, I don't think it's a coincidence that people are looking at different election systems that actually try to encourage more citizen participation, discussion and moderation instead of just campaigning to the polls.

And the second thing I would note is the important issue of education.

during the war people, kids kept going to school and they were schools that were divided depending on where the kids were.

Obviously during the war, circumstances after the war, there was not a strong enough effort to recognize the influence that educational systems that schools can have in terms of either promoting a vision of of tolerance, of living and working together, of support for and respect for human rights, national minorities and the other, and of really trying to open minds of young people in that way.

And instead, what we saw was three separate and divided educational systems, one for each of the main groups, leaving out the other the for the fourth group, as I've noted entrenching and really indoctrinating a lot of young kids in this old system that makes it impossible to imagine that you can live together.

And so those would be the two things that I think we've really, unfortunately, learned from the past 30 years that you can't have a country really function in a unified joint way.

If you're really putting into place these institutions that are structured to keep people divided.

>> And so how difficult is it as decades pass to create democratic reforms within these existing structures, instead of seeing a slide back toward sectarian violence, oppression, even war, how likely is democratic reform and how achievable?

>> one way that Bosnia Herzegovina was fortunate after the Dayton peace agreement was that there really was an international commitment to come in with peacemakers for example the NATO implementation force that was basically approved to come into the country after the peace was agreed had a cap of 60,000 people, which was massive.

this was a time when we believed in sort of peak liberal democracy and trying to make sure that human rights and comprehensive security were able to flourish.

And having these troops come in was significant and really ensuring that warring parties were separated, that artillery was collected, that ammunition and small arms were collected, et cetera.

And it was also important in ensuring freedom of movement, which I think can't be underestimated.

because we didn't see problems with checkpoints, you know, if there had been spoilers or warlords or just basic criminals or bullies who were against the peace for whatever reason they were not allowed to set up checkpoints, they were not allowed to sort of divide the country.

And this was key.

And I remember I think it was in about 2006 or so, I made my first visit to Cyprus, which is divided into Greek, Cyprus and then Turkish Northern Cyprus.

And it was fascinating for me to see the way that that island the country, those people were, were divided in that way, and I couldn't help but think that had Bosnia Herzegovina not had an international peacekeeping presence, it would have been very easy for checkpoints to solidify and for the peace to really be fractured and hamstrung from the beginning.

And I think as well, it was very important for Bosnia Herzegovina to have the perspective of moving forward into European integration, into transatlantic integration.

in 1999, there was a major, stability Pact summit held in Sarajevo to basically celebrate stability in the region, to look forward and to try to sort of create a sense of momentum and motivation to move forward not just of Bosnia Herzegovina, but of the countries in the region.

And at that time, people were quite optimistic that things would move forward quite quickly.

there was more of an effort to really marginalize the political spoilers.

And there was really an enthusiasm among people to sort of move forward and to put some of the worst parts of the recent past behind them.

the challenge is always whether or not people who want peace are supported and empowered in terms of trying to move forward and create that vision that they want versus whether or not there are spoiler politicians.

Spoiler elites, spoiler oligarchs who have a different intention, and who may want to see something different than a lasting, positive peace.

>> When we come back from our only break of the hour, we're going to welcome some emails from listeners, and we've got emails in a number of different topics.

Greg sends us a note saying we should give Ukraine their Ukraine proposal a chance.

President Trump has already ended six other wars.

That's from Greg.

I know our guests will have something to say about that.

And perhaps that that claim of creating or brokering peace elsewhere.

and James got an email from you, Tim.

We'll we'll check those out as well here.

If you want to email the program.

It's Connections at wxxi.org.

Connections at wxxi.org.

You can call the program toll free 844295 talk.

It's 8442958255263 WXXI.

If you call from Rochester 2639994.

My guest is Dr.

Valery Perry, a senior associate at the Democratization Policy Council in Sarajevo.

Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina is marking 30 years since the Dayton Accords.

And we're talking about the lessons of peace agreements around the world.

We all want peace around the world.

We want peace for our kids.

But how do you create real stability and real sort of flourishing peace?

And what do you learn from these previous agreements that have worked in some ways, and perhaps not in other ways?

Coming up in our second hour, everyone deserves a chance to have health care at home or resources at home.

Not everyone gets it.

We're talking about why there are still so many disparities that keep people of color from accessing resources at home when it comes to their health.

And we'll talk about an organization that is trying to change that.

That is next hour on Connections.

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>> This is Connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

All right, a lot of questions.

We're going to start with Greg.

Greg says Evan, give the Ukraine proposal a chance.

President Trump has already ended six other wars.

I think the claim they're actually making is something like eight wars.

But Valery Perry do you want to take that one from Greg?

>> sure.

No, I mean, again, I think the only I guess the one good thing we could say about this 28 point peace plan that was put out last week is that it's it's forced other people to come to the table and put out alternate visions.

And in that sense of jumpstarted some of this.

I mean, the initial 28 point plan, if you read through it, it definitely does read like a Kremlin wish list.

it gives lip service to Ukrainian sovereignty.

And the very first point, but then it consistently goes through and lays out a number of conditions that actually would fundamentally constrict and limit the country's sovereignty.

And it doesn't even note the notion of a ceasefire until point 28. after everything's already been given up.

so one can understand why it would be seen as just total capitulation after so much fighting for a dignified sovereign state.

however, since then, we've now seen a European plan, which is more to the liking of people in Ukraine.

It does not allow for amnesty for all of the war crimes.

The way the first the 28 point plan did.

And it does not constrict the possibility of a NATO expansion or membership and sort of takes out a number of the most objectionable elements.

but what we remain to see is whether or not those are nonstarters for Putin.

I mean, he's had his maximalist demands for a long time because he basically wants to be able to control Ukraine as a proxy state.

The way he's done in Belarus, for example.

in terms of the claim of the Trump administration ending eight wars, I mean, there's been a lot of talk and chatter about that trying to figure out just what they're actually talking about.

it the reporting suggests that it was after the Israeli-hamas deal in Gaza that they, some of the advisers were chuffed enough to try to put together something for Ukraine.

but the problem is, is that while there is a ceasefire, you know, that was agreed between Israel and Hamas you know, recently, let's not forget that there had been a ceasefire in place in January at the beginning of the year when Trump came into power, and that we've seen a consistent really a consistent struggle to sort of try to lay out what peace means and how it will look beyond making the announcement.

And this is where I think we see that the administration is not even interested in making a distinction between either a framework agreement that has no details and the devil is always in the details when you're talking about things of such importance.

And an announcement that they can make and then turn their back and move away.

And several times we've even heard President Trump note that, well, look, I've done everything I can.

It's up to them now, as if he can just sort of wish it away in that way.

if you try to think about what these eight words are, I mean, again, you can look at Israel.

Hamas and Gaza, which again, people are being killed every day.

If it's a ceasefire, it's a very ineffective cease fire.

he claims to have ended war in between Israel and Iran.

I mean, basically, the United States was supporting Israel in terms of their airstrikes and actions in Iran.

And then the U.S.

bombed a nuclear facility and seems to have pretty much given up on negotiations on nuclear issues.

I'm not sure if that would be ending a war.

you can look at the Cambodia Thailand border dispute that has been going on for for decades.

and he was able to use tariffs to basically try to get them to stop some of the latest flare ups, but there's nothing to indicate that the issue has been resolved.

you can look at India, Pakistan and Kashmir.

I mean, the list goes on.

And again, the issue is have the root elements of the conflict actually been addressed.

And in many of these the answer is no.

and so it's a nice soundbite.

It sounds good from the press spokesperson, but anybody who actually follows the complexities of a war and peace recognize it's really just a false promise.

>> Greg, thank you for the email.

I'll get back to other emails in a moment.

Let me just follow up on a couple of the points regarding Ukraine.

As you mentioned, the European proposal is very different than the Trump administration's proposal.

The European just if people haven't read the 28 points from the Trump administration Ukraine gives up any aspiration of joining NATO.

Russia keeps Crimea and the Donbas and all territory that they currently hold and gets internationally recognized as holding those territories.

Ukraine has to reduce the size of its armed forces to make it harder to defend itself in the future.

Russia doesn't have to do new elections, but Ukraine does.

I mean, it's pretty wild.

The the European proposal, when you talk about, for example, war crimes, putting it back on the table to prosecute war crimes.

Valerie, we talked about 80 years since Nuremberg on this program last week.

And when when you go back and you, you really think about what happened at Nuremberg, it seemed to establish a standard.

And, you know, in some ways it certainly has where the world recognizes crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, crimes of aggression.

before the establishment a few years later, of genocide.

But all of these categories, when Russia is bombing civilian targets in Ukraine, which it undeniably is all the time, the only reason I can think of that there's not going to be a Nuremberg for Vladimir Putin is because he has nuclear weapons.

Is there anything else?

I mean, what am I missing there?

>> No, no, I mean, I think I think you're exactly right.

and the notion that there would be blanket amnesty for both parties in this initial 28 points is, is just really shameful when you consider what the massacre in Bucha, when you consider the kidnaping of Ukrainian children and many, many other crimes against Ukrainians, against civilians over the years, I mean, and of course Moscow would like to see an amnesty.

They want to forget about it.

they don't want to be held to account because they don't want to believe the notion of the rule of law or any sort of international rule of law or rights.

but also an amnesty, a blanket amnesty like that would also make it really easy to continue to try to rewrite the notion of the war, the notion of Ukraine.

And it would take away an opportunity to understand what happened there and why and when.

When you look at the issue of war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Bosnia Herzegovina, there was an international criminal tribunal which was prosecuting some of the most egregious war crimes that had been committed by by war leaders and many of the higher ups, both at The Hague, but then also through domestic remedies and courts.

And one can make a lot of criticisms about the pace of this process, about the fact that this has been a generational exercise.

but it was at least working towards accountability.

And very importantly as well, just the process of going through and hearing these cases, allowing appeal, et cetera., has created an amazing trove.

Of archives that documents what happened so that it's harder to rewrite history, it's harder to revise history and narratives, and therefore it's harder to rewrite the future.

And I think that we need to keep that in mind when we think about any politician who's seeking to basically give blanket pardons, give blanket amnesties so that it's easier for them to pretend the history didn't happen, and then to control a new narrative.

>> one other point on Ukraine.

I mentioned earlier that there are Republican leaders.

There's a couple of senators, Republican senators, who either leaked or said outright that they spoke privately to Secretary of State Marco Rubio and that Secretary of State Rubio has said that, you know, this isn't really our plan.

This was a plan that Moscow gave to us and that we're putting out there.

And it's open to revision.

Now, Rubio has come out and said, no, that's not true publicly.

He's saying, this is our plan.

I stand by it.

But what this is exposing is there's a big difference in the international vision of Rubio and JD Vance, the vice president is kind of rumored to be very supportive of this 28 point plan, very much behind this deal, and wanting to kind of get Ukraine behind us, because when he was a senator in Ohio, he said, why do I care about Ukraine?

Like, why is an American?

Is that even a concern of mine?

But the the claim now by people smarter than me, doctor Perry, is that where Vance is going?

Is something like this.

He's accumulating more power in the administration and he views the world as moving into a place where the United States is kind of in decline, as as a possibly the major power player in the world.

Russia and China are on the ascent.

And so you kind of make this tacit agreement with the other two powers, where you say the United States is going to control the Western Hemisphere, Russia and China will divvy up the rest that we will sort of tacitly wink at each other and say, you've got your sphere of influence.

We have ours.

And and I wonder if that sounds like a plausible description of where some of these, I would say thinkers, people like Vice President Vance, may see the world and may be trying to take the world.

>> Now, I think this is going to be another interesting display to sort of highlight some of the schisms that we're starting to see emerge within the Republican Party.

at this stage, now that Trump in many ways is seen as a lame duck since he can't or should not at least run again.

And as we're starting to see some of the different dynamics happening, especially like after the elections recently, and one would be sort of more of the traditional GOP.

And as you mentioned, the fact that a number of Republicans, you know, basically were willing to say that they heard that this was that Rubio had said that this had been written by the by basically by the Russians.

and put that out there.

One has to wonder whether or not they'll sort of stand by that and seek to sort of put out a better alternative.

I mean, if the Republican Party would like to demonstrate any independence right now, one would hope that people like Mitch McConnell and others who have nothing to lose, who are at the end of their careers, would perhaps sort of try to put together a different bipartisan alternative that doesn't throw all of the American values that the country has stood for.

in the garbage.

the way of pro-Russia peace plan would on the other side, as you mentioned, you've got Vice President Vance, who certainly is trying to establish where he stands in the party.

I mean, I've seen a lot of analysis and writing, questioning whether or not he's got the charisma to carry on after a Trump presidency, whether or not he could really rally the base in a way that he, that people would expect after having a leader such as Trump in place.

But what you're describing in terms of his vision of geopolitics in a division of the world into spheres of influence, is something that you see among far right wing thinkers and other places.

as you noted, this would basically presume that the Western Hemisphere and again, I don't know about Canada on this one because I don't think Canada would want to imagine that it was like a vassal northern state of this kind of setup.

But when you look at the build up near Venezuela right now, it's clear that there's an effort to project strength there.

right wing thinkers will look at this then, and we'll look even at this concept of Eurasia, and which would be sort of more of like a returning to certain, like senses of an imperial Russia together with China and sort of having that be a great geopolitical sphere of influence.

And the question there is, what does Eurasia look like, whether or not you've got a Europe that is in a transatlantic relationship?

And can Western Europe, the European Union, as we know it, hold off threats like that?

If that kind of geopolitical vision would move forward?

and I think it's not a coincidence that some of these ideas have been pushed by far.

Right.

quite extreme thinkers in Russia, like Alexander Dugin and others who have been trying to sort of create this notion of like this, a Christian Christian Eurasia of trying to reverse the enlightenment, of trying to sort of go back to some mystical past that didn't exist and that would not be based on human rights or participation.

Participatory democracy or accountability.

And the last thing I would just say on that is when you hear about these geopolitical spheres of influence, et cetera., one thing that's consistently notable is that, you know, like the continent of Africa will be sort of left out of this.

And yet you see all of these other players seeking to make deals and try to basically exploit that continent with whomever they can, seeing it really as just a place from which they can extract resources as opposed to recognizing that it's a continent made up of independent states, with people who also would like to live in dignity.

So so it's a very it's a very regressive approach and way of looking at things.

The fact that the vice president of the United States would be giving it time in the 21st century should give us all a cause for concern.

but that's really where we are right now.

And it would be.

It would be.

It would be nice to see if Mitch McConnell or others in the Republican Party would stand up against this, because it's certainly not what the traditional Reagan Republicans ever stood for.

>> Let me try to steel man the vice president's position, though I think he would say, look, it's not 1990 anymore.

It's not 1995.

We don't have a unipolar world where we are the only superpower and our our position is unchallenged.

Russia is on the ascent.

China is China.

We are not going to get into war with them.

That would be terrible for the world and could end the world.

And we are going to avoid the kind of catastrophic conflict that would lead to that kind of destruction.

So knowing that they are more powerful than they used to be, we're going to just be pragmatic and we're going to say, you know, you are in your sphere of influence, and we're going to try not to get overly involved here.

We're going to worry about our neighborhood.

And that's where we are that just pragmatic.

What do you think, Valerie?

>> I would say, first of all, that it would show that he did not read history very well, to sort of fail to understand how this system of the international order that was put into place after World War II was largely developed by the United States in a way that it would benefit, you know, the the, the liberal West, the Democratic bloc of countries.

But also worked really well for the United States.

And I was speaking with a friend of mine who's who's from Bosnia the other day, who was just noting his frustration, saying, how is it possible that the United States was able to build this system that benefited it?

And now it's coming, and basically throwing the game board off the table and saying it wants more?

the system did work for quite a long time.

Now.

You can look at different issues and say, well, wait a minute, what happened about the financial crisis?

What about you know, different issues about the rise of China and different broader geopolitical competition.

And those are certainly good discussions to have.

But then the question should be is, why was it that these economic and financial issues were not addressed in a way that would have prevented the dissatisfaction and the inequality that we're seeing at the heart of these right wing and anti-democratic movements in the United States and elsewhere.

And that's the thing that people want to avoid talking about, is what was the breakdown in the economic sphere that has enabled people to channel all of their frustration into the democratic and the political sphere?

And and again, I would also just note that talking about the fact that it's not a unipolar world, the rise of China, et cetera., I mean, people have seen this coming for a while.

I mean, there have been efforts through the TPP and others to try to make sure that there could be a larger bloc of democratic trading countries that could basically try to be a counter to a rising China.

and all of that was basically scrapped and tossed out the window in the first Trump administration.

which has decided that a bully go it alone approach will be better for it than trying to actually work with values based allies.

And I guarantee you that if the United States thinks that it will do better on its own, as opposed to working in a democratic, values based bloc they're going to lose.

a race to the bottom is not going to favor anyone except for the autocrats who want to basically have a system that is the opposite of the democracy that Americans think they want.

>> Let me grab an email from James, who says when Joe Biden was vice president, the press reported that Biden wanted a sectarian solution to divide Iraq.

People seemed to scoff at that time.

But how well do Sunnis and Shias function together?

What about the Kurds?

Maybe the lesson is more states based on ethnicity and common characteristics.

What does your guest think?

>> I guess the first question I would say is think about your own community.

think about different groups of people, whether based on religion or skin color or anything.

And how easy would it be to disentangle people in your community if you were suddenly in a situation where you had this polarization and rising tensions in the sense that you could not work together?

The reason the war in Bosnia Herzegovina was so bloody was that it took a lot of work to disentangle.

People had been living together, people had been in mixed marriages for for generations, for centuries.

And it took work to tear that apart.

And I think any society that's not 100% homogeneous needs to keep that in mind.

I remember when Joe Biden made the comment about Iraq and looking to divide it, because at one point there was even a reference to sort of establishing entities, which was a political territorial concept that was invented at the Dayton Peace Accords to really create two different territorial internal divisions.

And a lot of us were like, oh, my God, this is this is like a bad practice to take from Dayton and to put it into Iraq.

And I think his his comment is interesting though, too, because talking about the Sunnis and the Shias, I mean, when you look at some of these different sectarian or community based conflicts, it can be very easy to sort of say, oh, you know, the Sunnis and Shias have always been at each other's throats, or people in the Balkans have always been fighting.

There's always been ethnic conflict.

Oh, the U.S.

has always had racial problems, et cetera.

and that really just makes it easy to sort of pretend that you can put everyone in a box.

It makes it easy to ignore the fact that, in fact, the Sunnis and Shias were not at perpetual war for centuries.

But this is actually a fairly, modern invention that even happened really enhanced throughout my lifetime.

And the idea that you can ever really just keep dividing any political unit into smaller and smaller homogeneous blocs is simply it's simply impossible to look at.

I mean, impossible to do in any way that doesn't involve massive human rights abuses or population transfers.

there was a very good academic article called the The False Foundation of the Right to Secede, which basically said, well, at what point do you stop doing this?

At what point do you say, okay, we've gotten to a unit of government where it's small enough that people don't have to try to work together, don't have to try to collaborate?

and that doesn't work.

And I often think about discussions about gerrymandering in the United States right now when I think about that.

Because where do you divide that?

Are you making sure that you've got a system where people are working in a civic compact, a social compact for everyone, or are you trying to divide things so much that you end up breaking the whole society in general?

>> Well, that was James in Pittsford on email.

This different James on the phone in Fairport.

Hey, James in Fairport.

Go ahead.

>> my question, first of all, I think it's a great one of the best discussions you've had on your, your show.

>> And thank you.

>> my concern has always been and it's been a hobby of mine now for 50 years is why has there been no discussion whatsoever of the creeping 19th century like ukrainization of areas including the Donbas, but also Odessa?

>> of the rights or the ethnicity or the culture of the Russian speakers?

And this is a problem.

The United States is never very good at making contributions.

We screwed it up after World War I when we didn't create content cantons in in the Czech, in Czechoslovakia a country, incidentally, who Mussolini rightly said, we don't have a Czechoslovak problem.

We have a German Magyar Ruthenian, Czech and Slovak problem.

And that is a case of where you could have had a solution.

Many, many years, you know, forget the help.

What a monster Hitler was.

The legitimacy.

And that was a case where the populations, with the exception of Prague and maybe Brno.

Really were quote, to use the term of Jimmy Carter, relatively ethnically pure.

And, we're making the same mistake now and I happen to know from reading German bulletins that Gerhard Schroeder was very close to having former chancellor having a what he calls the South Tyrolean solution.

It took the Italians 60 years to do this.

After they annexed the South Tyrol.

but it's giving substantial local autonomy to the dominant ethnic group in South Tyrol and northern Italy.

That's German, but with protections for the now in the province minority.

He said he had that very close and that people on high got in the way of that.

So I'll stop there because I think your expert can address the issue of how important ethnicity and language and culture really are.

In most of these places.

>> Yeah, James thank you.

And again, he referenced the Donbas there.

So go ahead, Dr.

Perry.

>> No.

Sure I guess I mean I James is right in the sense that ensuring minority protections is critically important.

And it's not an accident that in the decades after World War II that we saw a lot of institutions put into place to precisely do that.

The Council of Europe there's a high commissioner for national minorities, there's a European court of human rights that can be used.

And a lot of this was put into place to make sure that the rights of linguistic or other minorities who were a minority in their, in their country were able to access and ensure rights quite often in education, often in media, et cetera.

And we saw that a lot of these rights were also of concern and of interest and being applied to Russian speakers in the Baltics, for example.

And so a lot of these institutions were built precisely because it was seen as a better alternative to seek protection of minority rights as opposed to forced population transfers.

And was this always done perfectly everywhere?

No, but there was a lot more progress made during those decades in a peaceful way than we had seen in many other places.

Now, what's important to keep in mind as well is that while a group of national, while a national minority group in some country in Europe may actually have, you know, and be able to enjoy the rights of using their own language or learning their language in school, et cetera., that does not then set aside the the obligation and the expectation that that group would also learn the state language so that they'd be able to communicate at, you know, in the general broader civic space as opposed to existing in some smaller ghetto.

Now, when you look at where we are in Ukraine right now, I mean, since the invasion, the takeover of Crimea and then the launch of the full scale war, I mean, we've now seen a decade basically of of armed conflict which has made it difficult to even think about how you would be applying these different minority rights.

I found it quite not ironic.

It's not the right word, but very I felt like it was a bit of trolling to see in the 28 points that some of these European minority conventions were noted in the 28 points.

but of course, only to ensure the rights of the Russians Russian speakers in parts of Ukraine as opposed to ensuring really a bilateral approach like this.

So so is the I mean, I guess unfortunately is the answer that you want to sort of be have a recommitment to a liberal democracy, comprehensive security, human rights, et cetera., but try to do it better or basically throw the baby out with the bathwater and make it a free for all.

Where again the bully who wants it more and doesn't care about the human consequence, is able to roll over and take what they want.

>> But before we go here, I think part of what James is arguing is it's not about what the bully wants, it's he's going to argue that the people who are perhaps consider themselves culturally Russian or Russian speaking.

I mean, look, I know how complicated this can be, and I'm not trying to create this perfect binary.

I don't know if James is either.

but Bob writes to say that he has close friends fighting over there and that they all say the same thing that Ukraine, including the Donbas, including Crimea, have been around for a thousand years longer than Moscow, and that this would be very, very difficult to simply cede large swaths of territory under some sort of auspices that that will end the war or end any desire for further aggression.

At the same time, Valery, in the last 30s for the people in the Donbas who are Russian speaking you know, I guess part of the claim from James or others would be that maybe they deserve independence or, you know, some kind of self-governing.

What do you think.?

>> I think that we have seen since Russia went into Crimea in 2014, that Moscow has never wanted to see a Ukraine that functioned, or that even would have the possibility of stronger protections for minority rights in line with European institutions, because then more people within Russia itself would wonder why they weren't getting them.

I think that even if we start to see more and more support for partition plans, even if we see that the Trump administration or others are willing to sort of turn their back, the notion that the Russian speakers in Donbas, et cetera., are going to be living in a thriving democracy, it's just not going to happen.

I mean, that's not happening in Russia in general, and it's always an issue of who's going to be the next victim in target and whether or not there's a system of rights in the rule of law that will protect those people.

And in an authoritarian system, in an autocratic system, it doesn't exist.

And so in the long run, the people who are living in this place that has really been pummeled and destroyed and had its history and roots torn out of it their future will not really be one that's grounded in rights for anyone unless they're in the right political tribe.

>> Boy, we could have done two hours.

Dr.. Perry.

James, thank you for the phone call.

No partition, minority rights, the better path to peace, I think is I'm going to sum it up there, doctor Perry, great talking to you.

Thank you.

As always.

Talk to you again soon.

>> Thanks a lot, Evan.

Bye bye.

>> More Connections coming up here.

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