 We have, I should say before, sorry, I just had a message popping up here, I should say that the meeting is live streamed. It is also recorded. If you have any privacy concerns about this, could you please anonymise yourself as much as possible. You will only appear with some sort of name as you choose in the Q&A section, not in the chat function that's disabled for the audience. So if you anonymise yourself, then everything should be fine. If you're really worried, then please you would need to leave the meeting and then come and watch the session afterwards. It will, it's live streamed on YouTube and it will be recorded and then left there for in perpetuity. Q&A questions, as I said, please put them in the Q&A, the questions put them in the Q&A section. We will in the background start, I start, sorry. Right, it's just an administrative matter that's popped up in the background, start collecting questions while people are speaking, please ping us questions as they pop into your mind because we will have the Q&A session at the very end. Now it is up to me to, with great delight, introduce our illustrious panel. We have a guest speaker, Dr. Daniel Brunstetter, he's associate professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine. He holds a PhD in political science and he will speak together with Francesco, have a conversation with Francesco Lobo. He is a postgraduate research student at the Department of War Studies at King's College, and he's also one of the stellar members of our research team. He's an international lawyer. They will both be talking about self-determination through the lens of history and international law, a conversation between the two of them. They will then immediately in the interest of time be followed without any further interruption by Dr. Victoria Hudson. She is a British Academy postdoctoral fellow and in the Department of War Studies also at King's College London. She will be speaking about really exciting research that she's done over several years, breaking free of the Russian world, a trajectory of Russian soft power in Ukraine, which is all based on survey results that she has gathered in particular areas in Ukraine. And if Paul Schulte, who should be joining us, I'm not entirely sure whether he will, but I am assuming he will join us. If he will join us, he is a senior visiting fellow at King's College and an honorary professor at Birmingham University Institute of Conflict, Cooperation and Security. He is a very seasoned civil servant who has huge experience in matters from nuclear proliferation to all sorts of other security related issues. And he will be talking about orc ethics, the meaning of Z and the intellectual paternity and implications of violent expansionary rashes. At the end, at the last presentation after that we then have our Q&A session, hopefully a lively conversation with everyone. And so without further ado, I hand over to Daniel and Francisco. Thank you very much for the invitation to join you on this panel and at this conference. I'm speaking to you from Bordeaux or Bordeaux, France, where I'm on a sabbatical working on a project. Normally I would be in Southern California, but here I am on European time. So as Francisco and I started this conversation about self-determination a few months ago in preparation for this, one of the words that came up frequently was the word narrative. Self-determination had different meanings depending upon whose perspective one was taking to any particular conflict. And so I want to begin our presentation, our conversation by saying a little bit about the word narrative and what narratives mean. I'll give Francisco a second to put up our slide. So narratives are part of the process of constructing identity because they help us to create shared history that produces collective linkages. They contribute to the creation and construction of memories by giving meaning to certain elements of one's past, such as the origin of the people or the trials, tribulations, triumphs and sometimes failures throughout history, as well as defining present fears and goals which can affect current and future political actions. Narratives reflect historical events and portray a sense of identity, but are not always factually accurate and often contradict other narratives of the same events. Next slide please. So we're okay. The slide before sorry. So narratives are inevitably selective, whether through the limits of an individual's own experiences or by choice through deliberately placing emphasis on certain historical or cultural elements and or admitting, omitting others. So there are what one might call master narratives which project a sense of group identity and are attached to dominant culture perceptions and institutional actions such as education and governmental posturing. These often claim to represent truth and tend to be binary us versus them. On the other hand, there are individual narratives which reflect how different people and or groups perceive events and circumstances which may sometimes challenge the master narrative. And then there is the narrative of the other, which tends to paint the other as the enemy while denying the other a voice to express its own multitude of perspectives. According to leading experts on the study of narrative, the focus on narratives asks us to temporarily set aside questions of right and wrong, and instead focus on the explanatory questions essential to understanding how world politics unfold and in our particular interest here we're going to take questions regarding self determination. As this panel unfolds my hope is that we, the participants in the audience can collectively come up with a list of explanatory questions, and maybe some answers along the way as well. I also point out and emphasize that not all narratives are equal. They have different senses of power in the storytelling and in international relations, and not all narratives are true, or necessarily just. It is up to us through critical and interdisciplinary research to discern what power any particular narrative holds in a specific conflict, and then explore the moral tensions related to questions about justice that might arise. We need to be aware of biases of those who construct the narrative, the emissions over emphasis of the good bits distortion of history negation of facts. And of course, our own biases that we bring to the analysis. Next slide please. So, the Spanish conquest. Why you might ask, are we talking about the Spanish conquest of the so called New World. Today, in this seminar. Well, my own personal narrative is that I have a background in Latin American studies, Francisco and I were chatting about this he also has a background in Latin America. And we were interested in the subject. And this is in part due to some of my early work which was on this particular moment in history as it relates to just war. But more importantly, because once when I was teaching a class on the ethics of war, I had a student of Tlaxcaltekin origin challenge me in class by asking the following question. What does the Tlaxcaltekin narrative teaches us about the just war tradition. So here we are. Today I wanted to take on that challenge and in guys of an answer, offer this. The Tlaxcaltekin is a case where a narratives approach complicates our intuitions about the rights and wrongs of just war, and raises important questions about self determination that are relevant to contemporary conversations we will be having surrounding Russia and Ukraine. Next slide please. Our intuitions are that it was an unjust war for the Spanish to conquer the new world despite, sorry, previous slide, despite Francisco de Victoria's arguments to the counter. Those of you who have studied the just war tradition will be familiar with Victoria's arguments that despite arguing for the quote unquote sovereignty of the quote unquote barbarians. Nevertheless laid out several causes in which the Spanish could wage a just war against the Aztecs, notably to overthrow what he considered as a tyrant, and the just war to help ones allies in this case the Tlaxcaltekin. Our intuitions are that Victoria's arguments don't hold. We want to side with the Aztecs morally, even if we might disagree with their customs, their polytheistic rituals. We must, in some sense, try to put ourselves in the shoes of Kau Temak, who was the last of the Aztec emperors, defending the sovereignty of the Aztecs. And to put it in the words of Liklizio, who is a modern day Nobel Prize laureate, he says we need to imagine the terrible beautiful magical world of the Aztecs as equally legitimate. And therefore, the Aztecs were waiting in a just war to defend their own way of life. And you'll see that way of life was also a way of life that was defined by empire, the Aztecs were an expansive empire, and they were pushing all across what is considered to them as America, and especially waging perpetual wars against the Tlaxcaltekas. If we take this binary view and our intuitions about it, we're in some ways misled, as many scholars have shown that we need to take a broader narrative approach to understand different stories about self-determination that complicate matters. So next slide please. And so one of the narratives is the narratives of the Tlaxcaltekas. Many of you, a few of you might have heard of them, most of you probably not, but the Tlaxcaltekas were a group living in the same geographical space as the Aztecs. Their leader at the time of the Spanish encounters with New World peoples, Chico Dantla, sorry about the pronunciation, the first made the choice that in order to maintain and sometimes securitizes the sovereignty of his people to ally with the Spanish. And the goal of this choice was to defeat the traditional enemy of the Aztecs that was constantly harassing them. So in a very oversimplified version of events, by allying with the Spanish, the Tlaxcaltekas defeated their enemy, gained status and privilege in the generations to come as the Aztec imperial period faded and the Spanish imperial period unfolded. So if we privilege their narrative and recognize their agency to make strategic and moral decisions as legitimate, what does this tell us about just war, self-determination, and the rights and wrongs in international relations? Before I get to these questions, before we get to these questions, I want to emphasize that one thing taking the Tlaxcaltekas perspective does not do is it does not negate all the wrongs the Spanish committed, and there are many. Privileging the Tlaxcaltekas perspective does reveal a series of tensions we ought to think about. Next slide please. And these tensions I'll just mention them, not to take up too much time, but their tensions about questions of empire oppression in unjust war, about agency and self-determination in the name of a non-liberal or non-democratic regime. Questions about sovereignty protection to protect one's way of life as part of a just war, and questions about forfeiture of sovereignty and regime transfer information and when is in fact a war of self-determination unjust. And if we put all these narratives into conversation and try to ask who was on the just side and the unjust side, it raises a series of really important questions that I hope we're going to discuss that I think are important in the current context as well. Next slide please. And in the interest of time, I'll just throw these questions out there and then turn things over to Francisco who will bring us up to the present day. What matters most in this context, the Tlaxcaltekas, the Spanish, the Aztecs? Which narratives matter and how do they matter? And what is the relationship between self-determination, ethics, and international law? Excellent. Thank you so much, Daniel. I hope you can hear me. If not, please let me know. Okay, so I'll take over from here. We will be talking about international law a little bit as a result in a way of this history. It's interesting that you cited Francisco de Vittoria because he's one of the main authors of international law that the early centuries of modern international law. So the principle of self-determination as a cornerstone standard in modern contemporary international law has an interesting history. It's more technical or legal history as a source of international law. I will briefly summarize here. We find it in, well, after the First World War in Wilson's 14 points, we find it again at the UN Charter as one of the main principles of the new organization back in 45. Again, the UN endorses this principle in the 60s, referring to colonial peoples and their right to self-determination. It's linked in the 60s as well with not only the colonization but also with human rights. So it is part of that sub-regime of international law. It is also mentioned again in this very important resolution by the General Assembly on friendly relations and principles of international law. It is recognized as a just cause or legitimate cause for war in additional protocol one of the Geneva Convention. So it is acknowledged as a type of international armed conflict to fight for independence and self-determination against colonial or racist regimes. Those are the words used in the protocol. Moving on, very recently the International Law Commission has suggested this principle of self-determination as an example of a use Kogan's rule that is a very important rule hierarchically in the tree of international law sources. And more recently the International Court of Justice has said that this principle has the status also of a customary rule of international law. So this is just to say that it is a part of international law, self-determination as both a principle and a customary rule and even with this high hierarchy or high status that is a use Kogan's condition. So it is definitely part of international law today, again, as a result of this historic development that Daniel was talking about. In the interest of time, I'm not going to spend too much time on the different types of self-determination according to the literature. I don't think that's what interests us today. We are here to talk about practice. But there is a division between external and internal self-determination, whether you are free to govern yourself vis-a-vis a different political community or within your own political community. And then we have other types of self-determination, but that's the main division, I would say, or classification external or internal. We wanted to come back to Daniel's point about narratives in tension. So he was talking about that tension back in the day of the Spanish Empire, right, like 500 years ago, but we still have narratives in tension when it comes to self-determination today. And I wanted to briefly address each of these types of narrative that I have identified, especially when it comes to the case of Ukraine as a nice segue maybe to what the other panelists are going to talk about. So, okay, we have established that self-determination is a part of international law. It's a source. It's very important. It even has Yuskogen status. So it's definitely very, very important. But what does it mean? We don't have an exact definition. We don't have a legal definition. We don't have a treaty defining self-determination or a definitive authoritative ruling by a court defining it. So I would say that it's basically empty in a Kantian way. So my Emmanuel Kant is a bit rusty. I'm sorry, but I do remember that his formulations of the imperative, the categorical imperative were kind of empty. That was Hegel's critique against Kant, actually. So yeah, we're free to self-determine to self-govern, but it doesn't say anything about the way of life we're supposed to choose, right? It's only with the second formulation of the imperative that Kant introduces some content in the form of human dignity or not to treat others as mere objects, right? So we are supposed to flesh out or provide some content for this empty formula that is self-determination. And some contents are better than others. That's my contention. At least, I don't know if Daniel shares this view. In my view, some contents are actually worse than others. So this is one example, what I call authoritarian self-determination. So earlier this year, Russia and China, in early February, they issued a joint statement about international relations, international law, COVID, the Olympics, they covered everything. And they referred to democracy and self-determination, and they said, well, democracy is really, it really depends on the historic context and the traditional values that the community has. And the community can decide to be a democracy or not. It's up to the community. So it's a very, very interesting take on the link or lack thereof between self-determination and democracy. So my point is authoritarian regimes, and again, my contention is that Russia and China are, they could use also self-determination in their own advantage to actually curtail democracy and human rights. We can also see that modern democracies where the rule of law exists, like for instance, here in the UK, can still use this narrative of self-determination to, again, advance or perpetuate some views of history that we're not all comfortable with as in imperialistic views of history. So to put it more simply, the Brits have used the principle of self-determination, the same principle, to justify their presence in the Falkland Islands or the Malvinas in South America, the Chagos Islands, and a bunch of other overseas territories. Why? Because they say, well, the population, they are the ones who want to be part of our Commonwealth or our political community, so we are just applying the principle of self-determination. So this content is also one of the not desirable contents of self-determination. I would say that a robust sense of self-determination, as the one we can see in the Biden-Turk commission referring to the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, where you have democracy, respect for human rights, the rule of law, that is the kind of self-determination we should be aiming for. That is what I believe to be a robust sense of self-determination. But yeah, since I'm running out of time, I will just leave it there. Hopefully we can connect this to the construction of identity in the current conflict between Ukraine and Russia. And for that I will just hand over to Victoria Hudson, and I'll just stop sharing my screen. Someone did it for me. Excellent. Thank you. Hi, thanks. Thanks, Francisco, and thanks to all for inviting me to be part of this panel today. I will just quickly share my screen. Okay. Hopefully that should be visible now, but do let me know if not. Yeah, my contribution to this discussion on self-determination. Well, it's clear to see that the idea of breaking free of Russia's cultural orbit, it's an expression of Ukraine's will for self-determination and to free itself of the Russian world. And that people sometimes will have been actually imposed upon it and to find its own independent narratives. And today this is the very first chance I've had to share some of my findings from the ongoing field work from my postdoc. The surveys were run in the autumn to sort of early spring of this year, and very much just finished quite shortly before the war. So firstly, to explain my approach to this study of soft power. Overall, I'm looking at how the Kremlin itself operationalizes and approaches what I'm calling soft power, but it doesn't necessarily look at it through that particular lens. But it does operationalize in terms of cultural ideational influence, albeit not always in the more volunteeristic way they'll be associated with soft power. So in the research I'm looking at what are the narratives that Russia tries to promote about itself about the world, what interpretive filters does it want foreign citizens to apply in interpreting these things. And important values and pre assumptions to audiences need to hold to buy into Russian narratives. I also look in my research at the channels of communicating with audiences. But what's perhaps a bit unusual about my approaches by also look at the audience they're foregrounded in my research, and rather than being seen as some vessels ready to be filled with propaganda content. The audience members are seen as active active participants in the communication process, and they exert friction upon the communication upon the narratives that they receive. It shapes their reception of the strategic narratives that are directed at them. So the friction can relate to the credibility of the speaker, the sort of strengths of the communication, own personal experiences, those of friends, family, identity choices. And of course, except exposure and receptivity to alternative discourses, which might be seen to boost what we can call resilience. Now all these factors hand together and interact reinforce dilute each other it's quite hard to tease them apart. So in that sense, it's quite difficult to draw a line of causality between any given communication and a particular outcome in terms of audience reception. And there are many factors, but then what this study is it's kind of like a dipstick. It says what is what do people think about these things at this moment in time acknowledging that there can be many factors contributing to that. And essentially, though, if there's a favorable reception, that's going to be positive for Russian foreign policy possibilities, regardless of the reasons. And of course, how do audiences receive those messages positively? Do they sympathize with excitement, interest? Do they resonate with them? Do they reproduce the narratives in their own communications or do they reject, undermine, criticise, ridicule, express irony. And that feeds into behaviours, whether it's some active discipleship, perhaps, or maybe tested passive consent more commonly, or are they motivated to resist. And how far. That's the background of my approach. I think audience reception in my post-op overall, I've taken their mixed methods approach to try to triangulate the results between the surveys, which gives basically a series of statements that are expressed in Russian public diplomacy and asks participants to evaluate them and express their agreement or disagreement on a five point like at scale. So one is sort of strong disagreement, five strong agreements, and three is more ambivalent. And overall, in the post-op, we've put about spare 2000 valid responses from the three participating countries, Estonia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine in 2021 and 22. And these are triangulated with focus groups in the same countries, about 24, the data is still coming in from those mostly gathered but not yet analysed. So yeah, this is Ukraine clear. I'm sure it's a familiar map now in 2011 when I ran this similar survey just focusing on Ukraine in four cities. Lviv in the west of the country, Kiev, the capital, Parkiv, and Donetsk, both in the eastern regions. Obviously, in the 21-22, it was not possible to run this very same survey in Donetsk. So we looked instead at Odessa. So we did the survey in Odessa. Unfortunately, the wall broke out before we were able to run the focus groups there, but we did still get eight focus groups from the other three cities. So yeah, looking to the samples that we gathered. Overall, it was a smaller sample in 2011, but in both years, a slight majority of females should do various reasons for that, quite familiar in the social sciences and particularly in this region. And most people, almost 99% were citizens of Ukraine. They should be citizens or permanent residents to participate. And most people actually self-identified as Ukrainian, already in 2011, but even more so in 2021. People familiar with the census figures of Ukraine, outdated though they are, might raise their eyebrows at these and I'm happy to discuss that at a later stage in the questions. So then looking at the results of the survey, this is the overall, this is the headline figures actually. It's an average of the scores for questions about culture, values, foreign policy, and the social economic attraction of Russia. The blue at the bottom, that indicates they had a low level of attraction. Their average score over all those questions was less than 2.5. Medium bands, quite considerable in 2011, 2.5 to 3.5 of clustering around the middle, which we might often expect. And then those grey ones at the top, those are the ones that expressed a really quite consistently high level of receptivity, positivity towards the statements that were proposed to them. And it's really clear that over that decade, the level of acceptance of Russia's cultural narratives has decreased very significantly. Looking more specifically at the cultural questions here, just going to check the time, mindful of that. So culture is kind of seen as a forefront in public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, soft power. Overall, the difference in cities is less than in 2020, 2011. And when it comes to the sort of supposedly pro-Russian cities, we can see that more people have a negative attitude, less people have a positive attitude. It's quite interesting to look at Lviv, although it's still relatively unfavourable, and it's some very skeptical city as regards Russia. And it's perhaps a little less unfavourable. There's been relative positive change there perhaps, maybe we can talk about the role of cultural diplomacy and so on. But at the same time, Kiev remains relatively steady on issues of culture. This is quite an interesting development. As regards to questions about values, in 2011, there was a relatively low level of reduction of those issues, perhaps because they were more general statements, they didn't actually reference Russia specifically, rather just the positions that Russia tries to stand for in international politics in that sphere. We can perhaps come back to that. I don't want to spend too much time on individual points, but just to show that it breaks down quite interestingly also with regard to foreign policy, much greater rejection across the board, including in those cities are often seen as pro-Russian, generally much greater rejection. And socioeconomic attraction, that was perhaps a little bit of a surprise. This is perhaps one where the level of disillusion with Russia is highest. Yeah, so 85% overall turning out to be in the low band and 69% scoring an average of less than two. So interim conclusion, attraction of Russia among the target sample population has declined. But meanwhile, the intra-Ukrainian differences also appear to be shrinking, which is quite interesting. For instance, the correlation coefficients between like city of study and the scoring of individual questions have dropped from sort of moderate to moderately strong. So that was quite a strong correlation between which city you were studying in and whether you had a high or low level of attraction to Russian points of view as judged by the survey. And in the recent study, it was more sort of moderate to weak really. And this was the case across the board, all the questions really I don't know where there was greater division between cities. And then there was a significant minority of variables, where there wasn't actually statistically significant difference between the cities at all. So that's quite interesting. Because Ukraine has traditionally been seen as a city that is a lot of regional diversity, but certainly among this target population on the issues I've asked about, that seems to be shrinking. And this trend is particularly holds particularly true for the questions relating to Ukraine, specifically to Ukraine, which is like a fifth strand of questions that weren't included in those previous averages. So this, this summarizes people's responses to the statements Ukraine and Russia should come to be close and friendly ties reflecting their common history. So, unfortunately, labeled really, but the Ukrainian colors towards the top of the charts indicate that people were agreeing with that statement by giving a four or five score. So we can look to Donetsk and approximately 70% either agreed or strongly agrees with that statement. Looking over to 2021. Clearly, the statement is much less appeal to people, even in, let's say the most pro Russian cities, Harkiv or Desa when they were talking, and only 40% accepting those statements. And here, just another one to demonstrate the statements, President Yushchenko was long to recognize Stefan Bandera as a hero of Ukraine. It's a rather controversial figure, traditionally in Ukraine in Ukraine. From the Russians of Soviet perspective, this was say, you know, a Nazi, if I think they consider his followers doing neo-Nazis, those who lionize him, but from the Ukrainian patriotic perspective, the emphasis is much more on his role in fighting for Ukrainian independence. So, I say quite a lot of disagreements and ambivalence about this question in Harkiv and Donetsk in 2011, very low level of acceptance, very low level of disagreement with that statement. Contrast very strongly with Lviv, for example, where 80% disagreed. They find that they support really strong shift of opinions in 2021. It's really interesting to note that there's a very strong correlation or moderately strong correlation between people's scores on Russian soft power generally the four strands and their views on Russian perspectives towards Ukraine. The correlation is stronger as well as the overall mean scores have reduced, so we can see a much more homogenization of views. It's also interesting to note that over the decade between the two surveys, political engagement among the highly educated Ukrainian youth has really increased quite dramatically. These scores related to stated level of interest in politics, importance of voting, present level of involvement in political activities, intention distribution, political campaigns, and their stated readiness to participate in societal activities to initiate political change. But there isn't, interestingly, a particularly strong correlation between political engagement and the overall Russian soft power score. So what do we know about these very quickly pro-Russian Ukrainians, largely from the East, most of them do identify as Ukrainians. Unsurprisingly, perhaps because there was a low level of Russians actually identified in this survey, but there's a strong role of Russian speaking is very important. Quite interesting these linkages 20% have a 26% have a preference for Russian language media, you might find that's quite low, but it compares with 10% for those who had a low or medium Russian soft power score. 28% not fluent in Ukrainian that's far higher than the other groups, less likely to access online media. 50% sometimes or often Russian television Russian based which is 12% for those with a low score. It's been more likely to spend a longer period of time in Russia. Large number of them have family in Russia, of which 40% are in close contact. And the 27% participated in activities organized by the Russian community versus 10% among other groups. Let's skip over quickly over this one but can talk about if desired. So interim conclusions we don't know the direction of causality to these kind of linkages encourage a person to have professional attitudes or if they've got those attitudes the way more likely to go to Russia. It's likely to be iterative greater receptivity confirmation bias. It's a complicated relationship. And we'll be exploring great steps. What's interesting to mention is what's really driven these changes. Perhaps it's not surprising that many people consider themselves to be Ukrainians rather than Russians and this is a young generation, not only born and bred in Ukraine themselves but of parents who came of age and independent Ukraine. Many Russia's actions have made the expression of progression sentiments quite problematic. And this is a country that portrayed itself as a brotherly nation meant to engage in a war against it. It's hard to make sense of that. The objective negative consequences of Russian actions such as clearly loss of life, loss of livelihoods, displacement, reduction in Ukrainian GDP all the consequences from that. Ukrainianization measures are likely to play a strong role in promoting the Russian Ukrainian language restrictions on Russian media in Ukraine. That's an interesting factor of the decline of the pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch. So, for example, Renat Akhmetov was one of the major backers of the former president and Yanukovych, who was ousted in the 2014 revolution he was seen as rather pro-Russian. Mr Akhmetov was one of the major victims of the loss of territory in the east of Ukraine. So, to express a pro-Russian opinion, that was a very useful thing at a certain point in time. There was a constituency for elections to elect candidates on that basis but that's become much more problematic now, understandably. Whereas for many reasons previously, there were pragmatic financial reasons rather than cultural or political reasons, often the gatekeepers allowed a flow of pro-Russian ideas into Ukraine. Whether that was just by buying media content or reproducing Russian ideas about the role of the Russian language among the population, but now the drawbridge has really been drawn up against that. It's an acceptable, even traitorous, to reproduce those kind of ideas. So, the aggrand in that sense is much clearer for pro-Ukrainian patriotic ideas to flourish as they seem to be doing among the young people in my survey. And yeah, that's probably the main points I want to make today and I'm happy to take questions but in the meantime I will hand over to Paul Schroeter for his presentation. Close enough. Is that visible now as the slideshow beginning? No Paul, I can't see a slideshow at all. Well, I've pressed share slide. How do I get, my slide deck is open on my computer. How do I get? If you go down to share screen at the bottom of your window, there's a green button. Yeah, I had pressed that. I'll press it again. And if you go to, so you need to highlight the presentation that pops up because you will have various images and you need to highlight that and then once that's highlighted that should come up for all of us to see. Which I've done. It's now popped up again on my screen. I'm sorry about why this is not happening. Yeah, and now I can, ah, well, I can see your Twitter. Yeah, that's not that interesting. Let's see if I can from now. There's nothing happening here. Right. Yay. Thank you. Here we go. I wanted to talk about an important ethical and geopolitical issue the small operation going on in Ukraine and what it means and how it is being explained and justified. We're talking ethics. And so I want to talk about these evolving moral claims, but also behind them what is actually revealed about the ethical choices about the Russian elite and I have that I use this notion of the collective Putin. We don't know exactly who that is at any moment. I'm not assuming. So I'm going the opposite way from the proceeding presentation in a way I'm looking at statements by the elite rather than revealed measured attitudes amongst the public. And I don't believe that the elite believe all they say. I don't think they even expect to be believed. I'm not proposing all Russians agree with that or there is a single review, a single view. There are people who say a lot and may not matter very much to the choices of the Russian state. And to be clear, because I go through this set of moral arguments, it doesn't mean that I endorse or are sympathetic to them. So, Z is rather important. It's got meanings in the wider world and certainly within Russia as a certain sense of identity, almost produced by the state and constantly emphasized by the state. If you don't support the special military operation, you're not a proper Russian. You are a long way to being a traitor. And this kind of dehumanization is running high in this war. If you look at the samples I've seen of statements, each side receives the other as as conditioned by propaganda sinister forces, both sides call the other zombies. And the Russians even themselves took about the zombie box they're aware of what TV says. You can find samples of intercepted conversations which prove that. But what started me thinking is that only the Ukrainians see themselves as at war with orcs. And orcs are subhuman, they're maligned, they're destructive, they're murderous. And there are huge numbers of them and nothing will stop them except killing them. And so you find these official statements saying a squad of orcs has been repelled. And this woman who's probably now dead, a female's Ukrainian sniper, insist we must kill them all. And no doubt she did her best before probably being killed herself. And this is a Manichaean universe, drawing on Tolkien, but also Christian iconography. Virtuous Ukrainians are fighting Russian orcs assisted by Saint Javelin. And there's now a Saint N-Law, I think, who've come in on the virtuous side. But my point is there is what attempts to be a coherent moral system legitimating the orcs. You can trace its lineage, which I try and touch on very briefly. And it's continually being elaborated. It's trying to recuperate any challenge to it. We didn't pay enough attention to it. We didn't in the years before the special military operation in the West. The Ukrainians did, but we thought it couldn't be true. They couldn't possibly mean this. And it relies on many fairly abstract resentments and grievances. But those grievances are much, much less intense than now Ukrainians. And the Ukrainians call this system rashism, Russian fascism, a portmante word. It has to do with holy Russian exceptionalism, Russian endurance. It's innocent, non-aggressive character, the way it's been attacked and thwarted by others. And nevertheless, Russia can be great again by bold leaders, not put off by suffering. Russians are good at suffering. They emphasize that. Suffering, whether it's suffered or inflicted, is OK. Bold leaders need to do it, to choose it. And they need to do it because we need a post-Western world. The international system is unfair. It's dominated by the West. That spreads all sorts of perversion and liberal skepticism. The world has not changed with international law fundamentally. Hard power must be part of what good Russian leaders will do. If you don't, you're betraying the future of the Russian people, the Russian world. And so Russia has to lead in pushing for that post-Western world in every possible sphere. And there's now a global crisis. Ukraine is just one example of that. In this crisis, the virtues of solidarity and spiritual security and proper cleansing of information are more important than ever. Internal traitors, which includes the Ukrainian leadership, who refused to accept they were part of the Russian world, they must be punished. And their illegitimate state should be abolished. That's a maximalist view, which may now, as I'll say, be changing. And to be weak or sentimental or credulous is a betrayal of Russia and Russian people. And of course, in this situation, proceeding treaties and international law no longer automatically apply. And this creates an interesting case in kind of the moral argumentation. It's a supreme emergency to Russia's exceptional status, but it's an impending supreme emergency. There isn't actually an invasion, but there might be. Russia's position in the world might be so seriously ministered that it loses what it's entitled to. And that means, for all these additional reasons, the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians, discrimination and violence allegedly against Russian-speaking Ukrainians, the damage to Russia's proper global position if Ukraine moved. It's West's fault because they ignored Russia's repeated warnings and they say Western theorists like Mirzheimer themselves and say that NATO has made war an offensive, realistic inevitability. And also this real politic argument that Russia needs to deter other states from trying any similar movement. And behind that is a sort of straight propaganda claim. Russia that Ukraine was working on nuclear and biological warfare before the invasion. We haven't heard much of that since. So forcible demilitarization was indispensable. And this makes it a strong adbellum case. In any way, Russian public opinion largely agrees with it. And states from more than half the world's global population in the U.N. have refused to condemn Russia. So that's the kind of democratic aspect to it. And there's a religious ingredient. The Russian Orthodox Church has more or less blessed the war partly because it's a war against gay pride and liberal perversity. And they endorse the idea that this is a global emergency. And you've always had these people like Dugan for years who may not be Putin's brain as they were said to be a few years ago, but they have this worked out doctrine of Russia again being very different, special and entitled to a huge geopolitical presence in the world. In which you create to which Ukraine is a major threat. It's an absolute he was saying as long ago as 1997 and his book The Foundation of geopolitics is read by all Russian has been read by all Russian generals and staff college. And he takes this smittest approach that Russia has to bring down the global hegemonic international legal and economic system. Otherwise it's its destiny cannot be assured and it can't even continue in its in its present power. But what's happened is that this this very big. Ukraine related justification has receded as as the war's gone wrong. They're calling up other theorists like you can off who's saying this is this is now an attempt to bring down the international system, which we have to do because of the selfishness of liberal leaders after the Cold War. Russia's like as in 1917 is is kind of bringing defending the future of the world changing the future of the world, no matter what it costs. It's a brave Vanguard nation. Dimitri train in who used to be a relative liberal is now saying what's happening as the war's gone on because the West is increasing its involvement. It's in effect trying to destroy Russia's world role in the world. And to do this, we can't give in in Ukraine because otherwise the hybrid war will move into into Russia. And we must win. The important task is to achieve strategic success, which clearly means some kind of military success in Ukraine. So all those arguments and are being changed and strengthened and to turn to add in Bello how the orcs actually behave. Well, here I think that the playbook is quite clear. Russians must always be assumed to be behaving well. Everyone is lying. Russia's not saying it doesn't lie, but everyone does. Nothing's true. Everything is possible. Whatever happened a long time ago and besides it never happened. Everything must be disputed collateral damage shit happens. So no reported Russian disciplinary action over war crimes. The Constitution Constitution, they can't extradite anyone. And we get this interesting immediate angry historical relativism. Whatever we do, we're entitled to do it because the Americans have done worse. And they they talk about the numbers of deaths in Libya, etc, etc. And and and very angrily insist we must always bring this up. That's what we have to do. And we are going to then this proportionality argument. We were entitled to threaten to blow up the world with nuclear weapons because this is so important, even though it's not a war. We're entitled to starve millions in the third world. We're entitled to do what we have to do against civilians. But we must also and this would be part of what I take to be the code of Orc ethics is to preserve our power. We will do many of these things, but we must never we must never accept that we've done them because that would be to diminish our rightful power in the world. And it's going to get worse because Russia is now expecting an insurgency. It will explain this as Ukrainian nature, NATO hybrid warfare. And to deal with it, it's going to do what its doctrine requires it to do what it did in Chechnya, Syria and Georgia. And so we should get ready for all the apparatus of authoritarian peace, building and population control. We're already seeing filtration camps, ideological reeducation. They've removed all the textbooks, historical textbooks in Ukrainian schools they've captured. Net mass deportation as under Stalin. And this interesting new word, herbicide, the utter destruction of the cities that resist Aleppo, Grozny and now Mariupol. And that's going to be harsh, but we'll say the Russians are beginning to say at least these things work. This approach works unlike the way the West have lost Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, millions of deaths there and to what end you lost. So we're not going to use that Nambi-Pambi approach. And indeed, the ultra naturalists like the senator Gherkin are saying your wimps, the government is not being tough enough. So there will be plenty of voices within Russia saying we have to push harder. And anyway, most humanitarian arguments are just thinly disguised liberal self-pleading. So to conclude, what we've seen is an atomization of the huge gap, which I think we all already have noted and felt between Russian and Western moral judgments, let alone Ukrainian judgments. This is a huge collision in many dimensions. Now, Russians will make it spread into as many dimensions as they can. We won't see quickly its full effect on international relations. But if we think about the future, given what we already know, so many deaths, so many lies, what forgiveness after such knowledge, what forgiveness? I think that's T.S. Eliot. And in the future, it's not going to go away like the real Nazism went away after the Third Reich because a nuclear Russia cannot be forcibly liberalized. You know, Western leaders keep repeating that in talking of offerings. So we are going to have to think about coexistence without reconciliation, ethical softening or even agreement on the facts of Z, what caused it, how did both sides behave? So we should expect lasting moral disgust associated with inevitably with distrust from what the West will see as Russian denials callousness and sacred exceptionalism, but also expect reciprocal Russian resentment at hypocritical Western superiority. And these attitudes, partly intellectual, partly very, very emotional will become in themselves a divisive geopolitical factor, which of course, Dugan and his the Eurasianist who want this complete cleavage between authentic, soulful, teleuric Russian holy civilization on the West will be completely pleased by this is this this sort of emotional and ethical curtain won't be iron it will be something else is exactly what they hope for in the future of Eurasia. So that I think is the meaning of Z. At the moment, finished. Thank you very much for that was an exciting, incredibly speedy ride. Yes, I would like to introduce you to some of those interesting and largely horrible people that I was bringing up because we should be aware of them but in more later for anyone who wants it. Yeah, I think we all would have had have already got millions of questions to ask you, and would love to have another two hours to discuss everyone's presentations. Alas, we have 13 minutes. Let's start with one question that we have so while the audience is trying to digest Vicki's and Paul's presentation. Let's go back to a question on Daniels and Francisco Francisco's question. And that is researching international humanitarian law and listening to the presentations this morning. It occurs to me that understanding what lies underneath competing narratives is the key to the mediation of a peace process. If this idea is worthy of comment. Yeah, it is worthy of comment. Absolutely. Thank you very much. It is a really good question. And the fate of peace processes, which of course it feel free to pick up on some of the themes that Paul has just raised and some of the findings Victoria has presented on which narratives have lost currency in Ukraine, and in which areas, and which ones are still very much alive. So over to Daniel and Francisco, I'm not sure who would like to go first. Daniel, you want to go first. Sure. A very interesting and important question. I'll just offer a quick dive into it. I think one of the things to consider is when you're talking about peace processes. If the narratives are so far apart in one narrative requires the total destruction and violation of the other. And that tells us about the perspectives of peace. So if you if you're looking at some of the conclusions one might draw about competing narratives based on Paul's presentation, a narrative, a Russian narrative in which Ukraine ceases to exist doesn't create the conditions for a peace process that Ukraine is going to accept. And so I think when we look at narratives we need to understand at what point there might be potential overlap for certain parties to to find consensus on narratives that they might accept. As the conflict described by Paul right now is settling into this this competing narratives in which one side will prevail over the other. I'm not sure that that kind of a peace process is possible right now. Very quickly, I think it also comes down to agency. So if within your narrative, you don't have agency, whether because you gave it up because you want to be a victim or be seen perceived as a victim, you're comfortable with that. Or because it was taken away from you. It's very difficult for you to have say in the negotiating table for the peace process. So someone's going to make the decision for you. It could be an occupying power, the allies, the UN, the Americans, it doesn't matter. But if you're in your narrative, you have agency and you have a just cause and also own your actions because agency also comes with responsibility. So if you say, you know what, we also messed up, we also made mistakes, we also committed war crimes even but we're going to take care of that. That changes things, I think. So a narrative of agency, I think, has a better prospect of for everybody involved within a peace process. Thank you, Francisco. I think both of you have made really important points. The question after Paul's presentation and the question I would have to Paul is if you have not only two completely and totally and utterly irreconcilable narratives, but also one of the narratives and one of the philosophies driving action really is the utter destruction of the other side. There is nowhere to go. So are we basically on a track which gives us no off-ramp at all and which will end in basically nuclear exchange? Because if utter destruction is what Russia wants, then nuclear weapons use is pretty much guaranteed that utter destruction. So even in the most, I don't like the using the word evil, but even in the most self-destructive philosophy, there must be a smidgen of wanting to survive because what otherwise is the point, you might as well kill yourself instantly. So there are there are logics which are so irreconcilable even within themselves that it's totally impossible to see where we go from here and what the future holds. The future then to me holds pretty much self-destruction. I don't think it's as bad as that. I think that the Russians wanted the annihilation of the Ukrainian state. They still will still want it, but they have begun to recognize at least at the moment the present correlation of forces to use the Russian phrase, which will get worse. It's not attainable. It could be attainable by conventional means. It might be attainable by nuclear means, but the Russians have not indicated that they are willing to suffer to risk, seriously risk the nuclear annihilation of Russia to achieve destruction of Ukraine. And besides are all these inconvenient geopolitical realities, geophysical realities like the way the winds blow, Westwood carrying radioactivity into Russia, that all sorts of reasons not to fire nuclear weapons at Ukraine. So they'll go on fighting until they stop fighting and they will not. It looks as though they're going to have to make some kind of an ugly piece, which will be painful for the Ukrainians as well, though they say they won't accept it. So sort of battlefield exhaustion, Klaus Vitsch and friction, if you like, will I think impose a halt to hostilities, at least for the next few years. I'm going to ask Fiki to come into the conversation in a minute as well, but just one more question to Paul. What I've noticed is in the course of your presentation, it became more and more about Russia wanting to destroy Western philosophy and political dominance. And the West has already, as Ukrainian allies, cast some of its actions as actually, yet we're helping the Ukrainians, but we are fighting Russia. So in a sense, there is an odd, weird hybrid proxy war type narrative wrapped up in all of this as well. But if Russia is intent on destroying the West with its philosophy and dominance and cultural influence, then clearly that is it cannot be satisfied with what it then would have to consider to be a tactical victory just in or a tactical reason for a tactical ceasefire in Ukraine. It can't in the long run be satisfied, no. But it can perfectly decide that in this phase of this long conflict, this is the best we can get. So in ugly, this phrase, the ugly piece, ugly in terms of Russian aspirations and Ukrainian aspirations, because to get it both sides would have to compromise. And I think it's, it's not quite true to say that Russia wants to destroy the West. Russia wants to displace the West from its dominant position in the international order. And in that it is going to count on the support of the non West, which above all will include China, but plenty of other countries want to see the West displaced, which is why they and refuse to be drawn into the Western narrative about a confrontation of good and evil, which is why there's been such equivocal behavior in the U.N. So I think, and the final point is that war in wars, the purpose of wars changes over time, they can become both more become both more extreme and and and less ambitious. And I think that's happening with Russia's warrant. It's decided it is now in a, in a existential struggle with the West, but on the other hand, it's hinting it may settle for just taking the Donbas, rather than the light annihilating the illicit fascist dominated Ukrainian regime. So both things can be true. Inflated rhetoric at one level, but, but you know, very delimited area by area negotiating goals at another. Absolutely, especially if Russia cannot really call this a war, which would be the precondition for actually having general mobilization, they wouldn't be able to do to go that step if, but they need people and therefore would have to call up everyone. General mobilization, but they can't call it a war because that's not what that it doesn't fit into. It's to avoid a war. And I said, I've seen interviews with dead, dead soldiers wives saying I'm it was unfortunate he died, but I trust the leadership because we hadn't done this. The West would have attacked us in the war. So we're doing this to preempt a war. And that's, that's an amazingly successful narrative, even with dead soldiers families. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, some of the transcripts, sort of, you know, eavesdropping in social media conversations as well, show you just how sold Russian soldiers wives are on the on the official narrative. And I have another question, but first I would like to ask Vicki whether she would like to give us a you what you think it's always very difficult to read the rooms but where do you think Ukraine's resistance to some form of ugly pieces as Paul talked about it might start weakening. Do you see any scope for Ukrainians to accept something that is an intolerable piece really in many ways, but maybe the only way of stopping the actual lethal fighting. And it's not an easy question. I do apologize. You're muted. Yeah, I think there's a certain amount of maintaining a very, very strong absolutist position as a kind of negotiating technique with the West and allies in order to get support for the ongoing campaign because if they show a given inch, then you have to accept a mile sometimes. And in a way, this, they articulate their position as like protecting or standing and fighting for the West. And so it's, it's a kind of a soft power pressure in a way to ensure to help build support to maintain their independence. It, it's in terms of finding a way out of that. It's very, very difficult and I think there has to be some kind of and there's a great polarization and how to bring the polarization, how to bring views back to the mainstream. And you've got, you know, in the source is a clash of identities really and I'm, I'm really struggling to see the way forward from it because nobody wants to concede anything. But it's, it is a clash of identities. And if the West concedes it kind of undermines its own or will be seen to undermine its own values to let down people who have made very significant sacrifices. In their words to protect the West so I think there has to be some kind of compromise but yeah, people on in the mood to compromise. I'm very tempted. I agree with you. There is this and the mobilization of the determination to defend yourself on the part of the Ukrainians had to be so intense that to start reversing that threat that that dynamic is going to be incredibly difficult and it's been going on. And we must not forget this has been going on since 2014 in the, in the, in the, in the Eastern areas. So this is just in quotation marks the horrible escalation and with war crimes that have been happening that are now beginning to really become very much known and verified as this is these things are happening. It is extremely difficult for Ukrainians to climb down from this. Sadly, I've just been given another minute to wrap this up. We are only beginning to start have to have a conversation about the key themes and would need a bit more time to sort of link three really the first double presentation and then the next two interesting extremely valuable in the contemporary context presentations together. So I'll actually, I'll conclude a with thanks from me to the panel and to everyone who has been instrumental in making this this overall session work. But then I conclude with a last word from one of our audience members who says many thanks to all of the presenters. I agree with what I've just heard, and I if Russia's ambition along with China is to change the world order that you then that Ukraine is the first of many conflicts to come. So we've probably had the good times and things are going to get a lot harsher out there and much more difficult, which is another reason for political scientists and historians and philosophers and ethicists and lawyers to work together to try to utilize the otherwise potentially horrendous impact that we might be looking at. So thank you for your efforts, and we will now be cut off and have to finish. If you want to meet afterwards. Thank you very much.