Diplomats share thoughts on Ukraine, foreign policy at Texas Tech ambassador forum

Texas Tech and Lubbock High School students and faculty, as well as the community at large, got a bit of global perspective this week, hearing from four experienced U.S. diplomats as part of the seventh annual Ambassadors Forum hosted by Texas Tech University’s Office of International Affairs.

Ambassadors Ronald Neumann, Deborah McCarthy, Molly Williamson and Kenneth C. Brill started by speaking to students at Lubbock High Thursday morning and finished the day taking questions from students and citizens during a public forum at the Texas Tech International Cultural Center.

Neumann serves as the American Academy of Diplomacy board president and was former deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. He served three terms as ambassador to Algeria, Bahrain and finally to Afghanistan.

McCarthy is an expert on U.S. foreign and national security policy with more than 30 years of diplomatic experience. McCarthy was the U.S. ambassador to Lithuania and served as the deputy ambassador at the U.S. Embassy in Greece as well as the U.S. Embassy in Nicaragua. She is a senior advisor at the State Department.

Williamson is a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer, having served under six presidents and achieving the rank of career minister. She is a scholar with the Middle East Institute and the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations, a consultant, and frequent guest lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, the Defense Institute of Security Cooperation and the National Joint Staff College.

Brill was the president of The Fund for Peace (2010-2011) after completing a 35-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service. Brill’s overseas assignments with the Department of State included serving as ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. Office in Vienna, ambassador to the Republic of Cyprus, acting-ambassador and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India, and political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan.

Besides their educational stops, the four diplomats took some time to speak with the media Tuesday morning, covering a wide variety of topics like the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, rising energy costs, climate change and cybersecurity, among others.

Having served nearby in Lithuania from 2013 to 2016, during which Russia invaded Crimea in the eastern part of Ukraine, McCarthy is familiar with the situation in eastern Europe in a way that most people in the U.S., including across the South Plains, are not.

During the Crimean invasion, she said, “The reaction in the Baltics, those countries that had been formerly occupied by the Soviet Union, was remarkable – palpable fear and a sense of ‘never again,’ which obviously they are revisiting as we speak.”

“I think we need to look at the Ukraine situation in terms of policy and people. Obviously, on the people side, we’re seeing the outpouring of refugees – now over 2 million – going to neighboring countries, including the country I was last posted in, and it’s extraordinary what they are doing to greet all these people,” McCarthy said. “On the policy side, as we speak, both Ukrainians and Russians are meeting in Turkey to try to hammer out some sort of diplomatic solution. They’ve tried on two other occasions. We obviously support that. As diplomats, we think that is the way to go.”

McCarthy explained that a diplomatic solution will be a challenge.

“I think it is going to be extremely difficult (to reach a diplomatic solution) - for one side is intent on conquering the territory,” she said. “When we spoke today to students at Lubbock High School, I spoke about how this is the biggest challenge since World War II.”

“It’s also about the values … and the ideals that countries should uphold as responsible nations in the international order, and Putin is blowing it out of the sky,” McCarthy said.

“This is now challenging the whole structure of 70 years of post-war settlement and institution building, and remember that Mr. Putin has laid out an agenda that goes beyond Ukraine,” Neumann added. “You’re looking at a really, really large challenge, and one in which we are constrained because we really don’t want a nuclear war. Once you start a direct war between the United States and Russia, you’ve entered an uncertain world that we have not been in since the Cuban Missile Crisis in the Kennedy administration,” he said.

Williamson, who served in the U.S. Department of Energy, spoke to the rising cost of fuel in the wake of sanctions on Russia following the invasion.

“The top three oil producing countries – No. 1 the United States, No. 2 Saudi Arabia, No. 3 Russia – together produce a little bit more that 30 percent” of the world’s daily oil consumption, Williamson said. “You take any one of those elements out, you’re in trouble. The world will feel the disruption,” she added.

“If you were to suddenly have a massive interruption of the flow of 10 percent, the Russian component, of that 100 million barrels a day, prices are going to go up. People are going to get nervous,” Williamson said.”

On the subject of fossil fuels, Brill related the situation in Ukraine with climate change.

“One of the things that troubles me about Russia and Ukraine is that it’s getting us to focus on a short-term issue, I’m afraid, potentially at the expense of a really significant longer-term issue,” Brill said. “There’s a bigger power that we have to really be concerned about that’s really an existential threat to the United States and to others, and that’s climate change.”

It’s a problem for all of us, and the only way to deal with it is through collaboration and cooperation,” he said.

“Global issues require global responses,” Williamson added.

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Diplomats visit Lubbock for Texas Tech Ambassadors Forum