Professors Konstantin Sonin, Dick Farkas and Nicholas Grossman spoke about current foreign policy at the iHotel and Illinois Conference Center on Wednesday evening in an “un-debate” moderated by NPR Illinois and supported by the University of Illinois Institue of Government and Public Affairs.
The professors discussed two regions that have dominated headlines in America: the conflict between Ukraine and Russia in Eastern Europe, and the Israel and Palestine conflict in the Middle East.
The panel opened with a discussion about the conflict in Eastern Europe, and the professors emphasized the impact Russia had was “controlling.”
“The idea (is) that the Russian government is mind (controlling) and they’re controlling all the social media, and, you know, tricking people into thinking a lot of things,” said Grosman, assistant professor of political science at the University. “Part of the difficulty is nobody knows where Russia’s real red line is. We know that Russia declares a lot of red lines, and they’re bluffing at that.”
Professor Sonin, a John Dewey distinguished service professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, further discussed that Russia is not only putting the Baltic countries at risk by its proximity to Ukraine but is also harming its own country and economy by further pursuing Ukrainian territory.
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“It’s certainly the Russian people who subsidize this war by taking cuts on their consumption,” Sonin said. “This is the main thing about how the war is subsidized — that people just consume less, and they live worse than before the war.”
The panel then transitioned into how the Harris and Trump administrations compared the future of U.S. foreign policy.
“The Democrats are the only one of the two parties that (have) listed in the top 10 things to be concerned about foreign influence in the US Elections,” said Farkas, professor of political science at DePaul University. “Republicans do not include that in the things about which they reminisce and ruminate and worry. Apparently, the other thing that, to me, is really curious is that the formal Republican platform doesn’t mention Ukraine, not a word.”
The professors then discussed the Israel-Palestine conflict before the Q&A, clarifying that while the administrations had very different policies regarding the Ukraine conflict, they overlapped on this issue.
More specifically, Grossman said the Harris administration focused more on supporting the Israeli people and Israel as a country, whereas the Trump administration focused on supporting the government, especially for current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Many people at the Q&A mentioned the Biden administration and asked about the restrictions they have placed in respect to the Israel-Palestine Conflict. Grossman said it’s a lot more complicated than that; if Israel loses its connection of weaponry and resources with the U.S., it could make ties with Russia and China, posing a much bigger threat.
“To put it bluntly, the U.S. under Harris would be more friendly towards Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia (and) other U.S. allied democracies,” Grossman said to summarize the prospective administration. “The second Trump administration would be relatively less friendly to those and relatively more friendly to authoritarians, especially anti-NATO and pro-Russia (governments).”
