“This house believes there is no moral difference between American and Russian foreign policy”. This was the motion that was debated and subsequently passed on 27 February at The Oxford Union. Given the current state of affairs in the US following Trump’s second inauguration to the White House, this debate felt particularly topical. After Trump shared the widely condemned AI-generated video of the Gaza strip, it is no wonder that members voted with their feet, passed through the “Ayes” door, and equated the morality of US and Russian foreign policy.
Whilst the Union makes it abundantly clear that the term card published before the start of term is subject to change, the speakers in this debate were starkly different from those published. Of the six speakers published in the term card, only one of them spoke in the debate, Russian-American journalist Vladimir Pozner Jr. Potentially the most highly anticipated speaker, Nina Krushcheva (granddaughter of Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev), was unable to attend at the last minute. In her stead, a first year PPE student, Liza Barkova, delivered the closing speech for the proposition. Peculiarly, a post on X by the Union at 10.13pm (after the debate) mentioned Krushcheva’s name in the list of speakers for the proposition, though she was resoundingly absent.
A further inconsistency in the term card was the bizarre switching of sides from former President of Ecuador, His Excellency Guillermo Lasso. In the list of published speakers, he was expected to argue for the motion, yet in the actual debate he was supposedly arguing against it. Whether this was a mistake or not is unclear. Regardless, Lasso did not deliver a speech on the floor, since he abruptly exited partway through the debate, leaving a student speaker to deliver a rather hasty floor speech to conclude the argument for the opposition.
Both of the arguments were opened by Officers in the Union: the proposition’s argument was introduced by the librarian, Moosa Harraj, and the opposition’s argument was opened by the treasurer, Sarah Rana. Union President Israr Khan also spoke in favour of the motion. Khan argued that if a difference exists between the two nations’ foreign policies, it is “not a difference of substance, but a difference of style”. This difference of style is one that manifests itself in the media presentation of foreign policy; propaganda can make unpalatable foreign policy decisions far more digestible.
Harraj’s speech hinged on the principle of both America and Russia being empires that “do not have an ounce of morality in foreign policy”. The line of amorality was one elucidated by Barkova, whose argument focused on the idea that both nations’ foreign policy was “equally amoral”. Amoral foreign policy, she argued, makes the morality of their policies identical. Vladimir Pozner, speaking for the proposition, took a slightly different line, arguing that it was instead a notion of “exceptionalism” that motivated both America and Russia’s foreign policy; hardwired into residents of both countries is a feeling of superiority over the rest of the globe. As a journalist for over 60 years, Pozner had many private audiences with high-ranking officials of both countries, revealing that one had called him “naive” for questioning the morality of foreign policy.
In the opening speech for the opposition, Rana made a clever point that there is a high threshold for the proposition to surpass in claiming there is no moral difference. Given the result, it seems the audience was not compelled. The opposition offered an argument centred around the morality of the system that devised the policy, rather than the specific actions taken. Ambassador Erik Ramanathan, a former US ambassador to Sweden, contended that the moral difference lies in the power of democracy – citizens of the US have a mandate to change foreign policy if they do not agree with it, something which he argued was missing in Russia.
Employing an anecdote of his father’s own experience in jail in Russia, Russian investigative journalist, Andrei Soldatov, continued an argument based around the holistic difference between American and Russian foreign policy – a difference of motivation. Soldatov argued that US foreign policy is driven by “ambition” and “greed” in a more offensive manner, while the crux of Russian policy is “fear” of unrest and foreign interference. If Russian foreign policy is inherently defensive, he argued it cannot be morally equivalent to US policy.
Though the speakers were significantly different from those that were expected, the debate was undeniably thought-provoking. The outcome speaks to a general lack of optimism particularly about US foreign policy in a new era of US politics not infrequently perceived as democratic backsliding. Aside from the debate itself, the Union’s attention to detail has been called into question recently by the Cherwell in a recent piece on their “lazy” use of AI. Once again, a mistake has been made in the aforementioned post claiming that Krushcheva was present at the debate.