The Duran Podcast
The Lost Peace - Richard Sakwa, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen
Hi everyone. My name is Glenn Diesen and I'm joined today by Alexander McCurris and Professor Richard Sakwa. So Professor Sakwa is a retired Emeritus Professor of Russian and European Politics to University of Kent. I would say the greatest Russia scholar we have in Europe, an author of 18 plus books and citing his work has become near obligatory now for any serious Russia scholar. So yeah welcome to you both. Thank you very much. Yes so the reason where we have Professor Sakwa today is to discuss a book he had coming out last year which is The Lost Peace, How the West Failed to Prevent a Second Cold War. So yeah you'll have the chance to correct me of course but the way I understand that the foundational argument would be effectively we've been attempting to navigate between two orders. This is where the The Lost of the Peace began. So I guess after the Cold War in the west we already lived in two worlds. We had the internal order of the political west organized under US hegemony and then we had more or less the external order under the UN Charter based more on sovereign equality. One could argue the more best violin model and the challenge of course after the Cold War and then two years later when the Soviet Union collapsed there was two possible systems on the menu. So on one hand we had the opportunity to either expand the internal order that is to make the Atlanticist order effectively the new world order that is hegemony under the United States and the liberal ideals or we could form a more of an inclusive sovereign system based more on the UN Charter that of 1945. Now obviously towards the end of the Cold War we had this conflict Gorbachev wanted this common European home which very much resembles this sovereignty based internationalism and then on the other side you had the US calling for a Europe Poland free which is more organized around US hegemony and sovereign inequality. So obviously we ended up with the American order in which you write in the book the inside order became the outside order if I understood it correctly and effectively a hegemonic piece plus liberal universalism to mitigate the anarchy of the international system and this is what NATO expansion was also intended to facilitate. Now obviously the issue of Russia I guess how do you how does Russia this former adversary fit into the hegemonic order? How is Europe organized? I guess the dilemma is always on the inside is too big the loot hegemony on the outside it will be a bursarial poll and the threat then would be that would revive the Cold War much like Kenan warned against and again this was widely recognized by both advocates and opponents of enlarging NATO. Now one could argue that the solution to the hegemonic system was if Russia would just remain weak and Russia was weak it was getting weaker by the day then it could remain outside and it wouldn't really matter that much it could be facilitated orbiting the West if you will but again as we've learned from people like William Perry the US Secretary of Defense on the Clinton everyone kind of knew that keeping Russia outside would revive the Cold War logic if you will but again it was weak so then it would matter who cares so it went from being this evil empire to an insignificant country and I guess what happened was as also Kenan predicted was Russia got stronger much like China and it couldn't really be accommodated by this hegemonic system which was premised on Russia's perpetual weakness so I guess this is where we lost a piece but please if you could yeah maybe outline the premise of your book. Well thanks so much I think that you've done a marvelous job in doing so so that really does get to the core of it but I'll make three points to add to that the first one is that you know underlying it if you like the meta politics or the meta idea behind this book is and indeed to understand the politics of our times is the idea that there is an alternative that in other words outside of this political West and outside of our own little world there's alternatives I mean we're not just talking about that but forwards by the post-colonial it's global south and so on which is important but even across the world that there is an alternative to this very I mean I'm a realist but that sort of stark realism that considers international politics is only about great power conflict about one turn to get it fast to another and about endlessly you know hopefully managing conflict which we're doing very badly at the moment even worse than we did in the first Cold War but in short that a better world is possible and that it's worth for peace movements for all those women and men of goodwill to fight for it and that's I suppose the deep underlying thing and people like Gorbachev though with a complex history who accepted this and grasped that that sense so that I suppose is the first meta political point the second one is that the way you're formulated is exactly exactly what I was saying but I've slightly you know built on that too my thinking at the moment is to draw a contrast between empire and Commonwealth so that our internal system is empire and of course the world knows that there's two ways politics international politics can be organized is you know either empire or endless competitive international politics they'd get power politics geopolitics even so but the idea of this empire is that you know it is you know after after 1989 even you could say in the end of the Cold War the collapse of the Soviet Union we got to what you could even call it hyper imperialism and obviously that refers back to Karl Koutsky and those big debates before the first world war interestingly enough about hyper imperialism he meant it in terms of colonialism and indeed financial capital of course this was the age of Hobson hill footing and of course Lenin's contribution to that debate but the key point is that empire is this model of universalism and this it's you know empire has got many good things to say for it because it undermines sort of ethnic tensions and it's super national and so on you can say the EU is a type of empire as well but on the other side this other order we could call common ones yes it's inspired by the United Nations and it's those and of course in the nations that charter international system which we live under today that's under unprecedented attack this is a UN based system this charter system is based on you know these visions of commonwealth level commonwealth and a different type of politics to empire it's based on sovereign internationalism you talked about that sovereignty but tempered by an internationalism and a commitment to those charter principles human rights and all the guests so that's a second thing the third thing is this notion of a political west this is you know that empire what is this empire it's a political west it's a system power system you know remember that communist Eisenhower in his farewell address who talked about the military industrial car complex and its dangers and so many others have talked about it hands Morgan power you're referring to it by the way way back when it was being established late 1940s early 50s it's the two united state as others call it a military industrial complex revolving door with pancreas and so on so this uh two united state this political west was established during the cold war and after the cold war it you know expanded in the way we've just suggested became hyper and of course with its epigones epigones like victorian newland who's just a good tide but you know the whole career was devoted to expanding and viciously aggressively dominatingly that that system but so that political west can i just say though i also had there is a better west of course russians all the way back from peter the great have always suggested this that russia they would of course claim that they are the better west no more but in the old days but there's another west there's a civilizational west where for 500 years has dominated because it's military power that political that civilizational west is on the way it is changing it's evolving and just to say there's a third west a deep west this cultural west it's not just kree koroman or judeo christian it's a cultural west which was established you know an interaction with syrian pasha indo sinek civilizations and so in other words when we say anti-western we're simple the west we really do need to be clear what we're talking about and what i'm talking about is the political west thanks very much if i could just say a few things i mean you've anticipated some of the points i was going to ask you about in connection with the book but can i just say a few things i was reading the book and the first point is about alternatives the fact that there were alternatives and that there were choices and reading the book through i have to say at many many points i felt very sad because i absolutely do agree that the wars were lost peace after 1989 and the reason it happened was you know you got perhaps an overabundance of political imagination on the one side on the russian side gorbachev and all these ideas but also a very failure ultimately of matching political imagination to a great extent on the western side and there's a point you make well early on in the book which i actually remember from the nineteen eighties i mean i remember it at the time which is that many people in the united states in powerful position to the united states saw what gorbachev was proposing as an opportunity yes but an opportunity for american power to be increased but they also saw it as a threat they were afraid of these changes that gorbachev was proposing they were worried that you know it would make uh the soviet union russia attractive to people in europe that it would result ultimately in an erosion of american power and so at a very early stage even that you know at a very early stage during the program that gorbachev was footing forward there was already a big push back against it from the united states and within washington ragan was very receptive to gorbachev's ideas people in the bush the sub the succeeding bush administration to a certain extent less so but there was a sense that we can't really go where gorbachev wants us to go because if we do then that will somehow result in a reduction in our own power what he's asking us to do is something that we don't want we don't want to do so i i felt that that was there and i think that was there from the outset and in the end it explained an awful lot he'd explained why there was never really possibility that the united states that the people in charge at that time would of themselves have made the kind of choices to consolidate the piece that they did the option to do it was there but they didn't they didn't want to seize it the second thing is what you say about the united nations system and it brought home to me something about the united states nation system which is how different it is ultimately from every other system that has existed in terms of an attempt to organize international relations firstly it is global it encompasses i think every state secondly it offers everybody around the world a voice there's the general assembly there is the voice there thirdly it does extend talk about values in terms of the charter has values there's the you know the declaration of human rights all those kind of things so that is there too it sets up a framework for global cooperation within an international global system and at the same time it acknowledges a point which Glenn has been discussing a lot recently which is that there has to be that there needs to be a concert of powers at the center and this is a mechanism which was intentionally created after the second world war to avoid and get over the crises of the second world war which were european crisis ultimately but which people globally bought into everybody around the world there is massive support for it and it actually does provide if you go back to it a way forward and if you use it in the way perhaps in a way that is close to the way that it was originally envisaged and that not only has not been done but as you said just now it is under attack to a degree that we have never seen before yeah absolutely so absolutely completely first I just say that you're absolutely it makes me sad as well that there was an opportunity there was a piece to be lost or potential piece to be lost a positive peace order of the sort with outline just now a positive peace order based on united nations principles which really are you know principles which you know didn't come out weren't accidental first of all they came out from the understanding that the second world war was the most catastrophic war humanity has ever had and then of course overshadowed by nuclear weapons so we really must do better in future and this international system is based on that and of course it's evolved over the years unfortunately it's as you say the security council is a type of concert of powers in a mini concert of powers but it no longer reflects the you know we're obviously we're talking about in particular India and Brazil representation from Africa and some other issues involved with it but nevertheless it's the best we can do and when those people who devised the United Nations in the early 40s they had these ideas they were learning from the failure of the Versailles system learning from that old concert of powers then in 19th century one the Congress of Vienna system which ended up in such catastrophe in 1914 so they were learning and so you know I'm not saying this is the best thing ever that it can evolve it can change but it has to be organic whereas really we know that Ukrainians are saying that United Nations doesn't work and they're talking about something expelled from the United Nations from the security council absolutely crazy stuff but no one did it to say that sort of stuff in the first world first Cold War and they're saying it now so it's more dangerous so as you say we lost we squandered that opportunity for a positive peace order we glimpsed it in the first Iraq war when the Soviet Union endorsed and worked with the United States and other powers over Iraq and Kuwait issue but it was there you know as you say we squandered it and we squandered it and that takes us indeed why and why you're absolutely that you're at the beginning and there we need to be careful about well I mean I do we all need to be careful or we all have to sort of define what we mean and if you know to continue this Commonwealth versus Empire analogy that Commonwealth is based on you know in a Commonwealth United States would exercise you know leadership and we don't mind I mean Gorbachev and Putin have said it the US has the world's most powerful economy and you know possibly in military terms as well it's you know we expect it to exercise leadership but that leadership which it's sometimes showed in the first Cold War not always but it you know it's leadership but leadership then leads to a type of politics which we could call hegemony that is the the the active or sort of the voluntary acquiescence in that leadership and when the United States is at its best that's you know it's there you know unfortunately you know European Union on some issues perhaps has shown it's sort of benign hegemony but unfortunately it's lost its way quite catastrophically but on the the other type of politics is you know the Empire one which then is based not on not on hegemony not on you know voluntary the world going along with it it's based on dominion and it's based on coercion and it's based on domination and of course it's based on exclusion and that takes us to the to Russia of course and to China coming up so in that it cannot think this political worth cannot envisage something outside of itself which is legitimate that anything outside of itself is either has to be subordinated as an ally of course it's huge activity to try to get India on board today and to build up this global block politics Cold War style you know NATO plus plus which you know brilliant success of NATO and Europe just led to the worst war since 1945 so let's try that brilliant success in the guest of the world so we can spark wars all across East Asia South China Sea etc but that that so that is that you know expansive political and cannot envisage something outside of itself yet today the global south the global majority or it's kind of got the world majority aren't having it they're saying look enough is enough and you're quite right to say this is a European war going on what they say you know India and Indonesia and other countries Brazil South Africa in particular many many others they look this has nothing to do with this and this time you're not going to drag us into it like you did in the first world war and the second world war so the world has moved on and of course what this war has done because so you think in war shown is the marginalization and indeed the intellectual and political bankruptcy of the political west though as I say we can recover something hopefully for a better culture but a better west and that you know if we have this model we can say look we can do better and you know when I mentioned earlier that list piece next of course the churches is something very important in all of this I don't just mean the world council of churches which was important in the first cold war but so many other you know genuine civil society organizations you know are they all talk about it every Sunday every day either in the mosque and many other places they're saying look we've got to do better I like what you both said about the political imagination because this was also something the good but you touched on towards the towards the end in which he he effectively yeah cautioned the Americans that you know both Moscow and Washington had to be prepared for what what end of the cold war would mean because and the entire power structure has been premised on on perpetual conflict so this is why this is why yeah the two blocks effectively had loyalty towards either Moscow or Washington so saying that yeah we need the political imagination to be willing to effectively walk a little bit away from empire in order to to get an end to the cold war but so yeah I think that's why the your book is interesting as well because when you talk about alternatives this would be effectively the the political imaginations even though as you mentioned a lot of this would be based on previous lessons from history because again from the Congress of Vienna the main lesson we effectively had was after the French had been defeated in 1815 they got another seat at the table simply because this is what would bring stability and then of course doing the opposites in after the first world war with the Treaty of Versailles in which the Germans were effectively meant to be kept perpetually weak this will be the source of peace and yeah so it seems that the the the peace effectively we chose was which many Russian scholars that pointed out as well such as Karogno saying that we tried to impose another Treaty of Versailles so perpetuating the weakness of Russia if you will but but I was curious about how would the alternatives be though in terms of balancing political realities with ideal idealism because I think a key challenge of these two systems which you refer to in my opinion they already popped up right after the cold war in the Charter of Paris for a new Europe in 1990 you know you have kind of had this dilemma all states should have the freedom to join whatever security arrangements they want there should be no you know no one stage to tell another what to do and on the other hand we said also we have to have indivisible security no dividing lights so for example in the context of NATO expansion this meant you know NATO should not expand because then you're redividing Europe you are now promoting security of one country at the expense of another and but but at the same time we're saying anyone should be allowed to join any military blocs they want how would it be possible to escape such a dilemma yeah no absolutely so a couple of points there in the book and in general I distinguished between the international system which is the today I call it the Charter International System you know building on the Versailles system which failed as you say the Congress of the NS system the Utrecht system and the West Australian systems before these are all European based by the way rather than though they've gone global now so this is the international system based on sovereign internationalism based on ideas of commonwealth based on ideas of you know of multilateralism but but sovereignty then we have at the second level although I don't it's not particularly hierarchical we have international politics and it is in international politics that we have these bloc politics we have the you know eight states compete and some states who refuse to compete they're non-aligned movement and so on just for the sake of completeness I also say there's a third level which is the global international political economy which we don't talk about much well you do but I don't so much and then the fourth level is to international civil society this is as I said churches peace movements and many other good things and some bad things as well but in terms of international politics as you say this is why it looked as if in after the end of the first Cold War 1989-91 it looked as if we were going to get finally in terms of those documents you've mentioned of course going all the way back to the Helsinki final act of 1975 that we were going to see a congruence a merger between the way that international politics is conducted and those principles of the charter international system that what we're going to see a convergence of based on those charter principles that is the basis of the of that you know the positive peace order we were going to see a convergence unfortunately we saw the exact opposite we we actually saw that one sub order within international politics the the political west or the so-called rules based order or the liberal international order this one began to instead of having this convergence it usurped and claimed the privileges of the charter international system which of course meant the subversion of international law and making up the laws you go along we're talking about the bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 Iraq and at 2003 Libya 2011 and so much more so instead of a convergence we saw a massive well not just even a divergence and attempt to privatize the charter international system and keeping with the dominant ideas of neoliberalism in the post-Cold War years so we saw the exact opposite so so instead of these principles which you outline of indivisible security being guaranteed we we got the exact opposite it was used as an instrument it was used instrumentally rather than working autonomously and of course rules based order and all the yes is you know by definition then it then exercises double standards because double standards it comes systemic it's not an accident it was not an accident today that the western powers the liberal west is endorsing and indeed well not in well in military terms supporting what Israel is doing in Gaza today you know one of the most monstrous things we don't need to call it a genocide but we call it you know a killing which is way disproportional to the to the cause which was dreadful of course the events of seventh of october last year but you know that's double standards and of course the the the cheerful bombing of Yemen for seven years of 2014-15 you know but u.s and u.k and of course while talking about human rights and such like it's it almost makes one despair the fact that this gulf but it's systemic it's not just you know a bad leader and so on it's going to be the case because you have this gulf between the international system and international politics and we've got this sub order claiming to be the international system and to also claiming dominance within international politics to the exclusion of all the others just one other point on NATO enlargement in some ways you know that the actual NATO enlargement however much it may have been a repudiation of the promises given to Gorbachev in 1990 it's still ultimately it was the way it was done and you know both uh you know that great man was big near fjonski in 1997 in his book uh and chessboard uh and William Burns head of CIA today and others said okay enlarge if you like but you've got to have an overarching security deal with Moscow so there's got to be done and then within that NATO could enlarge and you know there could be some good things about it swaps goose and turkey going to war stops the small states uh going repeating the experience of the 1930s when they were all going fighting not too much at war but they're certainly attacking each other so but it was with that absence was completely this is where that lack of imagination accompanied by the amazing lack of institutional innovation at the end of the Cold War this was one of the major geopolitical turning points of our time and absolutely nothing new came out of it no new institutions no new ideas and no new political imaginary you know many of us put forwards these ideas not new but you know this flançois Mitrion talked about a confederation of your I certainly remain very strongly of I sometimes joke I'm the last goalist in England they did point out that there was one other whose name I've now forgotten but there's the very few but by goalist I mean you know a pan continental vision of from Lisbon to Vladivostok all that talk we used to have and that was what we really did need you know Bismarck used to say you know the secret of international politics is a good treaty with Moscow and that was lacking in Russia thank you my dear me which which is astonishing in some ways because even if you looked at the situation in Russia in the 1990s which is chaotic disorderly all the things we all know and I went then I think we all did we've all probably been to Russia in the 90s we remember what it was like but it was still potentially the bigger what was the biggest it was potentially the most powerful country in Europe one would have thought that the priority that should have been given was precisely to working out that good treaty with Moscow why when I talked about a good treaty what doesn't mean a treaty that favors lopsidedly one side at the expense of the other it means a treaty that is actually going to last not a Versailles type treaty but a Vienna type treaty and I could remember lots of people saying it I can remember you know was it Bush who said you know if we don't make them a friend we could end up finding them an enemy and we'll over again and yet it wasn't done priority was instead given to all kinds of other things you know extending NATO eastwards satisfying concerns in places like you know Warsaw and Regan let's say those concerns should be ignored but Moscow was the first place to begin and can I just also add to that to the extent that there was an attempt to work with Russians it was an attempt to work with the Russians by manipulating them so we were massively over involved in their internal affairs in a way that I don't think many people today would want to defend yeah the notable example of that is the 1996 election when US political consultants and money came in to support the reelection of Yeltsin and including media manipulation political manipulations of all sorts and of course many people argue that was when Russian democracy maybe didn't die but certainly it was wounded and it certainly hasn't properly recovered ever since and that was in the 1990s before Putin was in power so yeah absolutely right this intervention this engagement quite apart from the economic level and the development of the the you know as Kuku Yavlinsky endlessly says you know the neoliberal the model of economic transformation was was catastrophic and it still has a huge legacy to this day of course it's used for political capital purposes but it was also genuine as you say we all know Russia of the 1990s when you saw yeah Babushkidis ladies selling family heirlooms military medals of their husbands or fathers from the wartime just just to buy a kilo of potatoes it was so sad and this is one reason which inspires people today you know in a complex way but in general to support you know there's some of the achievements of the Putin system which I think shouldn't we would often forget about its achievements we can talk about its failings as well of course which they were there but you know its achievements shouldn't be forgotten I think that a lot of the political imaginations should have been directed towards harmonizing I guess this idealism with the political realities because as you began to say when you when you talked about your book was this idea of universalism that it's quite challenging because often when we come with this idea of liberal democracy human rights that it's this kind of universalism is only only a positive thing I I like to go you know always use the example of Socrates saying you know I'm a citizen of the world it's you know it's a wonderful thing we're all part of the same club but then of course whenever like Sandra the Great he also says more or less I'm citizen of the world but you used that to then build an empire because it diminishes well the universal claims will diminish the principle of sovereignty and I guess this is the difficult thing when you develop an international system how do you unify around universal ideals while still preserving the principle of sovereignty so this again this goes right at the core of world order and I think we've seen this before in terms of well I often brought up bring up the example of the French Revolution for example because this was also based on a lot of the same principles and you know was supposed to create a brotherhood of nations and instead it ended up with an with an emperor and an empire so so how was it turned on the sets and you can say the same with the Bolsheviks also where idealists and internationalists but also not intending to have a real foreign policy but then also developing an empire it seems we kind of walked into this same mind field with the idea of a liberal liberal hegemony in which we have this you know what can say good values which well intentioned however at the same time we see how they manifest themselves as you said we keep talking about human rights while you know committing this slaughter is from Yemen to to now Gaza so it's this in this political imagination we don't we haven't seemed to really explore this efficiently in terms of how yeah like Napoleon you go from you know advancing these ideals to ending up with an emperor yeah it's underlying this is a sense we're used to have a sense that history has a certain linearity to it that we can when what you're alluding to is the fact that history just is this endless cycle of good intentions leading to unintended bad consequences and you're absolutely right that the history is is rather than this linear version of onwards and upwards it's been endlessly going garden circles of the sort of you know what we're going to get on and Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee at the beginning of the last century we're going on and on about it's all cycles empires guys and fall and it's all the same sort of thing in other words that myth of sisyphus is the one that works best you know you're endlessly rolling up boulder up the hill and it keeps coming down quite often crushing the people but pushing it up the hill however that i couldn't stop there and you know that's why i argue precisely and why you know i say an alternative politics is possible you know we used to couch it in the language of socialism as you've alluded to laying this door marx as to whatever and indeed i think that's still got a valid you know input into this uh but or we could couch it in the language of you know good old-fashioned conservatism bakian conservatism sense of community which i think is important contribution to all of this but what the bottom line i'm trying to say is that if we can you know package this if you like in the language of marketing in terms of commonwealth that to say look we're in the nuclear age that humanity faces a global climate crisis of unprecedented character and many other things that you know we also have a technological development in our times which is just so phenomenal you know just in this little laptop i'm looking at now is you know it was almost unthinkable 20 years ago what it's computing power in short they the gulf between the aspirations for a type of commonwealth or community or the common good you know there's a our blue labor colleagues have a good language to describe this on the one side and this endless you know which is now increasingly suicidal politics of of political west of of empire we see it in a completely avoidable pointless catastrophic disastrous war in Ukraine to this day of course which could well be repeated over in the far east yeah so what is you know what is the language of the sulturative i as i said the united nation system has matured the states is now 193 states in the united nations about 200 states in the world then matured the post-colonial world that 500 years of history which you are just trying to put make a comment in you know that cycle of 500 years is coming to an end the european phase of global history is coming to an end uh and the atlantic phase and we're now going you know the people use the language multipolarity uh which is a rather thin book to put it on but yet yes it's multipolarity multi-order world some people talk about a chariot talk about uh multiplex world so we've got the key idea is pluralism you know then you could catch it in language of civilizational states you've got the china civilizational state the indo one the rasso the orthodox one in one way or another uh and of course the uh well the political west one so uh you know there's there's this um idea that you know multi- collaborative multi-order world within the framework of the international system but that requires one thing and that is a simple thing but impossible to achieve and that is modesty in the political west that requires a united states that returns to becoming a normal great power and this is what uh what is her name uh under reagan um she you know right no no the other one the one who was hated as a representative to united nations that ends the power uh the world before that yeah but i just said that you know there was a whole stack of stuff at the end of the cold war first cold war which said the united states must become a normal great power then you got the all the neo cons of the new land salt kegan thought we said no way but we become a normal great power the world will go to hell in the basket in a hand cut um and of course it's now gone to hell with our usuk um interference and endless militarism and so on and of course just now we're in a stage where you know military budgets going up but you know the world is arming people talking of a pre-war situation that makes you know i think discussions of the sort we're having now even more important to say no this isn't necessary you know that Russia we've just started talking about it let's evaluate what is its real goals is the is Russia and new emanation of Nazi Germany in other words that vision that it's always 1938 that any negotiation is appeasement even any talk to Moscow is a privilege it would actually legitimate them just absolutely crazy you may like or not like the regime in Moscow you talk to it you're in the same for Beijing New Delhi and so many others you've got to have go back to diplomacy otherwise you know we are closer today to the Third World War to the apocalypse than we've ever been we're hanging by a whisker and yet that same enthusiasm of July 1914 seems to have gripped the ruling elites in the political west though one is cheered by the sort of language coming out of Beijing New Delhi and other places South Africa Brazil which are saying warning signs so the global south may save the political west and the the global north from its own suicidal instincts which is to go back to war like we did in 14 in 1939 indeed you actually used the word fatalism about what happened in 1914 the fatalism in a kind of way of the great powers that were operating at that time that you know they're just mechanically moved forward because conceptually it was impossible for them to think otherwise and it can I just come back again though to what has happened in Europe the the price of the lost peace because this is all justified in many ways on other basis of you know entrenching the supremacy of the west of the United States you quote krat hauma of krat hauma I can never pronounce his name extensively about how important it is that if we don't have you know we don't assert the United States we'll have chaos around the world that's why the unipolar moment is necessary we extenate it eastward in the way that we do because that's also a essential for you know shoring up our position and sureing up the west position and increasing security and doing all of those things of course what's it's all done is it's done exactly the opposite we've actually seen the biggest the fastest decline I think that the west has experienced in modern history in a kind of a sense in the last 30 years we've seen powers emerge around the world and those powers are when they're not unfriendly to the west but they are very alarmed and worried about the way it's behaving and are seeking and increasingly to protect themselves from it now the rise of these powers was entirely foreseeable it was foreseeable arguably I would say from the time decolonization really began in the 60s it was already obvious then that one day China one day India one day Indonesia would indeed become significant countries but instead of entrenching consolidating an international system based on the United Nations which gave the west itself when you talked about the good west it's important to remember that the United Nations is itself to a great extent a product of western thinking and discourse I mean it was western politicians western diplomats was the Soviets were there too who played the central role in shaping the united nations at its outset anyway it's ever trenching that system which would have in fact secured the west in a changing global environment what we did instead is we embarked on a 30 year mission to try to keep everything you know at a kind of standstill to perpetuate forever the world of 1990 and of course we're now in a situation where we have instead of security in Europe we have war in Europe and where the rest of the world is getting careful in my use of words worried about us about us in the west and is organizing its politics in a way that seeks to ultimately contain this because that's what it seems to me we're starting to see thanks like two points in response that first on the united nations establishment you absolutely write that you know the major impetus came from so the United States and United Kingdom at the time to do but we should also say that the Soviet Union played a big part in all of this and that China considers itself quite frankly I found a member because it signed it signed up to the UN declaration of I think January 1942 as early as that of course that was the republican China but so the United Nations really was and of course the Arab world was quite involved later on the universal declaration of human rights was more a project of Eleanor Roosevelt but again it was major discussions debates the Arabic world was active in it so that's just to say that in broadly speaking your point holds but one had to say that United Nations the charter international system really is a part of the patrimony of all of humanity but the second thing in all of this that when you began just now is that you know we can talk and talk for many hours and then we simply if I hang on we actually haven't talked about Europe quite Europe at all and it just shows that it's geopolitical and intellectual significance in global affairs is so marginal that you know you talk about all the self-defeating west but that's absolutely the case over the last 30 odd years but the self-defeating Europe is a spectacular case of self-destruction as a ethical entity because European Union used to be you know I've used to be a great supporter of the European Union as a peace project look at it today look at what Robert Fizzo said after Macron's talk about their gatherings and Fizzo was such marvelous comment and of course Viktor Oban is saying similar things for some time and after the 26th of February when Macron said there could be NATO forces officially openly in Ukraine and Fizzo said you know what astonished me there wasn't the word piece at all this marshall this military spirit in all of this and you know this is what's happened of the hijacking of the European Commission by an American style militarist like Ursula van der Leyen it is when the history of books will be written I think that the charge list against her personally and that commission of you know what is it Joe Jungle Boreal and so on and and Charles Michel you know what a group of leaders without substantive political vision their responsibility is peace in Europe that's what we once are used to support in your union and they should be working might and may to find a way to end this dreadful war instead of which they're doing absolutely everything to perpetuate it and indeed to block the possibility of the war ending how astonishing is that how deep is the peace lost in Europe and how hard will it be to recuperate it and to recover some sort of peace agenda when we have you know the the you know that bomb from Britain of course the bombast the bluster the belly causity with no limit that's what so if we are coming also out of the Baltic Republics and it sometimes even makes Poland a moderate when they say no the forces and which is you know when it comes to that then we know we're deep trouble you mentioned a hijacking of the and in terms of the deep blue diplomacy being replaced with this militarism but I was wondering if to some extent that would have been not necessarily unavoidable but the path they were on because it seems like the format of liberal hegemony would be it's it creates this very uncompromising stance because it's very difficult to absorb any changes in in the international system simply because if it's based on if it challenges the hegemony undermines existing system or if it also very difficult to compromise when things are framed as values in which everything essentially becomes any compromise becomes a peacement and so this is become my concern because the way they speak now is effectively suggest by as you said referring to Russia as the new you know Hitler or Nazi Germany a effectively put himself in a position where security is dependent not on finding a solution to live with Russia but effectively peace depends on defeating now the world's largest nuclear power that's quite an absurd position to put yourself in and even let's say the EU and its American partners able to achieve this goal to defeat the world's largest nuclear power without sparking a nuclear holocaust it wouldn't even be the end of it wouldn't even be a return to the 90s perpetual peace it would be effectively China has already been listed as being next on the block by the Americans because they also have to be defeated somehow it just it doesn't seem like the yeah liberal hegemony has this flexibility to accommodate this new changes also then inability I guess to to bring together the world as well because if even put Russian China aside I think what's one thing that's really missing in the discourse now in Europe is that the rest of the world isn't following us we're all very we don't seem to mention that the world outside NATO is not joining in on this in any way so you know we you can't dismiss it as being susceptible to Russian propaganda or not caring about democracy it doesn't really explain this also it's simply not discussed anymore because it becomes inconvenient and this is this is my concern now that we hear this rhetoric especially from Biden that you know we're gonna more or less return to a new Cold War where they suggesting all liberal democracies will unite under US leadership and we will essentially replay the Cold War again and knock out its key enemies but the Cold War had such unique features I mean this was the ideological divide was not liberal and authoritarian you had capitalists and the communists so the other serious world communist countries decoupled from economic state's craft which and all that entails and meanwhile all the allies were willing to subordinate or not subordinate but at least the resolve their economic differences with the United States in or because the military confrontation had to take priority I just don't see any of this being able to be replayed now you have countries like Russia China very deep in economic state craft especially the Chinese you see the Europeans at some point they will they will I can't imagine continuing on this path because what they're doing now stripping themselves of all economic and strategic relevance so I'm just I'm not sure what what what you views are is it is there any possibility to absorb these changes in this current or not current the passing the liberal edgemonic system dinner I am I mean you alluded to it that about what is a Cold War and it's a and it's a big debate whether we should call where we are today a second Cold War and I initially was rather skeptical about this way of framing you know how do we how do we envisage how do we frame conceptualize international politics today not international system you mentioned by the way earlier this idea of world order I have no idea what a world order is so I don't use the term at all but you have an international system the charter system then you have within well I do in one specific context then within international politics we've got world orders we've got the u.s. led one so we do have there's not a world order there is a u.s. led world order then we have the the well as good as our post but a different one so let's call it even the political west on the one side and the political east on the other and the political east is a much different beast so it's not the same as this block politics this ideological unity this alliance of democracies you mentioned just now or into that so we have the political west consolidating and look look at the joy today in Brussels and in London and in new Washington about how this war in Ukraine has consolidated the block given NATO a purpose and so on and all of that rhetoric which as you say it's suicidal it's your barbative it's hemetic it simply cannot take in ideas from outside of itself meanwhile we have this dynamic political east flexible much more protein is not based on block politics it's explicitly excluded Chinese philosophy excludes block politics it's not going to be based on that alliance system which we had before 1914 and we had in first Cold War of the Soviet Union versus the United States so we have this political east based on oh no they rhetorically keep appealing to the chituan charter and they're absolutely right to do so of course then people say you know what about their human rights and so on you could say the same about ours uh in a different way i mean the tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands who have been unnecessarily killed in New York and Syria we still have we still have sanctions on Syria what on earth is the purpose there to starve or tortured and destroyed civilized uh economy and society to this day it's vindictive and tens of thousands are dying because of those these so-called Caesar sanctions imposed by Donald Trump and intensified by the Biden administration so we have a political west which is irresponsible which is uh imposing costs on the global south and we have an emerging political east very different but it's key point it's ideology is sovereign internationalism but then we would say that i would say to both the political west and the political east yes support the UN charter but also the values on which the charter is based and of course societies develop in their own pace in their own time uh but so therefore you know but still it's a commitment which we have to to insist on we're not as you know a teacher master master pupil relationship which is the way we tend to do these things so we have a second cold war which is more dangerous than the first but a very different one it's like a game of chess each game of chess has you know works out differently but it plays by the same rules that is don't go nuclear let the gate powers not directly come into conflict with each other because that will end we come close to it in Ukraine of course but uh so it's a much more dangerous one so i'm i'm saying you know talking about um can i go back to your first point which is to say that there's a zero sum game that peace depends on defeating the enemy indeed that is a new element as well in the second cold war it was never there in the first one uh so uh but if we analyze it in this way as we're doing then we can begin to you know think about strategies or advise even to government because surprisingly enough there's people in washington we saw all those people who were over the palestine issue in the state department there's a letter hundred who i think it's two hundred people and even even in belly coast belligerent london we know that in the ministry of defense i want name names in the so there's going to be shooting them out now in the foreign and commonwealth office elsewhere in government there are people who you know who understand these things and so therefore you know all is not lost absolutely can i can i confirm that i mean there's no doubt it will confirm that i mean i can i agree with that i know for a fact as we all do that there are people from washington in london in paris in berlin who do not agree with the direction of the policy has been taking and they are there and to the extent that they can they are speaking out and they're not being listened to at the moment but they're still there and they will continue to be and can i just perhaps pose a question a sort of rather more optimistic point now which is you know we're right in the middle of this horrible war at the moment and it is deeply distressing and we see this extreme period of i mean off the scale belligerents confrontation i agree with everything you've said about the european commission and what it's become by the way and by the way i should also say as someone who for most of his life was a strong supporter of the you know what eventually became today's european union i feel you know deeply well questioning about about what i believe before and disillusioned and demoralized by what has happened but is it possible that this is the dark moment before the dawn if i can put it like that in the sense that you know i i once remember reading long ago some passage i think it was um even halden who said you know that the very end of an empire there is often a big show of force it like like you know the the wick in the cat he said the wick in the the light in the wick of the cat which brightens up at the very end and it looks like it's getting it's about to get brighter when in fact it's a sign that he's going out in other words all of this activity this feverish activity this attempt to militarize everything to seek victory over russia fast and all of that is because there's a somewhere an understanding that this is the last big throw and that it it doesn't work this period of western a kind of western again very ugly western hegemony is ending and that the true point here is exactly the point that the global south the rest of the world is not joining in this you know nine eighty five percent of humanity is saying this isn't something that we want to become involved in they are asserting the charter principles the united nations and they're also saying this is this is um we are we are we are the forces we are we're the rest of the world and we're becoming stronger and whereas at the start of the 20th century the west basically was the part of the world when all the decisions were made that is not true anymore so that you know this is the last big flash if you like of that 500 years of western power policy and focus on europe and once we get through this which i believe we will by the way in spite of all the dangers um the world will reshape itself and it will become more stable and we'll just have to accept in europe and in the united states that we're part of a world's commonwealth i like that word by the way um and that we have a good place in it if we choose to make the most of it absolutely so we need to and this is what i'm working on now is a you know a vision of what this commonwealth politics could look like within international politics within the framework of the international system uh you absolutely guys so that if we do get see our way through this we should have ideas waiting at the other end of how we do it one of them for example i mean as many of them but one of them would have to be a going back to that um goberchovian idea and i'm still a bit goberchovian like it or lumpet but uh you know of the common european home or first want me to end if you want to put it the other way a confederation of europe so that all the states of europe could live comfortably and happily in this capacious pluralistic vision from Lisbon to Vladivostok including our friends in central Asia and the south Caucasus and you know north europe Asia a huge north europe Asian confederation and that as i say from Lisbon to Vladivostok that would be one of those visions that we had to get away from this militarized atlanticism which is a leftover hangover from the cold wall and of course i'd not for a second am i saying that this should be an anti-american exercise absolutely not we work in partnership with with washington with all those united states because you as well as i know with all of our many many friends in the united states and just this morning i was uh in the last days i was working with people in california it lacks this piece international piece movement there and i'm doing many uh other of those events so we know that these ideas resonate in american society deeply deeply uh so you know the idea of anti-americanism we're anti militarism we're anti the political western so on so make it absolutely clear so but i i really do hope that you know remember i won't quote the author of the idea that as we get closer to socialism uh the class to juggle intensifies well that's slightly a very important argument uh that indeed uh but you know as you say that just before a candle splutters it sort of flares out um and we're in that flare stage but um i just hope you're right i really do and you know in this confederation of you by the way european union may have its own place but let them get on with it without its endlessly expansive ambitions uh nato may have a little corner and niche within all of that as well those who you know it's obviously instead of you know again it's that substitution uh like we saw the political west substituting for the charter international system and so nato has substituted for that uh larger european security order which never happened i mean it was skeleton in the organization for the header and corporation europe it was never given substance so in and the european union it expanded and it claimed to be you know brussell century europe which is impossible anybody looking at the map as glenn suggested earlier that we have Moscow there the world's largest country and now europe's largest economy uh which you know has to be built in but on not post-cold war terms of victory and sub as a subaltern force to to the political west but a whole new political architecture so you know i'm often accused by our friends in Moscow you know fear do i look kind of in particular but he's always says my girl on that sakros girl um he's such an innate always an optimist and i'm glad you join me in that uh you know without hope where are we well exactly that's that's absolutely right well so we have to start to bring this to an end uh i also want to yeah just bring any listeners attention to uh professor sakros uh working on almost finished with another book which is the political culture of the second cold war uh just something for people to look forward to and uh i i hope i got that title right anyways uh i really hope also i haven't been able to read your draft or haven't access to it of course but i really hope you unpack this some of these ideas of what what what the second cold war entails because as you suggested and yes what's working towards was well what exactly is it because we don't this idea that it's an ideological divide it's sold in the west but obviously no one in the east is seeing this as a conflict of ideology of you know liberal democracy versus authoritarianism which would be a very weird way of an overly simplified way of organizing the world uh we don't have the east is very adverse to block politics as you mentioned so there seems to be um uh yeah very different uh rules and uh which makes the question if we're even playing the same game in this new cold war so i'm really looking forward to this and uh otherwise yeah i hope i'll also try to be optimistic that there's some new ideas coming because again this like the current format of europe the idea that the country europe with the largest territory the most people the largest economy the most powerful army that they are the only one who are not allowed to be a part of europe if the the this was the recipe for stability and security i mean it's um it this should have been predicted so i'm i'm really yeah i'm looking forward to your next book that also point uh so any final comments uh Alexander you just to say that i completely agree with the last point you've made Glenn but i also want to say that people can also read today uh Richard's current book the one we've been discussing today the last piece um is it it's it's tremendous uh to a divorce if i could say discussing international relations it sweeps beyond europe it looks at the whole charter system it explains a lot of the history it explains a lot of the thinking that has happened and it discusses what went wrong and what we both lost and that's why i come back to the sadness but also it points the way to the kind of things that we we might be able to do the you know the way that we can find our way through this this the situation that we're in today so the last piece thank you i just been marvellous talking with you too thank you