The Duran Podcast
The Dangerous Interregnum - Geoff Roberts, Glenn Diesen & Matthew Blackburn
The program you are about to watch is a studio discussion between three academics discussing the current world crisis or perhaps more precisely the current crisis in international relations. In the global system of international relations which threatens a major rupture and which might potentially lead to something which many are describing as a new cold war and which some fear might actually become something even worse than a cold war. That we are living through a time of crisis I think is about the one thing that most people can follow international relations we generally agree about. So this by definition is an essential topic for discussion and the three academics who are discussing this topic in this program which you are going to be seeing are three academics who are exceptionally well equipped to discuss this topic, this topic of the world crisis. Two of these academics have appeared on many programs which we have done on the Duran. One of course is Glenn Deason with whom I am a professor at the University of Oslo with whom I regularly co-host programs interviewing all sorts of people, diplomats, economists, military officers, former intelligence officers, diplomats, all sorts of people which we regularly publish on the Duran. The other, Jeff Roberts, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Cork, in my opinion, the outstanding historian on the period of Joseph Stalin and on Joseph Stalin's personality and his history, somebody who is able to therefore provide us an outstanding understanding of the context, the historical context into which many of these current problems fit and the third, perhaps less well known to viewers of the Duran but increasingly well known to me, I've been reading with immense respect and admiration, various articles which I see that he has written, places like the National Interest in the United States and elsewhere, Matthew Blackburn who is a senior researcher at NUPI which is the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and who has a particular specialty in Russian and Eurasian studies. So three incredibly gifted, extremely experienced, insightful academics undertaking an important, in my opinion, extremely necessary discussion on the current situation. In the world, now this particular discussion has taken the format that it has as a result of various complex events which Matthew Blackburn who is hosting the discussion will describe at the very start of the program. All I would say is that the difficulty that has arisen in conducting this discussion is in my opinion an extremely sad commentary on the state of the modern world and in particular the state of public discussion in the West today. Given that it is an indisputable fact in my opinion that we are in a global crisis and given how dangerous that crisis potentially is, one would have thought that a proper discussion like this one between academics, people with immense background, knowledge and experience of these topics would be welcomed and would encounter not only no difficulties but assistance. Well as you will see, events have been somewhat otherwise. So I'm glad to say that we've decided that you ran to step in and to make sure that this discussion actually gets rather more publicity and rather more retention than some people perhaps would like it to have. Now I say that because of course there is a view, a current view about the causes of the global crisis that we're living through. You can read it every day in the newspapers, in all sorts of magazines, you hear various political leaders talk about it, you have it discussed in parliaments and in news programs. Briefly it's a situation where the Western powers having won the Cold War and established a wonderful, perfect or near perfect system of international relations based on the new liberal rules based order of finding it disrupted by all sorts of malevolent actors in places like China and Russia. So I don't think that remotely adequately describes the problems that we are in, it's one that in my opinion discounts the complexity of causes and the role played in the crisis not just by leaders in places like Russia and China but in the West as well. Anyway this program obviously looks into the causes more deeply, it looks at them with historical insight, it both challenges, various analogies that have been put forward in discussions and descriptions of the crisis and of course it looks at the actions and motivations of parties on every side. It approaches this topic with the clarity and the rigor that you would expect from academics. So without further ado let me pass it on, please watch this program, enjoy it, learn from it, I myself have learned a great deal and I hope and trust and believe that you will find it extremely interesting. Thank you. Alright, my name is Matthew Blatper, I'm a senior researcher at the Origins of International Affairs and with me today are Professor Jeffrey Roberts, Emeritus Professor at University College of Cork and Professor Blindeeson at Professor University of Southern Eastern Norway and originally three of us planned to just be at an event here in Oslo which we were going to entitle the dangerous inter-regnum and the slide to global war be halted and that event has not actually a place and so we are here in a different format but still with a chance to speak to each other in a kind of interactive discussion and so I'm very glad that we are three of us are here, three academics with different backgrounds, perhaps different generations, different disciplines and maybe making different arguments but here we are a time in history when the idea of inter-regnum resonates more, I picked up this idea in Glenn Diesen's book that came out this year called The Ukrainian War and the Eurasian World Order, it comes from Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist who contributed so much to political and social theory, to quote Gramsci at the inter-regnum is a kind of crisis in which I quote, "The old is dying and the new cannot be born." In this inter-regnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear, end quote, and we all know what these morbid symptoms are whether it's the war in Ukraine, in Gaza, whether it's the international economy, the inflation or other kinds of symptoms that suggest the idea of a US-led order is crumbling into something else, that something else has not fully formed. Now to say that we are in a planetary poly-crisis, maybe it's pushing too far but we certainly can't dismiss out of hand the threat of a multi-theatre, multi-power war, by assuming we don't have World War III we also have some evidence that we're sliding into a cold war so whether it's a hot war or a cold war doesn't sound good. Now just to get things started I'll go back to a book I read last year by Gilbert Achkar who's a Lebanese scholar and his book was called "The New Cold War" which is appropriate for this discussion. I when it came to sort of defining what is cold war he went back to actually Edward Bernstein, the revisionist Marxist and who brought it into modern usage to talk about Imperial German and its peacetime war spending, military spending, its peacetime alliance system and the idea that this heavy sort of military spending was not good, it was lead to catastrophe and these socialists advocated the taunt, the salmon before the first Cold War that we all knew of actually happened. Now Achkar points out that with the advent of atomic weapons the Cold War takes on a new dimension, we're thinking about the logic of mutually assured destruction and that these superpowers attempt to maintain a balance of terror as he puts it which means constant spending on arms race escalations and in the kind of definition that we get from Achkar this is a kind of constant peacetime military spending, a failure to achieve overarching diplomatic solution to reduce tensions or dismantle hostile alliance systems. Now of course we all, I am from the generation that came of age when the Cold War ended and when this was dismantled for four decades of the last Cold War and you know it did appear to certainly my parents generation somewhat absurd or laughable that we would go back to having another Cold War so quickly we'd be remilitarizing Europe and we would be back steering down the abyss going toe to toe with the Russians but here we are and if I had to summarize from my own perspective and my own reading and analysis of how the western committeria kind of analyzes the situation there is this kind of sentiment that we won the last Cold War we set up a rules base order expanded it, it wasn't flawless but it was the best we've ever had in terms of world, the world history but now these bad actors have come along and spoiled it and maybe it's Putin, maybe it's Xi, maybe it's the autocrats, maybe it's the toilette, it's the latarians or maybe it's the populace, the nationalists, the Islamists, the Brexiteers, the Trumpists but whatever happened we're in a Cold War, wasn't our fault, we didn't want it but now it's time to struggle and do for the good cause of the west and if you don't sign up for that then you're a traitor or you're misguided or you're working for Chinese or Iranian intelligence so setting up our discussion and I'm casting some shadows back to the last Cold War, military industrial complexes that are in competition, in proxy wars, this information bringsmanship to testing of boundaries and capabilities but to bring Jeffrey in, this emergent Cold War in many ways is unlike the conflict between the Soviet Union and the west and that's really where I'm going to have asked you to come in, I mean obviously a lot of the historical analogies about the concept between for example Russia and the west spins almost automatically back to Hitler Putin, Churchill Wazielinski and that is the most obviously overused historical analogy and so it would appear that we'd be better off thinking about it in terms of the last Cold War, there's more interesting comparisons so I just can answer it. I agree with that, yeah if you got to use historical analogies at all then I think the old Cold War, the first Cold War, is probably the thing to focus on rather than going back to you know Hitler and Israel in the 1930s, now we begin with this idea of the Cold War having two fundamental components on the other hand, preparations for war, war preparations and on the other hand the deterrent effect of the existence of nuclear weapons, now that combination is not true for the early years of the Cold War and I was talking about the late 1940s, early 1950s, the early years of the Cold War certainly was about preparations for war and the assumption was that if the Cold War wasn't resolved it didn't end, then sooner or later there would be a war, yeah, okay but then of course in the 1950s you get the firm nuclear revolution, yes we're working at the atomic power, the atomic bombs that can a thousand times more powerful than the ones that the Americans dropped out of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you know, existentially, you know, threats to the whole of humanity, nuclear weapon, weaponry begins to come online, okay, then you get this concept of deterrence, coming very much part of the Cold War, the thing about this concept of deterrence, it's often sort of like, it tends to be associated with the idea that you have nuclear weapons in order to deter the other side that has nuclear weapons from using them on you, actually the function of nuclear weapons during the first Cold War wasn't there, the function of nuclear weapons was actually to deter a major conventional war between the Great Powers, yes, that was what that's, it's to deter it against conventional war rather than nuclear war, the reason being of course is that if you have the outbreak of a major conventional war on the Great Powers, the chance is actually going to escalate into some kind of nuclear war, it comes to present a situation and what war is me, it's the first point of worry if you like, is that the Ukraine war, what's happened in relation to the Ukraine war has actually normalized the idea of the possibility of a great power conventional war, I in theory without the use of nuclear weapons, because given the escalatory actions of the West during the Ukraine war, the proxy war has got us close to a major conventional war between the Great Powers as it could be without actually being one and I don't actually see a great deal of distance between the proxy war in Ukraine as we've experienced the last two years and an actual major conventional war between the Great Powers and it seems to be also that what was deterred, what was stopped that actually happening is not the fact of the existence of nuclear weapons by both sides, it's the fact that the West is weak conventionally vis-a-vis Russia and that's what has been exposed by the war, if Western conventional armed forces were actually up to a major conventional war with Russia, I think the prospects of their being such a little touch of war would be incredibly handsome, so okay, if we are moving into a new Cold War, a renewed Cold War, we move into a period in which there is an acute danger of a major conventional war between the Great Powers at a much greater danger than there was during the early years of the first Cold War, that's the first point, second point, second kind of concern, making the Cold War comparisons, okay there was this thing we called the Cold War, but actually, paradoxically, only one side of that conflict, okay there were lots of sides, well as soon as two sides, only one side of that concept really wanted the Cold War and pursued the Cold War as its project to achieve its political strategic goals and that side was the Western side, the Soviets didn't actually want the Cold War, the Soviets didn't actually, for the Soviets, what the Soviets were struggling throughout the Cold War was to end the Cold War, to curtail the Cold War, to create some kind of situation of permanent detente, the Soviets didn't want the Cold War, so in that sense it was a very kind of one side, a one side is stronger, and of course the Soviet efforts to contain Qatar and then the Cold War were backed up by an enormous international peace movement which in its day was very, very powerful, very, very influential, I'd say that the biggest peace movement in the 40s and 50s, 60s, it was the biggest movement, peace movement history so far, okay so going back to the emerging new Cold War, this is a Cold War in which we may have, is Russia, oh yeah so this is the main point, of course, yeah it was the Soviet Union's struggle for peace, which was a stabilizing factor in the Cold Cold War and one of the fundamental blocks to that Cold War becoming the hot war, but is Russia going to struggle for peace in the same way that the Soviets are, certainly if they did that they were not, they're not going to be backed up by some big, big, big, big peace movement, so this new Cold War you could have both sides, actually engaging in the struggle intentionally, I think that's going to make it all the more dangerous, okay and the third point is this, it's the same theme about how the new Cold War is potentially much, much more dangerous than the old Cold War and this is to do with the framework within which the struggle is conducted, now obviously, the distinguishing feature of the old Cold War relative to the new Cold War is that there was this ideological fundamental ideological political struggle, broadly the struggle between communism and capitalism, so there was kind of politically political ideological existence of struggle, right, that's what really defines as the Cold War and obviously in the West they're trying to build up, there's another existential struggle, you know, between authoritarianism and liberalism and stuff like that, but I don't think that really, really works, but here's the thing, you know, there was that ideological existential, a theme of the old Cold War, but it was a struggle conducted by both sides within the framework of the existing international order, i.e., the international order as constituted I would say from the 19th century onwards, particularly from the First World War and also reinforced by the result of the Second World War, and that's the international order based on the system of sovereign states based on sovereignty, yeah, you know, neither side, not even the West, no Americans wanted a spite of overturn that order in order to win their victory or to achieve their goals in, so there was a system itself, the existence of international order informed this system of sovereign states which has been formed and developed over hundreds of years, that wasn't under frank during the First Cold War, I think it is under frank now, and may well be in the future because it seems to me that elements on the western side of this emerging conflict are prepared to do whatever it takes to achieve their goals, even if that means destroying the existing international order and ushering in a new era of disorder and of real true anarchy in international politics, so what's at stake in the new Cold War may be not a contest between different types of order or, you know, multipolar versus liberal hegemony, yeah, sure, I think it was at stake might be international order itself, and that's the most concerning thing. I'd like to follow up a little bit on this question of how dangerous it is, and the question of, you know, we go back to the Korean War, for example, this was also quite a dangerous war, and if we take the interpretation that Stalin green-lighted North Korea's invasion, which is unclear if he did or didn't, you would be able to tell us about that, but once that war kicked off, we have American forces in Korea, we have MacArthur advocating, nuclear strikes against China was the Chinese enter, we have the possibility of that war spiraling out into the European theatre, it seems to me that there's an argument to be made that it was in a way more dangerous because we were as a willingness to put troops on the ground, and what's really struck me across the whole of the Ukraine crisis is that, you know, as you've already mentioned yourself, there's not the conventional capability to put men in the field, and there's no political desire to do it, and as much as we hear Macron talking about it, it doesn't feel convincing that there's actually a willingness or a capacity to have NATO troops on the ground doing anything significant in Ukraine, so I wonder if you heard that from him. Well, yes, a scientist green-lighted the world, and there's no doubt about it, but green-lighted on the basis that it was going to be a short, sharp, quick war, and there wouldn't be any broader dangers arising from it, and that turned out to be a fundamental miscalculation because you had this American-led intervention on the side of South Korea, which saved the South Korean regime, and then, of course, what happens next is that the US coalition advances into North Korea, and then you get the Chinese introverture, but the Chinese aren't intervened directly as a state, it actually intervenes in the form of volunteers, because, sorry, Ukraine, well, there's plenty of foreign volunteers who are actually state-sponsored fighting it, not on the scale set as in the Korean War, so yeah, but all the actors in that situation, Stalin, the West, Chinese, were acting with a considerable degree of restraint, yeah, yeah, it wasn't a limited war, it was in many ways a proxy war, but the element of restraint was quite significant, and there was never at any stage, no, unless we're a car for God as well, and they use atomic bombs as part of the struggling career itself, you know, I've always walked my car for one day, but apart from that episode, there was never any question, I don't think, that the Korean War was going to expand into a more general conflict, but I don't think you can say that about the Korean War, I think it's it has been, and it remains a constant threat, because of, well, because of the way the West has construed it as an existential threat, not just to their hegemony, but to, you know, Western civilization as well as we know it, yeah, and on the basis of that kind of rhetoric and discourse, that's why they pursued one escalatory action after no, whereas in the case of the Korean War, fireman again, certainly, I know for a fact, on the Soviet side, the China side, there's restraint is excised in order to make sure it doesn't go too far, and the same thing applies to Vietnam, Vietnam Wars, and even more, a much bigger, in many some ways more important, proxy war within the Cold War context, but again, there is a considerable degree of restraint, it's a lack of restraint on the Western side, and now some of you are being biased to just blame in the West, but I think that's true, one can criticise Russia, and Russia does see as an existential struggle as well, but at the same time, both before the war and throughout the war, there's clear evidence of restraint on the Russian side, there's willingness to negotiate a solution which will acclue a war to negotiate solutions that would end the war, and even now, I would say, on the Russian side, you know, there is the possibility of a negotiated end to the war, but the problem, the absence lies clearly on the Western side, and that forms part of its pattern of less and less restrained involvement in intervention in the conflict in Ukraine. I think an issue which makes it also more dangerous is the mere proximity, because during the First Cold War, at least the dividing lines in Europe had been clearly delineated, you know, this is the capitalist world, this communist, and we'll do our proxy wars through yeah, third parties in the third world, the problem in the new Cold War, which I would argue, to large extent, began when we gave up on our agreements for our common European security architecture, and we instead said, well, let's just expand NATO as a hegemonic system, because what we effectively did then is what we call European integration, effectively means moving the dividing lines closer to the east, and decoupling Russia from its neighbors. So what this means in terms of Cold War is, the regions we're fighting for now is where should the new dividing lines be in Europe, and this is much, much closer to home, so everything, if we have low interest in some remote parts of Africa or in Southeast Asia, that would be one thing, we can always walk away from it, it's not all or nothing, but but in Europe, it's very different, everything's closer to home, so the intention, yeah, decided to go for victory is much greater, and a paranoia for defeat is much greater, but this is also one of the reasons why the Ukraine war was such a disaster, I mean, these days you can't say much, criticize NATO, of course, unless you want to be labeled as Putin's stooge, but you know, let's look at what Obama said in 2016, he was supposed to send arms, a large amount of arms to Ukraine, and when he was asked why, pretty much pointed out the obvious that Russia was on the escalatory ladder, this is right on their border, if you want to fight a war with Russia, and it's on their border, they have the advantage of logistics, and this is a relation dominant, I think, yeah, yeah, logistic escalation dominance, this is, this is the, so not only do they have the logistics in place in this right on their border, but this also, more important I would say, it gives them, it's an existential threat for them, they have more to lose, this is everything, I mean, if NATO would roll it to Ukraine in this way, they would be kicked out of the Black Sea, they would see this as possible disintegration of their state, so they see this, I would say, in the reasonably as an existential threat, and even if we don't agree, certainly there's no doubt this is how the Russia will see it, so the mere proximity of this new, determining where this new dividing lines is that the Russians had major advantage, and they had everything to lose if they fail, so this is why I think it's become so much more dangerous, and I agree with Jeff, the fact that the West hasn't been willing to find any diplomatic solutions, because for the Russians this is either, this is all or nothing, of course they're happy to do, to find a diplomatic settlement, because if they don't need to take over large territories in Ukraine, if it was neutral, it would be fine, but they can't afford time NATO there, and also yeah, to quote Jeff, you know, I wonder what can I argue it's a very pro-Russian thing to say, but it's also rooted in reality for two years, the Russians have been pushing for diplomacy, and the West has rejected it, for more than two years we refused to sit down with the Russians, it was not the Russians who refused to have diplomacy with us, so I think, yeah, this proximity, for me this is the fighting board, the new dividing lines in Europe, I think this is what makes this very different from the First World War. Yeah, and to sort of develop maybe some of the causes for the difference between the last Cold War and the emerging Cold War is this question of strategic empathy, so you have an opponent, you may not like them, you may think they're a dreadful regime or a dreadful country, but you understand that they have certain strategic interests and you can empathize with what they are, and so that kind of brings you to the contrast between how Putin's Russia has been viewed in the West, as compared to how Stalin was viewed when he was alive in the West, and how Mao even was viewed in that time period at the beginning of the last Cold War, there's a number of elements to this, but it does appear that many people, or the political spectrum, take a very, very kind of anti-Putin position there, very passionately opposed to him, that's not really how it was in my understanding of the last Cold War, so I just wondered if that is another element here, that could be... Yeah, I don't know, I don't know if you should exaggerate the degree of strategic empathy in the first Cold War, sorry, in the first Cold War, yeah, I think it was the same problem, yeah, but you are right, but there is a certain difference in the way Putin is demonized in a way that Stalin never was, you know, I'm the expert on Stalin, you know, the mass murderer and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but I mean, the way Putin is treated in Western politicians or Western media, makes Stalin look good, you know, a statesman, you know, okay, I think the difference is this though, is that in the West, throughout the Cold War and in the West, there were significant currents of full parts of the establishment, intellectuals, think tanks, whatever the equivalent of the day, who did have a degree of strategic empathy, yeah, in relation to the Soviets and their perspective, yeah, so, and there was a different perspective, yes, and it was the existing, and there was a discussion, yes, and it's the existence of that different perspective, that elements of strategic empathy, which might possibly develop in the direction of detente, particularly after the issue of massacre. The difference of the day is that, okay, there are people like ourselves who do have strategic empathy for, you know, for the Russians, yeah, but overwhelmingly, there's this complete absence of strategic empathy compared to the first, the first, the first, the first Cold War. And I keep, I keep saying for, well, surely, you know, as the war progresses, as, as it becomes more and more obvious that, you know, Ukraine's defeat will be, you know, the longer the war goes on, the more catastrophic will be Ukraine's defeat, surely they will actually come to the senses and start to exercise, you know, the, the, the durability to, to emphasize with the perspective of Russia's, but I don't see a lot of evidence, I see them doubling down on the, on our, on our lack of empathy, now refusal to see the Russian, the Russian point again refusal to accept what the Russians say their motives are and what their concerns are. And then they just dismiss that saying, no, that's the sort of propaganda, you know, it's at least all about, you know, imperial expansion, you know, it takes your verses or purchase liberalism, all, all that kind of thing, yeah. There's also a sense that any researcher or analyst that carefully dispassionately, dispassionately reproduces the strategic narrative of China, Iran, Russia, is runs the risk of just being accused, you know, accusations like you're disseminating the propaganda of hostile states, you're undermining democracy, you're sowing confusion, you're, you're undermining the West's purpose. Yeah. Okay. And that's just me, it's the point. Yeah. What is that all about? And how does it compare with this wave of McCarthyism and also was important to the start of the last call? I, I will come here and then maybe can, can get on the discussion is that it's not just Russia that suffers from this problem of lack of strategic empathy, it applies to China and it applies to Iran as well. Yeah. I've seen that. It's important to note that. Yeah. But pledge, maybe you would try to continue at that point. No, it's a proof of where it comes from. It's a good question, but that was one of my big surprises as well, because I remember back in the day when I was doing my doctorate, I used the security dilemma as the main way of explaining the development of relations between the Western Russia after the Cold War. I remember going to the first conference and pointing out, you know, why, what Russia does, what Russia does threatens us, but also what NATO does threatens Russia. And this was, to my surprise, very, very controversial that the idea that a military alliance would expand towards the Russian borders and cancel all the agreements we had for a pan-European security architecture, that somehow this would be seen as a threat, that this is surely not legitimate, and it's very strange. I think, yeah, this conviction that I think that the generation that came after the Cold War, that this was essentially the recipe for a perpetual peace, as you began to, with your opening remarks, that we now finally, you know, ended all this ideological struggles to more, more and more adversaries we could, you know, to ascend, transcend the realism of the former world and essentially start on as something entirely different. I think we want to believe that the history, that path is kind of set, and you'll become a hostile to any disruption to it, and this is, yeah, very dangerous because people conflating empathy with the other, with the opposing side as in taking their side, and this is very strange to me because if you want to maximize your own security, obviously you have to be able to take into account, see things from the opposing side, but I think it's also rooted, therefore, in a new idea, which is the idea that peace is created by defeating your adversaries, because in the international system defined by an international anarchy, security competition is the key, so everyone's competing for security, and the path to security is usually finding out to the areas where your interests can be harmonized and how to resolve the conflicts without resorting to force, but I think that we embrace this idea now in the West that the way to peace is to defeat your adversaries, and I think the end of the Cold War strengthened this, this was one of the key arguments on the American ambassador to the Soviet Union as well, Jack Matlock, as he was pointing out, you know, we negotiate an end to the Cold War in 1989, so the lesson of the Cold War was, you know, sit down with your adversary, take their interest into account, and we can find a common solution who will have peace, but then two years later, the Soviet Union collapsed, and you had now a whole new ideology emerging, in which one month after the collapse of the Soviet Union, you had President Bush, senior, you know, saying, you know, the Cold War didn't end, it was one, and this legitimized all our struggles in Korea, and, you know, this was the foundation, as he said, that the leader of the West is now the leader of the world, so the whole international order of a hegemony rested on this aspect, so I think, yeah, the idea that peace is created by negotiations, I think it's, yeah, it's very hard to say, it's hard to support these days, because we have so much propaganda, and this is what Hans Morgan Ta was writing, you know, way back in the days, if you accept that there's a security competition between states, you have to understand the interest of the opponent, however, if you convinced yourself through propaganda that the world is a struggle between good and evil, there can't be any compromise, you have to defeat the adversary, peace is created when, you know, good vanquishes the evil, and I think, for me, this summarized the mentality, because we always fighting another Hitler, and you can't negotiate with Hitler, and if you try to understand Hitler, well, you know, you might be a Hitler supporter, and this is, it sounds like a very childish way of thinking, but this is, in my opinion, the dominance mentality we have. I kind of have a point about strategic empathy, which is this, okay, yeah, that Western elites, policymakers, decision maker, politicians above all, they seem to let the capacity for strategic empathy for Russia's concern, for example, the same is not true of their voters, all Western publics, yes, all the opinion pulp data shows that plenty of people out there, more and more people out there, have no problem with understanding, empathizing with the Russian point of view, and seeing Russia's security concern, seeing our NATO expansion, you know, could be friend, they certainly don't have any problem with the idea that the way to, the way to peace is to have peace negotiations, not to actually remilitarize them, go look around forces and prepare, prepare for a future war, so it's under the common sense of, you know, of the public, this gives me some some hope that, and the opener makes it to bring the Gaza into the picture, because, okay, I think what that crisis has done, seems to me anyway, it's kind of like prompted more people to exercise strategic empathy in the sense of trying to understand the Israeli perspective and the, you know, the Palestinian Arab and Gaza perspective, some hope for there can be some spillover, and that includes, you know, significant sections of the Western media, whose coverage of that crisis, that conflict, that war, is much, much more even handed, than the way they've handed the Ukraine war. So, so, I'm both, there might be some kind of spillover effect into having a new sets of eyes on the Ukraine war, what's going on there? So, you know, it's, it's, Gaza, Gaza is a tragedy, for sure, huge, kind of like a human human tragedy, but could have some, you know, helpful effects in relation to the Ukraine war, and finding a way, a way forward to resolve that conflict. I agree with what I said, because, well, I think that us, or the moral collapses further, I think, the public becomes a bit more aware of it, and I do see some similarities, because in Gaza, you know, we're told, you know, if you, if you criticize the genocide, the massacres, I say, oh, well, then you're Hamas supporter, and you support them, because, you know, if you don't fully support this side, that means you support that side, and it's the same when in the Ukraine crisis, if you, if you criticize NATO for provoking the war and sabotaging the peace agreements, well, oh, well, then you support Putin, because you, you know, you, you have to pick one side, and then stick with it. This is the mentality, and, and also context, of course, if you say, well, it's, you know, what Hamas did to civilians on the 7th of October, you can't excuse this, but, you know, the conflict did begin on the 7th of October. So if you imply there's context, then, well, now you're legitimizing it, and it's the same with this. Well, the war didn't start in February of 2022. It started, you know, eight years earlier, and it's, we, we in NATO, we started it when we toppled the government, and then launched this campaign against the Russians before they even took Crimea. So I, but then, oh, no, you're also legitimizing it, because you're providing context, you're explaining why they did it. So there's a lot of this similarities, but I think as the public now sits back and watches the leaders explain, well, if you create a side that means you hate Jews, or, you know, obviously you can't call for negotiations. Weapons are the path to peace, and we don't speak with our adversaries. At some point, the public, I think, does begin to question the bit of, you know, perhaps, you know, this, their leaders aren't as virtuous as they, you know, flim to be. This whole idea that you could come and not be on one side or the other, of course, was a big part of the last Cold War, the non-aligned movement, and a whole range of states that said, we don't want to be with the Soviets or the Americans, and we don't want to have any, be any party to a Third World War. And when we come to the current situation at the time, it's usually used as the Global South, which, you know, we could say is not exactly a geographical term, it's not very exact term. But the idea is that these states, in similar ways with the last Cold War, are not interested in taking sides. They want to have deals with all countries, and they tend to view, like you're talking about the Western public, because the view of this war in Ukraine, they go one step further and see it, you know, as a proxy war that they don't want to be involved with, and they would like to see it wound down immediately for the benefit of global economy and so on and so forth. So I just wonder, how does that compare with, you know, your understanding with the non-aligned movement in the last Cold War, and maybe is that one of the key differences here, because the relative weight of the Global South. Yeah, well, of course, what we call the Global South, but it's kind of the independence is exercised. Yeah, there's a direct line of continuity from the non-aligned movement in the 1950s, you know, the ban done conference as well. The difference of course is today's global surface infinitely more half-off than the non-aligned movement was in the 1950s, and it's an enormously important factor in a pro-peestyle direction, you know, if there is going to be some negotiated ends or some piece of them, then I think the Global South could play a really, really important role in lobbying and facilitating, you know, the negotiations that will have to take place. Yeah, so I was, yeah, kind of a huge importance to gain the global support. People and politicians at the Global South, they don't have any problem with exercising their human ability to emphasize, to see different points of view, to see the Russian point of view, see that Russian interests, as well as obviously, you're having a huge degree of which I do as well, if you use degree of empathy for the Ukrainians, Ukraine and the Ukrainian state and the Ukrainian people and all the damage that is suffering, the disaster, you know, the Ukrainians being destroyed by this war, you know, the longer it goes on, the more chances are that there'll be no recognizable independent Ukrainian sovereign state at the end of it. And so, yeah, so I, you know, obviously, I'm a Russia specialist and a historian, a historian is obviously specialized, this is what we do, we empathize, explain different points of view, particularly different points of view that we don't share, or we have differences with ourselves. So obviously, you know, it's a natural kind of, I have a natural empathy for the Russian perspective, yes, but that doesn't stop me from exercising my strategic empathy in relation to Ukraine, or actually in relation to in relation to the Western perspective as well, you know, we need to make an effort in that, in that, in that, there are Western sensibilities involved here. So any line, peace settlement, any reconstruction of relations with Russia, if that's at all possible, will involve accommodating Western sensibilities, as well as Ukrainian and Russian sensibilities as well. And I think at this stage, we maybe would move over to to Glenn, because you've been arguing for quite some time, for quite a while, to some cost as well, against the agreeing of the kind of general analysis of how this new Cold War is emerging, and that kind of analysis where the blame is at the foot of Russia, specifically Putin, this is a revengeist international spoiler that wants to tear down the rule-based order. There's others like you, Gilbert Achkar, I mentioned already, Noam Chomsky, of course, and a similar strand of thinkers, left-wing thinkers, Jeffrey Sachs, who was in some of these institutions that were involved in the post-Cold War era, and Mearsheimer, John Mearsheimer, is where we have to mention him. So, you know, this is the kind of group, it's rather small group, and then the collective group in some ways, but you usually wrote out a book this year, the Ukraine War and Eurasian World Order and devised, you know, what I've read of the book so far, you kind of contrasting the American grand strategy for, you know, our global hegemony and maintaining it with, you're contrasting that with, you know, what's the role of Russia, China, other countries in Eurasia, and is there going to be a kind of Eurasian Westphalian system that emerges? So, that kind of multipolar system of sovereign states that have a mutual commitment to collective balance of power, but also for stalling any attempts for one of these countries to make a graph for hegemony. And so, this is a kind of equilibrium that you describe in the book. So, I wonder if you could just say something about how you would relate your interpretation of the changing world order to this question of the nature of a new Cold War? Sure, well, in terms of what's, whenever you use concepts like a new Cold War, it's quite helpful because concepts, you know, they pack together vast amount of complexity, but they can also mislead, and I think that the problem of comparing this to the old Cold War is you had two potential hedgements with two competing universalist ideologies effectively, you know, in competition for supremacy. And this is very different from what's going on now. There's no, for example, in our struggle with Russia, despite the rhetoric, Russia is not restoring the Soviet Union. Russia neither has the capability or the intention to dominate, you know, the Eurasian landmass. At most, they're hoping to have some equilibrium within greater Eurasia, which means they recognize China will be the largest economy. But if you have a balance of powers, other large states, be it India, you know, with the Russians, Iranians, Japanese, Koreans, and it will be fine. It will, the Chinese will lead, but they can dominate. And dominate means you can dictate the policies of others. So I think this is a very important difference. So, so this is why, and I like the reference to Gramsci, which is why I used that quote as well, because I think this is all the struggles we have now with Russia, you know, in the Middle East, China, this all had the same origin, which is again, the old world is dying, and the new one hasn't been born yet, and it's also being prevented from being born. And the world that's dying is the hegemonic world order, because, you know, there was fall in system, which is the modern world order. It came to be a hegemony collapsed. You had the many centers of power also. There were no longer any universal idea values under the Catholic Church who could then, you know, a certain legitimacy to rule over old people. So universalism was gone, and the center of power was gone. So when talk about the world order, it's largely about the international distribution of power and the justification for whatever rules you have. And yeah, for what the rules will be of the game. Now, after the Cold War, you know, there were debates, also academic debates about what would be the new world order, the term world order came up over and over. Would we then return into a best fall in system that is several poles of power? And if anyone strives for hegemony, the other will collectively balance them, one based on sovereign equality, you know, accommodating many centers of power, they, this will be one option, or the second option would be another, you know, Pax Romana, a new hegemon. And this would then entail one center of power, and then using universal values to effectively create a system based on sovereign inequality, because, you know, how hegemon will enjoy full sovereignty. But if you rule over the rest of the international system, they're going to have to have diminished sovereignty. Now, the United States obviously went with the hegemonic option. And yeah, we'd emphasize as well, I think that most had genuinely benign intentions, because the main assumption is, if you have a dominant power, then it's assumed that this can reduce the international anarchy. So it mitigates great power rivalry, because no one's competing for dominance, there is a dominant power. So the power struggles is demitigated, but also then you have the opportunity to elevate the role of liberal democratic values. And I think many people generally believe that if we can introduce more humanitarian law into international law, we can have a more peaceful international system in which everything isn't power politics. And this was the objective, the new world order. And this is also what we pursued in Europe. And this manifested itself as abandoning the Charter of Paris for a new Europe, the OSCE, all of these collective European security institutions, and instead going with NATO expansion, which is effectively the Americans' ruling. And with all of Europe included, except the Russians, of course. And the problem, though, was always as critics also recognized in the early 90s, is it's unavoidably, it's a temporary phenomenon, this unipolarity or hegemony, because the power distribution is it can't be maintained over time. Like all empires, it will begin to, the resources will begin to be taken from the core to the periphery. So it's expensive. And the US would start to run itself into debt. It would have economic problems, economic disparities, social problems, political instability. So again, what you're seeing today, with 34 trillion in the whole, and all the social economic and political problems, which comes with it. And that's just what would happen within the US. But then at the same time, what would happen if one aspires for hegemon? Well, you have to also prevent the rise of rival powers, or even friendly powers, because then it's no longer a hegemonic system. So now this is a key objective of NATO expansion, of course, to contain and weaken the Russians perpetuate the weakness they had in the 90s. This is also why it would have economic warfare against the Chinese. But if you try to keep everyone else down, they will then begin to come together collectively to balance you. And this is what you see with BRICS, SEO, all these institutions where they're now seeking to decouple economically from the US, at least reduce dependence and the political West, and instead seek more economic integration with each other. So this is how you see just the power dimension. But then also you have the legitimacy aspect, because hegemon doesn't only bleed resources, it also bleeds legitimacy over time, because this becomes an amb else around your neck if you're going to run an empire. So we saw that the main system, a hegemonic system, where this liberal international order, which they tried to establish, it doesn't conform with international law under the UN Charter, because the UN Charter sovereign equality is a key principle. We all have the same sovereignty, and this is why you balance hegemon's. Now, after the Cold War, gradually the United States began to introduce the so-called rules-based international order and push out international law. And so it's important to distinguish the differences, because international law, again, based on some inequality, the liberal international order attempts to combine international law with humanitarian law. So, but this results in no rules at all. You have two sets of rules, and then you can pick and choose, which is why it's rejected by everyone, not everyone, but outside NATO, you don't find much support for it. So I think you saw this already began with the invasion of Yugoslavia. The Americans, they would, well, after NATO, sorry, invaded, it was obviously illegal. You went against the UN Charter. However, it was said to be legitimate. So this was quite interesting. And this was a foundation of the liberal international order. You decoupled legitimacy from legality. And what is the, what is the alternative legitimacy? Well, it's liberal democratic values, you know, because of the human rights abuses in Yugoslavia. So now you had kind of two systems, and you saw the same rhetoric coming after the invasion of Iraq, the recognition. We need to have, we can't rely on the UN, because, you know, authoritarian states might try to constrain us. So we need a different authority. So this one we began to speak of an alliance of democracies, concert of democracies, a League of democracy. So all this, yeah, more or less the same as what we now refer to as the liberal international order, which means, yeah, you can pick and choose which principles. So for example, in Kosovo, what did we do? Do you have, do you go with sovereign, sorry, territorial integrity in accordance with the UN, international law, or self-determination, which is the humanitarian argument, and we can pick and choose. So we go with humanitarian. Okay, so they can have self-determination. So ignore the UN. When the Crimea, you know, the very similar instance, they are the old, well, vast majority want to do secede and join Russia. Well, then you can't have any more self-determination. Now you want to have territorial integrity. So you pick and choose. And it's always power interests at the foundation. So the result of this is, of course, that other countries also reject the whole thing. So the whole international order that we're pushing. So the international distribution of power has shifted. And the legitimacy is gone, especially after what's happening now in Gaza. No one's really buying our, you know, our liberal arguments anymore. And this is why the UN polarity is gone. And it's very difficult to bring it back now. And so the rest of the world are now pushing for establishing multipolarity. They want many centers of power, especially they're not just military, but economic. So several centers for technologies, industries, they want new transportation corridors, use their own currencies and their own payment systems. So across the board, they want to have several centers of power. But meanwhile, in the West, we haven't accepted this yet, especially then with the United States. They would like to restore hegemony, because our entire order after the Cold War, perpetual peace, one central power, liberal democratic norms, the West essentially having the prerogative to make up the rules. I guess I go so long. It was a very good deal. And also it was a deal which all our current politicians grew up in. So we tried to get this back. But by doing this piece depends on, again, defeating your adversaries. You have to crush the Russians. You have to knock down the Chinese, prevent them from growing further economically. Israel has to be able to do what it wants. Any challenges like Iran have to be crippled. This is the path to peace, defeating your adversaries. And this is what we don't understand, because in the rest of the world, yeah, of course, our adversaries, be it Russia or China, it makes sense. They will oppose this. But what you see in the rest of the world, being from Turkey, India, Latin America, they don't want unique polarity. And this is why, while they don't support Russia's innovation of Ukraine, they don't support NATO's proxy, we're against Russia either. They don't want to see Russia defeated or China broke it and then have restored this dominance of the West, where they all live under the rules-based international order. So this is where we are now. Unipolarity has already gone, but we're rejecting the multipolar system. So we're now pulling in two different directions. And this is where all the chaos is unleashed. And everyone is willing to sacrifice everything, because as you said, everything is at stake now. And, but also there's no rules. So we're willing to take huge risks, but there's no clear rules, which is what you see now. You know, Cameron, let's take our missiles, shoot them into Russia's cities if you want, you know, paraphrasing, of course. This is, yeah, this can go really, really wrong. But this is, yeah, the main risk. This is why so much is at stake. It's not just one conflict, it's some, yeah, the world order, which we are now fighting over. I think you've really, you know, skillfully developed this picture of why it's a dangerous interregnum. And there's a few different strands to go through. But one is, I want to take a line from the book that I think really captures this very well. And I quote, "The perpetuation of US hegemony demands the re-creation of Cold War dividing lines and conflicts that ensure that adversaries are weakened while allies remain dependent and obedient. The US converts security dependence into geoeconomic and political loyalties. The challenge of the system is that excessive peace reduces the influence of the US and allied states. On the other hand, excessive tensions incentivize adversaries to decouple geoeconomically from America." Now, that's the quote from the book. And you kind of talked it through very clearly with your comments. My kind of question is, there is a, there are people who have a realist logic, who work in the Pentagon, who work in influential bodies in the West. And surely they see this paradoxical situation and the danger of what you might call overextension and being caught out. You know, there seems to be, that's on the one hand. But as you've just outlined, the elites appear to completely believe in this kind of binary logic of all or nothing, all eggs in one basket on Ukraine. If we don't prevail in Ukraine, we lose everything. So I'm wondering, you know, do we have any kind of grounds to maybe hoping that there are some smart people in some rooms that are talking about this in the right way? But what's in the public domain for public consumption? Do we kind of really take it, you know, face Bali? Well, this is the kind of question, because I mean... Yeah. Well, this is why, well, in the Vostalian system, alliances is an important instrument. That is, if one country attempts to expand, the others will collectively balance. But this is wartime alliances. A lot of realist scholars always warn that peace time alliances is very destructive because, well, for a variety of reason, it necessitates the perpetuation of conflict, because the entire power structure is premised on the continuation of violence. And this was Gorbachev. He mentioned this to the Americans actually towards the end of the Cold War. You know, if we pursue peace, this will also, we have to make adjustments because their alliance systems is predicated on having this perpetual conflict. So, of course, both sides would lose a lot of influence. And this is a problem for the Americans after the Cold War, because once the Europeans became less dependent on the security guarantees from the Americans, they can also then, the Americans were less able to convert the security guarantees into political influences. Suddenly, the Europeans started to pursue their own interests. And this is why American influence in Europe as, you know, benefits from having, maintaining some tensions and conflicts with Russia, at least. And you see the same in Asia, whenever there's a conflict between the Chinese and the Indians, how excited does the American media get? Why? Because now a huge powerful state like India will now be a partner in balancing the Chinese. And also, instead of insisting on all this, on being a non-aligned power and independent foreign policy, they will now have to submit themselves to some extent, in like the Japanese out to after the Second World War. So, and I guess the best example of this was also in the Middle East, because there the Chinese came in and then negotiated the town between the Iranians and the Saudis. And what was fascinating to me was, you know, then they began to do the same with the other Arab states trying to settle this. But, and then you had the former chief of a Mossad in Israel going out to Harits saying, listen, if we're going to dismantle the whole anti-Iranian alliance, maybe we should try to make our peace with Iran as well. And this comes at a huge cost to the United States. Look, when they wanted to bomb Yemen, for example, the Saudis didn't want to join in. The United Arab Emirates didn't want to join in. So suddenly, they lose a lot of influence because you want to fight with proxies, not, no, not stand on your own. So, so there's always an interest in in maintaining some conflicts, because if you want the hegemonic system, you have to weaken adversaries, and you have to make sure that your allies remain obedient and dependent. And this is why, and again, this is not from me, this is an old idea from realist scholars. This is why it's so dangerous to have these peacetime alliances. And my main argument is this peacetime alliances is built into a hegemonic system. And yeah, this is a key weakness. I want to bring in one more historical analogy. This is something that I, these are some points that were made by Niall Ferguson, a historian, in a discussion at the Nixon Institute. I can't remember the exact name of the event, but you know, he was making the comparison of 1970 and saying when Nixon decided to push for an end of the Vietnam War and a detente with Mao's China, that there's a lot of parallels with America right now. In as far as, first of all, there's inflation, America's divided at home. There's a war that's been a failure, and America's also failed in previous wars of Afghanistan, Iraq. And he's saying, well, they're, he's advocating this idea that, you know, why does, why doesn't America want to move towards detente? No, because they love Russia or they love China simply because they're in a weak situation and real, real politic dictates the need to some kind of temporary detente and to buy title. But instead, it looks like the set is happening. Instead, we've got bringsmanship and testing, you know, the boundaries and pushing to the limits. Now, this comes to a question of, you know, how you interpret the Biden administration as a brain has a political brain trying to navigate these choppy waters, navigate this dangerous interregnum. I wonder, you know, if you've got any thoughts on that. And also, you know, do you think anything can change if Trump comes in? So it's a kind of a double barrel of this question. And well, I think what do I'm sorry, let's make a point about Ferguson. Yeah, I'm not sure if he makes the point in this particular broadcast or whatever you're talking about. Yeah, he is making these kinds of arguments. And he's, you know, he's saying, yes, he's saying, you know, yeah, the West is weak, has all these problems. But he's also saying, it's facing this huge disaster in Ukraine, in terms of losing the war and all the consequences of that. But the conclusion he draws from that is not the obvious one is that if you're in a position of weakness, and you're fighting this losing proxy war, which could have all immense negative consequences, then you want to get out the situations. That's not Ferguson's conclusion. Well, he says, he doubles down, he doubles down. The West, this is so important to the West. The West cannot afford to lose no matter how risky it is, no matter how challenging a problematic. So he's doubling down on on on on Wesley Volman in Ukraine, which is what all the Western hardliners they're making, you know, the set the similar argument. Yeah. So there's this kind of level of like, it's a Western fanaticist that seems to override all these color like rarest calculations, which you get in his book, but you know, it's just might be applicable in these in these different in these different situations. So I don't know, so I'm not so sure it's a quiche. You know, this is a lot, this is a more human kind of fading or a human problem, rather than being a kind of function of the dynamics of international politics at a particular stage in its in its in its development. Well, I think it's a political problem. Actually, I have a huge part in the book about the collapse of diplomacy and why this has happened, but on first in terms of this Ferguson, I well, I agree with the premise because I think what's what's coming with the Vietnam War, which he refers to, but also Iraq and now, and now Ukraine is, it's the idea that well, not at his point, but from my perspective, the British and then the Americans, you know, they've been offshore balancers. This is a nice position to have because what you do is you stand outside the conflict and this is why the British Americans will enter the world late because, you know, you wait for everyone else to exhaust themselves and then you come in. You don't need total victory. Just make sure that you you leave, you leave the settlement with a balance of power. So the other, so the Germans, Russia, several will balance each other and then you pull out to save the resources. And the warning has always been if you go in, have some offshore power and stay there, then you will slowly be drained and you will exhaust the resources and the other states and the system will begin to work together against you. And this is why there's always been this push towards, it just restore if a balance of power has been disrupted, go in, get a settlement which restores it and then pull out. It's a finish, essentially preserve the best fall in the system. This has been a key logic of offshore balancing. And yeah, they think that this obviously hasn't, hasn't been done and, and I forgot where I was going about that. Yeah, and what I was going to say also with the diplomacy, I think one of the reasons why it's failed, which also points to the human era, I think is diplomacy itself changed in the 90s, because at this point, diplomacy used to mean we under we have some mutual understanding, we find compromises or solve see how we can avoid conflicts. But after the Cold War, the assumption was, you know, with one central power, diplomacy meant to socialize others. And this is, you know, what the language of EU, NATO, all of them said, you know, we have to socialize the rest of the world. So if you want to have diplomacy, you put conditions. And if you do the right thing, you'll be invited into the meetings. You know, if you don't do what we want, we will, you know, cancel diplomacy. So you saw institutions like the NATO Russia Council, you know, supposed to resolve differences. The first conflict we had in Georgia, we suspended it, we stopped talking to the Russians, you know, like 12-year-old girls in the schoolyard. It's quite extraordinary. But again, this is the assumption now of diplomacy. It's a, you know, you're rewarding other states. It's not a way to resolve conflicts. And so I think this is also, you know, the idea that you can't talk to your adversaries. And like whenever you see the leaders explain why, well, if we meet with Putin or Xi, or like whoever is having conflict with you, we're legitimizing them. So we have to deprive them of legitimacy. And this is why you meet with people. You give them or deprive them of legitimacy. So I think, yeah, diplomacy itself has suffered greatly. One part of Ferguson's argument that I think I will bring up and defend a bit more is that it is detrimental to US interests to bring Iran, China, Russia together with these alien anything acts that you just described, this kind of approach of stigmatization because of failed socialization. The question is really, you know, the need to build the threat, justify the coalition and the sense of purpose for the West, but then it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy where you create an autocratic block that one day meets in Beijing to announce the formation of a greater Eurasian core prosperity sphere, which will be more powerful than the USSR ever was, and beyond our capacity to contain or do anything about. So there seems to be a tension here. Where I come back to Ferguson, I agree. I don't know, be as hard as you say about Ukraine, but not realist argument. But Matthew, why do they do that? You expose this tension. How do you explain them taking the position? It seems an absolutely great way to take actions, which is going to solidify your enemies and strengthen them and weaken your own position. So why do they do it? My suggestion is you can't explain that pleatly in realist terms in terms of balances, and all of that kind of discourse. I think that's only part of the part of the exploration. It seems to be fundamental to exploration, is Western universalism, Western supremacist. That's at the heart of what seemingly irrational kind of behavior, and they're fighting you to actually calculate and take some realist digital, which are in their own interest, in their own interests, in their own stakes and their own people. Yeah, that's lost my thought before, but yeah, that's where I was going with the after the offshore balancing. That was my point, that if the United States would pull back, but it can't, because if your hegemony have to be everywhere, and this is the problem, why I argue this is not about us and them, this is not in our interest either. But if the US would pull back, the idea would be there would be a natural balance of power emerging. And this is of course a problem. Look now, for example, the Americans go over to China, they try to convince them, help us put sanctions on the Russians, let's break them. Meanwhile, all these American leaders are saying the same thing. After we broke in Russia, our key objective with breaking Russia is that we can focus all our resources on the Chinese. So it does make sense to go after everyone at the same time, but that's what you have to do when there's no properties, because once you have to dominate every corner of the world, there is no properties. Now, my point is, if the United States would pull back, it doesn't mean that the Chinese and Russians would turn on each other. I think they're developing a lot of mutually beneficial economic cooperation, but there would be at least a balance of dependence that is several centers of power. And this is why a lot of the policies, the hegemonic policies, they're very counterproductive, because they prevent a proper multiple system from emerging whether it's a balance. Look, for example, the Eurasian Economic Union. It's an institution where Russia institutionalizes a lot of the economic influence it has in Central Asia. Well, the Central Asia's have been growing dependence on China. Why would you undermine the Eurasian Economic Union when this helps to create a more balanced Central Asia? And even the Russians are even inviting India into the Central Asia. So they don't want to dominate, they just want to have a balance, so the Chinese won't be too powerful. But by undermining this, your strengthening your main address here, which is the Chinese. Same as with why would you talk the Indians into cutting ties with Iranians. Now Iran has to lean more towards China. How was this a great idea? And so you see this same thing over and over again. And I think, yeah, this is where the problem is. It makes sense if you could have a hegemonic world order, but if you can't, this undermines a preferable multipolar system. Even the Europeans understood this. The French and the Germans before the Russian invasion, they said, we have to keep good economic connections with Russia. So not too much of their economic interests ends up with China. That made sense. The Japanese were thinking the same. Now America's pressuring everyone to cut to it ties with Russia. Russia aligns more with China. And this will strengthen China's hand significantly. This is not the balance system you want. And so what you say is you achieve what you don't want, which is strengthening of a China-centric order, because the Russians don't want that. They would like to have... This is why they're having this North-South corridor with the Indians. They would like to not be anti-Chinese, but diversify the economic connectivity in the region to make sure no one is too dependent on one central power. Now we avoid the hegemon from emerging. This is this fall-in system. And this is good for America. Now they can pull back a bit, lick their wounds, restore their economic strength without pushing all their adversaries effectively. What looks more like an alliance against them. But the moment when it doesn't look so they're not going to step back. Oh no. They're not going to step back. And as you put it, restore some kind of balance. Germany comes to an end. But they're still in the balancing position themselves. They don't go there. That's all very bad. But they're good. They're doubling down on an outright victory in the struggle with Russia and China. That, in my view, portents disaster, potentially cataclysmic military disaster, but also more likely. Some kind of collapse of international orders. Fragmentation. The end of international society, as we know it. Yeah. And I think this is a problem because if you want to mobilize now against all these adversaries, what would you do? Well, you want to recreate essentially the dividing lives of the Cold War. So you're saying you have to mobilize your allies. You're saying, this is a struggle between liberal democracies and authoritarian states. And you're creating this dividing lives where you're essentially telling your allies you have to be in this block versus this block. And this is again the peacetime blocks, which is devastating for world peace and the stability in the international system. And you're breaking up not just trade agreements, but diplomatic agreements across the board. So I think it's, no, it's horrific. And this is why I find it so annoying this down down debate. Do you support this side or this side? But no one, we never have a serious discussion if perhaps multipolarity would be more beneficial to accept several, several centers of powers, which would then, you know, allow countries like the United States to, to recover because at the moment, the US and the collective West, we weaken ourselves year by year in relative power, at least while other powers are growing stronger, integrating more with each other, becoming less reliant on us. This is a good time to reconsider whether or not the hegemonic path has come to an end. And we should pursue a different path. Like the point of departure is what is an international interest? We don't have that. We say hegemony, or you're, you know, regurging the Russian propaganda. And this is, yeah, what's there for us trading? And, you know, within that kind of framework, and one of the difficulties is seeing any green shoots in the West. So, you know, I'm going to attempt to lay out what may or may not be green shoots. I know how you view it. One particularly orange tinged green shoot is, of course, Trump, who may come back into the office of president this year. And is there any hesitance to suggest that he understands even an eye otter of what you've laid out this question of preserving American power will buy careful restraint and allowing attractive, because, you know, one of the fundamental points here is even if America can't dominate or interfere with Eurasia, they're always going to be a powerful country, given the kind of hemisphenic dominance they have. And there's just natural resources and all the kind of advantages they have. They're not going to turn into a midget power overnight, like the United Kingdom and if you have to World War II, that's not feasible. So, coming back to this idea, is there any evidence of that kind of shift being possible in a Trump administration? There's certainly people connected to Trump or around Trump who precisely understand that. And argue that, and argue that position is time to step back. We shouldn't be afraid to step back. We should be afraid of rebalances of power. And that's in it, and that's in our, in America's interest that will actually strengthen the United States' position. So, I think there are people like, whether or not they could have an impact on Trump, I mean, it's another question, because last time, we thought, you know, he comes to power on the policy of America first, but actually, he appoints all these neocons into positions of power in his administration. Let's not forget, it was the Trump administration that authorized the supply of lethal weapons to Ukraine on a larger. That's where this war came from. In the latter part, the Trump administration, the significant strengthening of Ukraine and military forces and their integration into NATO's drug, into NATO's drug, and Biden just continued that policy on war. So, I don't know, I'm very, very skeptical about the difference that Trump will make of the stage. A month into the war, as well. I mean, the month after Russia invaded, he made an interview as well, where he said he would have sent more weapons in, because this was so grotesque. And he said, you know, we never seen anything like this in World War II the way they're bombing. And this was quite extraordinary, because Newsweek, or economists, one of those at that time, they had an article as well, pointing out that, well, actually, the Russians, the month of America dropped on Iraq on the first day, was more than Russia dropped on Ukraine in the first month. So, you know, historical facts weren't really in place. I mean, we haven't seen this in World War II, it's simply not correct. But, yeah, I share just pessimism. I don't think he would have significantly different policies. Again, he sent the weapons initially to Ukraine, which began to get this ball rolling. But also, the efforts to take him down, this is what sparked the Russia gate hoax, which effectively since 2016 has fueled a lot of this crisis. But I think it matters to some extent, because it's very different as a populist president. But he still wants the empire. He just wants a return on investment. So, for example, you know, Obama, AP, prioritized the Trans-Pacific partnership, and all of these institutions. But the main idea would be, the main opposition by Trump was not that they didn't want to write the trading rules for Europe or for Asia. The main problem was, you know, if it's America first, he's worried that, you know, NAFTA, within the club, the productive resources of transition to Mexico. Same in the Asia-Pacific partnership. His main concern was that the productive power of the U.S. would gradually be transferred to allies. So, he was more worried about America being weakened by its allies. And this is not an acceptable cause to put a check on the adversary. So, I think it's just he wants a greater return. So, I'm less optimistic. And he might have learned from his last administration, because putting both and all of this, I don't know, I've talked to his military advisor. And he said that, "Oh, if Trump gets back in, he's still going to make this mistake again. He's going to have a more hard-line crew." Because I think he was trying to buy his acceptance with the blob, if he will, by taking on some of the neocons. I mean, I mean, Trump has said this, himself, isn't he, doing an original interview. He said, "No, no. I've learned a lot from my first term." I mean, there is this argument going around it. It depends on who Trump practices his vice president's reign. That will signal that may signal where he's serious about a radical shift in policy. I think the other thing is, if he does come back into office, what stages do you crave war at? I think if he said the final stages of defeat, then, yeah, I think Trump could make a difference in the sense of going with the flow and getting out, ending the war, and blaming the owner on Biden, or whatever the negative consequences that were. If it's sort of dragging on and on, and it's still a kind of live thing in the sense, then Trump might listen to all kinds of siren voices about the need to continue a U.S. involvement in the war. We saw that recently, it pulls advantage of what the playable characteristics are. I mean, the $61 billion, $61.68, as far as I can see, the key move in that whole process was when, what's his name, Johnson's Speaker House, went and saw Trump in Florida, and Trump gave the signal that the United States should continue to support your crime. So he's capable of all kinds of different things depending on the situation, and how he calculates it politically. But at least Trump does make this weird. Yes, we'll find out when it comes to the President's election campaign and the degree to which he focuses on Ukraine as a means of really hammering the Democrats and their so-called incompetence, because then he'll put himself in the Eisenhower situation where he is a lady on the promise of delivering an end to the Ukrainian war and getting the Americans out. So just to kind of wrap things up in this final kind of segment, there's a couple of points left that one is that I realized that to some extent, all three of us are engaged in swimming against the current, swimming up, stream on the river where everyone else is just relaxing going downstream. And by this, I particularly mean the framing in your book is very much focusing on the American sort of imperialism, this attempt to retain hegemony, whereas a lot of the focus is on the others' idea that Russia has an imperialist agenda, China has an imperialist agenda, Iran has an imperial agenda. These are the evil empires and they want to subvert and they want to control regions and they want to take on historical enemies and so on and so forth. So you have already to some extent, you kind of push back on that, but it would be amiss as me not to mention that because it's kind of a big thing that gets thrown out at all these different discussions that we attend or we're participating in, that's the fundamental thing to be asked. So I wonder if there is a way to respond to that, why is it that we should be always starting the discussion of American imperialism first and then look at all the other kind of attendance as something like secondary? Well, when all of a sudden, I mean, it was Putin that decided to invade Ukraine and start the war. So I think in that sense, I think it's legitimate to start with Russia and with Putin. Okay, okay, but having said that, there is no evidence whatsoever that Putin has any intentional or abilities of pursuing ambitions and goals beyond his relatively limited security goals in Ukraine. Yeah, so obviously, by definition, as part of pursuing Russian security, Putin is expanding into various Ukrainian territories. Now, if you want, you can label that the imperialist. I personally don't find it very very helpful because you know, I don't know what territories you expand it into and then why is it and what a wise you do and what does the actual people living in those territories. So yes, I think that there is a legitimate discussion to be had about a rush of responsibility for the situation of Putin's decision-making and what is his greater goals might be. But my general take is that the war from Putin's point of view was a defensive of our action and at the end of the day, he would be prepared to settle the conflict on the basis of some kind of compromise piece that satisfied Russia's security goals in relation to NATO, also of a protection to the remaining pro-Russian parts of the Ukrainian population. So that is my response to that question. Well, I think it makes sense to use the United States as the main example because they have explicit hegemony in their security strategy that they can only be one center of power and no other state should even or collection of states should even be able to aspire to challenge it. So this is an only one state with this. And we'll just start with China. I think, well, again, a lot of the conflicts usually over Taiwan, but it's important to distinguish between the status quo and the revisionist power because the peace with China is the 70s and indeed Asia as a region, Asia-Pacific has been based on this one China policy. And it's the United States, which seems to gradually be contesting it by asking for more representation of Taiwan in the UN, sending military advisors troops to Taiwan and emboldening the nationalists to pursue secession. So I think this suggests that China is challenging the status quo. Now, also, if you look at power and intention from the China, which is capable of some tension, how China says threats, it's worth pointing out that if you're hegemonic power, you want to make sure everyone just becomes excessively dependent on you, not others. But if you see how do, for example, work with the Russians, they haven't opposed anything when the Russians reach out to Iran, India, to diversify their dependencies, to avoid excessive reliance on China. They said, well, fine, we're not a hegemon. And of course, we can say this. But also, if you look at their policies, they have this global civilization initiative, where they suggest that every state has their own, are distinctive, they all have their own path to development. It's called for distinctive values and civilizations. This is the opposite of universal values. If you're aspiring empire, you want to refer to Marxist values or liberal values as a way of asserting sovereignty over other peoples, to the minister sovereignty. So I don't see the the capability to see it or the intentions of China. It doesn't mean that over time, if they get in the same position as the United States to be all this power concentrated in China, of course, their views of the world can start to reflect around this, which is why you want the balance of dependence around Eurasia and Africa. You don't want only one player. But I don't see any imperial intentions from China or at this point are not capabilities yet either. In terms of Russia, we'd also say they also been defined most as a status quo power, not revisionist after the Cold War. I mean, it's NATO that began to expire. And then I think there's a key mistake in all our analysis, because we did the same in Georgia. Oh, they're going to conquer all of Georgia, but they didn't. They could have, but they pushed them out of South Osset, and this restored the status quo. And this was the same after we toppled the government in Ukraine. They saw what was going to happen. We're going to push them out of their naval base. So they took Crimea to assert control over their naval base in the Black Sea. So I would see it more as a, I don't see the imperial intent. And I can understand why many people would immediately get very aggressive and go on the common field now and how dare you. But this didn't start as a territorial conflict. Again, from the, I would remind people from the beginning of the 90s, what the Russians were calling most for was for the West to live up to disagreements, according to the Charter of Paris for New Europe, to establish a Europe based on the OSCE, an inclusive security institution. When we decided to go with NATO, both Yeltsin Putin said, well, we, we can join NATO. You know, let's, let's all be in the same club. Let's not have this a block system. You know, they proposed under Medvedev, our new European security architecture. Putin suggested this EU Russian Union. They, they tried over all the time. And then when we toppled the government in, well, as we were traveling the government in Ukraine, they even suggested, how about we have a trilateral agreement? The EU, Ukraine and Russia, they don't have to choose. We can all be a part of a greater Europe. This was the main objective. This is not an imperialist one. This is what would also be good for Ukraine to diversify. And it was only after we toppled the government when they took Crimea. And also they got involved, well, indirectly, at least, covertly in Donbas. But even then, with the Minsk agreement, they said we can reintegrate Donbas into Ukraine, but under the Minsk agreement, you know, they have to have the autonomy and all of it above. And we, you know, what's come out now, we rejected this for eight years as sabotage it. And then Russia invades. What did it do from the first divination? They went to the Ukraine and said, listen, we can restore neutrality. If you restore your neutrality, we'll pull out from where we were before the invasion. And so this was a pressure. It wasn't for territory. It was the US and the UK who sabotaged this and said, no, we'll fight the Russians, you know, with Ukrainians. And us then the war dragged on and became, then they began to realize, you know, NATO said, we're not going to diplomacy with you. As soon as this war is done, Ukraine will join NATO. What would you do if you're in Moscow, if you see this as an existential threat? Well, now to make sure these territories don't fall under NATO control, you take them yourself, which is why they will lose more and more territory. And at the end of this, they will lose everything from Karakov to Odessa unless we sit down and talk to them because they can't afford to have Odessa be a NATO city effectively. And this is, this is why I find this so horrific that we're not talking because we're, you know, if we don't what the Russians have Odessa, then we say we won't have it either, restore neutrality. And this will be a way of saving the Ukrainian nation. But anyways, my point was territory is the symptom. It's not a cause of this. So I don't see it as an imperial struggle for this or war from this perspective. But I know this will cause a lot of, unfortunately, this is a controversial statement, but it shouldn't be because the facts, they should speak for themselves. Could I add to that? I mean, I think that Russia, China, Iran, even even North Korea, many other states actually, and not just those ones, are status quo states in a very fundamental sense that they are defenders of the existing international system. The existing international society, as I would call it, based on sovereignty, based on international or based on diplomacy, based on common institutions, what they're seeking to do is to actually defend that society. In fact, not just to defend it, but to restore it from the erosion of it occurred during the unipolar moment of the 1990s. Russia, sorry, Soviet Union and Communist China during the Cold War, that there were staunch supporters of international society, and they continue to be through, all the way through the post-war period, up to the present side, and it's the United States and the asylum-wise, who wants to overturn the system, yes, and turn into a universalized their own system, their own like, make international society into a Western-dominated international society. And that's why the fundamental struggle of one that's going on at the present time, what is going to be the character of international society moving forward, is it going to be the classic Westphoning and sovereignty-based system, or is it going to be some hegemon-based system, which is what the United States and the West appears to aspire to. Well, I think that's why it's important to see it through this prism of a struggle to restore this following system, because much like in the 19th century, when the British and the Russians were fighting each other, or competing at least, and then at the periphery, you have, you know, America merging the Germans, Japanese, all these new centers of power, there's going to be the outcome this time as well. It's not as if, you know, we lose the war in Ukraine now, Russia will dominate the world. This is, you know, not the 19th or 20th century, it's not going to happen. But what's happening now is when we're throwing away all these resources, and also throwing away all the rules of the systems. So for example, seizing the Russian assets, this alone is very destructive. Look what they're seeing now, thinking in China, India, they will all now reduce their reliance on the West's, you know, not just the currencies, but technologies, transportation corridors, everything, payment systems, insurance systems, by the way, the Indians still want to trade with the Russia, so they're, they're all diversifying. So I think this is what's going to be the, one of the main consequences is that the Russians who will come out that much stronger from this, but it's that the rest of the world will increasingly the couple from the West seek to have more independent policies. If you want an independent foreign policy from the West, if you want to withstand its pressure, it doesn't matter if you're an ally or friend or an adversary, you're going to have to reduce your dependency. This is, you know, from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, India, South America, this is what everyone's doing. So I think how the world is transforming around, I think this is the main, the main issue. This is why the West-Fallen system is now intensifying, coming into place, while the Russians and NATO are, you know, battling out in Ukraine. To finish things off, we talked about at the start of our discussion, the slide to war. And it seems like this is a good way to end. And is this the most dangerous period of this war in Ukraine so far in terms of it, exploding into a whole war? What do we need to look out for in the coming months, the rest of this year? And when you think about maybe the people who might be watching this show and might be also academics or analysts, what do we need to really look out for? Oh, that Glenn Gold first on that one. Oh, I think it's much more dangerous simply because, well, if you go back to the Cuban missile crisis, at least the world was in panic. We understood the dangers. There were diplomacy, we're talking about nuclear deterrence. These days, we don't talk about nuclear deterrence, we're talking about nuclear blackmail. Oh, if we launch our missiles into Russia's cities, they might use nuclear weapons. Well, we can't then do nuclear blackmail. So we're gonna ignore the whole concept of nuclear deterrence. I mean, this is obscene. And even now with, you know, the Americans sending troops to British threatening use that their weapons will be used to strike inside Russia, all of this crazy developments happening and Russia responding with possible use of tactical nuclear weapons. Whereas to me, their coverage is like, oh, putting, you know, just threatening with nuclear weapons, we have to condemn it. It's very inappropriate. You know, as if it happened in a vacuum and there's no, as we began to talk about, the absence of strategic empathy, and they conversed into a public diplomacy, try and make the Russians look like there's again. Yeah, that's all the narrative. That's where all the things we seem to be working for. So no, I think this is much, much more dangerous, but you wouldn't think it if you open any average paper, but it's just, you know, I'm inclined to agree. Yeah, it's about dangerous because they're getting more desperate. It's more dangerous because there's a West getting more, yes, the West getting more desperate as Russia's with Windsor more war, war and more. It's more dangerous because of domestic political dynamics that are going on in different countries. Obviously, in the United States, you've got the election. It's more dangerous because Western hardliners seem to have an ever more powerful voice in the argument that he bait us obviously going on in the West about what the West should do. Yeah, so there's lots of things that kind of like stack up in that direction. And that's certainly been my my gut feeling. That's certainly what I feel is more dangerous than it's ever been. But the one thing, the one thing that perhaps might save us is the West weakness is that they're so weak, I think, in terms of what they can actually do, like militarily in terms of conventional, yeah, they're in the very end. And at least some of them on the West as I must know that, and they must know, you know, I just don't believe that there are at least some military advisers saying saying to the politicians or the military leaders they're saying, look, okay, yeah, we can involve ourselves more in Ukraine. But if you're going to do that, you have to, and you might say, yeah, we can call the Russians black day up back away, we can do what we want here, which is what I was telling them. If you're going to do that, fine, be prepared for the contingency of that developing into a much broader conflict with Russia. And the reality is, we are not in a position to engage in a wider world with Russia. So if you're not prepared to meet that contingency to face that, then don't do it. So I think I probably, I mean, trying to say it's not my gut feeling that in the end, they will, they will draw back from taking extreme stage because of their weakness. That would be very reasonable at Russia. But this is my concern, there doesn't seem to be that much reason. And the problem is we excluded the possibility of diplomacy. We're saying the company in diplomacy, when Stoltenberg goes out and say, listen, when this war is over, Ukraine will join NATO. Well, if you want any peace agreement, it has to be restoring the childhood of Ukraine, it has to be the foundation. Of course, you have to solve the territorial issues. But this is the foundation, and we now rejected it. And so, what will be the peace? We only have victory as a possible outcome. But what happened? We ran out of Ukrainians, and we ran out of ammunition. And the Russians are winning. So the only thing we can do now is reckless escalation. And that's what we're pursuing. You know, firing missiles into Russia, this is the only possible way we think we can stabilize the situation. Not only is this reckless, but I think the assumption of that Russia will be deterred from retaliating against NATO. I think this is a huge gamble that Russia would never dare to strike back at Russia. But I think at some point, the risk of not striking against Russia, against NATO, would be larger than the risk of doing it. Because, well, just very briefly, this was George B. He's the CIA analysts who used to be for Russian analysts in the CIA. And his main argument was in December 2021, was, you know, if Russia is a good chance of them invading now, because if they don't invade now, they never will have the chance, because America's, you know, making and trenching itself further further in Ukraine. So I think we're reaching the same point now. You know, we're saying, okay, let's send a few tanks, you know, something we wouldn't do. We're sending some ammunition, we're sending, you know, F-16s. Now we're saying, oh, we have long distance missiles, don't shoot them into Russia. Now, yeah, you can shoot them into Russia. So we're doing more and more. At what point do we have NATO planes, you know, dropping bombs on Moscow and assuming that Russia won't retaliate, I think, you know, I think they're, they're, they're, restraints has been interpreted as weakness. So I think, you know, the Russia's now, the real discussion there is, you know, we would don't want to war with NATO, but failure to deter will only embolden them. So at some point, we have to strike them. And I think that's why I'm taking this now, the nuclear threat from Russia, very serious. At least they will hit like targets of NATO countries, perhaps not with nuclear weapons, but if they hit them with conventional weapons, some, you know, British targets outside the Ukraine, for example, and then, and they have the tactical nuclear weapons prepared for, you know, as a deterrent. I think we're moving towards that scenario. If not now, it could come later simply because we took confidence that we can just keep hitting Russia and they would never dare to take us back, because we're NATO. You know, I think this logic only goes so far, and we're reached that point now. Well, I prefer how Jeff ended the conversation, but I don't get to choose how it ends. And I just want to thank you both for being here. I think we had a very interesting conversation. I'm glad we did it. Thank you. [MUSIC]