William Tyler
Victory in the Cold War Creates its Own Problems

William Tyler | Victory in the Cold War Creates its Own Problems | 03.18.24

- And so welcome everyone. It is rather unusual time, it’s six o'clock in the evening for me. I think it’s two o'clock, I was told in the afternoon for you, if you’re on Eastern time. So whatever time you are listening, you are more than welcome to come. First of all a little note. This is the penultimate talk in the series on America and history. And it’s in two parts this week and next week. I’m looking at the end of the Cold War and the beginning of what has been called the New Cold War. And so I should be taking the story from 1989 where I start today, right through to 2024, where I shall finish next week. Today I’m concentrating on the political issues that moved us from the old Cold War as it was to the new Cold War. So let me begin with a date, a date that I guess most of you will say, well, I know exactly what happened on that day.

The 9th of November 1989 marked the fall of the Berlin Wall. The very physical presence of a war dividing communist east in Europe from Democratic West. And the Berlin Wall fell on the 9th of November, 1989. And for most of you who are my generation, they thought that would never happen, we didn’t really expect it to happen. And yet when it did, it seemed quite natural. And the domino effect, which led in 1991 to the end of the USSR also was striking to us. But again, once it had happened in Berlin, it seemed inevitable as we saw those communist dominoes fall one by one, the Cold War was over. Frederick Taylor in his really excellent book on the Berlin Wall, and all the books are on my blog. He writes this of the fall of the wall. “The fall of the Berlin Wall like its construction took place in a single night. Just as on the 13th of August, 1961, a city and the people are woke to find themselves divided.

So on the morning of the 10th, November, 1989, that division was no more, although how many people actually woke up to this revolutionist debatable, since during that night in Berlin, many had not slept a wink.” It was a moment, a huge moment in history. The Japanese American historian, Francis Fukuyama, made his name with a book. It’s always good to have a excellent title for a book, and this book had a wonderful title. It was called, as you all well know, “The End of History and the Last Man.” It was published in 1992 after the Berlin Wall had fallen and after the USSR had fallen. He wrote in this book what we may be witnessing these events in Eastern Europe. “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War or the passing of a particular period of post-war,” post-Second World War, he means, “Or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such.” Quite a statement. Later in the book, he qualifies that, I’ll come to that in a moment.

But what struck people, what the press reported was the end of history. We’re all going to live wonderfully in peace with each other, a land flowing with milk and honey and human kindness. And he wasn’t the only person, as Taylor tells us, who thought that this was good news when the Berlin Wall fell and particularly in America. Sometimes one believes what one wants to believe. And Taylor writes, “The Americans, especially President George H. W. Bush and Secretary of State James H. Baker, provided the heavyweight international support for German reunification. Washington saw great advantage in a strong democratic and capitalist Germany and virtually no downside.” Well, we now know there was a downside, and the downside was the collapse in just a matter of a couple of years of a whole of that communist eastern empire, and that was regarded as success.

And now of course we know slightly, and think slightly differently. I said that Fukuyama in his own book qualified what he said about the end of history. What he said was that the conflicts of the past, what he called the ideological conflict between Marxist USSR and liberal Democratic United States leading in their wake communist countries in Eastern Europe in Russia’s case, and liberal democracies in Western Europe and elsewhere like Canada and Australia and so on in America’s case. He said, that’s gone, but it won’t mean it’s the end of conflict. And this is the bit that gets missed out of the sort of popular view of Fukuyama’s book. He says, no, no, no, there will be new conflicts, but they will be different. They will be cultural, religious and identity based. Cultural, religious, and identity based. And you can see that, you can see it in the Middle East at the moment very clearly, you can see it across the world in many places, in Africa, for example. Interestingly, Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister who had with Reagan in the special relationship that they had was a small s and an r, representing what it certainly in Britain is referred to as a special relationship between Britain and the United States.

But they had a relationship in terms of how they thought of things, even though some Americans thought that Reagan played second fiddle to Thatcher. And when the war came down, Thatcher hesitated. Now you don’t have to be a supporter of Thatcher to believe or understand that she was an extraordinarily able woman, and an extraordinary far seeing politician. This is a book by professor David Cannadine one of the best British historians. A small biography of Margaret Thatcher. And he writes in this way, but before we get there. I’m going to read a piece from Taylor I think, this will give you a sense of what Mrs. Thatcher was indeed up to. She went to see Mitterrand on the leader of France at the time, and she was one… let me just read this. I think this is rather fun to be honest. He writes, “Thatcher record in her own inimitable style, a hasty meeting with Mitterrand after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the call for German unification.”

Now, this is Thatcher’s words, not mine. “I produced from my handbag a map showing the various configurations of Germany in the past, which were not entirely reassuring about the future. Mitterrand said that at moments of great danger in the past, France had always established special relations with Britain, and he felt such a time had come again.” Mrs. Thatcher thought she had nailed Mitterrand about the danger of rushing into German reunification in terms of the history of Europe. And she was wrong, well, she was right and she was wrong. She was right that Germany has now become a powerful voice in Europe. She was right in the sense that Germany has never pulled its weight in NATO. And she was right that the far right has risen again in Germany, she was right on all of those things. But she was wrong about France supporting her, and she was wrong in judging America. And Professor Cannadine says, “American distancing from Thatcher became apparent in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism. Thatcher took pride and pleasure in claiming that this further extension of freedom was what she and Ronald Reagan had worked for.”

“But,” says Cannadine, “But that was only one of the reasons why communism founded.” There were two views of this. One as Cannadine said, no, no, no, come on. Communism didn’t fail because Reagan and Thatcher managed to end it, but other people like Simon Sebag Montefiore say something different. “With President Reagan, Thatcher was instrumental in engineering the triumph of capitalist democracies over communism in the Cold War. She helped to draw back the Iron curtain and give freedom to millions.” Now you must Judge Reagan and Thatcher’s intervention, not least Reagan’s speech in Berlin, you must judge for yourselves how big an impact they had to say they had no impact is nonsense, to say they alone engineer the fall of communism is equal nonsense.

It’s a balance and they were important. And so it looked as though under Thatcher and Reagan, Britain and America were singing from the same hymn sheet, but they weren’t. Mitterrand ditched Mrs. Thatcher’s view of Germany and so did Bush. And this is what Cannadine says in terms of Bush dropping it, he writes this. “Bush was determined that reunification of Germany would happen, and working with Kohl in Germany and Mitterrand in France, Mitterrand in France, and eventually with Gorbachev, Bush largely ignored an increasingly isolated Thatcher. As a result, their future American route into Europe will be more via Berlin than via London.” Now that raises issues and has raised issues since, and this isn’t just Britain talking about it. It is that America… and it’s been made worse of course by Brexit as Britain has withdrawn from the EU, and America can’t really, as it were, get into the European debate via London, but only by Berlin and Paris. But it’s different for Americans dealing with Berlin and Paris than it is with London.

Of course, there’ve been huge disagreements between London and Washington. But in the Maine, when push comes to shove, Britain has always been there in support of America. And you cannot say that about France, even on the security council can you say that about France. And it’s more difficult to say it about Germany. Cannadine finishes by saying, “While the Cold War had persisted, Britain had enjoyed privilege access to Washington, and as America’s essential continental partner, which Thatcher had exploited to the fall. But once it was over, the UK, US special relationship would never be as close again, and a reunified Germany will be reestablished as the major European power, not just economically, but politically and internationally too.” And so this change in Europe, this shifting of the plates in Europe affected and affects American policy to this day. And I’ll talk about more about that in terms of this day, next week when we look at very contemporary affairs, not least the future of NATO and indeed the support to Ukraine in its war with Russia.

It didn’t matter what the politicians thought, because events were running ahead of the politicians. The optimism at the end of the Cold War, the optimism that said a new world, a modern world was being introduced, was picked up by Frederick Taylor in his book on the Berlin Wall in his last two paragraphs. Now he wrote his book in 2006, that’s only 15 years ago. And it shows how historians can never be trusted to talk about the future. Indeed, neither can journalists, indeed perhaps none of us can see clearly into the future. And this is what Taylor wrote in 2006, in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall the fall of the USSR and in 2006, he’s still on a high about it. “For anyone who knew Berlin, when the war caskets Paul across Berlin, nothing can beat the pleasure of being able to stroll through the Brandenburg Gate and across the Pariser Platz maybe heading for an espresso on one of the Boulevard cafes on the Unter den Linden.

And nothing is sweeter than the awareness that compared with 20 years ago, the greatest danger you run and taking these few unhurried paces is of being knocked down by an over enthusiastic bicycle courier, not cut in half by a burst of automatic fire.” But it’s the last paragraph of all, “When we’re doing this,” crossing in Berlin between east and west. “When we’re doing this and the sun is shining, sometimes we can believe that Hitler never happened, that Auschwitz was just the German name for an obscure village in Poland and that the Berlin Wall was just a figment of someone’s mad imagination.” You couldn’t write that today. And that was written only 15 years ago. And in those 15 years, the world has become a game and perhaps worse than before, very uncertain place. And the really big change, of course, was the collapse of the USSR. Again, something none of us of my generation could ever think would happen, and it came when it came very quickly. Gorbachev had attempted to reform Russian Marxism-Leninism with the twin weapons of glasnost or openness or transparency, and perestroika or restructuring.

But Gorbachev fell into the trap that many who seek small reforms fall into or gradual reform. Gorbachev thought that he could by gradual reform, change the USSR into a modern state. Well, there was a backlash, and the backlash took place whilst he was as his dacha on holiday in the Crimea. And the counter revolution to Gorbachev was crushed not by Gorbachev, but by the president of the Russian part of the USSR Boris Yeltsin. And it was all up by the shouting with Gorbachev. This is Mark Galeotti who’s one of the best writers I think on Russian history. He writes this, “Yeltsin outlawed the Communist Party in the Russian part of what had been the USSR. Boris Yeltsin outlawed the Communist Party and refused to sign Gorbachev’s Union Treaty, which was his attempt to reform the USSR into a federation. The Baltic states declared their independence, the Ukrainians demanded theirs. Recognising the realities of the situation in his final duty as president of the Soviet Union Gorbachev decreed that it would be dissolved at midnight on the 31st of December, 1991.”

And that above all ended the old Cold War. Russia was reduced in size, not only because its satellites broke away like Poland, Czechoslovakia and so on, but also because internally it broke apart Ukraine being the clearest example which we know about. And I suppose for a short period of time, one could trust that Yeltsin would despite his failings and mainly his alcoholism, would nevertheless put in place a democratic constitution, and he would be followed by democratic politicians. He made a mistake from which Russia is still serving under. And the mistake was, he thought Putin would deliver that. Whereas we know Putin simply delivered an authoritarian state and a dead democracy, and because of that, the new Cold War began. In his book, “The New Cold War,” Gilbert Achcar a very odd name, A-C-H-C-A-R, Achcar. In this book, the New Cold War dates, the beginning of the war to a piece written by George Kennan in 1998 where he uses that phrase. And I read from his book, “The phrase The New Cold War was made in 1998 by George Kennan, Kennan then 94 years old declared Thomas Friedman, the famous "New York Times” columnist, that the US decision to expand NATO constituted in his opinion, the beginning of a new Cold War.“

That is so fascinating because NATO today is a matter of debate in the American presidential election. It’s a matter of concern to the Ukraine, and it’s a matter of disagreement between Britain and Germany, for example. So NATO is important, and Kennan says right back in 1998 that because America sought to bring in those Eastern countries into NATO, it meant that when Putin came to power in January, 2000, he faced all those satellite countries not just being neutral, but being brought into NATO itself. Not least Poland, which you remember up to the first World War was an integral part of Russia, there was no such country as Poland. And after the second World War, Poland was simply a satellite of USSR, but now Poland is a member of NATO along with other Eastern European countries. And so Kennan says the new Cold War was actually started by the West with the expansion of NATO. Two years later in the year 2000, Kenneth Waltz wrote in the Harvard Journal on International Affairs.

Waltz wrote this, "The reasons for expanding NATO are weak, the reasons for opposing expansion are strong. It draws new lines of division in Europe, alienates those left out and can find no logical stopping place west of Russia.” Now see it from Russia’s point of view. It was a Scottish poet, Burns, who told us to see ourselves as others see us, “It draws new lines,” says Waltz “Of division in Europe, alienates those left out and can find no logical stopping place west of Russia. It weakens those Russians most inclined towards liberal democracy and a market economy. It strengthens Russians of the opposite inclination.” And that’s exactly the message Putin has given out since, we are threatened by the West. “It reduces hope for further large reduction in nuclear weaponry, it pushes Russia towards China instead of drawing Russia towards Europe, and America. To alienate Russia by expanding NATO, and to alienate China by lecturing its leaders on how to rule their country to our policies that only an overwhelmingly powerful country could afford and only a foolish one attempt to follow.”

Now, that’s an American academic writing in 2000, the year that Putin took control in Russia. So historians are going to say in the future, why did a new Cold War break out? And I suppose if you ask people today that question, most people will answer, well, because of Russia, because of Putin. But actually people at the time were saying, before Putin seemed to be a major threat. It was the West and the expansion of NATO that began it all. We should have adopted different policies. Well, we didn’t. Now it’s also true that the new Cold War isn’t simply America and it’s at Western allies against Russia. It’s America and its Western allies against Russia, supported by China to an extent, although China is a separate and an independent player as well. So the subtitle to the book, “The New Cold War” by Achcar says the United States, Russia and China from Kosovo to Ukraine.

But that’s not true either, well, at least I don’t think so, ‘cause I think you can reasonably add to the players of the new Cold War or to borrow Rudyard Kipling’s phrase, “The great game” you can add in Iran and the European Union, particularly as there seem to be increasing, what shall I put, increasing tensions between the European Union and America, and between the European Union and Britain. So Iran and the EU are clearly players on the scene, but there’s also a group of other players on the scene, not least North Korea with nuclear weapons, not least Japan threatened by China in the South China seas. And I suppose you have to say the United Kingdom whose politicians still think they are major players on the world stage and in one sense they are as members of the Security Council and certainly in terms of Ukraine, the second most important support of Ukraine after the United States.

Now it looks as though we are facing a multicast new Cold War, not the old Cold War between Russia and its satellites America and its Western allies, but some players that are difficult to forecast. How will China react? China has backed Russia with arms, but as we understand it has put pressure on China not to use nuclear weapons in its war against Ukraine. And we have the unknown North Koreans who are a law unto themselves launching satellites, sorry, launching rockets towards Japan. And remember, Japan has treaty relations with America, which obliges America to defend Japan. We live, as I said, just now in a most uncertain world. In a sense, during the Cold War, we lived as the title of that magazine that some of us read that came from the states, MAD, mutual destruction.

We didn’t press the button in Washington and we didn’t press the button or they didn’t press the button in Moscow. Knowing that we will destroy each other, were we to do so? But now, but now we’ve got Putin who is, so I guess say volatile. We’ve got North Korea, which is… We’ve got Iran and we’ve got China. We live in a most uncertain world. This is not what the commentators and politicians thought at the beginning, they thought it would all be absolutely fine. But it wasn’t to turn out like that was it? It certainly wasn’t turn out like that. It was far more volatile than anybody thought, and we’ve had so many different conflicts. I tried to count up all the conflicts since 1989 to 2024. It’s an impossible task, we’ve been at war throughout somewhere in the world that period. But what I’ve done is isolate some of the major problems we faced, and the major problems we faced were these in terms of war, in chronological order.

The Balkan wars when Yugoslavia broke apart and looked at times as though we might enter via the various wars in Yugoslavia, a third world war. You remember there was the Croatian war, the Bosnian War, the Kosovo War, and the horror of that war, not just war, but the brutality of that war brought the horrors of World War II back to the Balkans and on the front pages of our newspapers. And America and Britain were fully involved in that, not well, with limited number of troops on the ground, but in terms of support for either side. Then we have the various wars of the Russian Federation, those previous parts of Russia that were breaking away like Georgia, Chechen, Russia had a lot of these, you might even describe them as internal wars, particularly down in the caucuses with Azerbaijan and Georgia and so on and so forth, we largely kept out of those in the west.

After all, it was a long way away and very few people in the West would ever be able to show Chechnya on a map of Europe or even Azerbaijan for that matter. Then of course we had the war in Afghanistan. Now you may prefer to call it the War on terror as president George W. Bush called it following the 11th of September attacks in America. The British had failed three times in Afghanistan in the 19th and early 20th century. The Russians had failed dramatically in Afghanistan in the late 20th century, ad here we go again and again, coalitions led by America failed disastrously in Afghanistan. The Iraq war or the Iraq wars they’re now called, the first being the 1990, 91 Gulf War, and the second, the 2003, 2011 war. The Iraq War where the US took on first of all, Iraq, you remember originally to move Iraqi forces out of Kuwait and then stopped.

The view from some in Britain was that we should have continued that war. And then of course there was in Britain at least a highly controversial invasion of Iraq, which was supported by our labour government under Blair, with misleading, we now know information intelligence about Iran’s capabilities, I’m sorry, in Iraq’s capabilities. So we have two wars, the Gulf War and the Iraq War, and at the end of it, we’re left with the powerful player of Iran intact and threatening and manoeuvring, which led on to conflicts across the Middle East, sometimes referred to as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but but that’s not entirely true. There was a civil war in Syria against Assad in which again, it looked as though we might be heading for a confrontation between the West and Russia. And we know what is happening in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict today, and we remember what Fukuyama said.

This isn’t the ideology of liberal democracy against Marxism, this is quite different. And it’s why some of us get cross with some of the journalism around the Israeli invasion of Gaza following those dreadful attacks in last October. Yet cross, because the Israelis are not fighting a country, this is not Britain versus France in the Middle Ages, this is Israel versus terrorists. Terrorists fueled by religion, exactly what Fukuyama said, conflicts with religion, terrorism, and there’s been so much criticism of Israel’s actions without much thought given to how do you fight a terrorist organisation on your very border who’s carried out a massacre in your own country? How do you deal with it? Well, you go to war, like you would go to war like Israel would go to war, shall we say with Egypt. But this is different, because the terrorists don’t fight according to normal rules, and so one of the problems that we face in the modern world is how do we deal with terrorism?

And some of us believe and have said that Israel is the first bulwark of civilization against the opposite in Gaza. Now, I know in some quarters that is not a popular thing to say, and I guess I’m probably quite safe saying it, but that’s what I genuinely believe anyhow, to fight terrorism is difficult. And this is the first time that a country has had to fight terrorism on its borders. It may well be that in Western Europe we shall face terrorism of similar nature inside our countries, that’s possible but in terms of where we are now, this is the beginning of a new Cold War element, the element of terrorism and how to deal with it. And then of course there are old issues resurfacing, Russia’s claim to Ukraine. The Russian state originally in the Middle Ages began in Kyiv, Russian orthodoxy, the church began in Kyiv. It wants Ukraine. It wants Ukraine because Putin wants to show he’s a big cheese and Ukraine, despite what we said before about NATO, was not invited to join NATO. And so there was no chance said Putin, and Putin was right, there was no chance as it turned out that NATO would put troops on the ground to defend Ukraine.

It hasn’t, it’s put money in and some would say limited military support, certainly the Ukrainians would say limited. And we played fast and loose with saying, well, please don’t use it on Russia, just defend yourselves with what we give you. That is now breaking down as we know we’ve grown attacks into Russia itself. It doesn’t sound does it when I read that list out, that all is well and good in the world, it simply doesn’t sound like that. This new Cold War is more complex than the old, much more complex. And in all these and other conflicts, including those, for example, in Africa, America has continued to play a leading role either directly as for example, in the case of the Gulf Wars or indirectly as in the case of support for Ukraine. America, whether it cares to or not, remains the leader of what we used to the free world of liberal democracies. America is the bulwark of liberal democracies, militarily, militarily it’s enormous as compared to the power of NATO and financially in the production of war material, for example.

So those of us in the West who are not Americans, still depend upon America just as we have done since 1945. Was there to be a change in American policy in the coming years, well that would create a new and very wild situation for Europe, particularly in those countries closest to Russia, Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and then of course Germany itself. There was a report in the times of London, only a week or so back of how incompetently, poorly equipped and poorly officered and poorly manned are the German armed forces. Now I was told that back in 2017 when I was giving a lecture in Colchester, which is a military garrison town on the battle of the Somme. And a senior British officer came to talk to me after I’d given my talk and he’d given his talk and I asked him what we should be worried most about in Europe? And he said, Germany. Because Germany was ill prepared. Now that is seven years ago and the times is still reporting that Germany is ill prepared.

You cannot blame American politicians for criticising European nations in NATO when they contribute so little to the general funding of the organisation. I kept using the term uncertain world, and you may be sick of me hearing me say it, and it is of course a truism. So I want to take a little piece now from Achcar’s book on the new Cold War, in which he takes us back to January, 2008 and to the Davos summit, where he quotes American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and he quotes her in this way. “Pointing to aggressive gestures by Moscow towards a Baltic state.” This is 2008 but that continued since. “Pointing to aggressive gestures by Moscow towards a Baltic states and alluding to the effect of sharply rising oil prices on the Russian economy. The Lithuanian president wondered, 'If a strong financial recovery in Russia is a stimulus for the new Russian leadership to return to the Cold War.”

Well we know exactly the outcome of that, Ukraine. “Condoleezza Rice’s rebuttal was quite stunning asserting,” and this is her words. “Perhaps nowhere is it clearer that we have no permanent enemies than in our relationship with Russia.” 2008, Condoleezza Rice is saying, we don’t have any enemies, no, we’re not enemies with Russia. And Putin’s been in power eight years, and is been threatening the Baltic states. She went on to say, “Ladies and gentlemen, the recent talk about a new Cold War is hyperbolic nonsense.” 2008. She went on, “Our relations today are fundamentally different than they were when all we shared was the desire to avoid mutual annihilation. Now, the fact is that the United States and Russia are working constructively today on many issues of mutual interest from counterproliferation to counterterrorism to the pursuit of peace in the Middle East. And we are determined to remember this even when we hear unwise and irresponsible rhetoric from Russia itself that hearkens back to an earlier time.”

She gives the game away with the last phrase. Everything isn’t in 2008 wonderful with Russia, and it’s not wonderful with Russia today and hasn’t been all through those years since Putin took power in 2000. She’s trying to convince herself. There are times when you have to see clearly what other people are saying about you. It’s an extraordinary thing. Achcar writes, “Condoleezza Rice’s state of denial became even more manic when later in the same speech, she described NATO’s mutation in terms that the Russian ears could only sound like those of a Cold War warrior. A fact of which he could not possibly have been unaware.” I said before that the creation of a bigger NATO was a threat. And here is Condoleezza Rice at its big international summit in 2008 saying this, “I remember when NATO saw the world in two parts, there was Europe and there was outer area, which was pretty much everything else. So who could have imagined seven years ago that our alliance today NATO alliance, would be training troops in Iraq providing airlift in Darfur and rooting out terrorists in places like Kandahar. These are increasingly the challenges of the 21st century.”

They’re, but Russia says NATO is meant for the defence of Europe, and here it’s acting on the world state led by America. She goes on to say, “These are increasingly the challenges of the 21st century. I’m optimistic that NATO will meet them, justice has met the challenges of last century. And who would’ve thought that NATO and the European Union would erase old divisions of east and west, that they would unite democratic nations across Europe, and that the alliance would hold its 2006 summit in Latvia, once that seemed impossible now it too seems inevitable.” If Russia invades the Baltic, we might be saying the same thing in five or 10 or 15 years time. It seemed impossible after 1991 that Russia could go to war with independent internationally recognised Ukraine. What I’m trying to say is that it takes two to tango.

In 2018, the editorial for a Foreign affairs journal special on the new Cold War said this, and I will read it to you. On March 18th, 2018, Vladimir Putin was elected to his fourth term as Russia’s president, a position he can hold until 2024 and possibly beyond that,“ He now holds it until 2030. "During this campaign in 2018, Putin stressed to Russians that he was just the kind of strong leader who could, as his supporters often put it, raise Russia off its knees.” Now why did Russia think it was on its knees? Because of the expansion of NATO. “And he spent much of his time bashing his critics in the West, particularly in the United States. Putin’s hostility towards the west has been met in contend, in fact, so concerned of Westerners grown with his political meddling, regional aggression and general efforts to play international spoiler, that many of them contend that we’re entering a new Cold War, but it’s taken a long time to realise that we’re in a new Cold War.

How interesting that we’ve had new members of NATO like Sweden, traditionally neutral, enter NATO. Why? Because of Putin’s threats. And Putin is frightened he cannot fail in Ukraine, and we in the West are frightened that if he succeeds, he will attack Northern Europe. Hence all these large NATO exercises that have been going on in the last month with combined actions. Except during those manoeuvres, the Germans were unable to communicate with other allies because of their outdated equipment. That seems not good. As for the British, both our very large and new aircraft carriers failed mechanically, and our sub carrying a nuclear warhead failed in a launch, or not a real launch of course, but in a launch procedure with it.

Europe’s defence looks weak, without the United States, Western Europe could fall very quickly thus Putin to succeed in Ukraine? These things are interrelated. If war comes in Europe and America has to get more involved in Europe, well China sees its chance to take Taiwan and other islands in the south and east China sees. I’ve written here the Russian Ukrainian conflict is only one of many problems facing today’s world order, and it’s these that I will turn next week. But in brief, I wanted to read them out today. The first is what I just mentioned, China’s threat to Taiwan, which would involve the United States, Japan, Australia, and others. North Korea’s threat against Japan and arguably geographically wider as it develops its nuclear weapons. Thirdly, the threat of escalation of conflict in the Middle East, again engineered by Iran. And we’ve seen that the threat to NATO’s Northern flank, which I’ve talked about, the Baltic states, Finland and Poland from Russian aggression.

The threat of increased conflict in Africa caused by famine, lawless states Islamic extremist groups, particularly in northwest Africa, and the involvement of China in Africa is of considerable concern. And then there’s clashes in the Arctic, and we’ve already seen some clashes in the Arctic by all the nations from Canada across Russia who have interests in the Arctic. But as the Arctic becomes unfrozen, the competition to declare parts of the Arctic belonging to A or country B will assume greater significance because of what lies beneath the perma ice, mineral extraction. And that might well also move from the Arctic to the Antarctic. There is of course the potential of conflict in space of individual countries claiming parts of the moon, especially if we discover things that are valuable there. And then there is the rising tide across the world of people who are poor moving across the globe to reach a country in search of a better life.

We’ve seen the problems in America with those coming up from south and central America through the American Mexican border. We’ve seen it in Britain with immigrants sailing across in appalling conditions from France to England. We’ve seen it from North Africa to Italy. We’ve seen it everywhere you turn, there is the problem of the migrations of people which will only be made worse by the threat of environmental change. And then there’s an internal threat in the West. The shadow of Hitler and his ideology is gaining new ground across the Western democracies. I never imagined in my lifetime that I would see such antisemitism arise in Britain, I never imagined it in my wildest moments could I have imagined that? And yet it’s here, and it’s here across Europe, and we have Islamists who don’t want to belong in Britain or France or Germany or wherever, want to convert us to Islam and change our countries into Muslim countries.

How on earth have we allowed that to happen, and what do we do about it now that it has? And if you became this year the prime Minister of Great Britain or the President of the United States, all those things will be in your incline. You might want to grab a gun and just shoot yourself. Except I’ve not mentioned the worst of all. They might say, well, Mr. President, yes, we know we have problems that we’ve got to resolve in Ukraine and the Middle East and in the Arctic. We’ve got all those problems. Yes, we understand there were activists present as a far worse part, and that is the threat to the future of our planet, the threat to the future of our planet. And as these conflicts take place, politicians put worries about the environment on the side. Yet it was Franklin, indeed Roosevelt who said, "The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.”

He could have said today, the world that destroys its oceans destroys itself. I see that on a daily basis as I walk on the beach here. The amount of stuff that comes ashore is absolutely unbelievable. And the death of the kelp fields off our coast, which has serious implications. We’re talking about rise of sea levels. Can I give you any hope at all? Well, I’m not sure. We should always have hope, but we should also be realistic. One of our problems, and again, this is something I should look at next week, is the failure of NATO, which has been stark over the Middle East conflict between Israel and Hamas. We have major problems, I think with NATO but then we had major problems with the League of Nations and we know where that led. Can we resurrect NATO? Can we do anything to bring international order back, or do we abandon it all together and look at nation states again, or groups of nation states. Do we look for different sorts of arrangements on the international scene?

But the final quotation I want to use comes from Rudyard Kipling. Kipling coined the phrase “The great game” to describe the conflict between the Russian tsarist empire and the British Indian Empire in the 19th century. It was a Cold War, it never led to a full blown war, a Cold War, he called it the Great Game. Many commentators, they use the phrase, “The great game” to describe not only the problems in the far east in Asia, but to cover the world as a whole. An alternative, if you like, to the phrase the new Cold War and Kipling said this, “When everyone is dead, the great game is finished not before.” When everyone is dead, the great game is finished not before. The tsarist Empire has gone, but Putin’s empire exists. The British have gone, but the Americans remain, when everyone is dead, the great game is finished, not before. And then he adds in the book, “Listen to me till the end.”

And that’s my request to all of you, listen to me till the end next week when I look at all those issues in terms of 2024 and America’s role in all of those, from Ukraine to the environmental issues, from the Arctic to the South China Sea, because these are really big important questions. Then one must ask oneself in the British general election or in the American presidential election, how many of these issues will actually surface or will it simply be the old issues of who can manage the economy best of all? Who can reduce the cost of living, who can reduce taxation, or who can provide better public services? I suspect we shall just go back to those old debates and these big issues will remain on the side. And the president of the United States, whoever he might be on his first day in office, will put that tray that I mentioned just now on the side and say, no, no, don’t bother me with all of that, let’s look at the economy and what we do. And in Britain, the Prime Minister will put all that aside and say, what do we do about our failing economy here in Britain?

So next time I will bring it all to not a conclusion because the game isn’t over until everyone is dead. But I should try and bring us up to date at least. And instead of bringing it to a conclusion, there will be lots of threads into the future. And I said earlier in this talk, no historian can ever or politician or journalist can ever say which threads will be important and which are not. Putin might be shot next week by someone close to him and Russia take a turn for the better. China might decide during the American presidential election to launch an attack on Taiwan. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Which I suppose you might say makes life interesting. Thanks for listening. Now I’ve probably got quite a number of questions. Let’s see if I have. Yeah, hang on, let’s see what I’ve got.

Q&A and Comments

Oh, Jonathan says, without contradicting your references to domino effect, I believe that that term is usually used in the context of Cold War indicate US concern. Yes, if one country in a region felt communist, neighbours will follow suit. You got that right. And it’s in particularly true in Asia when it was first used, I was using the phrase in a different and newer context of the new Cold War, but you are absolutely right. It was used primarily by America and others in terms of the conflicts in the Far East. If you allow career to fall, if you lie with Vietnam to fall, et cetera, et cetera. Oh, somebody’s put, I still remember seeing actual dominoes falling on American TV news to illustrate this. Oh great.

Henry Kissinger, says Marilyn, in his book “Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy,” two of the leaders he writes about are Nixon and Thatcher. Jonathan says, isn’t it true that in Putin’s first years as head of Russia, he seemed amenable to democratic overtures of Western leaders. He spoke to the German Bundestag was applauded by all its members. Correct, but what we don’t know is whether that was a strategy that he then dropped or whether he really believed it, I suspect it was a strategy.

Q: Shelly says, how does religious fundamentalism in the Muslim world fit in and old style Arab countries like Syria and Egypt? A: Well, religious fundamentalism is exactly what Fukuyama was saying in his book “The End of History.” We have to deal with religion, it isn’t only Muslim fundamentalism, there’s Christian fundamentalism as well.

Yes, Alan, you are quite right. What about Pakistan and India in today’s Cold War, you are absolutely right. It is possible that nuclear war could break out there. I simply don’t think so. There could be further problems if you want me to be pessimistic, there could be problems over Kashmir again, which could lead to war between Pakistan and India, where there have been wars since independence in 1947.

Faith, so if NATO’s fought for trying to help countries keep their independence from a xenophobic autocracy as aggressively sought, invade its neighbours, a country that has a permanent hostility towards Western Europe it is developed long before the two world wars. The West is supposed to exceed whatever you want to do in your backlog you’re entitled, as if the West will concede to the World as it was under Vladimir or Bush. No. Well, faith, I have to disagree really, there’s a question of how we dealt with the new scenarios that we were presented with after the fall of the USSR. Many commentators in terms of journalists, academics, and all sorts of disciplines think that we could have dealt with it differently. We didn’t look at it from the Russian point of view. They saw us or Putin saw the West as being aggressive.

Now you may say that’s wrong NATO isn’t an aggressive force. Yes, but you can’t sell that to Putin, and it’s not because Putin is stupid, it’s because he sees that as a great possibility. And indeed people, politicians in the West have called for NATO to put troops on the ground. Macron in particular has been totally outspoken about putting troops on the ground in Ukraine. Why did communist Vietnam stay peaceful, and North Korea become such a problem? Because Vietnam moved with the times and modernised and became a quite different country than the old North Vietnam. Whereas North Korea became a completely isolated country under one family, total dictatorship by one family. So it just simply is one of those things that the two countries went different ways.

Angela, it’s such a comfort to hear only about Israel and their battle with Hamas. I who had a father who volunteered and fought in World War II with the most wonderful men, the salt of the earth of British people. I can only say, and I’m not going to read the Hebrew because I will pronounce it wrong. Well, I said what I said about Israel and Hamas because I really believe that, and I think it fits what Fukuyama was saying about terrorism and groups, and we don’t know how to deal with it. And my evidence for that would be the total inability of the United Nations to see that point of view, and it’s very worrying.

Q: Does NATO require members to contribute 2% to NATO or 2% to their own defence? A: It’s to their own forces, which are part of NATO, and Britain is putting 2.5% and there’s huge arguments here that it should go immediately to 3%. And we are putting the most in and it’s a joke, it’s a joke across Europe, and the Americans are well in their rights to criticise Europe.

Ron, oh dear, this is a big question on Ron. What are your thoughts on terrorism spreading over large parts especially the Sahel, i.e Mali, Burkina Faso, North Nigeria, Somalia, and Niger, which only recently demanded the American military abandon its huge air base. Yeah, and many Russian fingerprints on this, including the Wagner group, now replaced, but still a Russian group. Yes, the spread of militant Islam is a major threat to all the West, in Africa it’s a major threat to democracy in Africa, it’s a major threat, of course in the Middle East to Israel, and it’s a major threat inside western European countries. Terrorism we haven’t got an international means that i.e NATO, sorry, i.e the United Nations to know how to deal with it. And that’s why there’s been such bad press internationally for Israel, a failure to understand that it’s not easy to deal with it. How do you deal with… and one of the worst, I’ll talk about that next week, one of the worst aspects of that of course, is the internet.

Q: How can you believe the figures you see on the internet? A: I guess lots of you saw the Palestinian who, oh, hang on, I lost it now. Let me… I’m sure lots who saw the Palestinian, who was complaining about the food packages drop. He certainly didn’t look hungry himself, and those food packages are fine. They’re what American troops are obviously expect them to drop, you know, stake and chips or something, and the whole thing has got quite difficult to identify truth. Truth is the first casualty of war, we know that, but with the internet, it becomes extremely difficult to judge what we are being told by whatever side, whether it’s true or not.

Where have I got to? Sorry. Where am I? Oh, Barbara, thank you for your nice comment. Ron, I’ve answered that. Reva, I agree 100% Israel Gaza war, beginning of the third World War extremism, dictatorship, be it socialist, or Islamic jihad religious fanaticism against the developing and reassessing Western democracy. Yeah, I’m with you the whole way with that. Judith, what would have been an effective alternative policy to the expansion of NATO which would’ve benefited the West" The west did not actively seek to expand NATO, it responded to please of those countries which had experienced oppressive… Yes, except it didn’t respond to Ukraine, oddly enough. Well, we should have opened dialogue better with Yeltsin in Russia. The sad truth is that Yeltsin was an alcoholic and was not in a fit state, and then made the dreadful error of appointing Putin as his successor. And there has to have been better ways of dealing with it, and that meant talking to Russia, involving Russia, in a quite new approach to European policy.

Q: Shelly, how do you think the Obama administration not reacting to Russia going into Crimea affect what’s happening now in Ukraine? A: Of course, and you can say that was like Hitler going into the Rhineland. That’s always a difficult question. Do you stand up? But it’s only afterwards that you realise you should have stood up. And yes, of course in hindsight he should have done, it’s in the same way that Britain and France should have have stood up to hit this invasion of the Rhineland.

Marilyn, this sounds like the lack of preparation of Britain and World War II. Yes, it does, it does. Faith, Russia has long had a conservative, deeply religious character, puts it at odds with degenerate Western European ideas and lifestyle. Couple that with its diminished economic and that is often as ridiculed as a gas station with a nuclear army rather than a robust country, naturally feeds into its entity with the west. 100% right Faith. In my view, Myrna, it would appear at the moment that Congress has no idea of the history of expansionist Russia in enlightened example that 1939 Germany should be teaching. Don’t disagree.

Michael, one of the greatest worries in the future will be AI, rogue nations could create havoc with this. Absolutely, and so could terrorists, and I’m going to say something about AI next week, and I hope if any of you’re experts on AI, you will come in after I’ve spoken and say, William, you didn’t understand this because X, Y, and Z. But I’m going to say something about AI because I’m absolutely with you, Michael, I think that’s a major issue we are facing. Myrna, and is not the UN becoming a dangerous disaster. Yes. Kingston, Jewish couple, I guess that says, more so than NATO, in my humble opinion. Yes it is, well, NATO could be a complete disaster, was Trump to be elected and follow through on his promise to withdraw America. I don’t think that will happen, but want America to withdraw from NATO, then Putin will simply move into Northern Europe. I’m sure of that.

Enoch Powell, says Michael, warning about the entry of Arabs and the like Kahana in Israel was pillared and barred from high office both for prophets. Now I’m not getting involved in that, there’s an element more than an element of racism in Enoch Powell, which wasn’t helpful. And indeed the the people he referred to have integrated, there’s no problem with what colour or religion people are when they integrate. You asked me for an example, and the best example of all I can give are the Eastern European Jews who arrived in the 19th century, late 19th century in Britain. They accepted, not only accepted but wish to accept being British as well as Jewish, and British Jews is a phrase we use. That is not a phrase that Muslims would use of themselves.

William, a major irritant never mentioned increased population, decreased resources solution maybe let it go. You’re absolutely right about increased population and decreased resources, particularly in terms of water, Middle East and food. And food we’ve already seen with Brexit in Britain, some parts of that. Yeah, we are in problems, absolutely, that’s part of our environmental disaster.

Q: Nina, wouldn’t Trump’s ascend the president this year be a major factor in global destabilisation with his relationship with Orban and Putin and his blocking the shipment of much needed military supplies to Ukraine? A: Well, of course it would, of course it would. There’s no question about that, I listened to the speech that he made in Dayton, Ohio last week, and it’s worrying.

Robin, so several hot wars around the globe now could trigger another Cold War downfall. No, no, I don’t think I’ve said that. We are in a new Cold War, but like the old Cold War, there are hot wars going on. In the old Cold War, remember we had Korean War, we had the Vietnam War and we had other wars too. We are in a new Cold war and if you prefer the term, the new great game, but no, seems like the current wars will get hotter. Well, we need to try and prevent that, America’s already involved, we continue to arm Israel as Iran arms Hezbollah hot enough already in the Middle East. Yes, that’s true. But it could… yeah, no, I don’t think we’re disagreeing to be honest Robin.

Esther porridge, our powdered laundry detergent comes with a plastic cup in box. Oh, I read that when I mentioned my wretched plastic scoop in my porridge. In Italy 45 years ago, cake mixes came with a paper envelope to measure water that could be used for porridge. Yeah, well this is part of… I’m sorry I’m being a bit thick, Esther, that’s absolutely right, and that’s one of the problems with environment. But I’m sad to say that using paper bags instead of plastic isn’t going to solve the planet. We’ve got to do something about it. We are fortunate in Britain because we have the king who is been a supporter of issues concerning environments throughout his life. He was pillared as a young man and now he’s been seen as a prophet, but that’s all well and good. It’s the politicians that have to do something, and as soon as things become tight, i.e on the international scene or in terms of money, the first thing that goes is environmental policies.

You understand why, but it’s not… China seems not have a Muslim problem. Not true. China has a major Muslim problem in what was called Chinese Turkestan and they have been brutal in dealing with Muslim opposition in China. Maybe I should make a note of that so that I can say something about it next week, at least one person is interested, maybe other people would be interested as well. I’ll try and talk about China and Muslims. You mentioned water is a limited resource, especially near east, yet Israel leader in desalination can now produce enough fresh water for the whole region, not only itself, respected and admired for it. Sorry, I’ve lost it but I guess what it said, would’ve said no. Desalination is something I do not understand why we are not investing in more desalination plants. In this country, we’re on an island for goodness sake, and it’s the answer. It has to be the answer and we still don’t do it.

Oh dear, I think we’ll all have, wouldn’t it be wonderful if this Lockdown team, if we could all join together and offer political leadership to the western world, we’d solve all problems, wouldn’t we between us? Maybe not.

Thanks for listening. I’ll be back next week at the proper time or the original time of five o'clock, see you all there. Bye.