Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: The United States seen as a predator, China is a
Speaker 2: big gorilla that people are scared of.
Speaker 3: Russia to history is not just about great men or
Speaker 3: they might look like that at the moment. It's about
Speaker 3: raw logistics.
Speaker 2: It's about understanding geography and geology and working at how
Speaker 2: you can find a way around that.
Speaker 1: Peter Frankopan, the historian making sense of a shifting world order?
Speaker 1: Do you think that Putin and Trump have something in
Speaker 1: common in that these wars with Ukraine and Iran respectively,
Speaker 1: are with much less powerful countries. But have they both
Speaker 1: underestimated the kind of power that those countries can nevertheless wield?
Speaker 3: No question.
Speaker 2: Powerful men often miscalculate and think that their muscles and
Speaker 2: brain power are stronger better than anybody else's. And the
Speaker 2: challenge in a system where you have a single powerful
Speaker 2: leader who expects everyone to bound down to them is
Speaker 2: that they're very hard to get to listen to.
Speaker 1: Advice from Bloomberg Weekend. This is the Mishal Husain Show.
Speaker 1: I'm Mishal Husain. We're at a moment right now when
Speaker 1: the US Iran War is again resurgent with ripple effects
Speaker 1: across the Middle East and for global shipping and trade.
Speaker 1: That war has already cost tens of billions of dollars,
Speaker 1: and at precisely the same moment, there is another, longer
Speaker 1: running war, one that is much less in the international headlines,
Speaker 1: but which also has implications beyond the countries actually doing
Speaker 1: the fighting, Russia and Ukraine. I've been thinking a lot
Speaker 1: about the combined effect of these two conflicts, and as
Speaker 1: far as the Ukraine War is concerned, there is something
Speaker 1: very notable that has happened in the last few months.
Speaker 1: The way Ukraine has been striking Russia is really having
Speaker 1: an impact economically as well as on the battlefield, where
Speaker 1: there are many thousands of Russian casualties every month. There
Speaker 1: are also links between these two situations that are worth exploring,
Speaker 1: the tactics being deployed, the relationship of Iran and Russia,
Speaker 1: the comparison to past moments, and that is what led
Speaker 1: us to Peter Frankopan for this episode. He is a historian,
Speaker 1: but one who has charted the rise and fall of
Speaker 1: Middle as well as great powers, who's plugged into China
Speaker 1: and Central Asia and also Russia, Ukraine and the Middle East.
Speaker 1: He's always looking for undercurrents that tell a wider story,
Speaker 1: so transport connections, trading routes, pipelines that reveal where new
Speaker 1: markets are being found. Peter is Professor of Global history
Speaker 1: at Oxford University and the author of a book called
Speaker 1: Silk Roads, which he updated on its tenth anniversary last year,
Speaker 1: and The Earth Transformed all about climate and battles over
Speaker 1: time for natural resources and land. He is especially worth
Speaker 1: listening to if you're interested in drawing out common threads
Speaker 1: and working out what we need to brace for next.
Speaker 1: I hope you agree. Hi Michelle, Hello Peter, how are you.
Speaker 2: I've had a very busy year, but you caught me
Speaker 2: in an absolute sweet spot where I've got lots of
Speaker 2: things I want to do and I'd rather be talking
Speaker 2: to you than doing them.
Speaker 1: I feel guilty though we're taking you away from thinking
Speaker 1: big thoughts and probably your next book.
Speaker 2: No, I've got I've got a manuscript. I got a
Speaker 2: hand in in a month. So I do need to
Speaker 2: I do need to slightly get myself under the cosh.
Speaker 2: But I mean I don't work without a deadline.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm almost there.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, I look forward to seeing that come out.
Speaker 1: Why don't I just start by telling you what made
Speaker 1: us reach out to you. It's essentially because your work
Speaker 1: has so often been about the links between places and people,
Speaker 1: links and surprise other people, you know, you find these connections.
Speaker 1: And right now we have an ongoing war in Russia
Speaker 1: and Ukraine which feels like it's in a new phase,
Speaker 1: and then we have a resurgence in the war between
Speaker 1: the US and Iran. And I just wondered, when you
Speaker 1: see those two conflicts and situations, what jumps out to you.
Speaker 1: What are your observations at those two I.
Speaker 2: Mean, the first one is that if you decide to
Speaker 2: fight a war of choice, it's very hard to win.
Speaker 2: If you're fighting a war of existence, then your capacity
Speaker 2: is limitless, and in that sense, slightly unlikely Bedfellows. You
Speaker 2: see Ukraine doing something similar to what Iran a doing,
Speaker 2: which is you can absorb enormous amounts of military superiority,
Speaker 2: enormous amounts of pressure, political, military, all the rest of it,
Speaker 2: and you can keep on going. Maybe not indefinitely, but
Speaker 2: it's quite hard to deliver a knockout blow. And you know,
Speaker 2: Iran has been fighting since nineteen seventy nine three Cold Wars, simultaneously,
Speaker 2: one with the great Satan as Iran is like to
Speaker 2: call it the United State, one with the little Satan Israel,
Speaker 2: and with Saudi Arabia. And it's done so for forty
Speaker 2: seven years with about three percent of the US defense budget.
Speaker 2: And you know, I'm not here to tell you whether
Speaker 2: that's a good or a bad thing. But you know,
Speaker 2: if your job is to stay in business and to
Speaker 2: preserve regime stability, then it's amazing how far you can go.
Speaker 2: So that's the kind of major takeaway that the United
Speaker 2: States has not been able to deliver a knockout blow
Speaker 2: to middling size if that's small to middling size country
Speaker 2: like Iran. And the fact that the capability to keep
Speaker 2: on going was mispriced by Washington, as it was mispriced
Speaker 2: by Moscow.
Speaker 1: And what is your assessment then, of the state of
Speaker 1: play between Russia and Ukraine, because that has been the war,
Speaker 1: much less in the headlines in the last few months,
Speaker 1: and yet it feels that something distinct has happened in
Speaker 1: the Ukraine has been doing better than many people imagined.
Speaker 2: Well, there's no question that is an investment, particularly in
Speaker 2: drone technology, but also in the hierarchy of the targets.
Speaker 2: It's trying to hit from what Wildbery's logistical sense through
Speaker 2: to the oil refineries, and that has brought the price
Speaker 2: of the war into daily Russian life. And one of
Speaker 2: the reasons it hasn't been in daily Russian life is
Speaker 2: if you have state control of the media, you can
Speaker 2: choose what it is that your citizens here. When you
Speaker 2: have massive balloons of smoke over Moscow or Saint Petersburg,
Speaker 2: it suddenly becomes more real. That capacity to invest in
Speaker 2: drowing technology has taken several years and has a lot
Speaker 2: of outside support and investment in innovation. We're saying that
Speaker 2: at a time when last year Russia took less than
Speaker 2: one percent of Ukrainian territory, probably for the cost of
Speaker 2: something like two hundred thousand servicemen's lives as well.
Speaker 3: As many injured.
Speaker 2: The question, I think is what it is that gets
Speaker 2: Russia to come to the negotiating table, and that's been
Speaker 2: open to them at any point. But there's no question
Speaker 2: that the paper cuts that Ukraine are delivering to Russia
Speaker 2: are being very painful for the Russian economy as well
Speaker 2: as for citizens. Are therefore credibility in the.
Speaker 1: Regime and is part of that because of a link
Speaker 1: to the other war, in that Iran was a major
Speaker 1: supplier of drones and other military hardware to Russia, and
Speaker 1: then it ends up fighting a war for its own survival.
Speaker 2: Well, we've seen all sorts of smoke and mirrors, I
Speaker 2: mean lots of noise in Russia. In fact, in the
Speaker 2: last month, in particular of people like Nikolai Patrusha, who's
Speaker 2: one of the gray cardinals around Putin, very experienced, say
Speaker 2: that Europe wants Russia to become a resource colony and
Speaker 2: this should never happen. If you look towards China, you know,
Speaker 2: from Beijing's point of view, that's exactly what Russia has
Speaker 2: become a resource colony where China gets metals, oil and
Speaker 2: gas at discounted prices and in return gives support both
Speaker 2: multi nateral agencies like the UN institutional support, but also
Speaker 2: lots of support that's meaningful for the Russian war effort.
Speaker 2: So I think you could see these echoes everywhere. But
Speaker 2: I think there's no question that Russia's challenge is to
Speaker 2: define what it is that it wants, and so far,
Speaker 2: the problem is is that Putin, it's not a particular
Speaker 2: river or a city that he wants to get to
Speaker 2: he doesn't believe that Ukraine should exist as a sovereign state,
Speaker 2: despite his famous essay on the Historical Unity of Russia
Speaker 2: and Ukrainians, where at the very end he says it's
Speaker 2: up to Ukrainians to choose their own future. We would
Speaker 2: never use force against Ukraine and so on, and that,
Speaker 2: I think is an existential question that if you're a
Speaker 2: Russian historian, is not new to Putin, and it's not
Speaker 2: new to the last thirty forty years. It has a
Speaker 2: long history and legacy in Russia.
Speaker 1: We're going to dig into a lot of what you've said,
Speaker 1: Peter further as we go on in this conversation, but
Speaker 1: I'd love you to take us back in time to
Speaker 1: how your own interest in Russia in particular, but in
Speaker 1: Iran and the Middle East as well began. You were born,
Speaker 1: I think nineteen seventy one, were almost the same age.
Speaker 3: So much older, Michelle, not.
Speaker 1: Really, but we're talking about the nineteen eighties and you know,
Speaker 1: teenage years. How did the interest in Russia begin?
Speaker 2: It began even earlier. I used to watch John Craven's
Speaker 2: News Round and well brought up I was it was
Speaker 2: a TV program that I was of a generation which
Speaker 2: I'm sure you're the same, where our parents actively discourage
Speaker 2: us from watching TV because they thought it would corrupt us.
Speaker 2: But we were allowed to watch John Craven, who did
Speaker 2: a sort of ten minute news bulletin at about five
Speaker 2: o'clock every day. And I was struck, even as an
Speaker 2: eight or nine year old boy, that all the news
Speaker 2: I saw at that time was the tail end of
Speaker 2: the Vietnam War, genocide in Cambodia, s S twenty missiles
Speaker 2: being parked in Eastern Europe pointing at us here in
Speaker 2: the United Kingdom, and to see that there were all
Speaker 2: these parts of the world, like the Middle East, that
Speaker 2: we never heard anything about in our classrooms. So the
Speaker 2: interest in Russia or the Soviet Union as it was
Speaker 2: then was to try to understand why it was that
Speaker 2: nuclear holocaust was expected on our lifetime, Michelle, And again
Speaker 2: these last thirty to forty years, we've come to think
Speaker 2: that the world is all about free trade, or possibly
Speaker 2: even fair trade, but to find ways in which we
Speaker 2: can cooperate together. And I think our generation was disquieted
Speaker 2: by the fact that there was a likely moment that
Speaker 2: the Coldvill would turn hot, so I wanted to understand that,
Speaker 2: and so I started reading lots of Russian literature and
Speaker 2: eventually Soviet literature too. I was very lucky to go
Speaker 2: to a school where we had a Russian teacher, and
Speaker 2: even luckier that my Russian teacher in our A level
Speaker 2: the year had gone to I think Q eight for
Speaker 2: twelve months, had learnt Arabic and came back and taught
Speaker 2: a small group of US Arabic, but also about Middle
Speaker 2: Eastern cultures, including Iranian culture, including the complexities of the
Speaker 2: Middle East. So by the time I went to university,
Speaker 2: I was already looking east, and I'm fascinated in the
Speaker 2: history of Western Europe, but I didn't think I could
Speaker 2: add much, whereas if I looked eastwards, there was a
Speaker 2: whole world waiting to be explored, and it felt to
Speaker 2: me not only interesting but important, And so I made
Speaker 2: a bet on that whined when I started my PhD
Speaker 2: on looking at those worlds that by and large people
Speaker 2: thought I was mad, because if you wanted to have
Speaker 2: an academic job, it was much better to do the
Speaker 2: Tudors or Hitler, because that's what students want, and the
Speaker 2: world I work on are slightly still slightly obscure, you know,
Speaker 2: for investment bankers, they'll call all of these places the
Speaker 2: rest of the world. I mean, China now has its
Speaker 2: own category, but our engagement with people who lived to
Speaker 2: our east is pretty minimal. And even now, despite guards
Speaker 2: of being in the news, despite the war in Iran,
Speaker 2: despite the importance of critical minerals, despite last year in
Speaker 2: April there being a war between India and Pakistan, despite
Speaker 2: this huge change across Southeast Asia in the last twenty
Speaker 2: or thirty years, apart from organizations like yours at Bloomberg,
Speaker 2: we still understand these parts of the world, not just imperfectly.
Speaker 2: We'd paid them very little attention, and it turns out
Speaker 2: that they are super important to our own futures.
Speaker 1: I'm going to share two things, one that is different
Speaker 1: in the way we were brought up and one that
Speaker 1: we have in common. Because I grew up in the
Speaker 1: Middle East, we didn't have television, so I had notice,
Speaker 1: no job, no news, no TV news or children's programming
Speaker 1: of any kind. Although I do remember my parents talking
Speaker 1: about Cambodian exactly the period you mention. But I also
Speaker 1: learned Russian at school, and that was also due to
Speaker 1: the geopolitical time because at that time the Soviets were
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan. My family in Pakistan wondered if one day
Speaker 1: they would come across the border, and they thought would
Speaker 1: be a good idea of someone in the family knew
Speaker 1: how to speak Russian. So I do recognize the time
Speaker 1: you're talking about. And of course then there was that
Speaker 1: period after the end of the Cold War and before
Speaker 1: nine to eleven where it felt like you could travel anywhere,
Speaker 1: you could do anything, and then the world started to
Speaker 1: look a lot darker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the old saying is if you're an optimist,
Speaker 2: learn English, if your pessimist learned Chinese, and if you're
Speaker 2: a realist, learn how to assemble a kalashnikov. I mean
Speaker 2: that Afghan War and its conclusion, followed by the dissolution
Speaker 2: of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall
Speaker 2: at the end of the eighties, and then ninety one
Speaker 2: when Soviet Union collapsed, it did pressage a huge set
Speaker 2: of changes, and those changes sometimes we think of as
Speaker 2: being in the Soviet world, but they had a massive
Speaker 2: impact on the global economy too.
Speaker 1: But look at Russia, which changed fundamentally in economic terms.
Speaker 1: But there's a mindset that remained. And I'm thinking particularly
Speaker 1: about put In former KGB man one form of control
Speaker 1: that he knew was essentially repay. Another form of control.
Speaker 2: Well, it's small groups of men who make all the decisions.
Speaker 2: And in fact, that world's the eighties that you missed out,
Speaker 2: Michelle because you weren't allowed to watch TV. But you know,
Speaker 2: we used to have Soviet leaders who they'd be dead
Speaker 2: for a few days, for a few weeks, like Chenenko
Speaker 2: before it was announced the world, they all looked like
Speaker 2: they've lived in a deep freeze. And the group around
Speaker 2: Putin all in their seventies. Now they've all grown up together.
Speaker 2: There's no sign of a new generation coming forward to
Speaker 2: replace them. And I think that in some ways that
Speaker 2: the decision making in Moscow has been as narrowly dictated
Speaker 2: under Putin as it was under the Soviet Union. So
Speaker 2: there's a lot of continuity there. I mean, you could
Speaker 2: argue that parking vast amounts of assets into the hands
Speaker 2: of about thirty families changes things, but I could promise
Speaker 2: you under Marcist Leninist states there are still forms of
Speaker 2: control that families are very adept at keeping within their
Speaker 2: own structure. So I think one of the challenges is
Speaker 2: we thought that Russia was changing. We thought that Russia
Speaker 2: was going to become more like us now with a
Speaker 2: bit more gas in the tank of thinking about where
Speaker 2: did this all come from? You know, Russia has had
Speaker 2: the same foreign minister for twenty years. Putin's essentially been
Speaker 2: in charge for more than a quarter of a century.
Speaker 2: The group around him likewise, So I think, like in
Speaker 2: any relationship, either Russia's changed or in fac Russia never changed.
Speaker 2: It's just we misunderstood it and got it wrong. So
Speaker 2: I think that that would be my more persuasive line
Speaker 2: of trying to argue, which is that the end of
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union was seen as a moment to regroup
Speaker 2: and to reharness what Russia would look like as a
Speaker 2: great power. And Russia, despite its military weakness, the fact
Speaker 2: the fact that it's a smaller economy than Italy, has
Speaker 2: a small population's declining life expectancies, all those metrics, it
Speaker 2: still has the world's largest nuclear arsenal, and it has
Speaker 2: that hydrocarbons and the metals that mean that it shapes
Speaker 2: global markets. So Russia gets a seat at the high table,
Speaker 2: whether it deserves it or not. And Russia tries to
Speaker 2: leverage that weakness into a stronger position than it might
Speaker 2: otherwise have.
Speaker 1: So, Peter, can I then take you into the future
Speaker 1: and ask you about how various situations in different parts
Speaker 1: of the world, problems or conflicts are likely to play
Speaker 1: out in your view, the first being Ukraine and Russia
Speaker 1: the backdrop we've already discussed. Do you see a landing
Speaker 1: zone for an agreement at any point or are we
Speaker 1: looking at almost endless, perhaps low lying conflict.
Speaker 3: Well, I should, probably, with the.
Speaker 2: Modesty of a historian, say I'm much better looking backwards
Speaker 2: than forwards, because I've got facts and data in front
Speaker 2: of me and shaking the bones to guess what happens.
Speaker 2: There's a slight hiding to nothing. I'd have thought that
Speaker 2: the logic would be that there would be a frozen
Speaker 2: conflict in Ukraine, that eventually one or both sides reached
Speaker 2: the stage of exhaustion where there's a sort of fudge,
Speaker 2: and that those fudges can last essentially indefinitely, as they
Speaker 2: as they have done between North and South Korea, as
Speaker 2: they've done in Cyprus since nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 1: Kashmir, you could say.
Speaker 2: Kashmir too, and that you can establish a modus for Vendi.
Speaker 2: There are ways in which face can be saved. It
Speaker 2: doesn't look to me that those are the noises that
Speaker 2: are coming from Moscow of a willingness to say, let's
Speaker 2: cut our losses. Trump last summer offered Putin, I think,
Speaker 2: a deal that he thought was impossible to turn down,
Speaker 2: of bringing Russia back into the G eight family of nations,
Speaker 2: back into the global economy, US investment into metals in particular,
Speaker 2: and gas and oil fields in the north of Russia
Speaker 2: as well as elsewhere, the technical expertise that's needed because sanctions,
Speaker 2: you can beat them, but they're expensive to beat, and
Speaker 2: he couldn't understand. I think why Putin said no. And
Speaker 2: Putin did say no because he started to give a
Speaker 2: long lecture about this is Russian history that goes back
Speaker 2: a thousand years of confrontation from the West. So I
Speaker 2: can't although the logic would be a settlement of some
Speaker 2: kind that requires one or both sides to reach a
Speaker 2: stage of exhaustion, and I can't see that yet. So
Speaker 2: I fear that things will keep going until Putin or
Speaker 2: Moscow decides that it's time to cut losses. And there
Speaker 2: has been some noise about that properly for the last
Speaker 2: month or two. That might escalate over the summer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, that's what I wanted to dig into, because
Speaker 1: you wrote about this in your foreign policy piece recently
Speaker 1: that average monthly casualties are running at more than thirty thousand.
Speaker 1: This is on the Russian side, and that Russian fighters,
Speaker 1: once they're sent out onto the battlefield, survive an average
Speaker 1: of twenty to thirty five minutes. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: almost incomprehensible to me, those kinds of odds.
Speaker 2: Well, those battlefield numbers that drawn from a small number
Speaker 2: of Russian military bloggers. But interestingly, this week the head
Speaker 2: of CIA has said that this is confirmed by US
Speaker 2: military intelligence too. I think the point is that the
Speaker 2: casualty levels are unsustainable. Russia is losing more on the
Speaker 2: battlefield than they are able to recruit, and so far
Speaker 2: the men who've been called into service have been from
Speaker 2: distant regions for the big cities, and from minorities. Disproportionately,
Speaker 2: there are lots of minority populations in Russia. The problem
Speaker 2: now is for Russia to keep sustaining itself and just
Speaker 2: to stay in it's on me. It needs to be
Speaker 2: starting to look at how it can scripts from cities,
Speaker 2: and that that brings again the war closer to home.
Speaker 2: And again you'll remember from the Afghan War, Michelle, that
Speaker 2: one of the reasons why it became difficult with the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union was mothers of fallen servicemen which started to
Speaker 2: take to the streets to protest that their boys would
Speaker 2: never come home again except in body bags. And that
Speaker 2: that is something that is always difficult in any authoritarian state,
Speaker 2: whether you control the media or not, is that groups
Speaker 2: of people start to say, we are willing to take
Speaker 2: our protests because we're nothing left to lose. But that
Speaker 2: is something I think that can happen both in Russia
Speaker 2: and also in Iran, and I'd probably have both of
Speaker 2: those on my BINGO card for coming up later this year.
Speaker 2: That then, the question is, like in all periods of
Speaker 2: history with a persecution of Christians through to how this
Speaker 2: worked in Islamic societies is you either have to become
Speaker 2: more tolerant and you need to let some pressure into
Speaker 2: the system, or you have to repress and you have
Speaker 2: to crack down.
Speaker 3: And cracking down tends.
Speaker 2: To be an attractive show term solution, but it can
Speaker 2: make things much much worse.
Speaker 1: I'm still wondering at its heart, what does the Ukraine project,
Speaker 1: the Ukraine War represent to Putin? Or is it a
Speaker 1: combination of all of these? Is it an imperial project,
Speaker 1: is it recovery of lost prestige? Is it emotional or
Speaker 1: is it a question of his own survival because if
Speaker 1: he has to make a deal or end the war
Speaker 1: in Ukraine, what does that mean for his standing domestically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a good question. I think it's lots of things.
Speaker 2: I think there's no question that many of us think
Speaker 2: that Putin having an existential threat or something that's badge
Speaker 2: as an existential threat is important because it justifies the means.
Speaker 2: It's a really important tool of control. I think beyond that,
Speaker 2: what does Putin want, I think, is to be able
Speaker 2: to frame this in a context that this is not
Speaker 2: just about Zelenski or Kiev. It's about a persistent, long
Speaker 2: running way in which Europe in particular is trying to
Speaker 2: undermine Russia and to colonize it. And we might find
Speaker 2: that impossible to understand because the way we see it,
Speaker 2: we're trying to help Ukraine protect its sovereign territory. But
Speaker 2: that is something that has gone through the system in Russia,
Speaker 2: and it's absolutely believed that this was all to do
Speaker 2: with a plan that the West always had to destabilize Russia.
Speaker 2: That Russia is a person and on Granta never will
Speaker 2: be and no matter what Russia does, And so the
Speaker 2: war is a way of saying, this is our way
Speaker 2: of showing how we all bloody Europe knows this. It's
Speaker 2: a complicated one in Russia now, but it's something that's
Speaker 2: deeply believed in Russia that Europe and particularly the British
Speaker 2: are behind all of these things. And again that's the
Speaker 2: very similar conclusions are drawn in Tehran too.
Speaker 1: Do you think that Putin and Trump have something in
Speaker 1: common that these wars with Ukraine and Iran respectively, are
Speaker 1: with much less powerful countries. But have they both underestimated
Speaker 1: the kind of power that those countries can nevertheless wield.
Speaker 2: No question, And I think that that powerful men often
Speaker 2: miscalculate and think that their muscles and brain power are
Speaker 2: stronger better than anybody Else's The challenge in a system
Speaker 2: where you have a single powerful leader who expects everyone
Speaker 2: to bound down in front of them is that they're
Speaker 2: very hard to get to listen to advice, and so
Speaker 2: we see Putin micromanaging the war. We see Trump opening
Speaker 2: the straits of Hormuz, threatening to charge tariffs on passage
Speaker 2: on volumes of cargo, and then twenty four hours changing
Speaker 2: their mind. Both of them blow in the wind and
Speaker 2: do some extent. Trump and Putin suffer from the from
Speaker 2: the lack of discipline in sticking and staying on target,
Speaker 2: not defining what their goal is, and not then thinking
Speaker 2: about how do problem solve? And that's probably not a
Speaker 2: great position to be in. And arguably, if you are
Speaker 2: to ask a jobbing history and like me, that was
Speaker 2: why countries chose to have parliaments and democracies. It wasn't
Speaker 2: about rights and freedoms. It wasn't just about rights and freedoms.
Speaker 2: It was about taking those powers away from kings, taking
Speaker 2: powers away from single rulers who might mismanage things. And
Speaker 2: it wasn't about the belief in the brains of crowds
Speaker 2: or the sanity of crowds. It was that wars are
Speaker 2: very risky, and in Britain, for example, the selection process
Speaker 2: from the seventeen hundreds onwards about which wars to get
Speaker 2: involved with tended to be quite cynical. And they tended
Speaker 2: to be very very carefully based on where were we
Speaker 2: likely to win. That that's not the way that Putin
Speaker 2: thinks about things, not the way that Trump thinks about things. Interestingly,
Speaker 2: Shijinping in Beijing has been watching this very carefully, and
Speaker 2: I think has been repricing what this means for Chinese
Speaker 2: military architecture, not just with Taiwan, but with other arenas too.
Speaker 1: Well, that's exactly what I wanted to ask you about next.
Speaker 1: Because China has those deep links with both Russia and Iran.
Speaker 1: It has bought, always still buying in oil from those
Speaker 1: two countries, are other links as well. So you're saying
Speaker 1: it's benefited because it is seen the exercise of US
Speaker 1: military power and it's learning from it. But overall, how
Speaker 1: has it been impacted because economically the loss of those
Speaker 1: imports of oil from Iran must be significant.
Speaker 2: Well, have you a blast one of your excellent corresponds
Speaker 2: in Bloomberg has been flagging over the last couple of months.
Speaker 2: China's imported about forty five percent less oil than it
Speaker 2: normally does, and to understand why that's the case, begs
Speaker 2: lots of different questions are difficult questions Number one might
Speaker 2: be that China's economy is overheating and the demand has fallen,
Speaker 2: which I don't think looks likely to me, even though
Speaker 2: there's obviously pressure on Chinese economy. The second is that
Speaker 2: China's oil reserves are much much bigger than anybody had realized,
Speaker 2: or there's another way in which China's getting oil that
Speaker 2: we're not able.
Speaker 3: To see through.
Speaker 2: So I think that there is a real question about
Speaker 2: how that piece of the Hormer's closure has affected China,
Speaker 2: and in fact all of Asia. Eighty four percent of
Speaker 2: the oil gas that comes through Hormuz doesn't end up
Speaker 2: in Europe or Africa or the United States. It ends
Speaker 2: up in Asia. So Asian economies are at the thick
Speaker 2: end of this. And I mean from the point of
Speaker 2: view how this has been analyzed. Obviously, one of the
Speaker 2: best things you can do if your military strategist is
Speaker 2: to see how weapons perform on the battlefield, and when
Speaker 2: you have intense conflict like we've seen since twenty eighth
Speaker 2: of February, you can benchmark what pieces of kit perform
Speaker 2: well and how that happened A lot in the India
Speaker 2: Pakistan confrontation that wasn't very long last April. But when
Speaker 2: you can see how anti M missiles perform, how you
Speaker 2: can see how radar detection works, you get real time
Speaker 2: experiments that are not being done in a laboratory or
Speaker 2: in theory. So China harvested a lot of logistical information.
Speaker 2: But I think there's also the question about leadership decisions
Speaker 2: on the battlefield.
Speaker 3: And to see that the big player.
Speaker 2: That should outnumber and outfight the smaller doesn't happen easily,
Speaker 2: I think requires a lot of thinking, and there's a
Speaker 2: lot of thinking going on in in Beijing around exactly that.
Speaker 1: Now that mispricing, how would it use that knowledge of
Speaker 1: the US. Could you imagine China making a move on
Speaker 1: Taiwan knowing not only how the US has used military
Speaker 1: power lately, but also knowing that this war has cost
Speaker 1: a lot of money already. Pete Hegseth has put it
Speaker 1: at more than thirty seven billion dollars the last few
Speaker 1: months and is short of munitions and missiles.
Speaker 2: Well, Taiwan is a different geography. First of all, our
Speaker 2: islands have great levels of resilience, but they also have
Speaker 2: extreme vulnerability. So there are all sorts of ways in
Speaker 2: which China can make life very very difficult in Taiwan.
Speaker 2: Taiwan again imports more than ninety five percent of its
Speaker 2: fuel and about the same proportion of its water. So
Speaker 2: finding a way to strangle Taiwan or to make things difficult,
Speaker 2: you know, all you need is one shipment of bananas
Speaker 2: that has an unusual spider or pathogen on it, and
Speaker 2: you say, look, we're going to do inspections that they're
Speaker 2: going to take several weeks, so we don't have enough
Speaker 2: people to monitor and to investigate this, and it's nothing personal.
Speaker 2: Suddenly life become difficult, so that there are ways in
Speaker 2: which if you want to put pressure on somebody's windpipe,
Speaker 2: there are aggressive ways of doing it, and then there
Speaker 2: are slower, softer ways. I'd have thought the law of
Speaker 2: numbers in Taiwan looks to me more complicated if China
Speaker 2: doesn't want to force the issue, despite the fact many
Speaker 2: people think that she is determined to do this and
Speaker 2: be ready to do this. By twenty twenty seven, there
Speaker 2: are lots of anniversaries coming up about the founding of
Speaker 2: Communist Party, anniversaries China of maw taking over mainland China.
Speaker 2: There are all sorts of ways in which pressure can
Speaker 2: be imposed, and again because of the war in Iran,
Speaker 2: we forget that. Scott Bessent in Davos in January had
Speaker 2: said that the single greatest threat to the global economy,
Speaker 2: think was great choke point was on the semi conductor
Speaker 2: industry of Taiwan. There are all sorts of ways in
Speaker 2: which you can make that difficult too and compromise. So
Speaker 2: I think that a lot depends on what kind of
Speaker 2: game it is that China wants.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you could also say that China the status
Speaker 1: quo is not a bad one. There is a you know,
Speaker 1: there is an economic relationship that exists, and perhaps that's
Speaker 1: not such a bad status quo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Taiwan spends less on its defense than Trump's
Speaker 2: demanding us to spend in Europe. Taiwan typically around two
Speaker 2: percent of its GDP on defense, So you know, I
Speaker 2: think a lot will depend. I mean, what's interesting is
Speaker 2: if you travel around China and Taiwan, you talk to
Speaker 2: anybody under the age thirty five, they really don't care
Speaker 2: about these kinds of things. So I think in the
Speaker 2: case of Taiwan, the vulnerability of the strait as a
Speaker 2: choke point is what is really important both to China,
Speaker 2: where so much of China's important exports come through that strait,
Speaker 2: but also to places like South Korea and Japan. You
Speaker 2: know about a quarter of UAES exports and imports comes
Speaker 2: through the Strait of Taiwan. So these choke points are
Speaker 2: a reminder that history is not just about great men,
Speaker 2: or they might look like that at the moment.
Speaker 3: It's about raw logistics.
Speaker 2: It's about understanding geography and geology and working at how
Speaker 2: you can find a way around that. So one of
Speaker 2: the reasons why SEPEK, the China Pakistan Economic Corridor is
Speaker 2: such an in part for China is it provides optionality
Speaker 2: to be able to send things through to places like
Speaker 2: Gwadar in due course on the south coast of Pakistan.
Speaker 2: Not particularly well utilized at the moment, but it could
Speaker 2: be if it could be in the right or the
Speaker 2: wrong circumstances. And I think having those options is what
Speaker 2: forward strategy looks like.
Speaker 1: Gwadar is that big port that the Chinese have built
Speaker 1: on the south coast of Pakistan. It's interesting you mentioned
Speaker 1: the UAE Peter because I was looking at this sign
Speaker 1: of new cordiality and raprosche more between the UAE and
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia because those two countries. Again, this has probably
Speaker 1: pass most people by because of the international climate we
Speaker 1: live in, but they've had their differences before the Iran
Speaker 1: War and through the Iran War. And I wonder what
Speaker 1: you make of relationships within the Gulf for this moment
Speaker 1: in time.
Speaker 2: Well, I thought the first one is that necessity is
Speaker 2: the mother of all invention. And with Iran not just
Speaker 2: sitting as a threat, but positioning itself and thinking of
Speaker 2: itself now as a Hegemond thinks that survived the worst
Speaker 2: that the United States can throw, thinks that it's got
Speaker 2: proper ability to close and put pressure on the global economy.
Speaker 2: That means that lots of other voices are not necessarily
Speaker 2: in Iran's camp, but need to have some kind of settlement. Suddenly,
Speaker 2: those differences of opinion between UAE and Saudi Qatar, Bahrain, Oman,
Speaker 2: Kuwait and others suddenly looks that, well, how do we
Speaker 2: find a regional solution where we're all going to be
Speaker 2: part of this together. We talk a lot about China
Speaker 2: It's investment, port, infrastructure and loans and so on, but
Speaker 2: other players are doing something similar in Saudi Arabia and
Speaker 2: its investment in the economy of countries like Morocco. You
Speaker 2: could see that this is a kind of Mark Khni
Speaker 2: world of middle powers try to work out how they
Speaker 2: can all negotiate together at a time where you see
Speaker 2: a lot of big predators out in the wilderness. You know,
Speaker 2: the United States seen as a predator in large parts
Speaker 2: of Asia, China, you know, it's a it's a big
Speaker 2: gorilla that people are scared of as well as seeing
Speaker 2: their opportunities. Russia to Ira probably on the edge of
Speaker 2: that category as well. And I think that those those
Speaker 2: moving parts mean that there can be a time of
Speaker 2: consolidation of people put in their differences to one side.
Speaker 1: Well, let's draw all of this together, Peter, before you
Speaker 1: leave us, because it's a year since you wrote just
Speaker 1: after the Twelve Day War between the US and Israel
Speaker 1: and Iran. You wrote at that time that the past
Speaker 1: few weeks have brought reminders of how a new world
Speaker 1: order is straining to be born. One year on, how
Speaker 1: do you see things? Is there a decline in US
Speaker 1: power that we're seeing play out and what ultimately replaces it.
Speaker 2: I don' think this is a decline. I'd have thought
Speaker 2: that you could take the opposite view, which is the US,
Speaker 2: despite the chaos of what's happened, has shown that it
Speaker 2: is willing to go in and put its money where
Speaker 2: its mouth is, even in places where it said it
Speaker 2: wouldn't you know, the US has held its its share
Speaker 2: of the global economy for the last fifty years with
Speaker 2: you know, and in terms of its innovation, it's military,
Speaker 2: its cultural impact. I think it's it's it's wrong to
Speaker 2: price the US as being a declining power. But having
Speaker 2: said that, there's no question that Trump has talked a
Speaker 2: lot about bricks, and Marco Rubio has talked a lot
Speaker 2: about the global world order does not have the institutions
Speaker 2: required for the world of today and tomorrow, and that
Speaker 2: the global order is whole the United States back. But
Speaker 2: lots of these states that I work on are talking
Speaker 2: quite heavily about could you have metals exchanges? Could you
Speaker 2: have crops exchanges where you have lots of these states
Speaker 2: that are producing rice, wheat and so on, and to
Speaker 2: do price fixing and make rich economies like the West
Speaker 2: pay for them at inflated prices. So that sits alongside
Speaker 2: some of the new tech where most of the Chinese
Speaker 2: models are open sourced most of the stuff in the West,
Speaker 2: try to monetize. Those are two very, very different trajectories,
Speaker 2: so that that new world order. I think I was
Speaker 2: right that there was the strain of what that might
Speaker 2: look like. But you know, these states don't have huge
Speaker 2: amounts in common, but you can work together if you
Speaker 2: want to and it suits you.
Speaker 1: You are a scholar of the past. But contrary to
Speaker 1: what you said earlier, you have talked plenty about the future.
Speaker 1: I'd love to just ask you to look even further ahead,
Speaker 1: as we close to twenty thirty six. What is something
Speaker 1: underappreciated today that will be all around us and so
Speaker 1: obvious ten years from now.
Speaker 2: I think the first thing is the impact of the
Speaker 2: El Nino system coming towards us in the next twelve
Speaker 2: to eighteen months. I think that the sea surface temperatures
Speaker 2: that we're seeing in the Pacific and the Atlantic are
Speaker 2: not just abnormal, they are on a magnitude of scale
Speaker 2: beyond anything we've seen before that that will do things
Speaker 2: in terms of heat waves, wildfires, droughts, crop impacts that
Speaker 2: I think really deserve to be thought about, and that's
Speaker 2: going to create much higher levels of inequality of countries
Speaker 2: that are energy poor and food poor are going to
Speaker 2: have a tough time coming ahead. That was going to
Speaker 2: post questions also about the global environmental and humanitarian order.
Speaker 2: When you and I'm Michelle ending up where we started,
Speaker 2: grew up, the UN had a fundamental role in humanitarian
Speaker 2: relief and disaster relief.
Speaker 3: That's receded a huge way. So one of the questions
Speaker 3: when we see.
Speaker 2: The next twelve and eighteen months coming what happens in
Speaker 2: stress organized in stress countries.
Speaker 1: Well, it'll be plenty of material for your future books.
Speaker 1: You've written one about the Earth being transformed in climate
Speaker 1: and the battle for natural resources. What do you think
Speaker 1: you will be writing about in ten years time? You'll
Speaker 1: be charting all of this and more.
Speaker 3: I'm hoping.
Speaker 2: I'm hoping I'll hung up my pen and I'll be
Speaker 2: sitting on a beach somewhere reading reading clever things that
Speaker 2: other people have written, rather than having to make my
Speaker 2: own mind run over time. Look, I think when you
Speaker 2: see the problems around energy, around food, around new global orders,
Speaker 2: I think it's an odd thing to say, but they
Speaker 2: do focus the mind. They do make you think about
Speaker 2: long term strategy. They do make you think about what
Speaker 2: it is that you need as a sovereign state to
Speaker 2: protect yourself and also how things go looking forward. So
Speaker 2: I think if some of those questions can get answered,
Speaker 2: I'll have a nice easy retirement watching the news and
Speaker 2: seeing what's going on.
Speaker 3: But I've got quite a bit to do before then,
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 1: Peter Frankopan, thank you so much. Thanks for taking us
Speaker 1: around the world, back in time and into the future.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much having Mishal.
Speaker 1: That's where we left it. There is no excuse now
Speaker 1: for Peter not to get back to that manuscript and
Speaker 1: his looming deadline. And please do have a look at
Speaker 1: my written notes at Bloomberg dot com forward slash Mishal.
Speaker 1: They are always there as another dimension to these episodes.
Speaker 1: This time you'll find links to the data behind what
Speaker 1: Peter and I discussed, details of his books, and a
Speaker 1: greater sense of how we as a team dug into
Speaker 1: the themes before and after the recording. And that takes
Speaker 1: me too. The Mishal Husain Show team. The producers are
Speaker 1: Jessica Beck and Chris Martlew. The video producer is Andy Hayward.
Speaker 1: Guest booking by Elan Bird, social media by Alex Morgan,
Speaker 1: and our music is by Bart Warshaw looking after us
Speaker 1: in the studio with John Canfield, Lucy Conquest and Ian Green.
Speaker 1: The executive producer is Louis Lewis. And at Bloomberg Weekend
Speaker 1: thanks to Brendan Francis Newnham and our executive editor Katherine Bell.
Speaker 1: Until next time, goodbye,