WEBVTT - History’s Not Just About Great Men: Peter Frankopan on Iran and Ukraine 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:08.360 Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. 0:00:10.800 --> 0:00:13.760 The United States seen as a predator, China is a 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:15.320 big gorilla that people are scared of. 0:00:15.600 --> 0:00:18.079 Russia to history is not just about great men or 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:19.920 they might look like that at the moment. It's about 0:00:20.239 --> 0:00:21.160 raw logistics. 0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:24.640 It's about understanding geography and geology and working at how 0:00:24.680 --> 0:00:25.880 you can find a way around that. 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:32.120 Peter Frankopan, the historian making sense of a shifting world order? 0:00:32.360 --> 0:00:34.919 Do you think that Putin and Trump have something in 0:00:34.960 --> 0:00:39.560 common in that these wars with Ukraine and Iran respectively, 0:00:39.680 --> 0:00:42.760 are with much less powerful countries. But have they both 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:48.120 underestimated the kind of power that those countries can nevertheless wield? 0:00:48.280 --> 0:00:48.800 No question. 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:52.239 Powerful men often miscalculate and think that their muscles and 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:55.320 brain power are stronger better than anybody else's. And the 0:00:55.400 --> 0:00:58.040 challenge in a system where you have a single powerful 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:00.400 leader who expects everyone to bound down to them is 0:01:00.400 --> 0:01:01.600 that they're very hard to get to listen to. 0:01:01.640 --> 0:01:07.479 Advice from Bloomberg Weekend. This is the Mishal Husain Show. 0:01:08.680 --> 0:01:15.479 I'm Mishal Husain. We're at a moment right now when 0:01:15.600 --> 0:01:20.400 the US Iran War is again resurgent with ripple effects 0:01:20.520 --> 0:01:24.760 across the Middle East and for global shipping and trade. 0:01:25.520 --> 0:01:29.120 That war has already cost tens of billions of dollars, 0:01:29.600 --> 0:01:34.040 and at precisely the same moment, there is another, longer 0:01:34.120 --> 0:01:37.920 running war, one that is much less in the international headlines, 0:01:37.959 --> 0:01:42.039 but which also has implications beyond the countries actually doing 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:46.160 the fighting, Russia and Ukraine. I've been thinking a lot 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:50.320 about the combined effect of these two conflicts, and as 0:01:50.320 --> 0:01:53.360 far as the Ukraine War is concerned, there is something 0:01:53.760 --> 0:01:56.480 very notable that has happened in the last few months. 0:01:56.800 --> 0:02:01.120 The way Ukraine has been striking Russia is really having 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:04.960 an impact economically as well as on the battlefield, where 0:02:04.960 --> 0:02:09.080 there are many thousands of Russian casualties every month. There 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:13.920 are also links between these two situations that are worth exploring, 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:18.920 the tactics being deployed, the relationship of Iran and Russia, 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:23.520 the comparison to past moments, and that is what led 0:02:23.639 --> 0:02:27.400 us to Peter Frankopan for this episode. He is a historian, 0:02:27.560 --> 0:02:30.360 but one who has charted the rise and fall of 0:02:30.560 --> 0:02:34.720 Middle as well as great powers, who's plugged into China 0:02:34.760 --> 0:02:38.919 and Central Asia and also Russia, Ukraine and the Middle East. 0:02:39.320 --> 0:02:42.840 He's always looking for undercurrents that tell a wider story, 0:02:42.960 --> 0:02:47.720 so transport connections, trading routes, pipelines that reveal where new 0:02:47.800 --> 0:02:51.880 markets are being found. Peter is Professor of Global history 0:02:52.000 --> 0:02:54.680 at Oxford University and the author of a book called 0:02:54.880 --> 0:02:58.880 Silk Roads, which he updated on its tenth anniversary last year, 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:04.280 and The Earth Transformed all about climate and battles over 0:03:04.360 --> 0:03:08.920 time for natural resources and land. He is especially worth 0:03:08.960 --> 0:03:12.240 listening to if you're interested in drawing out common threads 0:03:12.680 --> 0:03:15.480 and working out what we need to brace for next. 0:03:15.840 --> 0:03:21.320 I hope you agree. Hi Michelle, Hello Peter, how are you. 0:03:21.639 --> 0:03:24.600 I've had a very busy year, but you caught me 0:03:24.639 --> 0:03:27.440 in an absolute sweet spot where I've got lots of 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:29.320 things I want to do and I'd rather be talking 0:03:29.320 --> 0:03:30.720 to you than doing them. 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:33.320 I feel guilty though we're taking you away from thinking 0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:35.160 big thoughts and probably your next book. 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:37.320 No, I've got I've got a manuscript. I got a 0:03:37.320 --> 0:03:39.520 hand in in a month. So I do need to 0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:42.000 I do need to slightly get myself under the cosh. 0:03:42.000 --> 0:03:43.880 But I mean I don't work without a deadline. 0:03:43.960 --> 0:03:45.400 Yeah, so I'm almost there. 0:03:45.560 --> 0:03:48.120 Okay, Well, I look forward to seeing that come out. 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:51.240 Why don't I just start by telling you what made 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:54.480 us reach out to you. It's essentially because your work 0:03:54.520 --> 0:03:58.520 has so often been about the links between places and people, 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:02.680 links and surprise other people, you know, you find these connections. 0:04:03.080 --> 0:04:06.800 And right now we have an ongoing war in Russia 0:04:06.840 --> 0:04:09.600 and Ukraine which feels like it's in a new phase, 0:04:09.720 --> 0:04:12.200 and then we have a resurgence in the war between 0:04:12.240 --> 0:04:15.240 the US and Iran. And I just wondered, when you 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:19.360 see those two conflicts and situations, what jumps out to you. 0:04:19.400 --> 0:04:21.880 What are your observations at those two I. 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:24.560 Mean, the first one is that if you decide to 0:04:24.560 --> 0:04:26.880 fight a war of choice, it's very hard to win. 0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:31.680 If you're fighting a war of existence, then your capacity 0:04:31.720 --> 0:04:35.159 is limitless, and in that sense, slightly unlikely Bedfellows. You 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:38.279 see Ukraine doing something similar to what Iran a doing, 0:04:38.600 --> 0:04:42.160 which is you can absorb enormous amounts of military superiority, 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:46.160 enormous amounts of pressure, political, military, all the rest of it, 0:04:46.720 --> 0:04:49.279 and you can keep on going. Maybe not indefinitely, but 0:04:49.320 --> 0:04:52.080 it's quite hard to deliver a knockout blow. And you know, 0:04:52.160 --> 0:04:57.040 Iran has been fighting since nineteen seventy nine three Cold Wars, simultaneously, 0:04:57.080 --> 0:04:59.279 one with the great Satan as Iran is like to 0:04:59.279 --> 0:05:02.279 call it the United State, one with the little Satan Israel, 0:05:02.440 --> 0:05:05.039 and with Saudi Arabia. And it's done so for forty 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:08.279 seven years with about three percent of the US defense budget. 0:05:08.520 --> 0:05:10.800 And you know, I'm not here to tell you whether 0:05:10.839 --> 0:05:12.760 that's a good or a bad thing. But you know, 0:05:12.760 --> 0:05:14.599 if your job is to stay in business and to 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:18.640 preserve regime stability, then it's amazing how far you can go. 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:20.800 So that's the kind of major takeaway that the United 0:05:20.839 --> 0:05:23.520 States has not been able to deliver a knockout blow 0:05:23.560 --> 0:05:27.440 to middling size if that's small to middling size country 0:05:27.480 --> 0:05:30.760 like Iran. And the fact that the capability to keep 0:05:30.760 --> 0:05:34.560 on going was mispriced by Washington, as it was mispriced 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:35.120 by Moscow. 0:05:35.600 --> 0:05:37.919 And what is your assessment then, of the state of 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:41.320 play between Russia and Ukraine, because that has been the war, 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:43.440 much less in the headlines in the last few months, 0:05:43.440 --> 0:05:46.760 and yet it feels that something distinct has happened in 0:05:46.800 --> 0:05:49.799 the Ukraine has been doing better than many people imagined. 0:05:50.560 --> 0:05:52.760 Well, there's no question that is an investment, particularly in 0:05:52.839 --> 0:05:56.279 drone technology, but also in the hierarchy of the targets. 0:05:56.279 --> 0:06:00.560 It's trying to hit from what Wildbery's logistical sense through 0:06:00.600 --> 0:06:04.000 to the oil refineries, and that has brought the price 0:06:04.040 --> 0:06:06.640 of the war into daily Russian life. And one of 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:08.680 the reasons it hasn't been in daily Russian life is 0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:11.640 if you have state control of the media, you can 0:06:11.720 --> 0:06:14.000 choose what it is that your citizens here. When you 0:06:14.040 --> 0:06:16.800 have massive balloons of smoke over Moscow or Saint Petersburg, 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:20.160 it suddenly becomes more real. That capacity to invest in 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:23.040 drowing technology has taken several years and has a lot 0:06:23.040 --> 0:06:26.680 of outside support and investment in innovation. We're saying that 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:28.720 at a time when last year Russia took less than 0:06:28.720 --> 0:06:31.520 one percent of Ukrainian territory, probably for the cost of 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:34.640 something like two hundred thousand servicemen's lives as well. 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:35.839 As many injured. 0:06:36.480 --> 0:06:38.880 The question, I think is what it is that gets 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:41.840 Russia to come to the negotiating table, and that's been 0:06:41.880 --> 0:06:44.279 open to them at any point. But there's no question 0:06:44.360 --> 0:06:46.840 that the paper cuts that Ukraine are delivering to Russia 0:06:47.279 --> 0:06:49.640 are being very painful for the Russian economy as well 0:06:49.640 --> 0:06:51.760 as for citizens. Are therefore credibility in the. 0:06:51.680 --> 0:06:54.440 Regime and is part of that because of a link 0:06:54.520 --> 0:06:57.760 to the other war, in that Iran was a major 0:06:57.800 --> 0:07:03.480 supplier of drones and other military hardware to Russia, and 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:05.960 then it ends up fighting a war for its own survival. 0:07:06.279 --> 0:07:09.400 Well, we've seen all sorts of smoke and mirrors, I 0:07:09.400 --> 0:07:11.680 mean lots of noise in Russia. In fact, in the 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:14.840 last month, in particular of people like Nikolai Patrusha, who's 0:07:14.880 --> 0:07:18.640 one of the gray cardinals around Putin, very experienced, say 0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:21.440 that Europe wants Russia to become a resource colony and 0:07:21.440 --> 0:07:24.440 this should never happen. If you look towards China, you know, 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:26.840 from Beijing's point of view, that's exactly what Russia has 0:07:26.840 --> 0:07:30.200 become a resource colony where China gets metals, oil and 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:33.920 gas at discounted prices and in return gives support both 0:07:34.200 --> 0:07:37.239 multi nateral agencies like the UN institutional support, but also 0:07:37.800 --> 0:07:40.480 lots of support that's meaningful for the Russian war effort. 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:44.400 So I think you could see these echoes everywhere. But 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:47.760 I think there's no question that Russia's challenge is to 0:07:47.840 --> 0:07:50.200 define what it is that it wants, and so far, 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:52.280 the problem is is that Putin, it's not a particular 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:54.440 river or a city that he wants to get to 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:57.920 he doesn't believe that Ukraine should exist as a sovereign state, 0:07:58.000 --> 0:08:01.480 despite his famous essay on the Historical Unity of Russia 0:08:01.480 --> 0:08:03.080 and Ukrainians, where at the very end he says it's 0:08:03.120 --> 0:08:05.440 up to Ukrainians to choose their own future. We would 0:08:05.480 --> 0:08:08.120 never use force against Ukraine and so on, and that, 0:08:08.160 --> 0:08:10.040 I think is an existential question that if you're a 0:08:10.080 --> 0:08:13.320 Russian historian, is not new to Putin, and it's not 0:08:13.400 --> 0:08:15.280 new to the last thirty forty years. It has a 0:08:15.320 --> 0:08:17.960 long history and legacy in Russia. 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:20.840 We're going to dig into a lot of what you've said, 0:08:20.880 --> 0:08:23.800 Peter further as we go on in this conversation, but 0:08:23.880 --> 0:08:25.560 I'd love you to take us back in time to 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:28.880 how your own interest in Russia in particular, but in 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:32.720 Iran and the Middle East as well began. You were born, 0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:36.559 I think nineteen seventy one, were almost the same age. 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:38.520 So much older, Michelle, not. 0:08:38.559 --> 0:08:41.760 Really, but we're talking about the nineteen eighties and you know, 0:08:41.960 --> 0:08:44.320 teenage years. How did the interest in Russia begin? 0:08:45.200 --> 0:08:47.440 It began even earlier. I used to watch John Craven's 0:08:47.480 --> 0:08:51.880 News Round and well brought up I was it was 0:08:51.880 --> 0:08:54.280 a TV program that I was of a generation which 0:08:54.320 --> 0:08:57.240 I'm sure you're the same, where our parents actively discourage 0:08:57.280 --> 0:08:59.720 us from watching TV because they thought it would corrupt us. 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:01.480 But we were allowed to watch John Craven, who did 0:09:01.480 --> 0:09:03.319 a sort of ten minute news bulletin at about five 0:09:03.360 --> 0:09:06.480 o'clock every day. And I was struck, even as an 0:09:06.480 --> 0:09:08.920 eight or nine year old boy, that all the news 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:10.559 I saw at that time was the tail end of 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:15.000 the Vietnam War, genocide in Cambodia, s S twenty missiles 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:17.800 being parked in Eastern Europe pointing at us here in 0:09:17.800 --> 0:09:20.320 the United Kingdom, and to see that there were all 0:09:20.320 --> 0:09:22.000 these parts of the world, like the Middle East, that 0:09:22.040 --> 0:09:25.280 we never heard anything about in our classrooms. So the 0:09:25.600 --> 0:09:27.880 interest in Russia or the Soviet Union as it was 0:09:27.880 --> 0:09:30.000 then was to try to understand why it was that 0:09:30.600 --> 0:09:35.000 nuclear holocaust was expected on our lifetime, Michelle, And again 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:37.640 these last thirty to forty years, we've come to think 0:09:37.679 --> 0:09:40.480 that the world is all about free trade, or possibly 0:09:40.480 --> 0:09:42.760 even fair trade, but to find ways in which we 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:47.600 can cooperate together. And I think our generation was disquieted 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:50.840 by the fact that there was a likely moment that 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:53.600 the Coldvill would turn hot, so I wanted to understand that, 0:09:54.240 --> 0:09:57.880 and so I started reading lots of Russian literature and 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:00.120 eventually Soviet literature too. I was very lucky to go 0:10:00.120 --> 0:10:02.400 to a school where we had a Russian teacher, and 0:10:02.440 --> 0:10:05.920 even luckier that my Russian teacher in our A level 0:10:05.920 --> 0:10:08.920 the year had gone to I think Q eight for 0:10:09.000 --> 0:10:11.520 twelve months, had learnt Arabic and came back and taught 0:10:11.600 --> 0:10:14.160 a small group of US Arabic, but also about Middle 0:10:14.160 --> 0:10:17.679 Eastern cultures, including Iranian culture, including the complexities of the 0:10:17.720 --> 0:10:19.520 Middle East. So by the time I went to university, 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:22.760 I was already looking east, and I'm fascinated in the 0:10:22.840 --> 0:10:24.720 history of Western Europe, but I didn't think I could 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:29.080 add much, whereas if I looked eastwards, there was a 0:10:29.080 --> 0:10:31.800 whole world waiting to be explored, and it felt to 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:35.079 me not only interesting but important, And so I made 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:37.200 a bet on that whined when I started my PhD 0:10:37.400 --> 0:10:39.520 on looking at those worlds that by and large people 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:41.800 thought I was mad, because if you wanted to have 0:10:41.840 --> 0:10:43.600 an academic job, it was much better to do the 0:10:43.640 --> 0:10:46.800 Tudors or Hitler, because that's what students want, and the 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:49.920 world I work on are slightly still slightly obscure, you know, 0:10:49.960 --> 0:10:52.720 for investment bankers, they'll call all of these places the 0:10:52.720 --> 0:10:54.920 rest of the world. I mean, China now has its 0:10:54.920 --> 0:10:59.360 own category, but our engagement with people who lived to 0:10:59.400 --> 0:11:03.000 our east is pretty minimal. And even now, despite guards 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:04.720 of being in the news, despite the war in Iran, 0:11:05.120 --> 0:11:07.560 despite the importance of critical minerals, despite last year in 0:11:07.559 --> 0:11:11.120 April there being a war between India and Pakistan, despite 0:11:11.160 --> 0:11:13.840 this huge change across Southeast Asia in the last twenty 0:11:13.920 --> 0:11:18.400 or thirty years, apart from organizations like yours at Bloomberg, 0:11:19.160 --> 0:11:22.480 we still understand these parts of the world, not just imperfectly. 0:11:22.559 --> 0:11:24.839 We'd paid them very little attention, and it turns out 0:11:24.880 --> 0:11:27.920 that they are super important to our own futures. 0:11:28.440 --> 0:11:31.480 I'm going to share two things, one that is different 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:32.840 in the way we were brought up and one that 0:11:32.880 --> 0:11:34.280 we have in common. Because I grew up in the 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:37.080 Middle East, we didn't have television, so I had notice, 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:40.840 no job, no news, no TV news or children's programming 0:11:40.840 --> 0:11:43.160 of any kind. Although I do remember my parents talking 0:11:43.200 --> 0:11:46.800 about Cambodian exactly the period you mention. But I also 0:11:46.960 --> 0:11:49.240 learned Russian at school, and that was also due to 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:53.480 the geopolitical time because at that time the Soviets were 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:57.320 in Afghanistan. My family in Pakistan wondered if one day 0:11:57.320 --> 0:11:58.960 they would come across the border, and they thought would 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:01.040 be a good idea of someone in the family knew 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:04.600 how to speak Russian. So I do recognize the time 0:12:04.640 --> 0:12:06.520 you're talking about. And of course then there was that 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:09.559 period after the end of the Cold War and before 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:13.840 nine to eleven where it felt like you could travel anywhere, 0:12:13.880 --> 0:12:16.240 you could do anything, and then the world started to 0:12:16.240 --> 0:12:17.080 look a lot darker. 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:20.760 Yeah, I mean the old saying is if you're an optimist, 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:23.400 learn English, if your pessimist learned Chinese, and if you're 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:25.880 a realist, learn how to assemble a kalashnikov. I mean 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:30.520 that Afghan War and its conclusion, followed by the dissolution 0:12:30.600 --> 0:12:32.280 of the Soviet Union, the fall of the Berlin Wall 0:12:32.360 --> 0:12:34.120 at the end of the eighties, and then ninety one 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:37.480 when Soviet Union collapsed, it did pressage a huge set 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:40.079 of changes, and those changes sometimes we think of as 0:12:40.120 --> 0:12:43.320 being in the Soviet world, but they had a massive 0:12:43.320 --> 0:12:45.720 impact on the global economy too. 0:12:45.920 --> 0:12:50.160 But look at Russia, which changed fundamentally in economic terms. 0:12:50.400 --> 0:12:53.640 But there's a mindset that remained. And I'm thinking particularly 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:58.320 about put In former KGB man one form of control 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:02.960 that he knew was essentially repay. Another form of control. 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:05.359 Well, it's small groups of men who make all the decisions. 0:13:05.520 --> 0:13:07.959 And in fact, that world's the eighties that you missed out, 0:13:07.960 --> 0:13:10.160 Michelle because you weren't allowed to watch TV. But you know, 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:12.720 we used to have Soviet leaders who they'd be dead 0:13:12.760 --> 0:13:14.840 for a few days, for a few weeks, like Chenenko 0:13:14.880 --> 0:13:16.280 before it was announced the world, they all looked like 0:13:16.320 --> 0:13:19.200 they've lived in a deep freeze. And the group around 0:13:19.200 --> 0:13:21.560 Putin all in their seventies. Now they've all grown up together. 0:13:21.640 --> 0:13:24.520 There's no sign of a new generation coming forward to 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:27.960 replace them. And I think that in some ways that 0:13:28.000 --> 0:13:32.640 the decision making in Moscow has been as narrowly dictated 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:35.199 under Putin as it was under the Soviet Union. So 0:13:35.240 --> 0:13:37.360 there's a lot of continuity there. I mean, you could 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:41.040 argue that parking vast amounts of assets into the hands 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:44.079 of about thirty families changes things, but I could promise 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:47.760 you under Marcist Leninist states there are still forms of 0:13:47.760 --> 0:13:50.560 control that families are very adept at keeping within their 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:52.560 own structure. So I think one of the challenges is 0:13:52.600 --> 0:13:54.880 we thought that Russia was changing. We thought that Russia 0:13:54.960 --> 0:13:57.360 was going to become more like us now with a 0:13:57.360 --> 0:13:59.400 bit more gas in the tank of thinking about where 0:13:59.400 --> 0:14:01.560 did this all come from? You know, Russia has had 0:14:01.600 --> 0:14:04.360 the same foreign minister for twenty years. Putin's essentially been 0:14:04.400 --> 0:14:06.720 in charge for more than a quarter of a century. 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:09.600 The group around him likewise, So I think, like in 0:14:09.640 --> 0:14:13.000 any relationship, either Russia's changed or in fac Russia never changed. 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:15.720 It's just we misunderstood it and got it wrong. So 0:14:16.360 --> 0:14:19.320 I think that that would be my more persuasive line 0:14:19.360 --> 0:14:21.160 of trying to argue, which is that the end of 0:14:21.200 --> 0:14:23.920 the Soviet Union was seen as a moment to regroup 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:27.000 and to reharness what Russia would look like as a 0:14:27.000 --> 0:14:30.160 great power. And Russia, despite its military weakness, the fact 0:14:30.160 --> 0:14:32.480 the fact that it's a smaller economy than Italy, has 0:14:32.520 --> 0:14:36.080 a small population's declining life expectancies, all those metrics, it 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:38.880 still has the world's largest nuclear arsenal, and it has 0:14:38.920 --> 0:14:41.960 that hydrocarbons and the metals that mean that it shapes 0:14:42.000 --> 0:14:44.920 global markets. So Russia gets a seat at the high table, 0:14:44.960 --> 0:14:47.400 whether it deserves it or not. And Russia tries to 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:50.400 leverage that weakness into a stronger position than it might 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:51.040 otherwise have. 0:14:51.280 --> 0:14:54.160 So, Peter, can I then take you into the future 0:14:54.320 --> 0:14:58.520 and ask you about how various situations in different parts 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:03.560 of the world, problems or conflicts are likely to play 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:07.280 out in your view, the first being Ukraine and Russia 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:12.040 the backdrop we've already discussed. Do you see a landing 0:15:12.160 --> 0:15:16.080 zone for an agreement at any point or are we 0:15:16.560 --> 0:15:20.440 looking at almost endless, perhaps low lying conflict. 0:15:20.880 --> 0:15:22.600 Well, I should, probably, with the. 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:26.800 Modesty of a historian, say I'm much better looking backwards 0:15:27.200 --> 0:15:29.480 than forwards, because I've got facts and data in front 0:15:29.520 --> 0:15:32.359 of me and shaking the bones to guess what happens. 0:15:32.440 --> 0:15:34.920 There's a slight hiding to nothing. I'd have thought that 0:15:35.000 --> 0:15:37.640 the logic would be that there would be a frozen 0:15:37.720 --> 0:15:41.520 conflict in Ukraine, that eventually one or both sides reached 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:44.320 the stage of exhaustion where there's a sort of fudge, 0:15:44.400 --> 0:15:47.720 and that those fudges can last essentially indefinitely, as they 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:49.800 as they have done between North and South Korea, as 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:52.080 they've done in Cyprus since nineteen seventy four. 0:15:52.160 --> 0:15:53.440 Kashmir, you could say. 0:15:53.640 --> 0:15:57.200 Kashmir too, and that you can establish a modus for Vendi. 0:15:57.280 --> 0:16:01.560 There are ways in which face can be saved. It 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:03.400 doesn't look to me that those are the noises that 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:05.840 are coming from Moscow of a willingness to say, let's 0:16:05.840 --> 0:16:09.880 cut our losses. Trump last summer offered Putin, I think, 0:16:09.920 --> 0:16:12.560 a deal that he thought was impossible to turn down, 0:16:12.720 --> 0:16:15.920 of bringing Russia back into the G eight family of nations, 0:16:16.000 --> 0:16:20.360 back into the global economy, US investment into metals in particular, 0:16:20.520 --> 0:16:23.080 and gas and oil fields in the north of Russia 0:16:23.120 --> 0:16:27.000 as well as elsewhere, the technical expertise that's needed because sanctions, 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:29.800 you can beat them, but they're expensive to beat, and 0:16:29.880 --> 0:16:33.280 he couldn't understand. I think why Putin said no. And 0:16:33.440 --> 0:16:35.480 Putin did say no because he started to give a 0:16:35.480 --> 0:16:38.000 long lecture about this is Russian history that goes back 0:16:38.040 --> 0:16:41.120 a thousand years of confrontation from the West. So I 0:16:41.160 --> 0:16:43.920 can't although the logic would be a settlement of some 0:16:44.080 --> 0:16:47.480 kind that requires one or both sides to reach a 0:16:47.480 --> 0:16:49.960 stage of exhaustion, and I can't see that yet. So 0:16:50.160 --> 0:16:54.560 I fear that things will keep going until Putin or 0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:58.400 Moscow decides that it's time to cut losses. And there 0:16:58.400 --> 0:17:01.080 has been some noise about that properly for the last 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:04.040 month or two. That might escalate over the summer. 0:17:04.240 --> 0:17:06.440 Yeah, well, that's what I wanted to dig into, because 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:09.720 you wrote about this in your foreign policy piece recently 0:17:09.760 --> 0:17:14.080 that average monthly casualties are running at more than thirty thousand. 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:17.080 This is on the Russian side, and that Russian fighters, 0:17:17.080 --> 0:17:19.920 once they're sent out onto the battlefield, survive an average 0:17:19.920 --> 0:17:22.040 of twenty to thirty five minutes. I mean, this is 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:25.800 almost incomprehensible to me, those kinds of odds. 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:29.920 Well, those battlefield numbers that drawn from a small number 0:17:30.040 --> 0:17:33.440 of Russian military bloggers. But interestingly, this week the head 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:36.160 of CIA has said that this is confirmed by US 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:38.800 military intelligence too. I think the point is that the 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:42.600 casualty levels are unsustainable. Russia is losing more on the 0:17:42.640 --> 0:17:46.880 battlefield than they are able to recruit, and so far 0:17:47.400 --> 0:17:50.640 the men who've been called into service have been from 0:17:50.840 --> 0:17:54.600 distant regions for the big cities, and from minorities. Disproportionately, 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:58.240 there are lots of minority populations in Russia. The problem 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:00.440 now is for Russia to keep sustaining itself and just 0:18:00.480 --> 0:18:02.040 to stay in it's on me. It needs to be 0:18:02.600 --> 0:18:05.480 starting to look at how it can scripts from cities, 0:18:05.520 --> 0:18:08.240 and that that brings again the war closer to home. 0:18:08.400 --> 0:18:11.960 And again you'll remember from the Afghan War, Michelle, that 0:18:12.240 --> 0:18:14.000 one of the reasons why it became difficult with the 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:17.560 Soviet Union was mothers of fallen servicemen which started to 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:19.960 take to the streets to protest that their boys would 0:18:19.960 --> 0:18:22.560 never come home again except in body bags. And that 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:26.359 that is something that is always difficult in any authoritarian state, 0:18:26.400 --> 0:18:29.120 whether you control the media or not, is that groups 0:18:29.119 --> 0:18:31.360 of people start to say, we are willing to take 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:33.760 our protests because we're nothing left to lose. But that 0:18:33.880 --> 0:18:36.760 is something I think that can happen both in Russia 0:18:37.000 --> 0:18:39.280 and also in Iran, and I'd probably have both of 0:18:39.280 --> 0:18:42.240 those on my BINGO card for coming up later this year. 0:18:42.240 --> 0:18:44.359 That then, the question is, like in all periods of 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:48.040 history with a persecution of Christians through to how this 0:18:48.080 --> 0:18:50.320 worked in Islamic societies is you either have to become 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:53.160 more tolerant and you need to let some pressure into 0:18:53.200 --> 0:18:55.879 the system, or you have to repress and you have 0:18:55.960 --> 0:18:56.760 to crack down. 0:18:56.920 --> 0:18:59.040 And cracking down tends. 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:01.080 To be an attractive show term solution, but it can 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:02.240 make things much much worse. 0:19:21.840 --> 0:19:26.840 I'm still wondering at its heart, what does the Ukraine project, 0:19:26.880 --> 0:19:29.800 the Ukraine War represent to Putin? Or is it a 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:32.400 combination of all of these? Is it an imperial project, 0:19:32.480 --> 0:19:37.159 is it recovery of lost prestige? Is it emotional or 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:39.480 is it a question of his own survival because if 0:19:39.520 --> 0:19:42.920 he has to make a deal or end the war 0:19:43.000 --> 0:19:46.000 in Ukraine, what does that mean for his standing domestically. 0:19:46.440 --> 0:19:48.639 Yeah, it's a good question. I think it's lots of things. 0:19:48.800 --> 0:19:51.440 I think there's no question that many of us think 0:19:51.480 --> 0:19:54.200 that Putin having an existential threat or something that's badge 0:19:54.200 --> 0:19:58.439 as an existential threat is important because it justifies the means. 0:19:58.840 --> 0:20:02.080 It's a really important tool of control. I think beyond that, 0:20:02.560 --> 0:20:05.560 what does Putin want, I think, is to be able 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:07.960 to frame this in a context that this is not 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:12.200 just about Zelenski or Kiev. It's about a persistent, long 0:20:12.280 --> 0:20:15.879 running way in which Europe in particular is trying to 0:20:15.960 --> 0:20:19.880 undermine Russia and to colonize it. And we might find 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:22.359 that impossible to understand because the way we see it, 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:26.359 we're trying to help Ukraine protect its sovereign territory. But 0:20:26.440 --> 0:20:28.679 that is something that has gone through the system in Russia, 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:30.719 and it's absolutely believed that this was all to do 0:20:30.760 --> 0:20:33.439 with a plan that the West always had to destabilize Russia. 0:20:33.640 --> 0:20:35.720 That Russia is a person and on Granta never will 0:20:35.760 --> 0:20:38.080 be and no matter what Russia does, And so the 0:20:38.119 --> 0:20:40.880 war is a way of saying, this is our way 0:20:40.960 --> 0:20:44.280 of showing how we all bloody Europe knows this. It's 0:20:44.320 --> 0:20:46.600 a complicated one in Russia now, but it's something that's 0:20:46.640 --> 0:20:49.720 deeply believed in Russia that Europe and particularly the British 0:20:50.320 --> 0:20:53.359