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I'm Tom Price, and in my podcast, my mate bought a toaster. I explore the weird and wonderful internet orders of my guests to tell their life story. Who knew Stephen Merchant bought this? Decorative freestanding toilet roll. Was it used when you sent it back? Almost certainly not.
adams quite literally splashed out on this you've bought a kayak if you want to hear me uncover the secrets of over 120 comedians writers and actors find my mate for a toaster and you can start listening to any episode that takes your fancy ACAST is the home of podcasting, including such shows as The Logbooks, The High Performance Podcast, and The One You're Listening To Right Now. Hello and welcome back to These Times. I'm Tom McTague. And I'm Helen Thompson.
Last week, we set up all the reasons why the world has become multipolar, as Marco Rubio himself admitted. And in this follow-up episode, we're going to look at Donald Trump's response to this multipolarity and the implications for the rest of the world, especially... in Europe. Just to remind everybody then, the question we're asking is, doesn't American acceptance of a multipolar world serve as a thread to explain the geopolitical ambitions of Trump too?
So, Helen, the first thing we should say is that we're recording this episode immediately after we recorded the last one. So we're recording on Monday, the 24th of March. And as we know from past experience of recording these... episodes after the over the past few weeks the world is moving very quickly but that is just a warning to listeners what we're trying to do though is deal with
big picture questions here. So we wanted to have the chance to step back and try to understand what's going on and to try to understand Donald Trump's reaction to the... changing nature of the world. And in this week's episode, we're going to start... with Russia, because that's where Trump's actions have been much more clear, especially in relation to his policy towards China, which there is a almost an admission of a lack of...
Donald Trump is owning the lack of clarity saying I do not want to talk about the question of Taiwan because I don't want to be bound into something which is effectively a policy of strategic ambiguity which started to disappear under the Biden presidency. In one sense, Trump is returning to an American policy that has been there for decades, and Biden is the break. But let's start with Russia. I think it's really important.
to stress how much of a shift has taken place here. Because in the first Trump presidency, it's possible to tell a story that nothing much changed in the grand scheme of things. In fact you could actually argue that some aspects of it the policy was tougher. Yeah. On Nord Stream 2, the Nord Stream pipeline, also on arming Ukraine. Absolutely, arming Ukraine. There was even on America's exposure to European security or in the Middle East. In Europe, there were more troops.
American troops at the end of Trump's presidency stationed in Europe than there were at the beginning. There's a way of telling that story in that manner. I think it's very difficult to argue that the Trump presidency has not already created a significant shift in American policy, and that is most clear in relation to Russia. If we just cast our mind back three years to 2022, or at least the 12-month period, say, after
Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. And there was talk of delivering a strategic blow against Russia. And potentially, some of the wilder talk was a kind of knockout blow in which... perhaps the regime itself. would collapse because of sort of under the weight of its failures, the loss of manpower, the inability to take territory and even perhaps to lose territory and some of the gains that it had made in 2014.
particularly with Crimea. So there was this, there was a sort of growing optimism in Now, that has shifted completely and formally, I think it should be said. It's not just in the personal ambitions of Donald Trump. This is now a formal policy of an administration that is in lockstep.
it seems, behind Trump. And that is to normalise relations with Russia. That is a grand strategic shift, which has brought about suggestions that it is thought through, that it is a clear strategy, it's a Nixon in reverse to try and drag Russia away from China. And we'll come to that question and how seriously we should take that, both as a piece of historical analysis and as a...
plausible strategy for the United States. But at the very least, what you're seeing is an acceptance of some Russian arguments about Ukraine, a reluctance to be involved in any sense in protecting whatever rump Ukraine emerges from this talk to even act as this backstop to a potential European force of coalition of the willing of peacekeepers led by the
British and the French. So something absolutely significant has happened already in these first few months of the Trump presidency. I think there's so much that's interesting, Tom, about the Russia question. I think the starting place in a way should be, given what we're trying to do in these episodes, is just how difficult it has been thus far actually for Trump to move the Russians.
on the Ukraine question itself, actually to get to the point where the administration could be at all confident that Putin actually wants to settle the conflict. And I think it's quite striking just how difficult that might be.
has become clearer then the language gets ever more accommodating or at least from some members of the Trump administration gets ever more accommodating towards Russia over the subject of Ukraine itself, because Trump, you could say, has completely accepted the premise that Russia is part of the multipolar world, that the United States has to have in his mind some kind of constructive relationship with.
And he's not at all willing for the question of Ukraine's future to complicate that question really in any way whatsoever. But in order to achieve that reset with Russia, he has to find a way. of bringing the war to an end and we can see very clearly the ways in which he's put immense pressure on Zelensky to come to the table including just humiliating him or at least allowing humiliation of Zelensky to take place in the Oval Office but in terms of being able to say
He's got a clear idea of what Putin's terms for peace are. That looks like a lot more complicated picture. And then that raises a question of, well, what is in it? For the Russians, of a reset with the United States, in Russia's mind, has long been a multipolar world in which Putin wants to ensure that the multipolar world is as far on Russian terms as it can possibly.
be and i think you can see here once you turn to the normalization aspect of it as it plays out in terms of energy just how complicated the relationship between russia and the united states now is because on the Russian side, I think that the overall demand for the reset will be that it can go back to selling gas.
via pipelines to European states and obviously particularly to Germany. And that would require the repair of the Nord Stream pipelines. And for Trump to accept that, and he may have to accept, that would mean that... the policy which he pursued in the first administration, which was, let's push the interests, the corporate interests of the American shale gas companies who want to sell more liquefied natural gas to Europe, i.e.
to be in a competition, a commercial competition with Russia that the US shell companies like win, and which they have won as a consequence of everything that happened since Putin cut the supply off. through the Nord Stream pipelines in June of 2022. It's going back to that competition. In that sense, it's a kind of like multipolarity in the competition between the United States and Russia as energy.
And if that's the price that Putin demands for settling the Ukraine conflict, that's quite a high price, I think, including for Trump's own credibility on these issues, given where he was last time. The other price presumably is spheres of influence. It's effectively saying that Ukraine is in the Russian world just as you want Greenland to be in the American world. This is ours and no, there cannot be.
Western troops, Western peacekeepers in this neighborhood. Ukraine has to be a neutral part of a broader...
Russian world, just as presumably Central Asia and others will then, that there will have to be an acceptance that they are part of the Russian world and the Caucasus and elsewhere. There is a funny kind of inversion as well of the paradox of Germany, I think, or a certain echo of it, in that the Americans understandably complained that they were paying for Germany's defense as they saw it against an enemy.
of which they were becoming ever more dependent by having this economic and energy relationship with at the disbenefit of American shale companies. And now, in reverse, the cost. for America to change the nature of the transatlantic alliance to effectively withdraw from it as much as possible seems to be that it would be at...
the disadvantage of American shale companies. Again, that if you want to have the close relationship with Russia, it comes at a geopolitical cost. And that is not the question that I've heard. debated very often among American circles. It's a very transactional debate about the nature of American exposure to leeching Europe. But the consequences are obviously vast.
Well, I think, yeah, they are. And I think you can say that what Russia also gains out of it, on the energy side, I mean by that, if the normalisation takes place, would be for the Western oil. We talked about this a few episodes ago, particularly ExxonMobil, which was the one of the American companies that was most in Russia, to go back in to Russia to be able to work with the Russian companies, not just in the Arctic.
but in Russian shale as well and possibly like in the Black Sea, which is where X-Mobile was also shut out from after the events of 2014, is that the framework would then become one in which the Americans and the... companies and the Russian companies were both energy competitors when it comes to European markets but would be energy partners when it comes to developing particularly I would say the Arctic.
resources and that's interesting because if you go back to the period of the first decade of the well really up to 2014
when the sanctions that affected the Western companies, particularly ExxonMobil, came into effect. At that point, the US liquefied natural gas companies were not selling into the European market. There was a prospect that they were going... to I think the first US LNG arrives in Europe in 2016 or like 2017 but they weren't at that point so it was just a partnership relationship if you like corporate partnership relationship then you move into the period where the corporates take a blow
So companies like Exxon Milbo and take a blow. And then the US shale companies are starting to sell into the European market and the Trump administration policy is helping them over the Nord Stream to pipeline, putting light, pressure light on Germany. We're not going to be in this position.
This is going to be a new position, assuming it does come about, in which you have simultaneous competition and partnership. But that's also the case with Europe, isn't it? Because if the Russian price of normalisation... of relationship with the united states is the resumption of the gas relationship with europe which is a form of a normalizing of the relations with europe it comes at a time when europe
is responding to the American attempt to normalize relations with Russia by militarizing its stance against Russia as a potential... threat to the territorial integrity of the EU. and whatever NATO is left at the end of the Trump presidency. So there is a kind of a question, and this is something we'll deal with in the second half when we turn to...
how Europe is going to respond to this because it's absolutely existential. But in a sense, at the same time as this is happening, and we're looking at a map with the United States on one side of the Atlantic. Russia on the other side of continental Europe. You have this sort of altogether new geopolitical game that is happening over the top of this space, which we have not really...
had to think about in a great deal of detail until relatively recently. But we did an episode where we looked at the geopolitics of the Arctic, but it seems ever more clear, I think, this is a frame. to understand the relations between the United States and Russia. Yeah, I think that the Arctic is absolutely crucial to understanding present geopolitical conditions.
and to understanding at least some of the thinking reactions we want to present what the Trump administration does on these issues. And I think you could make an argument that says, look,
This is where the Russian aspect of multipolarity has become really clear. And in one sense to see why you just have to look at a map. So more than half of the coastline of... the arctic is russian controlled according to the economist then over the last six years russia has built more than 475 military bases astonishing in the arctic even if you go back actually
right to the beginning of the days leading up to russia's invasion of ukraine in 2022 there was a very important satellite communication cable that was cut and the island of Svalbard. And one of the consequences, if we know, in terms of the response of European states to Russia's invasion of Ukraine was that two of the Arctic states...
Sweden and Finland, Sweden I think being particularly significant in terms of militarisation in the Arctic, have joined NATO. So actually a really significant... geopolitical plated if you like is moved as a result of the ukraine war around the black sea around the arctic itself and it's come at a time in which the melting of the ice in the arctic has opened up a set of
We talked about some of them when we had Pippa Malmgren on including the ability for Russia to use the Great Northern Sea Route as it's been called to take.
oil and liquefied natural gas from Arctic ports to the Pacific coast, cutting out all the need to go through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea. It's significantly shorter. And I think you can then say... that the Trump administration has got a clear project of trying to strengthen american power in the arctic and greenland will come to that because i think it's also connected to the china question but greenland is i think central to this as a response to the increase in russian power
over the last decade or so. I think it's quite a long time back that Putin inserted that Russia was the Arctic power. And I think that in that sense is the... conjunction of Russian military power there and the fact that the Arctic is the place where perhaps at least the best long-term prospects for more oil and gas but there's also minerals there lie means that the russians in order to be able to develop
Their interest, their need, the help, the technological help and the capital perhaps of Western oil companies. And the Americans do not want their companies to be left out of. the arctic and if you look at the moment like where the best prospects lie they lie on the russian side there is one thing though i think that is really interesting that will become a reason though why the arctic exploration and arctic development could well lead to yet more American
Russian commercial competition is because the other place where there's considerable hope about exporting liquefied natural gas from in the medium term is Alaska and using the sea routes and that would mean Alaska so the United States companies being able to sell via the Arctic routes into the Pacific and into China. So actually, you would then not just have American Russian commercial competition for European gas markets, but you would have it by a new route.
because there's always some competition that goes on via the Arctic. Just to look at a map gives you a sense and a clarity, in a way, of Donald Trump's seemingly mad obsession with Greenland and Canada. Once you just stare at the map and place it in a different place, looking at Russia and this potential new sea route over the top of Russia and down the Pacific to China.
you see an entirely different set of choke points to what exists at the moment, certainly down the Bering Straits that... separate alaska from russia that itself could be a remarkably contested and important space in the world and then coming down the pacific side
you hit Japan, Sea of Japan, South Korea, and then into China. So it's just a different way of looking at the world. And China as well, we should just make clear is... asserting itself or trying to assert itself as something called a near which
I think some of the Americans have done more than raise an eyebrow and say you are either an Arctic power or you are not an Arctic power. But just pivoting back to the United States, it does point to the importance of Canada, which itself is an Arctic power. I think that what's interesting at this point, Tom, is the way in which the Russia and the China question come together. And that's...
Partly because, as you said, that China does have its own Arctic ambitions, including commercially in Greenland, though it's been thwarted. The Chinese companies have been thwarted thus far in their mineral projects. there you could say is the americans do not want the chinese companies operating in greenland and that they want a strengthened military position in the arctic because of the rise of russian power in the arctic but as we talked about in the episode when we talked about.
Greenland and Canada. If you look historically, Greenland questions and Canada questions for the United States have gone together, go back to the formation of Canada in 1867 as a confederation in defence of American ambitions.
ambitions towards Canada. And that was about the point that they were actually taking control of Alaska, buying it from me, from the Russians. Once you put that Arctic tension point together with the fact... that the americans and i don't think this is just about the trump administration fear that china is commercially an ascendant power in the western hemisphere and that is a problem in their mindset
in terms of the Monroe Doctrine, the idea that the United States is unipolar, almost dominant completely in the Western Hemisphere. And what you can then say is that there's an economic problem that's arisen. And by that, particularly perhaps at the Mexico border. but that Greenland and the Arctic are a way in for expanding perhaps even Russian influence back into the Western Hemisphere, certainly in any context in which Russia and China are firmly aligned with each other.
It's interesting to me, Helen, how it's all interlinked now, in a sense. I was reading a piece on Axios, the American website, recently about Trump's Taiwan mystery is what they called it. And they included a... tweet from the Chinese embassy in the United States, which specifically tied this question of American interests and supremacy.
in the Western Hemisphere, to its relations with China. And it said, if the US truly wants to solve the fentanyl issue, which we should say is something that Trump has used. as an excuse or as a reason for hiking the tariffs on both Mexico and Canada. He is saying that they're not doing enough about fentanyl coming in.
to the United States. And we covered this, didn't we, in a piece about the borderlands, an episode we recorded about the American relations with Mexico and how China was connected into the production of fentanyl that was then causing such devastation in the United States. The Chinese embassy saying that if the US truly wants to solve this fentanyl issue, then in quotes, the right thing to do is to consult with China by treating each other.
as equals. If war is what the US wants, be it a tariff war, a trade war, or any other type of war, we're ready to fight it out until the end. It's amazing how it's all coming together in these issues, and it ultimately does seem to tie these three global powers together, each interacting with the other? Well, I think if you look at it from a long historical perspective, Tom, we could say this, that since the time that...
the United States first emerged as a kind of world power. I'm not saying that in relation to unipolarity or multipolarity. Let's even just say as a great power and began not its steady rise to world dominance because... through the first half of the 20th century that was a much more erratic course but to the point whereby at the end of the second world war it was unquestionably the world's most powerful eight All that took place in a context in which the United States had established that
supremacy in the Western Hemisphere and that the Monroe Doctrine, which I think we talked about when we talked about Guyana and Venezuela, which had first been asserted back in the 18... 20s is made a reality really in the 1890s and it's at that point when you start to see the US under Theodore Roosevelt really
pushing to becoming a naval power so although that there's been if you like ups and downs of american power through the whole of the 20th century and into the 21st century all that story has played out without the Western Hemisphere primacy being put in question in any way. The nearest that you can get to saying where it's violated is Hawaii, is the attack on Hawaii. And obviously that brings the United States into the second world.
So a moment in which at least some Americans fear the commercial penetration of the Western Hemisphere by China. Think about the response. to the Chinese company, which is actually a Hong Kong company that controlled the ports at either end of the Panama Canal and now being bought out by BlackRock and where Russia...
is asserting itself at the point in which the difference between the Western Hemisphere and Eurasia is the most narrow because of the nature of the Earth. This is, I think, actually completely, there is no real historical precedent for it. And that doesn't mean to say that it makes sense to think that the Trump administration is full of people who like thinking in these terms unnecessarily. I've got that kind of historical perspective on it, but these are the forces that are...
at work. And I think that they do provide a context in which we can say things that do look random at times from Trump. in particular perhaps or not so now i still go back to the point which i've ended up making quite a number of times over the last couple of months about how difficult it is to think about
the Trump presidency, the danger of seeing a strategic purpose where there isn't one and then trying to work out what is actually arbitrary and function of his personality. But nonetheless, I think that these... geopolitical plates would be shifting in ways that are really long term.
not just about long-term in relationship to the nature of the US security commitment to Europe, but longer than that, to do with the whole moment historically in which the United States emerged as a world power. Because of climate, because of resources.
demographics you're looking at both China and Russia and saying they have demographic issues that are going to require if you have hundreds of military bases across an arctic coastline they need manning and if you're going to then protect your if you're going to have wars of aggression in europe that mean hundreds of thousands of people dying you also have questions of
In a sense, listening to you there, it makes me think that history kind of makes mugs of us all in the end. I'm thinking of Sarah Palin, this much mocked figure for understandable reasons, saying, I understand Russia because I'm from Alaska.
And I look over and I can see it. And you think that was completely dismissed at the time as a kind of ludicrous thing to say. And I understand why it was seen as ludicrous. At the same time, now it's true. Now that's the case. If you are the governor of Alaska. you're going to be staring at a pinch point in...
global geopolitics that has emerged because of changes in the climate and other issues. It goes back to this, in a sense, it's these questions, I think, and this is where it affects Europe, I think, as well, and where the lack of clarity in... Trump in his instincts, in the instincts of the American ruling class in the Republican Party, the sort of the dynamics between those instincts and strategy and the reality of global power, they all come together in a way that's not.
often easy to understand because I'm not sure that there is a way of pulling them all out. consistently coherently that there is sometimes an incoherence and we have to accept that in a sense but there is something of a emerging reality and acceptance
that you have multiple powers in which the relations between them need to be normalized, I think you can, in a sense, understand at least some of the strategy in that way. So if you go back to the Marco Rubio... in which he is saying the Chinese will do what is in the best interest of China and the United States needs to know what's in the best interest of...
the United States and it's the job of diplomacy to prevent conflict while still furthering our national interests. That is an explanation of almost like a kind of concert of Europe style way of thinking about the world. But what's really interesting about that perspective, Tom, and this gets us, I think, to the end of this half and on to the next, is, well, what then are European interests?
in this because Rubio assumes that it's relatively straightforward, I think, to work out what American interests are and what Chinese interests are. But it's not at all clear that it's at all straightforward to work out what European interests are. in this situation, in this multipolar world. Readly is perfect for you, with unlimited access to over 8,000 newspapers and magazines. A big...
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Welcome back, everybody. So in this half, we're going to turn to Europe and that most fundamental question that you posed, Helen, which is what are European interests? Because as you say, you can say quite clearly what are Russian interests, what are Chinese interests. modern American interest.
and the conflict that exists between them. I think that is an interesting question in terms of whether they are compatible, particularly Chinese and American interests. If China wants to be a global power rather than just a regional power, is that something that the American... can accept but when you look at european interests it's very hard to say exactly what they are so you mentioned in the first half for instance you talked about
Finland and Sweden becoming members of NATO. And that being a really sort of seismic moment following the invasion, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And of course it is. And then you step one further, you take one step further back and say, well, what is NATO now? And what are NATO's interests? What have they joined? Yeah, what have they joined? It's actually not clear.
And of course, those two are both members of the European Union. So is the European Union seeking to be an Arctic power? Will it seek to assert itself in that way when that comes... Back to the question of whether the EU is a state, is a power that is able to act in this world that is emerging. And that question hasn't been answered. And if you're going to get a coherent European response...
to the Arctic, well, then you would have to consider questions of Norway, which is not a member of the European Union, but is a member of NATO. And also Britain, because as we've talked about before, there is this thing, the Greenland Gap in security terms, which runs... literally between Greenland and the United Kingdom. So in a world in which Trump does look like he's pretty serious about by one means or another.
absorbing Greenland into the United States effectively annexing even if he ends up like they end up paying for it. There's going to be very considerable European resistance to that, not just Denmark. If you go back a month or so, I've lost track of time now, but there was a point where Macron even seemed to be talking about sending European troops to defend.
Greenland, that raises a UK-like question too. And it's not difficult to see how the first crisis, practical crisis of this new order under Trump for Europe becomes over the Greenland question. And having to work that out at the very same time, as it is very clear that in a meaningful sense, the US security guarantee doesn't exist any longer. That isn't to say that the United States wouldn't...
defend a European state who was a member of NATO from Russia. But it is to say that nobody knows for sure that would be the case, particularly if you were talking about the Baltics. Well, just look again, looking at a map, you'd say, right, first of all, Greenland, you know, whether Macron is going to send European troops to defend Greenland is not a member of the EU.
So strangely, the kind of ambiguity of European interests, Greenland not being a member of the EU, but being treated in part of Denmark and in some senses being thought of as a European asset. Ireland, the other country that is important in this, gap between the UK and Greenland is not a member of NATO and is a neutral power. And as I said before, Norway, not a member of the EU, but an Arctic power that is in NATO and quite forward.
forward facing when it comes to Ukraine, among the most kind of hawkish members. So there is a kind of incoherence there. And I think it ultimately boils down to this question of whether there is going to be an alignment between the European Union, its economic interests and its security interests. And this has been a question that has been bubbling along from the very beginning of the European Union in a way that has never been.
answered because there's never really been a sort of political will, continental-wide political will, to address that question or offer a European answer. I think, doesn't it go back? Tom, to the fact that the European Union's creation, even though it wasn't the European Union, then it was its predecessors. It was created in the world, if you like, of bipolarity. It was created in the world of the cold.
The question of what happened once the Cold War was over, in a way, wasn't really taken that seriously, because there was just a kind of shift into, oh, well, the European Union can get bigger. NATO can get bigger to be in either the NATO or European Union if you're a European state was to be in some sense like pro-European and not.
But the question of whether there was actually a load-bearing security architecture to this arrangement between the EU and NATO never had to be faced. It's only actually being forced. to the front now because what's been this long-standing anger in Washington about the European performance, if you like, in NATO is now being turned into something that the Europeans can't avoid responding to. It's not like the development itself.
in terms of the American attitude towards burden sharing in NATO has suddenly come out of nowhere. We've talked about that like on a number of occasions. But the Europeans have never been put under the kind of pressure that they've been put on over the last few months. And we could already see the outcome of that at the individual state level, most consequentially in Germany, where Germany has quite literally ripped up.
the debt parts of its constitution and committed to major rearmament and using debt in order to finance that. But that's a German response. It's not a European response. We've also seen the first hints of resuming the Turkey's membership talks into the European Union, which...
for a long time has effectively been accepted that it's politically impossible. So you're already seeing changes there, but then significantly as well, you're seeing not just the emergence of German deficit spending to... to rearm but you're also seeing the push from brussels to be able to secure a kind of eu defense fund and the significant consequence so far of this is that the french have vetoed the ability
for those defence funds to be spent on British, Turkish or American defence companies. And that is a big moment, I think, because that gets again to these... Questions of Western coherence, whether we can think in those terms anymore. We've discussed on this podcast a few times, Helen, Macron intervention, where he talks about the brain death of NATO, and that was in relation to Turkey and to Syria and to the...
the different interests and the diverging interests within NATO, the sort of tensions that were already evident. Well, now you're getting very clear diverging interests between the European Union member states of NATO.
and the americans with britain and turkey on the outside now that's causing sort of very clear tensions and it's leading to decisions it's imposing decisions on countries like britain and turkey about well How on earth do you respond to that if British companies are going to be kept out of these defence contracts unless we sign a defence pact with the European Union with conditions?
because we are seen effectively in Paris as a Trojan horse for American interests. So effectively, we are a Trojan horse that will stop. the EU from being able to get some kind of strategic autonomy. And if that is the effective judgment, then it leaves Britain in an isolated position. It questions the coherence of Europe's response because of geography you've talked about the the Greenland Gap where in which the UK
is just an inevitable player. It has to be part of that equation. Well, on the other side of Europe, Turkey cannot be ignored as a player when it comes to containing Russian power. And I think, Tom, underneath all that... There's even a harder set of questions, which is it at all plausible to think that the Europeans, even if they could unify and deal with the non-members of the European Union,
are capable of a strategic defence capability that was autonomous. And to the extent that they might be so in principle, what kind of timescale does that involve? And this is where I think you get to the... complete tension which has been there and i've said this many times before in macron's thinking is macron is keen on the idea of strategic autonomy for europe he in a way is responding to this present
moment by saying I told you so but I don't think it's a vindication for Macron's thinking at all because Macron's thinking was based on the idea of reset with Russia. He made that abundantly clear in the speeches he was making about strategic autonomy in 2019. And indeed, go back to his brain death of NATO remarks, he's much more sympathetic to Russia at that point.
point than he is to turkey yes at that point but what european strategic autonomy would mean now is being directed against russia so saying in this multipolar world russia is a power that europe has to take much more seriously as a threat than it has previously done and at just this moment it will try to do that without the Americans and it will do it at a moment in which it's
Resource dependency or its energy dependency upon the United States has dramatically increased since 2022 and which certain countries in Europe, not least Germany, there is considerable appetite for getting back to... an energy relationship with Russia. Because for Germany's point of view, the events since February 2022 and the breakdown of its energy relationship with Russia has been a complete...
economic disaster, particularly hitting the energy intensive parts of the German economy, particularly the chemical sector, exceptionally hard. So even if we just reduce the question for a moment like to Germany's inner world. in which it's rearming, in which it's ripped up its constitution in regard to debt in order to... in which it's going to look both ways on the energy question, but preferably more in the Russian direction in the medium term than in the American direction.
And it can't take for granted any longer the idea that the United States would defend the states that sit between Germany and Russia inside NATO and that Germany itself might actually have to... become a serious military player in a way in which it never has since the end of the second world war well even a nuclear player this is these are the questions aren't they that are now
on the table as they are in Poland, where there are serious talk of whether Poland needs to become a nuclear power. I think we can split out the different strands of thinking and say, okay, there is clear incoherence. in Europe's response, as there is incoherence in the American policy or in most countries' policy, there'll be a kind of incoherence baked into it. And we can see what the EU's incoherence is, in a sense.
Strategic autonomy, it will never be autonomous from either Russia or the United States. I think in theory, it can become militarily autonomous. It can exist.
without the United States. It will take a long time. And you speak to people, military advisors in NATO countries, and they will say, effectively, the problem that... europeans have is that they have to spend a lot more for a lot less because they just don't have the capabilities that the americans have so there are this huge trade-offs in trying to gain some kind of
strategic autonomy and even when you get to the end of that you're going to be dependent on the powers that you are fearing the most that you think are a territorial threat to yourself so there is something at the heart of it
that seems almost contradictory. And yet at the same time, maybe that is the world that we're moving into, where all of these powers, the United States, Russia and China, they're interlinked with each other. But you could say, I think... that the nature of multipolarity in the form that it's now taken is not going to be one in which Europe can transform itself into one of the poles. And what is going to happen is that Europe is just going to have a much more transactional relationship.
both with, I should say, the European states and potentially the European Union, a much more transactional relationship with both the United States and Russia. And I think this is where, in a way, we've got to... get out and i've been like thinking about this in terms of my own thinking of get out of the mindset if you like that was created by nato and see what a historical anomaly it is
to think that the most powerful state in the world gives permanent security guarantees or seemingly permanently security guarantees to a set of allies. There's nothing historically normal about that, like, whatsoever. But that didn't mean, if you go back to the first half of the 20th century...
that the United States wasn't going to engage in wars in Europe. We know that it did. But the position then that the European states and the European Union find themselves in is being in a state of almost like permanent negotiation with the Americans. Yeah. about when the American power might come into play in Europe. And you can see context in which that might be pretty clear and the Arctic in time might turn out too.
be one of them it's just it's not the world that was created by nato in which things could seemingly happen on automatic pilot if you like and to the extent it wasn't automatic pilot the europeans could do what that they wanted about and not have to think that there was going to be too many consequences if they didn't spend as much money as Americans were saying that they should. So that in that sense, that the requirement for European states and for the European Union...
is going to have to be more pragmatic and just constantly making judgments about how to entice the Americans in. But I think it's going to have to be... More than that, because it's going to have to be, they're going to fundamentally have to figure out who is making the judgments here. Is it Europe as a whole? Is it Brussels? Is it going to give the EU the power to... to decide these trade-offs or are they going to be more and more led by
the individual member states that is i think one of these sort of open questions that is yet to be answered i was happened to be deep in the weeds recently of maastricht and reading how maastricht didn't create the European Union formally until the German Constitutional Court ruled that it was legal about a year or so later or a little bit less than that. One of the things that the German Constitutional Court said in its ruling that Maastricht was legal was that the EU had not become a state.
So the Bundestag still retained the power. It was still a democratically elected body. Because that was the sort of sacrosanct. It could not lose its power, its decision-making body permanently. You couldn't just transfer it to a new entity which had permanent authority over Germany. That was my understanding.
of the ruling. So we still have the EU is a kind of this hybrid state. It hasn't got all the functions of a state. It has transferred some of them to NATO. It hasn't got debt sharing yet at a significant level. are still decisions to be made. And I think what's interesting in a sense is that what Putin is pushing for is what he would consider a return to a normalization with Europe, in which Russia is a
major European power in which individual states have to deal with Russia and make trade-offs. And that sort of just extends Russian power further into Europe. naturally, as he would see it, as has usually been the case in history. Another way of looking at this is then that America is pursuing not just normalisation of relations with Russia,
So normalisation of relations with China, in a sense, although that, as I say, I think is unclear because I still think it wants to retain a sort of dominance. And certainly not in the Western Hemisphere. And certainly not in the Western Hemisphere. It wants to normalise relations with Europe. It wants to end this anomaly of being
It's overlord. It's military overlord. Although, again, Trump has not ruled on that. He seems to want it all. But that comes back full circle to this question of, well, it's not... a normal state of affairs in history for Europe to act with one voice geopolitically. That's not been the case. That is potentially something we are going to move into.
We don't know. And finally, my thought is things have sped up because in one sense, if you cast your mind back a few years, you might think, OK, there's a kind of rational world where America is the Roman Empire and it's divided. between East and West, but it will still effectively represent the transatlantic world, the West in some senses, and it will work to each other's interests. Europe will take on the defense of Europe and allow America to take on the defense.
And that is a kind of rational end state in which everybody benefits and the sort of liberal democracy will still be protected. That doesn't seem the world anymore. It seems much more... adversarial between Europe and the United States and that this attempt to normalise relations between the United States and Russia means that relations between America and Europe
cannot be normalized. I think the other part of this is back to the Turkey question and to try and think about that over a long historical perspective. If we just for the moment they start in them now. is that Europe is facing the crisis that's caused by Trump. at the same time in which something fundamental has changed in the Middle East around Turkey. And that is the end of the Assad regime. The fact that Turkish backed.
well, largely Turkish-supported rebels, complicated, more complicated than the Turkish rebels, the rebels in northern Syria that Turkey directly supports in power in a very now disintegrating Syria. Plenty of potential. for more refugees coming into Europe. But you could say that what's happening in the Middle East as a result of Assad's fall is a kind of the assertion of old Turkish-Iranian competition for...
influence in the northern part of the Middle East. And this goes back to this issue that I think we've talked about a number of times on this podcast about how I think that the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the ways in which the Ottoman Empire came to an end. The end of the First World War and the ways in which that opened up to British and French imperialism in the Middle East around oil was a really significant historical turning point. And I think that there's a danger in Europe as a whole.
of underestimating the importance of Turkey in this multipolar world. We've seen how even Macron at the beginning of the Ukraine war had to accept that Turkey's ability to provide drones to... Ukraine was an important part of Ukraine's early defence in those first months. It was Jan who managed to persuade Putin to allow Ukraine's...
grain exports to get back out of the Black Sea. Multipolarity for Europe doesn't just mean dealing with Russia and the United States in new ways, it means dealing with Turkey in a way in which I think most European governments aren't really very comfortable with.
I wonder if there's another sort of slightly more... worrying parallel with the ottoman empire there which is a sort of collapse of authority in europe of the united states if that was to happen a sort of self-imposed collapse of authority withdrawal of authority and we there is a sort of assumption that
can be then replaced by the European Union in some sense, and that it will be able to step into that void. And that is actually not clear. Something else may emerge into that void. And something that I think is worth reflecting on. scenario. and America's acceptance of multipolarity and embrace of it, in a sense, in that it wants to shed itself of the responsibilities of supremacy in Europe, but also potentially in Asia in relation to...
Japan and South Korea and its other kind of protectorates, is the... rational emergence of calls for nuclear weapons outside of the United States. Because you have a lot of chaos at the outer edges of the American order where it can't impose order.
principally in the Middle East, where they're following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. There doesn't seem to have been a power that has been able to impose any order. They're certainly not throughout the whole region, and you've obviously had a huge amount of violence. chaos as a result but it's not nuclear violence and chaos there's one nuclear power in the region but not more than that now that it seems to me is certainly
an enormous future danger over the 21st century. If you have nuclear proliferation through democratic... who are seeking rationally to acquire nuclear weapons, whether it's Poland, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and then presumably others in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and others. That just is...
an intrinsically more dangerous world. Well, we have no experience of managing a world of that level of nuclear proliferation. I think you're right, Tom. And that's where I think like the Iran question.
is really central and indeed i think if we wanted to have a point in this story that we told over these last two episodes where we can measure the degree of the change one way of doing that would be to go back to 2015 obama's iran nuclear deal where you have all of the united states russia and china working together to constrain Iran in a flawed way. That's completely broken down as an approach for dealing with the Iran question. What has come to the fore is the Israeli way.
of dealing with the iran question and the fact that whether israel takes direct military action against iran and its nuclear program is now a very live question whether trump would be willing to support such And this is where I think that it's really difficult to see how actually the Trump administration has got itself into a coherent position in terms of the projection of American. power beyond what might be described as US core.
interest in the way in which rubio might wanted to have defined them because it's really notable whilst all these things that we've been talking about have been going on that the one place where Trump has been deploying military power rather more aggressively than was the case under the Biden administration is against the Houthis and his language is very strong and it's actually it's at one point he says
This was Trump on Truth Social. If they don't stop, hell will write down upon you like you've never seen before. He had another one where he said that...
Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon from this point forward as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of Iran. This is a kind of strategy for... outright confrontation with Iran and then given that Iran is an ally of Russia and China it really brings out the question of well is this something that any reset with Russia in particular is going to be able to
And I think if you think about both the relationship between Turkey and the EU's predicament and the fact that the Iran question still hangs over the Middle East in a fairly fundamental way, you can see how difficult it is for the European. states to go back to where we started this part of the conversation to work out like where their interests in all this are because keep running up into the really
fundamentally weak geopolitical position that European states find themselves in this multipolar world. Yeah, absolutely. I have since been put on to this guy called Francesco Guicciartini by a friend of mine, John Gray. I became obsessed with a few of his observations in this book called Ricordi. It's a kind of Machiavelli, but it's sort of more cynical, even more cynical in a way. And he has this one that I think is quite apt.
that I've just been thinking of as you were talking, Helen. And he writes that, and this is in sort of Renaissance Italy, but if you see a city beginning to decline, a government changing, a new empire expanding, or any such phenomenon, and these things are sometimes...
quite clearly visible to us. Be careful not to misjudge the time they will take by their very nature and because of various obstacles such movements are much slower than most men imagine and to be mistaken in these matters can be very harmful to you. Be very careful for it is a step on which people often stumble.
And I think that is the dilemma that the rest of the world is facing. We can see the kind of outlines of what's happening, but then it's not clear how you respond to that or how quickly, and particularly in a case like the Middle East, where we've had more. And on that note, Helen, we should bring this episode to a close. And as we said at the beginning of the first episode in this.
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