In 2014 Macer Gifford left his job as a city trader to go and fight ISIS in Syria. Now he’s continuing his work as an international volunteer, this time in the Ukraine conflict. In an illuminating conversation, Macer tells Arthur about the parallels between wars in Syria and Ukraine, the role of international volunteers in the conflict, and his plans for a frontline medical unit to support the Ukrainian people. We're putting out irregular war bulletins covering different aspects of the Ukraine c...
Mar 23, 2022•37 min•Season 2Ep. 8
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has Finland questioning its tradition of military non-alignment. Janne Korhonen, university professor and political activist, dials in to tell Arthur how the debate on NATO membership has shifted following Putin’s war. We're putting out irregular war bulletins covering different aspects of the Ukraine crisis. Help our work, and shape the next full series of Doomsday Watch, by supporting us on Patreon. Resources to help the Ukrainian people can be found here: https://...
Mar 19, 2022•34 min•Season 2Ep. 7
India’s tradition of military non-alignment has come under huge strain with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The world’s second most populous country has tried to maintain a neutral stance, but has come under sharp criticism from the West as casualties from the conflict mount. What explains India’s stance, and what does it hope to achieve? Harsh Pant, International relations professor at Kings College London’s India Institute, joins Arthur Snell to discuss. We're putting out irregular war bulletins...
Mar 16, 2022•32 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Two weeks into Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and things aren’t going to plan. Kyiv is still yet to fall, and Russian troops have failed to make substantial progress against fierce Ukrainian resistance. Defence analyst and military historian Dr Peter Caddick-Adams joins Arthur Snell to pinpoint where Russia’s shameful war went wrong… and what could happen next. We're putting out irregular war bulletins covering different aspects of the Ukraine crisis. Help our work, and shape the next full series ...
Mar 13, 2022•40 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Is Russia’s fiasco in Ukraine just Putin’s monstrous folly? Or does the Russian military have even bigger problems? Arthur Snell hears from KCL Lecturer for German and European Studies Alexander Clarkson about how a flawed image of Ukraine as a failed state sowed the seeds of Russia’s embarrassment. And how, when Putin invaded Crimea in 2014, he inadvertently began training a generation of fighters who do not know how to give up. Sound quality warning! This time Arthur records from a car park in...
Mar 09, 2022•40 min•Season 2Ep. 4
The bogeyman of NATO expansion was Putin’s pretext to invade Ukraine. Can NATO act now to stop Russia’s war – or would that trigger nuclear conflict? Is a No-Fly Zone practical? Former NATO representative in Moscow and now Chatham House associate fellow John Lough tells Arthur Snell about the latest state of play with NATO and the long-term implications of the most dangerous security crisis in Europe since 1945. We're putting out irregular war bulletins covering different aspects of the Ukraine ...
Mar 06, 2022•38 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Putin has few friends – but one is Belarusian despot Alexander Lukashenko. Belarusian democracy activist and reporter Hanna Liubakova talks to Arthur Snell from exile in Lithuania, to explain how Lukashenko dragged her country into the war – and what the world can expect from Putin’s stooge. What price will Belarus pay for Lukashenko’s fealty? We're putting out irregular war bulletins covering different aspects of the Ukraine crisis. Help our work, and shape the next full series of Doomsday Watc...
Mar 04, 2022•24 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Kyiv is under siege but Putin’s invasion is going badly. How far will Russia’s ruler go to win his monstrous gamble? And what can the West do to stop him? In the first of our irregular Ukraine War bulletins we talk to Ukrainian journalists Artyom Liss and Kyiv-based Romeo Kokriatski about the balance of power in Ukraine, the resolve of President Zelensky, and Putin’s doomsday psychology. We’ll be releasing special Ukraine War bulletins on an irregular basis as new developments arise. Help us kee...
Mar 03, 2022•38 min•Season 2Ep. 1
As tensions rise on the Ukrainian border, are we looking at the first ground war in Europe since 1945? In an emergency roundtable edition of Doomsday Watch, Arthur Snell asks a panel of experts what’s driving Putin’s thinking, how far he and Russia are willing to go to achieve their aims, and if a disastrous conflict can be averted. Want to support us, get episodes early and extra content? Support us on Patreon and back us from just £3 per month now. “The question is less, ‘Is Russia going to in...
Feb 02, 2022•53 min•Season 1Ep. 11
In this series we’ve looked at under-reported threats to global stability, from the psychology of Xi Jinping to the coming water crisis to the War on Truth. But what happens next? In this extended end-of-season edition, Arthur Snell steps back to look at the big picture with experts in geopolitics, future warfare and the Chinese, Russian and American superpowers. Can the world pull itself from the brink – or is our Long Peace coming to an end? Season Two of Doomsday Watch is coming soon. Help us...
Jan 26, 2022•1 hr 26 min•Season 1Ep. 10
The Cold Warriors of the postwar world never dreamed that Western democracies would come to rely on a global information network – and that our very openness could be turned against us. As the stories of Brexit, COVID and Trump coalesce into one nightmare tale of disinformation and weaponised lying, Arthur Snell asks whether democracy can survive in a post-truth world. If you control the information space, do you control the future? And after the pandemic, can we withstand the infodemic? Want to...
Jan 19, 2022•55 min•Season 1Ep. 9
The digital Utopia we were promised has given us a desperately vulnerable world where we depend on a global internet with a billion badly-protected backdoors. Today’s cyber-war battlegrounds aren’t on bank servers or Government databases. They’re in your smart fridges, doorbells and security cameras. Arthur Snell traces a path from the first-ever co-ordinated cyber-attack (on Estonia in 2007) to a world of invisible weapons and relentless probing conflict – where hostile governments can target y...
Jan 12, 2022•57 min•Season 1Ep. 8
What could persuade someone to leave a comparatively wealthy country in the Western Hemisphere to fight and die in the hellhole of the Islamic State? That’s exactly what happened in the unlikely setting of Trinidad and Tobago. Arthur Snell pieces together an astonishing story of how radicalisation is continuing in unexpected places around the world – how jihad leaders learned from the experts in global expansion, the fast food giants – and how jihad has found its mirror in QAnon. How do we fight...
Jan 05, 2022•56 min•Season 1Ep. 7
After 9/11 the West invaded Afghanistan and Iraq to remake them as friendly, terror-free liberal democracies. But the unintended consequences were historic disaster, countless dead and the humbling of Western power, symbolised by the shameful evacuation of Kabul in 2021. How did we get it so catastrophically wrong? Arthur Snell, who served in Lashkar Gah in Helmand Province, explores the flawed thinking that generated the very insurgencies the West was trying to suppress. Has the West built a wo...
Dec 29, 2021•1 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 6
An Indian megacity of 11 million people literally runs out of water, trucking in 10m litres a day to hydrate a panicking population amid water queues and panic-buying. In Bolivia a scandalous water privatisation leaves people paying a quarter of their earnings just to drink. Water riots and deaths ensue. And in the UK, companies take £60bn in profit while pumping raw sewage into waterways – while London’s millennia-old chalk aquifer is now drained bone-dry. The Capital is now under threat of run...
Dec 08, 2021•45 min•Season 1Ep. 5
What happens to the Middle East when the world stops buying its oil? As the world races to decarbonise, the region’s petrochemical plutocrats face a terrible decision. To keep power, they must cut off their addiction to oil. The plans of one young Saudi prince – the ambitious, ruthless Mohammed bin Salman – are already unleashing a wave of arrests, intimidation, black ops and murder across the world. Oil power has enforced brutal stability in the region since WWII. What happens when it crumbles?...
Dec 01, 2021•58 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Russia’s newly-belligerent stance has rocked the democratic West on its heels, from the annexation of the Crimea to the sponsoring of extremist digital disinformation to – almost certainly – the stacking of elections in the US and UK. And it all stems from the paranoid, Machiavellian, espionage-steeped mindset of one man: Vladimir Putin. On this edition, Arthur talks to exiled journalists, foreign correspondents including Luke Harding of The Guardian and Russia analysts to unpick the question th...
Nov 24, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 3
On this episode of the podcast that looks at the threats to global stability that they’re not telling you about – the mind behind the unstoppable rise of China. Who is Xi Jinping? What are the forces that shaped China’s paramount leader? Will his psychological make-up, and his belief that his country has been robbed of its rightful place, lead inexorably to confrontation with the West? And what does Thucydides have to do with it? Arthur talks to experts and China insiders to ask: are we on the b...
Nov 17, 2021•56 min•Season 1Ep. 2
The world has never stood as close to the apocalypse as it does today. Hosted by ARTHUR SNELL, a former British diplomat and counter-terrorism operative who has seen service in Yemen, Helmand and Zimbabwe, DOOMSDAY WATCH meets experts and eyewitness for an unflinching look at the threats that conventional media ignores. On this first edition: Is a toxic combination of extreme partisanship, detached elites and Trump’s incitement driving the world’s greatest democracy to a second Civil War? • “Thi...
Nov 08, 2021•58 min•Season 1Ep. 1
