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World of Trouble: Putin is manipulating Trump and doesn’t want peace, ex-US aide warnsThe Independent
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00:00:00Welcome to the World of Trouble and I'm not going to lie, I've been really excited about this
00:00:07next interview victim that we have who is Fiona Hill, a British American academic, diplomat,
00:00:16former presidential advisor, chancellor of Durham University and star of the Brookings Institute
00:00:25in the United States. She's joining me from her offices in Washington DC. Fiona, that wasn't just
00:00:33flattery, there was a bit, but the fact of the matter is that over the last three and a half,
00:00:39four years I've spent a great deal of time in Ukraine and whilst I maintain my journalistic
00:00:46integrity and balance I hope there is no question of who is in the right and who is in the wrong
00:00:54in my view. But that does seem to be a question that's been reintroduced to the debate in the West
00:01:03with the return of Donald Trump to the White House. Can you explain to me this incredible
00:01:10vault fast that he made in terms of withdrawing support for Ukraine that had been full square
00:01:16delivered by the Biden administration? This has got to do with Donald Trump's
00:01:21worldview, Sam, as you well know, I'm sure, you know, has been discussed, you know, many times on
00:01:26this program. He kind of thinks the same as the rest of these guys. He is, you know, very much the
00:01:32strong man in his mind. You know, we've got loads of books out about this being the age of strong men
00:01:36and he hates and abhors weakness and he just perceives that Ukraine is weak because it's not
00:01:42a great power. And again, you know, what is a great power? I mean, it's a very 19th century view,
00:01:46but it's one, you know, in Donald Trump's mind that has a really strong military
00:01:51and has the ability to push everybody else around, has the ability to set its own agenda
00:01:56and actually has a sphere of influence, you know, and related to all of the rather, you know,
00:02:02shocking ways that he's talked about Ukraine. He's also talked with equal intensity about why is
00:02:08Canada not part of the United States? Why is it not the 51st state? Why shouldn't Greenland be part
00:02:13of Denmark, which is a country nobody's ever heard of kind of thing, far, far away? How come
00:02:18Denmark has Greenland? You know, completely ignorant and willfully so of the history of,
00:02:24you know, all of these different places. He just sees the map and thinks that that should belong
00:02:28to him. And he has the same view, frankly, of Ukraine. It was once part of the Russian Empire.
00:02:32It was part of the Soviet Union. Why should it not still be? The big question, I think, beyond all of
00:02:38this about Ukraine, I mean, it's fairly straightforward about how Trump thinks about it. He just can't stop
00:02:42himself from, you know, expressing all of this. It's kind of, you know, stream of consciousness
00:02:46verbalized all the time. Every thought bullet and, you know, kind of bubble that one would keep to
00:02:51oneself normally, you know, he puts out there. That's his blunt, you know, kind of frank way
00:02:55of approaching things is to really kind of think that all of Europe, UK included, should also be in
00:03:00Russia's sphere of influence, because we certainly think that China has the right to the sphere of
00:03:04influence as another big, great power. And for Russia, he hasn't basically resized Russia in his
00:03:10thinking, that Russia is still the superpower of the Cold War, the major adversary of the United
00:03:15States. It certainly still is, obviously, on the nuclear arsenal front. But it's been a long time
00:03:20since Russia was still, was a colossus astride, you know, the whole planet, you know, let alone part
00:03:25of Europe. And I mean, I do kind of wonder, you know, when Puska comes to show, is he thinking that
00:03:30Europe is part of Russia's sphere as well? And I think that's up for the UK and for European countries to,
00:03:35you know, reassert themselves in that space. Can you explain this sort of from perspective of
00:03:41psychology? I mean, you've dealt with the previous Trump administration, you've been on the inside
00:03:47track. And, you know, you've been in the room, you know, with Putin and Trump and others, people at
00:03:54these seminal moments in history. From the outside looking in, it kind of looks like a man crush. I mean,
00:04:00what is going on there? Has Putin got a compromise on Trump? Is Putin a Russian agent, consciously
00:04:07or unconsciously?
00:04:09It is a man crush. It's because Putin's the badass, you know, in that sort of sense. He's what
00:04:14Trump would like to be. You know, Trump looks at people who are, you know, frankly, in charge of
00:04:21everything, who have the kind of basically the bling, you know, they're emblazoned in gold, they're in
00:04:25gold, bold relief at all times. And that's what he wants to be. And he believes that he is elevated
00:04:31in everybody's minds by their association, by being in their company. And that's what Putin's
00:04:37got on him. Putin's got his number. I mean, basically, Putin realizes it's a man with a
00:04:42very fragile ego, and that it's somebody that can be manipulated in that way. He doesn't need
00:04:46compromising information. We've all got compromising information on Donald Trump. Again, he's an open
00:04:50book. But, you know, what this is, is really about Trump himself wanting to be recognized
00:04:57by absolutely everybody who matters. And that's a very, you know, small group of people on the one
00:05:01hand, but then everybody else on the other, as being, you know, king of the world. And that's
00:05:06what he's talking about all the time. And he only gets that he has the approval of people like
00:05:11President Xi of China, you know, President Putin of Russia, you know, the royal families of here,
00:05:16there and everywhere. That's kind of, you know, basically for Trump, what really matters. That's
00:05:22the coin of the realm for him.
00:05:24And is that something that Putin consciously exploits?
00:05:29Of course. Putin always does things consciously. You know, Putin himself is also vulnerable and,
00:05:35you know, has the same, you know, kind of fears that Trump does, frankly, of being, you know,
00:05:39caught out, of being weakened, about, you know, being humiliated. But Putin is also very much
00:05:45steeped in the history of his own country, just like President Xi is. I mean, he knows his history.
00:05:50He thinks of himself as somebody in a long line of, you know, leaders of the great Russian state
00:05:56going back millennia. Trump is just Trump. It's all about him. It's all about his uniqueness. It's
00:06:01got very little to do with the United States. He's acquired the United States. It's part of Trump
00:06:06enterprises. And in every different sense of that matter, this is all about him and how he looks.
00:06:11It's about how people recognize him. He's not thinking about legacy. He doesn't want to be dead.
00:06:16You know, I don't think Putin and Xi want to be dead either. We've got that hot mic,
00:06:19you know, moment where Putin and Xi are talking about organ transplants and longevity and all
00:06:24the rest of it. But they do think of themselves as, you know, basically the inheritors, the carries
00:06:29of a legacy of a great of a great statehood of, you know, the Chinese empire or the Russian empire
00:06:34that has to be carried forward into the future. And Trump, it's all again, it's got nothing to do
00:06:38with the United States. It's got nothing to do with the United States, but it does, is it that
00:06:43that makes him particularly vulnerable to Putin? I mean, if you look at the kind of talking points
00:06:49that he echoes coming from, and we'll come on to Netanyahu later, I imagine, but if we're dealing
00:06:57with Putin, he tends to echo whatever Putin last seems to have said to him. I mean, and he strongly
00:07:04reflects the Russian perspective, which is why, and I was talking to some people in the intelligence
00:07:10community who kind of laughed off my question as to whether or not he was compromised or Russian
00:07:15agent. They simply said, well, you don't have to worry about the whys and wherefores. It is the that
00:07:20that matters in all things. He is likely or almost certain to reflect the Russian position. But is
00:07:27that how does how does Putin get that out of him? Do you think in part through flattery? I mean,
00:07:33Putin very early on, you know, as I said, figured Trump out. And if you check very carefully, he is
00:07:40very careful about not to insult Trump. Even when he is actually, you know, insulting him, he does it in
00:07:48this kind of veiled cloaked way that it's, you know, glossed in translation or glossed over in
00:07:53translation so that, you know, Trump doesn't pick up on it. And of course, you know, Trump's not getting
00:07:57packages of the kinds of rude things that are said about him in, you know, the Russian press or, you
00:08:02know, on Russian television or the way that, you know, kind of he is presented. There has been a notice
00:08:07sent out in any case by the Kremlin basically telling the Russian media that being too rude about
00:08:14Trump is off limits. You can go after anybody else. And, you know, right now the UK is in the crosshairs
00:08:18in terms of being, you know, the bet noire or the, you know, the main adversary of Russia at
00:08:25different times has been placed like Georgia or Estonia, you know, kind of it's, you know,
00:08:29it's whatever Russia needs is a kind of a useful enemy or foil in the propaganda realm. But
00:08:36they've been very carefully just treading carefully around Trump. So that's how Putin keeps his powder
00:08:42dry. And he's got lots of things that Trump wants, which is, again, basically rooted in Putin paying
00:08:50him homage and respect and, you know, and all the rest of it. And look, we've seen how other leaders
00:08:55have done this as well. You know, glossy gifts, you know, great awards, you know, talking about,
00:09:01I mean, Putin's even talked about Trump getting the Nobel Peace Prize, not necessarily for, you know,
00:09:05Ukraine and Russia because he doesn't want to give, you know, Ukraine up and he doesn't really want
00:09:09that to be negotiated by Trump. But he, you know, will say it about other things as well.
00:09:15They all know what Trump wants. And again, as I said, it's less about the respect for the United
00:09:19States. It's more about respect for him. And it is about the US insofar as Trump thinks that the
00:09:24United States is an extension of him.
00:09:27Frankly, have you seen Putin take the mickey? I mean, is there something, does he slightly play to
00:09:33his own even local audience when he's dealing with Trump? Are there soto voce, pantomime,
00:09:38asides about the widow twanky from the White House?
00:09:42I have. And one of the classic cases for me was in one of the last meetings that I, you know,
00:09:49saw between Trump and Putin, which was at the G20 in Osaka in Japan in 2019. And Putin and Trump
00:09:58in the conversation were doing a bit of chest beating about nuclear missiles and about, you know,
00:10:04whether Russia was ahead of the United States. And then they were also both bragging about how much
00:10:09they were respectively doing for Israel. And I mean, that might sound a bit counterintuitive,
00:10:14but this was a period where the Russians were telling the United States that they were really
00:10:19the great protectors and defenders of Israel. This is obviously a long time, you know, before the attacks
00:10:23of October 7th. And we'd had a meeting in Israel between the national security advisors of Israel,
00:10:32the United States and Russia. And, you know, Putin was basically going on about, you know,
00:10:38what Russia was doing. And Trump was saying, well, no, there's no way that, you know, kind of Russia
00:10:43is a bigger support of Israel than, you know, I am and was talking about all the things that he'd done,
00:10:48you know, for Israel, you know, the capital of Jerusalem, you know, new embassy, et cetera,
00:10:52et cetera. And then Putin said, well, Donald, you know, because Trump was saying that named all
00:10:58these things after him, he said, well, maybe they should just name the country after you.
00:11:02And I mean, obviously, I mean, I almost like died laughing because, and I could see Bolton and a few
00:11:07other people, you know, Ambassador Bolton, who was, you know, still the national security advisor's
00:11:11mustache twitch, you know, kind of, they'd got the point that, you know, basically, he was being trolled.
00:11:17But, you know, the translation itself, you know, was somewhat, you know, glossing over really the
00:11:24kind of the way that Putin said it and the body language, the way he shifted in the seat.
00:11:28And Trump took it at face value and said, oh, no, that would be a bit too much.
00:11:32Great face.
00:11:33So it's just a total, yeah.
00:11:34It was a credible idea, but he wouldn't go for it.
00:11:37Exactly. A credible idea for him. Why not name Israel after me? I mean, look, right now,
00:11:41he's trying to get stadiums named after him, things renamed after him from airports to the
00:11:46Kennedy Center, God knows what, the new Trump ballroom, you know, for him sticking his name
00:11:50on things, a country or anything else, isn't that far fetched?
00:11:55It is pretty far fetched, though, isn't it, that he is the President of the United States
00:12:01of America, of America. I mean, obviously, there's the famous episode of The Simpsons.
00:12:06But domestically, we are living, the United States, you, an American citizen now, are living
00:12:14through what the Chinese curse would say, a very interesting times. I mean, how would
00:12:19you characterize and describe the times that you're living through? Is democracy safe in
00:12:24America?
00:12:25It's not safe. But look, democracy is not safe anywhere, including in the UK. And, you know,
00:12:30it has to be renewed by the people themselves. We all have agency, we all have a role in this.
00:12:36It's not going to be necessarily protected from the top when you've got people who are power
00:12:40hungry, which, you know, or, you know, in the case of Trump, hungry for so many different
00:12:44things, you know, in terms of being recognized as a king, you know, the head of the state,
00:12:49you know, the greatest being in the United States out of 330 million people, etc. I mean,
00:12:53obviously, the principles of, you know, democracy and mass participation are out the window there.
00:12:59You've got to also remember that America is a much younger democracy, even though it's 250
00:13:03years. People will always say that America is a republic, and it was a republic of men,
00:13:08there was a republic of a few men when it was set up, including 13, exactly, and 13 colonies. It
00:13:15wasn't the America we see today. So much of America wasn't part of America. And it's really
00:13:19only in my lifetime, I just turned 60 this year, when you get the voters, voter rights,
00:13:24and the civil rights acts of, you know, of that period in the early to mid 60s, that you really get
00:13:31full participation in everything from, you know, voting, you know, to civic life. So, you know,
00:13:36we've got to think that we're talking about an American democracy, that's really been vibrant
00:13:41for about 60 years, and has gone through so many ups and downs and trials and tribulations.
00:13:46And it's in trouble again, you know, we can we're kind of going back on ourselves,
00:13:50you've got the breakdown of the two party system, there's no question about it. Yet,
00:13:54at the same time, you've got this really rigid, and you know, deepening bipartisan sentiment,
00:14:00that's become, you know, some people say it's tribal, some people say it's like,
00:14:04you know, team sports that, you know, you can't imagine, you know, rooting for one team over the
00:14:08other, you've got people who will vote for Trump, because he's seen as the head of the Republican
00:14:12Party, but the Republican Party has been taken over by this MAGA group, Make America Great Again,
00:14:18which also has its own trials and tribulations. It's a revolutionary moment. You've got Steve Bannon,
00:14:23you know, who remains an advisor to Trump, talking about this is the Bolshevik Revolution,
00:14:29and, you know, himself as Lenin. And Trump is also an agent of God, I saw an interview.
00:14:34Well, yes, I mean, you've got this in religious terms as well. I mean, this is one of these,
00:14:38you know, kind of epochal changes. You know, you can think about this at the end of, you know,
00:14:43the Romans in Britain, or the end of Pax Augustus, and all of the different type of historic moments
00:14:50that we've thought of, this is historic. And it is a challenge to everybody who's living through it
00:14:55to basically see if they can meet the moment. It's not going to be decided by one guy. And,
00:15:02you know, of course, we've got, you know, people like Tim Snyder, who wrote, you know,
00:15:05the book that remains on the bestseller list on tyranny, is always saying, you know, don't bend
00:15:10the knee ahead of time, you know, in advance. We've seen this happen in so many other countries in
00:15:16Russia as well. Russian's pluralism, it's more democratic leadership and the evolution of its
00:15:25political parties in the Russian parliament, the Russian Duma, you know, was all thrown away
00:15:29over the last 25 years by people basically cashing in their desire for, you know, a better life
00:15:36with Putin in return, you know, for not opposing many of the things that he's done. And that's,
00:15:44you know, essentially what Trump is trying to lay out there. He's like trying to lay out a grand
00:15:48bargain, certainly with the billionaire and soon to be trillionaire elite in America, rather than
00:15:54the population. But he did tell the population, the people who voted for him, his base that he was
00:15:58going to make, you know, life better for them. I mean, that's really why so many people voted for
00:16:03Trump, you know, this past time around and really did give him a victory in the popular vote and in
00:16:08the electoral college, you know, like his previous election in 2016. It was because he led them to
00:16:16understand that he would make life more affordable, more things accessible for them. And, you know,
00:16:23he hasn't delivered. And so what he's delivering on instead is the kind of thing we've seen in Russia
00:16:27of repression, you know, beefing up the military and the military and the National Guard's domestic
00:16:32activities, this explosion of ice, you know, which is immigration and customs normally, but now being
00:16:40deployed as a paramilitary force far from the international borders of the United States, Charlotte,
00:16:47North Carolina, you know, kind of the sort of latest victim of all of this. And again, it does feel very
00:16:52much like other countries at other times. And the United States at other times as well. I mean, it's in
00:16:58its history. It's just that nobody in living memory has this in their heads of, you know,
00:17:04something like this in the United States. So they're a bit paralysed and trying to figure out,
00:17:07you know, what to do about it. You've hinted at it there. But tell me more about what that what
00:17:11that actually feels like. You know, I mean, does it does it what does it feel like to see
00:17:16ice on your streets to see the National Guard deployed or the army deployed on the streets
00:17:22of Washington DC, the capital of the threat of friction between the federal president and the
00:17:30states? I mean, these are the these are the not just the constitutional norms, but the actual fabrics
00:17:37of democracy, to me, seem to be being rapidly unraveled. Look, I have to say it's a cautionary tale
00:17:45for the UK and for anywhere else in Europe and others watching this, because the United States has
00:17:50prided itself on being exceptional. And I've, you know, come over a long period of time to realize
00:17:55it's not so exceptional. So because many of the things that are happening here have happened
00:17:59elsewhere, either in history or in real time, you know, so it's got this kind of feeling of a banana
00:18:03republic at the moment, although, you know, the communal violence is already there. You know,
00:18:08someone who grew up in the UK in the 60s and 70s, and, you know, I came out to the US in 1989,
00:18:13it feels very much like the times of troubles in Ireland, you know, the kind of use of paramilitary
00:18:18forces, all kinds of excesses, you know, that were, you know, kind of carried out that kind of
00:18:23feeling that something could happen, that literally something could blow up at any any
00:18:25point, and that we were far from resolving, you know, these difficulties and finding a formula for
00:18:30that. And again, you know, that kind of populist politics, Trump filling a vacuum, you know,
00:18:35that nobody else has been able to come into politically. But again, this heavy handed use of
00:18:40repression, America's had this before during the Vietnam War, you know, other periods. And, you know,
00:18:45again, it feels like all of this coming together and coming to a head. And, you know, very much
00:18:51driven by the fact that so many people have ceded their power, including and especially in the US
00:18:58Congress to Trump. And, you know, again, the political parties, not really parties, over time,
00:19:03it's become more apparent that they're just vehicles, movements, larger movements, for the
00:19:08purposes of only electing a president, rather than doing anything else in between. And I think that
00:19:12should be, you know, very evident to anybody else watching this, that neither the Democrats nor the
00:19:17Republicans are actually real political parties, and that you've, you know, really entered this
00:19:21realm of personalized politics. Look, the UK faces that. Why is everybody talking about Nigel Farage
00:19:27inevitably becoming prime minister of the UK when he didn't have a party to speak of? I mean,
00:19:32he's had electoral success in some of the local councils, including my home council in County
00:19:37Durham. But he doesn't have a political party, doesn't really have a platform. He scavenges on,
00:19:42you know, various political issues, which is exactly what Trump does. I know I'm being quite harsh
00:19:45here. I'm not in a political party. I never would be. You know, I'm an independent. I'm going to call
00:19:49it as I see it. But people have to realize that they've got agency and they've got a responsibility
00:19:54as well. If you want to live in a country that is really addressing, you know, some of the things
00:19:58you're most concerned about, including on affordability and, you know, your chances of, you know,
00:20:03living a decent life, then you've got to take action here and think about it, not think that one guy
00:20:08is going to fix things. And there's not one issue either that's at stake here, be it immigration or
00:20:13anything else. There's no silver bullet. This is going to be difficult. And that's what, you know,
00:20:17real democracy is about, is about your participation and trying to deal with the issues as well. You
00:20:22know, you can't just take a vacation, a holiday from all of it and sit it out because then things
00:20:26will happen to you inevitably.
00:20:29The complacency may be allowing Trump to get away with what he's done so far in the view of his
00:20:35his critics. And I'm on the record for a lot of criticism of Donald Trump. But and you're hinting
00:20:42there that the Democratic Party has really not got its act together and hasn't figured out a way to
00:20:48counteract this. You also live in a country in which there is a huge number of armed people. There
00:20:54are groups of militias. There's been deep suspicion of the, ironically, of the return or attempt to return
00:21:03the monarchy in any form. There is an anti-federalist energy. Is there a possibility or even a likelihood
00:21:12of actual violence?
00:21:13Well, there's violence all the time in America. I mean, it happens every day, every day, precisely for
00:21:20the reasons that you're pointing out here. Mass shootings, you know, school shootings,
00:21:25you know, people resorting to gun violence in any kind of dispute, road rage, you know, you name
00:21:33it. I mean, America is a violent society. And, you know, it's always, it's always present at any
00:21:41particular time. The question is whether it coalesces, you know, behind anything specific,
00:21:45you know, whether it remains at a kind of community or communal, you know, level, or it really,
00:21:50you know, translates into something, something bigger than that. You know, you see already,
00:21:58you know, a lot of resistance, protests and things to, you know, the actions of ICE and
00:22:03National Guard presence. And this is a dangerous time. Absolutely for sure. I just can't say exactly
00:22:09how it's going to unfold. You know, is the federal government going to go head to head with some
00:22:15governors, you know, in particular states? Or will, you know, there be other formulas? Will Trump just
00:22:20try to buy people off, you know, that he doesn't like? He obviously tries to intimidate everybody.
00:22:24You know, will he continue to get away with sending in the National Guard to other states? Because
00:22:28always the National Guards of other states. This is very much what Russia has done and the Soviet
00:22:32Union did. You know, you can look back over, you know, Soviet and Russian history and see many
00:22:37episodes of where, you know, the equivalents of the National Guard or the military with soldiers from
00:22:43regiments from different places were sent in to put down local disorder or what was presented as
00:22:49local disorder, which was really protest. The Soviet Union had tens of thousands of protests.
00:22:53We just never heard about them because they were always repressed. And if you think about how the
00:22:58Soviet Union came apart or was picked apart by elites in the final stages, it was because Gorbachev
00:23:03didn't want to do that. He didn't want to continue that practice of shooting at his own people,
00:23:09you know, be there in places like Georgia or in the Baltic states, for example. There was a lot going on
00:23:14in that final stages and Gorbachev pulled back from more oppression from more having after several
00:23:22incidents of having soldiers, you know, shoot at Soviet citizens. And that's, you know, kind of
00:23:28really what, you know, Trump is going to have to be called out for. He's trying to delegitimize
00:23:32everybody and legitimize his use of force. I mean, and it's look, it's a big question now for the UK
00:23:38as to whether to push back against this, the attack on the BBC, for example. That's an attack
00:23:44of the, you know, the very fundamental UK democracy as well, not to mention the support for Farage and
00:23:49GB News and, you know, the support for the AFD in Germany or Marine Le Pen, you know, in France.
00:23:56The US under Trump is actively now in ways that, you know, perhaps Latin America was more familiar
00:24:03with and it's doing it there again, you know, in the 1970s. The US is actively involving itself
00:24:09in European politics, or at least, you know, this administration is.
00:24:14That's a fascinating thing. I mean, you allude there, you mentioned the 1970s. That was during
00:24:18the red fear, if you like. It was the CIA toppling democratically elected socialist governments
00:24:25and infiltrating, causing civil wars to prevent the communists, broadly speaking, of getting a
00:24:32foothold. And those communists in the American mind, at any rate, probably in reality, drew their
00:24:38inspiration and funding or direction from Moscow. In terms of Moscow, the communists don't exist
00:24:45anymore. So what, what, what is the, you know, why are, why is America attempting to infiltrate
00:24:53effectively European politics and define the debate here? That sort of thing, we can understand
00:24:59to some extent Putin wanting to do that. Why is Donald Trump? Unless, of course, it's to court favour
00:25:05with the Russian Tsar of today.
00:25:09It's all for himself, but it's the same reason as Putin does, and actually with the same groups,
00:25:14honestly. But of course, Trump is bandying around all the time. Marxism, you know, kind of socialist,
00:25:21he's just called Mamdani in New York, that although, you know, he tends to talk about that himself. But the
00:25:26other way is that Trump tends to denigrate everybody by calling about the radical left, you know, Antifa,
00:25:31you know, calling everyone out. He's still using that old ideology, because, you know, it sells to many
00:25:36people. It still works with, you know, kind of many of the groups. But really, what he's trying
00:25:40to do is the same as Putin is to try to basically promote like minded parties, people who he thinks
00:25:47will, you know, bend a knee to him. And, you know, basically, he's trying to influence politics for the
00:25:54United States advantage, access for trade, you know, more preferential deals, removing regulation,
00:26:00having a free hand in expanding US interests. That's no different from what Putin's doing. Putin
00:26:07says he wants to have demand for Russia all over the place. And that's what Trump wants as well. He
00:26:14wants to have the US having unfettered access. I almost said excess, but you know, that's kind of
00:26:20another part of this as well. There's some degrees of excess around this as well. But I mean, he's just
00:26:26seeing Europe, UK included as vassal states and as, you know, opportunities, you know, for trade and
00:26:32again, without any regulation. So I just think that people have to wake up to see that, unfortunately.
00:26:38Look, it's very painful to say that. I never in a million years expected I would be saying things
00:26:43like this. Never in a million years until quite recently. But what I mean, there has been,
00:26:48ironically, a little bit not pushback, but there's been a slight evolution of trying to think of a
00:26:58polite way of putting it some steel in the spine, should we say, among some European leaders with
00:27:04regard to at least understanding that America, they're not going to be able to hand off all
00:27:10responsibility to America. But there's been no sign and it intrigues me that there's been no real sign
00:27:17of people in the centre of politics or the left even, of actually pushing back at Trump, of actually
00:27:28calling out what is going on. And if they agree with you, which I think many of them do,
00:27:35that to some extent, he's actually represent a threat to Western Europe and certainly to Western
00:27:41values. Why do you think that is? And indeed, am I right?
00:27:44Well, I think you are right. But I think it's not just a left issue, right? I mean, I think this is
00:27:49the, I said left and then right, but you know, that's the problem. I don't think we know what
00:27:52left and right are anymore. We've got that, as many people talk about that kind of horseshoe effect
00:27:56of, you know, lots of ideas, you know, kind of coming together and coalescing. I mean, again,
00:28:01you have Steve Bannon talking about himself as Lenin, you know, and a kind of, this is sort of a
00:28:05Leninist, you know, revolution. And, you know, they kind of want to take over. We're talking about,
00:28:09you know, hard right views, you know, the kind of views that frankly, you know, we've seen
00:28:14in the past that are reasserting themselves. And it is, I have a very small group of elites,
00:28:19you know, kind of around coalescing around a certain set of ideas and their own values
00:28:23really take over at the expense of everyone else. So again, this is not really a left right issue.
00:28:28It's about kind of a question of a sort of hostile takeover and merger, you know, with a lot of people
00:28:32thinking they can make money out of all of this. And seeing, you know, the nation states or,
00:28:37you know, kind of European states and the UK as, you know, targets for hostile takeovers.
00:28:43You know, it is very much businesslike and transactional. I mean, in some cases, it is
00:28:47ideological. These guys have, you know, mostly guys have got particular kinds of viewpoints
00:28:52that they want to assert and they want to see everything else in their image. Again,
00:28:57it's this is a very old story. But it's and it doesn't mean that this has got to be the direction
00:29:02of travel forever. I mean, the United States remains a very, you know, vibrant society with
00:29:08I mean, incredible things happening, you know, across the United States and its economy and its
00:29:13polity. It's just that, you know, there is now this administration that's got itself ensconced
00:29:18in its palace in the White House, which is starting to look like Caesar's palace in Las Vegas every
00:29:23moment, you know, kind of taking in that kind of whole idea of being in a casino with meme coins
00:29:28and all kinds of things. You know, we're in a moment, a very, you know, difficult moment for
00:29:32the United States where, you know, kind of things can go in all kinds of different directions
00:29:37and Europeans need to wake up and understand that. And, you know, if it were, you know, a lot
00:29:42of different European countries are in peril as well. God knows what's going to happen in France,
00:29:47difficult times in Germany, all kinds of things happening in the United Kingdom. And I think this
00:29:53is just a lesson here that people have to get their act together and they have to decide for
00:29:57themselves what's important to them and then, you know, take that action and not be swayed
00:30:02by ideological precepts. I mean, we're trying to get, you know, people are trying to impose
00:30:08their own ideologies, their own way of thinking on everyone. And that's not what people need
00:30:13at this particular time to deal with all the challenges that, you know, that the world is
00:30:17throwing at us. It's the breakdown of one or just been going on for a very long time and
00:30:21the beginning of something new. And often what happens when you've had some overarching
00:30:26global or certainly larger meta-regional set of orders, you get, you know, something more local
00:30:32for a time before something else is built up. And I think that that's kind of where we're going to
00:30:37have to head. So the UK is going to have to make some, you know, collective decisions, you know,
00:30:41regional and local level, not just at, you know, the level of Whitehall. And then, you know,
00:30:46start to think about who are its current, you know, partners and who can it best, you know,
00:30:51work with, be this on defense and security or in economic terms and, you know, do some reassessment
00:30:55and, you know, kind of think about, you know, how can we best address the challenges we're facing
00:31:00and not have everything driven by the United States. I mean, Trump controls the narrative.
00:31:05Why? He's one guy. And, you know, others are just, you know, kind of basically
00:31:09drafting along, you know, in his wake at this particular moment. And we shouldn't be letting
00:31:14that happen. There needs to be a bigger discussion about this, which is, you know, one of the things that,
00:31:18you know, you're trying to do with this podcast and others are again. And again, I would just
00:31:22challenge people to stop thinking about it in ideological terms, because that's been the problem
00:31:26here in the United States, thinking about this and partisan and, you know, this is left and this is
00:31:30right. You know, I think you'll kind of find that, you know, the most people in the US and in the UK
00:31:37have shared interest in what they want to see. And it's not a question of whether you've got a left
00:31:41or a right viewpoint. Oh, for me, it's a question of whether or not you've got a democracy in which
00:31:46you can express those and other viewpoints. Exactly. Yeah. And that's the challenge, is kind of
00:31:50not suppressing debate. You know, that's the one thing that, you know, if you try to think
00:31:55charitably about J.D. Vance's Munich speech, which is the kind of height of hypocrisy, but he was
00:32:00right that people are not listening to their, you know, to their populations. And there is, you know,
00:32:04a movement to have more citizens' assemblies, you know, to get people more engaged in debates.
00:32:10You know, it's not just at the parliamentary level in the Houses of Parliament, but, you know,
00:32:16kind of on local arenas as well. Podcasts do that, you know, local media does. But we need more of that.
00:32:21We need more of people discussing and thinking about things for themselves.
00:32:24Now, on Ukraine, as I say, I've spent a great deal of time there. And what I find quite interesting
00:32:34about the Trump administration's effect is that it has helped with Putin's movement of this terrible
00:32:43term, the Overton window, the area of kind of acceptable discussion has been shifted from
00:32:50how do we how does the West help defend Ukraine and help Ukraine effectively win through now the
00:32:58debate centers around how can Ukraine be persuaded to give up on 20 percent of its territory, but
00:33:06preserve what is left over in perpetuity, or at least for the foreseeable future. And that is
00:33:14that is essentially, to me, that delivers a victory to to Putin in and of itself.
00:33:24But if the if Europe is facing these fragmentary factors, all of this provides more opportunity for
00:33:33Putin down the line, doesn't it? In addition to the fact that he may end up illegitimately gaining 20
00:33:39percent of Ukraine. Yes, sadly, it does. And I mean, again, you know, this is on Earth.
00:33:45To frame this in the right way. I mean, what we've got to remember here is that Putin set off to do a
00:33:51special military operation. I mean, he told himself and then everybody around him who, you know, kind of
00:33:56forced into this position that it would be over very quickly. And everybody else outside believed him.
00:34:00You know, if we go back to February 2022, everyone was, you know, pretty convinced that Kiev would fall,
00:34:08so to speak, in a matter of days, if not hours, weeks, that in other words, the government capitulate,
00:34:16Zelensky would be off and somebody else would be there installed as a pro-Russian or, you know,
00:34:23certainly very malleable Ukrainian president. Well, that didn't happen. I mean, Putin has lost,
00:34:28he's failed. He failed to get Ukraine in the way that, you know, he intended to. And he's created just an
00:34:34incredible amount of devastation. And what we're trying to do now is blunt his ability to keep
00:34:39on devastating everything, including himself. I mean, over the long run, I mean, I don't foresee
00:34:43that, you know, anytime soon Russia is going to collapse. But he's done incalculable damage
00:34:49to the fabric of Russian society, to its demography, to its economy. It's now, you know,
00:34:54totally war mobilized economy, which is going to be very hard to shift in a different direction,
00:35:00which also points in the way that you've kind of framed this question as to, you know,
00:35:08it doesn't look like this is going to be over anytime soon kind of idea. It also kind of points
00:35:13to the idea that Putin can't give this up because his whole economy, his whole society, his whole
00:35:17politics, his whole preservation of self revolves around having this war go on. I think it's very hard
00:35:23to see how he stops the war, how he moves into peacetime or just moves into more and more problems.
00:35:29Think about the demobilization of all of these people who've gone through the front in Ukraine
00:35:34in Russia, not just in Ukraine, who come back grievously wounded, not just with prosthetic
00:35:40limbs, but also heavily armed and, you know, knowing how to fight and that, you know, further
00:35:45criminalization of Russian society, further increase the violence in Russian society. We're
00:35:50talking about that here in the United States of having militias and the effect of having so
00:35:55many people cycle through Iraq and Afghanistan on the US front. Well, think about that on the,
00:36:01you know, the Russian front and just that devastating impact. I think it's extraordinarily
00:36:06difficult to think about how you make Putin stop and to miscalculate beyond just making it impossible
00:36:13for him to continue the war, either by making the front line where, you know, Ukraine is now
00:36:20completely defensible from the Ukrainian point of view or just squeezing down Russia's resources.
00:36:27And again, you know, given what you just said about that fragmentation, Putin's kind of betting
00:36:31we're not going to be able to do that. You know, if you look around the kind of a spectrum
00:36:35of Russian opinion, you know, you can see that Russians want this war to stop. Certainly the elites
00:36:40and the technocrats around Putin want it to stop. They've lost a lot from it, but they don't want
00:36:44to have this at a loss to Russia. And Putin's the one person who really doesn't want to stop,
00:36:50want to stop. You can see, again, analysis after analysis that sort of suggests that
00:36:54for Putin, it's easier to continue the war than it is to stop it. And I think that that's something
00:36:59that, you know, Trump and others haven't really picked up on. Trump's got a lot of leverage with
00:37:04Russia, but, you know, Putin, this is about his own self-preservation, the continuation of his own
00:37:10imperial presidency. And, you know, Trump's got much more leverage, which is why we're seeing
00:37:14the way that this discussion has gone about Ukraine to get the Ukrainians to give up and
00:37:19stop. But Ukraine capitulating, Ukraine giving Putin what he has got now isn't sufficient to put
00:37:25an end to this because, again, Putin's not going to demilitarize at this point. He's not going to
00:37:30change the course of the Russian economy. And he's basically created enemies out of most of Europe,
00:37:37even if, you know, some Europeans would love to, you know, get back to business as usual with Russia.
00:37:41That's just really not going to happen. And it's had all these knock-on effects elsewhere. It scared
00:37:45the hell out of all of, you know, US allies, you know, seeing how capricious the United States is
00:37:51being about all of this. It's certainly given, you know, China and others' ideas about how they can,
00:37:56you know, probably, you know, kind of put more pressure on Taiwan, you know, to avoid having a
00:38:02ruinous war. It's, you know, let all kinds of other countries around the world see that war can win,
00:38:09you know, if it's done under certain circumstances. It's also shown how ruthless, you know, Putin is
00:38:14and how little he cares about human life, be it Russia's, like, Russians' lives or Ukrainians' lives
00:38:21or anyone else's for that matter.
00:38:23Isn't it interesting, or at least I find it interesting, that at the beginning, back to 2014,
00:38:27when Ukraine was first invaded, the West, most of the West refused to give any kind of lethal aid
00:38:32to the Ukrainians in spite of commitments made to preserve Ukrainian security. Even after 2022
00:38:38and the full-scale invasion, again, it was very, very slow. There were lots of restrictions on all
00:38:44kinds of weapons. And this will sound familiar. You and I are of the same vintage, that kind of
00:38:49Whitehall official kind of steepling their fingers and men putting their fingertips together and saying,
00:38:55well, we've got to be very careful of defeating the Russians. We all know what happened,
00:38:59you know, in the Second World War in 1917 or whatever. And my response was, well, would the
00:39:06world be a dangerous place if the Russian Federation did start to fly apart? It's an imperium. It has
00:39:13large numbers of oppressed peoples within it in terms of the contemporary Russian Federation.
00:39:19From my perspective, as a resident of the West, you know, that would be unstable, but better than
00:39:28having an invading army on our doorstep. Am I wrong?
00:39:32Well, I think if we look at about Russia falling further apart, I mean, that was really the big
00:39:37debate in the 1990s. That's actually what, you know, Putin himself has capitalized upon. I mean,
00:39:43he comes into the presidency as a wartime president against Chechnya, if we think back that far.
00:39:49Because Chechnya was that response to the, you know, the removal of the Soviet Union,
00:39:56the Chechens, you know, thought they had a really good case of saying, well, we can go too. We have
00:39:59a million people. We're on a border now, an international border. You know, we've got kind
00:40:04of history of separateness, of otherness, you know, and if all of these other, you know,
00:40:09former Soviet republics, Ukraine, Belarus, you know, you name it, can go, well, why can't we too?
00:40:13Well, the Russian Federation internally wasn't, you know, set up the same way as the Soviet Union,
00:40:17which actually did give the rights, you know, to republics to secede, even if, you know,
00:40:20there was no expectation that they were going to actually exercise those. And of course,
00:40:24we saw an absolutely ruinous, horrific war, you know, which was the biggest conflict on Russian
00:40:30soil since World War II, you know, preceding now this incredible land war that we now have
00:40:36in the case of Ukraine. And, you know, the Russians eventually, under Putin by, you know,
00:40:42rather horrific methods, subjugated and repressed the Chechens. I don't think that we're likely to
00:40:48see anyone try, you know, the Chechen secession again in Russia, but I think we can really see the
00:40:54weakening of the center happening again, as it was in the 1990s under Yeltsin, you know,
00:40:59with various republics having to take matters into their own hands more, and, you know, kind of
00:41:04spinning away, you know, further and further from Moscow. And you're already seeing other former,
00:41:11you know, Soviet states, you know, all the countries that Russia tried to keep under its grip,
00:41:16you know, doing a lot of things themselves. That's really been a consequence of this conflict.
00:41:20I mean, you're Azerbaijan, you know, looking to the US to help them, you know, kind of broker
00:41:25a peace deal and not wanting kind of Russia, you know, involved. The Georgians, even though they've
00:41:30kind of moved, you know, back towards Russia still being, you know, kind of much more cautious
00:41:34about this. Kazakhstan, you know, other countries trying to, you know, make it out of the exits.
00:41:39Moldova, you know, Belarus is stuck because of its, you know, support for Putin in the war in
00:41:44Ukraine, and also because they've got this union treaty. But you can really see these
00:41:47centrifugal forces already there at work. And, you know, Putin is worried about that.
00:41:54Absolutely. You know, he's worried about that, which is, again, why he wants to show that war
00:41:57wins and that, you know, Ukraine can't completely get away because, you know, yes, he is worried
00:42:03about that. Now, should the rest of us be worried? I think what the rest of us should be worried
00:42:07about is, you know, this kind of failing, flailing, you know, Russian state kept together with repression
00:42:13with a lot of internal violence, and, you know, kind of more of a desire to lash out
00:42:19at all of us. But they're doing that all the time anyway, right? So this isn't something
00:42:22that, you know, we've got to just look forward in the future. It's happening now. That's why
00:42:26I keep saying we're at war with Russia, even though I get, you know, pushback against this
00:42:30all the time. You know, the acts of sabotage, what just happened in Poland, you know, all kinds
00:42:35of, you know, lasers and sensors and GPS blocking. And, you know, people say, well, that's
00:42:39not really war, hybrid war. Well, Putin thinks it is, you know, Putin's trying to do whatever
00:42:44he can to subvert and to, you know, basically, you know, have a war by means other than having
00:42:50an outright confrontation with NATO. But he's certainly confronting NATO. He's certainly
00:42:54trying to expand, you know, the fields of battle and information propaganda. In fact, he seems
00:43:00to be winning. I mean, all the time that, you know, I hear, you know, people taking Russia's
00:43:04side and Russia's talking points. You know, he's definitely got the edge in the propaganda
00:43:09and information wars because people, you know, were more likely to, you know, feel very negatively
00:43:14and badly about their own countries. I mean, all of us, you know, criticize our own country
00:43:18because that's what democracy is for. But, you know, that doesn't mean that we should
00:43:21then, you know, be feeding into celebrating what Putin's doing or saying that, you know,
00:43:26Russia's got it right is, you know, a lot of, you know, we see the far right doing right
00:43:30now in the United States and elsewhere. But in that regard, Putin has managed to create
00:43:35a lot of, you know, fellow travelers, you know, strange bedfellows, perhaps, but not
00:43:40so much because, you know, Putin has, you know, you're saying before, he has the ear
00:43:44of Trump and he has, you know, basically a lot of capacity to influence others as well.
00:43:48He's got a lot of money that he's sloshing around. You know, for Putin, this is war.
00:43:52This isn't peace. This is all a kind of a war for Russia's status in Europe and for its
00:43:58position.
00:43:59But it seems incredible to me that a country with an economy that small, yes, it's got a lot
00:44:04of people, it's got a lot of landmass, but it's got a relatively small economy in comparison.
00:44:08We just talk about the European Union, even minus the United Kingdom, which sadly is no
00:44:13longer in the European Union. But you're still looking at some 500 million plus people, a
00:44:20gigantic economic block that has a massive capacity that seems to me to be largely unused
00:44:30in defence of itself against. He gets a hell of a bang for his buck, doesn't he?
00:44:36Yes, he really does. And I mean, the patterns that he has perfected, other people are emulating
00:44:42now because we've seen how successful he can be. I think, you know, Putin's the first populist
00:44:46president of the 21st century.
00:44:49He certainly, you know...
00:44:49Which is ironic, given that he's an authoritarian, didn't get elected.
00:44:52Yeah, but this is authoritarian populism. You know, it's kind of, and a lot of these other
00:44:56people prefer not to get elected and just to, look, Trump keeps talking about not bothering
00:45:00to have elections again. You know, and it'll be, you know, not much of a surprise if that's
00:45:05the same viewpoint of the AFD or, you know, the Le Pen, you know, acolytes or, you know,
00:45:12people in the UK. You know, it's just like, just dispense with it all. You know, we'd much
00:45:16rather be able to assert our authority and to manipulate the media. And that's, again, why
00:45:22it's so important to have discussions like this and for everybody to be having these
00:45:26discussions. Make up your own bloody mind. You know, don't just let them tell you what
00:45:30you should be thinking. And I mean, that's actually why I always have an aversion to
00:45:34ideology because it's kind of, people get, you know, so, you know, caught up in their
00:45:38ideologies and just the simplicity and the beauty and the attractiveness of like a realist
00:45:44theory or that theory. And, you know, it kind of makes sense of a very complicated
00:45:48world. Well, the world is very complicated and there's no, you know, kind of
00:45:52of, you know, one way of kind of reaching answers. I mean, there are often really, there
00:45:57are right answers, you know, to be got there. There is a truth that's out there, but sometimes
00:46:00it's difficult to get to it because you have to deal with this, all of this complexity.
00:46:03You have to ask a lot of questions. You have to be open to hearing, you know, different
00:46:07sides of an argument. And that's what these guys are not. Trump and Putin are both people
00:46:12telling you what to think. Look, what Trump has just said, he called, you know, a journalist,
00:46:16you know, kind of a piggy for asking a question or said that somebody else was insubordinate,
00:46:21another woman, you know, from asking a question, didn't like the way questions were asked.
00:46:25Don't let people tell you, you can't answer, you can't ask questions and find answers for
00:46:29yourself. This is what this attack on the BBC is about. You know, it's not about, you know,
00:46:34kind of just, you know, really bad editing job, you know, on the face of Panorama. It's about,
00:46:39you know, getting rid of an institution like the BBC that for all its flaws was set up to be a kind
00:46:45of a GPS for information, for people being able to ask questions and to get answers to them back
00:46:50in the 1920s at exactly the same time that the Soviet Union with its big propagandist machine
00:46:55was being set up. People seem to forget, as they're always quoting Orwell, that Orwell worked for the
00:46:59BBC. You know, and although everyone has criticised it, the whole idea was that it was supposed to be
00:47:04there as a source of information for people, you know, to be able to make up their own minds.
00:47:10You know, it was also set up to give producers as much autonomy as they're liked in the way that you
00:47:16have it, you know, kind of not as part of the BBC, but as, you know, part of the kind of independent
00:47:20and, you know, thinking about podcasts. Everyone was supposed to be that equivalent of people who could
00:47:25go out there and, you know, try to ask questions, not necessarily shape the answers, but actually be able
00:47:30to ask questions and have debate and discourse. And that's why, you know, an attack on that kind
00:47:36of institution is an attack on everybody, an attack on everybody's, you know, ability to access
00:47:42information and to be able to ask questions and have a healthy conversation and discourse about issues.
00:47:49The British government, has it been pusillanimous in its dealings with Trump? Are we being too wet?
00:47:58I think we've been in a very weak position. But, you know, look, you can look at Putin, and you just said
00:48:03this again, you know, you can pair a weak hand very effectively, and we need to just do better at
00:48:08that. You know, this is... What should they be doing? Well, they should be building up, you know,
00:48:12different ways of building up their own resources and, you know, leaning into that and moving more
00:48:17quickly and being bolder. I mean, I know that, you know, again, the government is running scared
00:48:21of both the left and the right at the moment, but there are all kinds of things that can be done,
00:48:25and you need to not be afraid of your public. You need to have open conversation, and you need to not
00:48:30just think of everything through the prism of London either. You need to have, you know, real
00:48:34capacity and enabling power given to other parts of Britain and to give people a voice and, you know,
00:48:41kind of a chance to be able to do things for themselves. And that's something I found incredibly
00:48:45frustrating about the UK. You know, I took part in the strategic, you know, defence review as one of
00:48:49the reviewers. I found actually that's a very uplifting exercise as well as, you know, somewhat horrifying
00:48:55and, you know, all the kind of ways that one would, you know, think about worrying about the future of
00:49:00UK defence and the capacities that it had. But I also found it uplifting because we did engage with
00:49:05a very large number of people, 8,000 submissions on how people should think about defence. We had
00:49:12cities and assemblies of people who went to bases and talked to people, and people had great ideas.
00:49:17And there was a real discourse happening that, you know, seems to have not died a death, but kind of
00:49:23become more muted, you know, after that. But the frustrating thing is that people can't look outside of
00:49:28Whitehall. The big thing where things kind of got held up was this cross-Whitehall. Well, what about
00:49:35cross-country? What about thinking about, you know, kind of the various nations of the United
00:49:40Kingdom? It isn't just about England. You know, I got up to the north of England and there's all
00:49:45these George, St. George flags put everywhere. But what is England? There is not even a debate about,
00:49:50you know, how different London is from all of the other, you know, UK regions, how different the
00:49:55north-east of England is from Greater Manchester, you know, for example. How do you get a kind of
00:50:00place-shaped approach to these things? You know, England is not the sum of even parts at this point.
00:50:08And with the devolution of power, you know, to Scotland and tax levying, you know, capacity,
00:50:15and to some degree, some devolution to Wales and, you know, autonomy for Northern Ireland and kind of
00:50:19going back to, you know, self-rule, we need to be thinking, you know, more actively about the future
00:50:25of England and not have Vladimir Putin thinking about that for everybody or, you know, Donald Trump
00:50:30shaping that. You know, it's not just a question of, you know, the separation of, you know, powers
00:50:37between Parliament and the monarchy. I mean, Trump's obsessed about the king and the royal family at the
00:50:41moment. But how does England function within the United Kingdom, not just, you know, Scotland and Wales?
00:50:47And how does all of this, you know, get bound together? I mean, I would just challenge people to just go
00:50:51and travel north and just see how much things change there, because so many parts of Britain are not just
00:50:58left behind, left out of mind. And that was really something that I thought was even, you know, a feature
00:51:04of the Strategic Defence Review, a lot of focus on Barrow and Furnace. How many people have actually been to
00:51:08Barrow and Furnace is a good question. You know, I have to rent a car whenever I visit the north, because you just
00:51:13can't get there from here on so many, you know, kind of levels. You know, the lack of discussion now about
00:51:20transportation. You know, UK is not mobile. People just can't get from here to there in many, you know,
00:51:26different places, let alone social mobility, geographic mobility. And sometimes, you know, the UK doesn't feel
00:51:32fit for purpose. And it's not going to be, you know, basically resolved by debates from the left or the
00:51:39right, or, you know, kind of about just immigration. There's going to be, I mean, that's a big issue,
00:51:45a really big issue. I think there should be a commission, you know, put together for a sensible
00:51:48discussion about it, not a politicised discussion, although it's very hard given, you know, the raw
00:51:53feelings about this for understandable reasons. But there are so many issues that have to be, you know,
00:51:58decided on a national level, not just in one place for one place and by people from one place.
00:52:04And that, I think, is, you know, the real challenge that the UK faces right now.
00:52:08It sounds to me that sort of from a kind of emotional, but also a deeply intellectual perspective,
00:52:14you're kind of, you're seeing a lack of ideas when you're back in the old country.
00:52:20I mean, a lack of boldness. I don't think we are short of ideas. I just think we're just
00:52:24not engaging everybody in coming up with those ideas. Lots of great ideas. They just don't get
00:52:29implemented because they can't get traction. Because, you know, there's only one way into the system.
00:52:34You know, how is Nigel Farage getting so much traction? Because all the media is focused on
00:52:39him all the time. He's got his own GB news. I mean, this is just, again, everybody now is a media
00:52:44personality. And, you know, how do you kind of break through all that noise? Well, again, I think
00:52:49you have to take things back to the regional and local level. And that's, you know, supposedly what
00:52:53MPs are supposed to be doing. It's not what's happening in the US Congress. They're not representing
00:52:57their constituencies, you know, and they've ceded, you know, any authority to Trump. But, you know,
00:53:03I mean, I think this is a challenge for the UK and a particular challenge of articulating,
00:53:08you know, what power and responsibility means in an English context. What is England? You know,
00:53:14if you look at North East England, for example, the North East, it's got a much stronger regional
00:53:18identity that has an English identity, despite, you know, the appearance of St. George flags.
00:53:24It's as strong an identity as it is in Wales and Scotland, other places less so. I think you need
00:53:29to have much more of a sense of being in, you know, communion and in communication with the rest
00:53:35of the country. I think, you know, that's why, you know, Whitehall or the political party have kind
00:53:41of lost their way. They're not getting full representation, full voice, you know, from the
00:53:46country. Is this why you constantly hear this sort of panic stations in both the Labour and in the past
00:53:52in the Tory party about the so-called Red Wall? I mean, I've always been kind of amused by this idea
00:53:57that there was some kind of sort of tribal group that needed to be appealed to or fed some kind of
00:54:06red meat of politics up there somewhere in the windswept North where people have unintelligible
00:54:13accents, which I know with relief that you've moderated for my benefit.
00:54:19I've got my dad's telephone voice on. My dad always would laugh at him, you know, we'd go on
00:54:23the telephone and say, what are you doing? He says, well, you know, people have got to understand me.
00:54:28So my dad's telephone voice is, you know, in operation right now because that's exactly the
00:54:33issue. Look, it's a two millennia problem, a two millennia old problem. The Romans had the same,
00:54:37you know, issue. They built a bloody wall, a real wall, not just a red wall, a stone wall up there
00:54:41because they also, you know, had the same, you know, kind of problems of not wanting to devolve
00:54:46power. I mean, Rome never devolved power from Rome, although they had, you know, consuls and,
00:54:51you know, kind of governors and things that they kind of sent out there to run everything from the
00:54:55centre and then from, you know, the various forts all the way into places. And we've got the same
00:54:59problem there. I think, you know, people don't really understand their own country.
00:55:04And, you know, I would just challenge people to just bloody well get out of London and go and see
00:55:09your own country. It's not that big. The UK is not that big. I mean, I talked to, you know,
00:55:14Americans who've spent time in England and one of them, in fact, I was meeting with yesterday
00:55:18or the UK kind of quipped at me that, you know, that they really, you know, understood that for
00:55:24the first time that history, you know, kind of is in the US context of a couple of hundred years
00:55:29is not very long, but that they could never get their heads around that, you know, 200 miles was a
00:55:34really long way in a kind of an English sense where it's, you know, just a day trip,
00:55:38you know, kind of in a US context, not quite, but, you know, kind of not far off.
00:55:43And I think that that's kind of people's mental maps of Britain seems to be enormous. You know,
00:55:48the Romans exaggerated the size of Scotland to justify why they couldn't take it over.
00:55:52But, you know, this is a kind of a, you know, a perpetual problem, I think, for people in the UK.
00:55:58They need to get a better grip of their own country. And then they wouldn't be running so scared and,
00:56:03you know, freaked out by the idea of, you know, this implacable group of God knows who with,
00:56:08again, as you said, impenetrable accents in different places, wanting something that they
00:56:11don't know about. Everybody wants the same thing. They want to have the ability to lead
00:56:16a reasonably good life, a decent life for themselves and for their families.
00:56:20Not everybody wants a bloody yacht or, you know, to cloak their house in gold and have a gold toilet,
00:56:25you know, in every bathroom. People, you know, want to be able to kind of, you know,
00:56:30hope to have a good education, be able to get a job, you know, have skills, you know,
00:56:34have a chance, you know, to not be living in poverty. That's kind of, you know, the basic bottom line here.
00:56:41You mentioned Rome and we're coming to the end of my time slot with you. So I've got two last
00:56:45questions. You mentioned Rome there and it always triggers in me mention of Rome, the notion that
00:56:52the West is going through a decline and the next stage is a fall. Is this, are we at the end
00:57:01of the Western era?
00:57:03Definitely the end of this particular version of it. So, you know, we're in one of those periods,
00:57:11definitely, of change. You know, I hesitate to use the word transition because we used to look about,
00:57:16we used to talk about that in, you know, the Soviet Union, the idea that, you know, after the
00:57:20dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia within transitioned to something we thought was going to
00:57:24become France or Poland or, you know, kind of some other country. Yeah. And as you remember,
00:57:29you know, it just transitioned to being itself again, you know, kind of.
00:57:33So I think, you know, we are going to find different formulations here. You know, I've
00:57:40been thinking a lot about Rome, you know, as I look at what's happening in the White House. And
00:57:43again, you know, Trump looks like he's building Caesar's Palace Vegas style, you know, all the
00:57:47time.
00:57:47Yeah, or Caligula. Is there going to be a voice in the Senate?
00:57:50Yeah, there's just all kinds of, you know, things that we realise that there's nothing really new in
00:57:54the world and history definitely rhymes. And, you know, we come back on ourselves even as we're
00:57:58always moving forward. And I think that's the thing to bear in mind. We always move
00:58:02forward. Even if, you know, some of the problems of the past, you know, rear their heads again,
00:58:08which is certainly the case now. I mean, we are in a period reminiscent of the 1920s, as
00:58:12I said before, which is, again, the end of, you know, really those mononarchical eras,
00:58:18the imperial eras, the end of empires that, you know, had the collapse of the Kaiser and
00:58:23the German Reich, which actually wasn't very long lived anywhere since the, you know, unification
00:58:28of Germany in the 1870s. But you definitely had the collapse of the British Empire as a result of
00:58:32that, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire. You know, we left that imperial age and
00:58:38moved on to something else. And, you know, I think we're leaving the end of a world dominated by the
00:58:44United States and the United States is giving it up. But, you know, maybe we're also for a period
00:58:48leaving, you know, kind of an age that has to be dominated by centers. And, you know, America
00:58:54is not going to be calling the shots anymore, but it's also not going to be what we saw in the past.
00:58:59This is not going to be in a battle of the great titans, not in a bi-polar or multi-polar,
00:59:06even if we feel all a bit bipolar at the moment, in a multi-polar world. It's not just going to be,
00:59:11you know, the United States, China and Russia in the place of the Soviet Union duking it out.
00:59:16We've got Brazil, we've got Indonesia, we've got India, we've got, you know, South Africa,
00:59:20we've got all kinds of countries, the Gulf states, the Saudis, you know, we've got the,
00:59:25you know, all of these players out there. And, you know, we could go on and on who would like
00:59:29their time in the sun as well. And thinking about regional orders and new ways of interacting.
00:59:34So we're in a time of change. And then we've got all the rapid change that we're seeing
00:59:39from technological change, emergence of AI. It's just a difficult period, you know, climate change,
00:59:45whether people want to deny it or not, things are definitely in flux here. And so we've got
00:59:50to figure out how do we adapt to that? How do we deal with that? And what is going to make the most
00:59:54sense in that context? Whereas maybe there's going to be multiple centres rather than one centre that
01:00:00dominates everything. So my last question with all of my interviewees in the world of travel is,
01:00:06do we have any reasons to be cheerful, to quote the great Ian Dury?
01:00:10We do. And look, Ian Dury himself is somebody who overcame incredible adversity. I mean, he had
01:00:18polio. And, you know, I mean, and kept on going. And, you know, and an incredible spirit. I loved
01:00:25Ian Dury and the blockhead. You know, so I think that that's what we need. We need a bit more of a
01:00:28blockhead in the sense of keeping on going, you know, basically remembering that we do have agency,
01:00:34we can do things. And we've just got to remember, you remember that. Well, look, this is another
01:00:39crisis. It just might not be taking the forms that we're familiar with. But it is a crisis. Britain is
01:00:44under siege information, you know, wise, politically, you know, many other ways, you know, literally
01:00:51trying to deal with floods of people coming in, not really knowing how to manage all of this.
01:00:55We need to get our act together. We can get our act together. We've done it before. And honestly,
01:01:00we can do it again. But it won't be necessarily through silver bullets coming out of Whitehall.
01:01:05I mean, the UK is replete with actually great stories if we go out and look for them rather
01:01:09than just having the, you know, the American carnage or UK carnage approach and listening
01:01:14constantly to Nigel Farage or anybody else, you know, talking the country down all the time.
01:01:19Fiona. Fiona Hill, thank you so much. That was fascinating. And I wish I could talk for another,
01:01:26steal another hour of your time. And any chance you're going to come back here and get into
01:01:33politics? It sounds like we could probably do with you. I don't want to run for government
01:01:37because, again, you end up having to pander, you know, to special interests. And, you know,
01:01:42kind of I think that what we need to do is, again, keep motivating people to do things for
01:01:48themselves in civil society. So I'm trying to, you know, kind of find a way, you know, of a platform
01:01:53for this. I don't want to be out there, you know, because, you know, when you're out there
01:01:56asking for people's vote or asking for people's money, you want something, right? I don't want
01:02:01anything. I want to see some change as well. And I want to see how I can be part of making
01:02:04that change happen.
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