The Duran Podcast - The Lost Peace - Richard Sakwa, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

The Lost Peace - Richard Sakwa, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Hi, everyone. My name is Glenn Dyson, and I'm joined today by Alexander McCurris and Professor Richard Sacka. So, Professor Sacka is a retired emeritus professor of Russian and European politics at University of Kent. I would say the greatest Russia scholar we have in Europe, an author of 18 plus books, and citing his work, has become near obligatory now for any serious Russia scholar. So, yeah, welcome to you both. Thank you very much. I'm a pleasure to be back. Yes, so the reason where we have Professor Sackwara today is to

discuss a book he had coming out last year, which is the lost piece, how the West failed to prevent a second Cold War. So, yeah, you'll have the chance to correct me, of course, but the way I understand it, the foundational argument would be effectively, we've been

attempting to navigate between, two orders. This is where the loss of the peace began. So I guess after the Cold War, in the West, we already lived in two worlds. We had the internal order of the political West, organized under U.S. hegemony, and then we had more or less the external order under the UN Charter, based more sovereign equality. One could argue the more Westphalian model. And the challenge, of course, after the Cold War, and then two years later, when the Soviet Union collapsed, there was two possible systems. on the menu. So on one hand, we had the opportunity to either expand the internal order that is to make

the Atlantis'ist order, effectively the new world order, that is hegemony under the United States and the liberal ideals, or we could form more of an inclusive sovereign system based more on the UN Charter,

that of 1945. Now, obviously towards the end of the Cold War, we had this conflict. Gorbachev wanted this common European home, which very much resembles this sovereignty-based internationalism. And then on the other side, you had the US calling for Europe, Poland, free,

which is more organized around US hegemony and sovereign inequality. So obviously, we ended up with the American order in which you write in the book, the inside order became the outside order. if I understood it correctly. And effectively, yeah, hegemonic peace plus liberal universalism to mitigate the anarchy of the international system. And this is what NATO expansion was also intended to facilitate. Now, obviously, the issue of Russia, I guess, how does Russia, this former adversary fit into the hegemonic order?

How is Europe organized? I guess the dilemma is always on the inside, it's too big, dilutes hegemony. On the outside, it will be an adversarial. And the threat then would be that we would revive the Cold War, much like Kenan warned against. And again, this was widely recognized by both advocates and opponents of enlarging NATO. Now, one could argue that the solution to this hegemonic system was if Russia would just remain weak. And Russia was weak. It was getting weaker by the day.

Then it could remain outside. And it wouldn't really matter that much. it could be facilitated orbiting the West, if you will. But again, as we've learned from people like William Perry, the US Secretary of Defense under Clinton, everyone kind of knew that keeping Russia outside would revive the Cold War logic, if you will. But again, he was weak, so then it would matter.

Who cares? So it went from being this evil empire to an insignificant country. And I guess what happened was, as also Kennan predicted, Russia got stronger, much like China, and it couldn't really be accommodated by this hegemonic system, which was premised on Russia's perpetual weakness. So I guess this is where we lost a piece, but please, if you could maybe outline the premise of your book. Well, thanks so much. I think that you've done a marvelous job in doing so. That really does get to the core of it. But I'll make few points to add.

to that. The first one is that, you know, underlying it, if you like, the meta-politics or the meta-idea behind this book is, and indeed, to understand the politics of our times, is the idea that there is an alternative, that in other words, outside of this political waste and outside of our own little world, there's alternatives. I mean, we're not just talking about that, put forwards by the post-colonial global south and so on, which is important, but even across the world, that there is an alternative to this very, I mean, I'm a realist, but that sort of stark realism that considers international politics is only about great power conflict, about one to try and get it fast one over the other, and about endlessly, you know, hopefully managing

conflict, which we're doing very badly at the moment, even worse than it did in the first Cold War. But in short, that a better world is possible and that it's worth for peace movements, for all those women and men of goodwill to fight for it. And that's, I suppose, the deep underlying thing. And people like Gorbachev, though, with a complex history, who accepted this and grasped that sense. So that, I suppose, is the first meta-political point. The second one is that the way you formulated is exactly what I was saying.

But I've slightly built on that. My thinking at the moment is to draw a contrast between empire and Commonwealth. So that internal system is empire. And of course, the world knows that there's two ways politics, international politics can be organized, is either empire or endless competitive international politics, and great power politics, geopolitics, even. But the idea of this empire is that, you know, after 1989 even, you could say in the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union,

we got to what you could even call it hyper-imperialism. And obviously that refers back to Karl Kautzky and those big debates before the first world war. all, interestingly enough, about hyper-imperialism. He meant it in terms of colonialism and indeed financial capital, of course, this was the age of Hobson, Hillfording, and of course Lenin's contribution to that debate. But the key point is that empire is this model of universalism and this, you know, empire has got many good things to say for it because it undermines sort of ethnic tensions and it's

supranational and so on. You could say the EU is a type of empire as well. But on the other side, this other order we could call Commonwealth. Yes, it's inspired by the United Nations. And of course, United Nations, that charter international system, which we live under today, that's under unprecedented attack. This is a UN-based system. This charter system is based on these visions of Commonwealth, global Commonwealth, and a different type of politics to empire.

It's based on Soviet internationalism. You talked about that. Sovereignty, but tempered by an internationalism and a commitment to those charter, principles, human rights, and all the rest. So that's the second thing. The third thing is this notion of a political West. This is, you know, that empire, what is this empire? It's a political West. It's a system, power system.

You remember that communist Eisenhower in his farewell address who talked about the military-industrial car? complex and its dangers. And so many others have talked about it. Hans Morgenthau, referred to it, by the way, way back when it was being established late 1940s, early 50s. This is the Trumanite state, as others call it, a military industrial complex, revolving door with Congress, and so on. So this Trumanite state, this political West, was established during the Cold War, and after the Cold War, it expanded in the way we've just suggested, became hyper and of course with its epigones, epigone, like Victoria Newland, who is just retired, but, you know, the whole career was devoted to expanding and viciously, aggressively,

dominatingly, that system. But so that political West, can I just say, though, I also add, there is a better West. Of course, Russians all the way back from Peter the Great have always suggested this, that Russia, they would, of course, claim that they are the best. West, no more. But in the old days, but there's another West. There's a civilizational West where for 500 years has dominated because it's military power. That political, that civilization West is on the way. It is changing. It's evolving. And just to say, there's a third West, a deep West, this cultural West. It's not just Greek Roman or Judeo-Christian. It's a cultural

West which was established in an interaction with Assyrian, Persia, Indo-Synic civilizations. So in other words, when we say anti-Western, or the West, we really do need to be clear what we're talking about and what I'm talking about is the political West. Thanks very much. If I could just say a few things. I mean, you've anticipated some of the points I was going to ask you about in connection with the book. But can I just say a few things? I was reading the book and the first point is about alternatives, the fact that there were alternatives and that there were choices. and reading the book through, I have to say at many, many points I felt very sad,

because I absolutely do agree that there was a lost peace after 1989. And the reason it happened was, you know, you got perhaps an overabundance of political imagination on the one side and the Russian side, Gorbachev and all his ideas. but also a very failure ultimately of matching political imagination to a great extent on the Western side. And there was a point you made quite early on in the book, which I actually remember from the 1980s. I mean, I remember it at the time, which is that many people in the United States, in powerful positions in the United States, saw what Gorbachev was proposing as an opportunity, yes,

but an opportunity for American power to be increased. But they also saw it as a threat. They were afraid of these changes that Gorbachev was proposing. They were worried that it would make the Soviet Union, Russia, attractive to people in Europe, that it would result ultimately in an erosion of American power. And so at a very early stage, even at a very early stage during the program that Gorbachev was footing forward, there was already a big pushback against it from the United States and within

Washington. Reagan was very receptive to Gorbachev's ideas, people in the Bush, the succeeding Bush administration to a certain extent less so. But there was a sense that we can't really go where Gorbachev wants us to go, because if we do, then that will somehow result in a reduction in our own power. What he's asking us to do is something that we don't want to do. So I felt that that was there, and I think that was there from the outset. And in the end, it explained an awful lot, He'd explain why there was never really possibility that the United States, the people in charge at that time, would of themselves have made the kind of choices to consolidate the peace that they did. The option to do it was there, but they didn't want to seize it. The second thing is what you say about the United Nations system, and it brought home to me something about the United States nation system, which is how different it is ultimately from every other system that has existed in terms of an attempt to organize international relations.

Firstly, it is global. It encompasses, I think, every state. Secondly, it offers everybody around the world a voice. There's the General Assembly, there is the voice there. Thirdly, it does extend talk about values in terms of the charter has values, there's the Declaration of Human Rights, all those kind of things. So that is there too. It sets out a framework for global cooperation within an international global system.

And at the same time, it acknowledges a point which Glenn has been discussing a lot recently, which is that there has to be, that there needs to be a concert of powers at the centre. And this is a mechanism which was intentionally created after the centre. World War, to avoid and get over the crises of the Second World War, which were European crises, ultimately, but which people globally bought into. Everybody around the world, there is massive support for it. And it actually does provide, if you go back to it, a way forward, and if you use it in the way perhaps, in a way that it's close to the way

that it was originally envisaged. And that not only has not been done, but as you said just now, it is under attack to a degree that we have never seen before. Yeah, absolutely. So absolutely, all that I agree completely. First, I'd just say that,

Absolutely. It makes me sad as well that there was an opportunity. There was a peace to be lost, or potential peace to be lost. A positive peace order of the sort with outlined just now. A positive peace order based on United Nations principles, which really are, you know, principles which, you know, didn't come out, weren't accidental. First of all, they came out from the understanding that the Second World War was the most catastrophic war humanity has ever had. And then, of course, overshadowed by nuclear weapons. So we really must do better in future. And this international system is based on that. And, of course, it's evolved over the years. Unfortunately, it's, as you say, the Security Council is a type of concert of powers, a mini concert of powers, but it no longer reflects the, you know, obviously we're talking about in particular India and Brazil representation from Africa and some other issues involved with it.

But nevertheless, it's the best we can do. And when those people who devised the United Nations in the early 40s, they had these ideas. They were learning from the failure of the Versailles system, learning from that old concert of powers, in 19th century, one, the Congress of Vienna system, which ended up in such catastrophe in 1914. So they were learning. And so, you know, I'm not saying this is the best thing ever that can evolve, it can change, but it has to be organic. Whereas really, we know that Ukrainians are saying that.

the United Nations doesn't work. And they're talking about being expelled from the Security Council. Absolutely crazy stuff. But no one did to say that sort of stuff in the first Cold War. And they're saying it now. That's why it's more dangerous. So as you say, we squandered that opportunity for a positive peace order. We glimpsed it in the first Iraq war when the Soviet Union endorsed and worked with the United States

and other powers over Iraq and Kuwait issue. But it was there. As you say, we scorned it, and we squanded it, and that takes us indeed. Why? And why? You're absolutely going to the beginning. And there we need to be careful about, well, I mean, I do. We all need to be careful, or we all have to sort of define what we mean.

And if, you know, to continue this Commonwealth versus Empire analogy, that Commonwealth is based on, you know, in a Commonwealth, the United States would exercise. leadership. And we don't mind. I mean, Gorbachev and Putin have said it. The US is the world's most powerful economy and possibly in military terms as well. It's, you know, we expect it to exercise leadership. But that leadership, which it sometimes showed in the first Cold War, not always, but it's leadership. But leadership then leads to a type of politics which we could call hegemony. That is the active or sort of of the voluntary acquiescence in that leadership, and when the United States is at its best,

that's, you know, it's there. You know, unfortunately, you know, European Union on some issues, perhaps has shown a sort of benign hegemony, but unfortunately, it's lost its way quite catastrophically. But on the other type of politics is, you know, that empire one, which then is based not on, not on hegemony, not on, you know, voluntary, the world going along with it, it's based on dominion and it's based on coercion and it's based on domination and of course it's based on exclusion and that takes us to Russia of course and to China coming up so that it cannot think this political West cannot envisage something outside of itself which is legitimate that anything outside of

itself is either has to be subordinated as an ally of course it's huge activity to try to get India on board today and to build up this global block politics, Cold War-style, you know, NATO Plus Plus, which, you know, brilliant success of NATO and Europe just led to the worst war since 1945. So let's try that brilliant success in the rest of the world so we can spark wars all across East Asia, South China Sea, etc. But that, so that is that, you know, expansive political and cannot envisage something outside of itself. Yet today, the global South, the global majority, or the world majority, aren't having it. They're saying, look, enough is enough.

And you're quite right to say, this is a European war going on. They say, you know, India and Indonesia and other countries, Brazil, South Africa, in particular, many, many others. They know, this has nothing to do with this. And this time, you're not going to drag us into it like you did in the First World War and the Second World War. So the world has moved on. And of course, what this war has done, because so you're saying in war shown, is the marginalisation and indeed the intellectual and political bankruptcy of the political West. Though, as I say, we can recover something hopefully for a better cultural West and a better West. And that, you know, if we have this model, we can say, look, we can do better.

And, you know, when I mentioned earlier at list peace next, of course, the churches is something very important in all of this. I don't just mean the World Council of Churches, which was important in the First Cold War, but so many other genuine civil society organizations, you know, they all talk about it every Sunday, every Friday in the mosque and many other places. They're saying, look, we've got to do better. I like what you both said about the political imagination, because this is also something that Godbachev touched on towards the end, in which he effectively cautioned.

the Americans that both Moscow and Washington had to be prepared for what the end of the Cold War would mean. Because the entire power structures had been premised on perpetual conflict. So this is why the two blocks effectively had loyalty towards either Moscow or Washington. So saying that we need the political imagination to be willing to effectively walk a little bit away from empire. in order to get an end to the Cold War. So, yeah, I think that's why your book is interesting as well, because when you talk about alternatives, this would be effectively the political imaginations.

Even though, as you mentioned, a lot of this would be based on previous lessons from history. Because, again, from the Congress of Vienna, the main lesson we effectively had was after the French had been defeated in 1815, they got another seat at the table simply because this is what will bring stability. And then, of course, doing the opposite after the First World War with the Treaty of Versailles, in which the Germans were effectively meant to be kept perpetually weak, this will be the source of peace. So it seems that the peace, effectively, we chose, which many Russian scholars have pointed out as well,

such as Karagnov, saying that we try to impose another treaty of RASA, so perpetuating the weakness of Russia, if you will. But I was curious about how would the alternatives be, though, in terms of balancing political realities with idealism, because I think a key challenge of these two systems, which you refer to, In my opinion, they already popped up right after the Cold War, the Charter of Paris for a new Europe in 1990. You know, you kind of had this dilemma.

All states should have the freedom to join whatever security arrangements they want. There should be no one state should tell another what to do. And at the other hand, we said, also we have to have indivisible security, no dividing lights. So, for example, in the context of NATO expansion, this meant, you know, NATO should not expand because then you're redividing Europe. You are now promoting security of one country at expense of another. But at the same time, we're saying anyone should be allowed to join any military block they want. How would it be possible to escape such a dilemma? Yeah, absolutely.

So a couple of points there. In the book and in general, I distinguish between the international system, which is the, today I call it the Charter International System, building on the Versailles system, which failed, as you say, the Congress of the Ennis system, the Utrecht system, and the Western Australian systems. These are all European-based, by the way, rather than though they've gone global now.

So this is the international system based on Soviet internationalism, based on ideas of Commonwealth, based on ideas of multilateralism, but sovereignty. Then we have at the second level, although I don't, it's not particularly hierarchical, we have international politics. And it is in international politics that we have these block politics. We have the state states compete and so on. And some states refuse to compete, the non-aligned movement and so on. Just for the sake of completeness, I also say there's a third level, which is the global international political economy, which we don't talk about much.

Well, you do, but I don't so much. And then the fourth level is transnational civil society. This is, as I said, churches, peace movements and many other good things and some bad things as well. But in terms of international politics, as you say, this is why it looked as if after the end of the first Cold War, 1989, 91, it looked as if we were going to get finally, in terms of those documents you've mentioned, of course, going all the way back to the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, that we were going to see a concurrence, a merger between the way that international politics is conducted and those principles of the charter international system.

They were going to see a convergence of based on those charter principles. That is the basis of the positive peace order. We were going to see a convergence. Unfortunately, we saw the exact opposite. We actually saw that one suborder within international politics, the political West or the so-called rules-based order or the liberal international order, this one began to, instead of having this convergence, it usurped and claimed the privileges of the charter international system,

which of course meant the subversion of international law and making up the law as you go along. We're talking about the bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999, Rehachna, 2003, Libya, 2011, and so much more. So instead of a convergence, we saw a massive, well, not just even a divergence, an attempt to privatize the charter international system and keeping with the dominant ideas of neoliberalism in the post-Cold War years. So we saw the exact opposite.

So instead of these principles which you outline of indivisible security, being guaranteed, we got the exact opposite. It was used as an instrument. It was used instrumentally rather than working autonomously and, of course, rules-based order and all the years, is, you know, by definition then, it then exercises double standards because double standards, it becomes systemic. It's not an accident. It's not an accident today that the Western powers, the political West is endorsing, and indeed, well, not in military terms supporting what Israel is doing in Gaza today. you know, one of the most monstrous things. We don't need to call it a genocide,

but we call it, you know, a killing, which is way disproportional to the cause, which was dreadful, of course, the events of 7th of October last year. But, you know, that's double standards. And, of course, the cheerful bombing of Yemen for seven years after 2014-15, you know, by the US and UK.

And, of course, while talking about human rights and such like it almost makes one despair, the fact that this Gulf, But it's systemic. It's not just, you know, a bad leader and so on. It's going to be the case because you have this gulf between the international system and international politics and we've got this suborder claiming to be the international system and to also claiming dominance within international politics to the exclusion of all the others. Just one other point on NATO enlargement. In some ways, you know, that the actual NATO enlargement, however much it may have been a repudiation of the promises given to Gorbidurban. of in 1990. It's still ultimately, it was the way it was done. And, you know, both, you know, that great man, Zbignyafiyszynski in 1997 in his book, Grand Chessboard,

and William Burns, head of CIA today and others, said, okay, enlarge, if you like, but you've got to have an overarching security deal with Moscow. So there's got to be done. And then within that, NATO could enlarge. And, you know, there could be some good things about it, stops Greece and Turkey going to war, stops the small states, repeating the experience of the 1930s when they were all fighting,

not too much at war, but they're certainly attacking each other. But that absence was completely, this is where that lack of imagination accompanied by the amazing lack of institutional innovation at the end of the Cold War. This was the major geopolitical turning points of our time, and absolutely nothing new came out of it. No new institutions, no new ideas, and no new political imaginary. You know, many of us put forward these ideas, not new, but, you know,

this Francois Mitterrand talked about a confederation of Europe. I certainly remain very strongly, I sometimes joke, I'm the last Gaulist in England. They did point out that there was one other whose name I've now forgotten. But there's a very few. by Gaulist, I mean, you know, a pan-continental vision, from Lisbon to Vladivostok, all that talk we used to have. And that was what we really did need. You know, Bismarck used to say, you know, the secret of international politics is a good treaty with Moscow. And that was lacking in

2009, which is astonishing in some ways, because even if you looked at the situation in Russia in the 1990s, which is chaotic, disorderly, all the things we all know. And I went there, and I think we all did. We've all probably been to Russia in the 90s. We remember what it was like. But it was still potentially the biggest, it was potentially the most powerful country in Europe. One would have thought that the priority that should have been given was precisely to working out that good treaty with Moscow. And when one of what talks about a good treaty,

what doesn't mean a treaty that favours lot-sidedly one side at the expense of the other, it means a treaty that is actually going to last, not a Versailles-type treaty, but a Vienna-type treaty. And I can remember lots of people saying it. I can remember, you know, was it Bush who said, you know, if we don't make them a friend, we could end up finding them an enemy and we'll over again. And yet it wasn't done. priority was instead given to all kinds of other things, you know, extending NATO eastwards,

satisfying concerns in places like, you know, Warsaw and Riga. I would say those concerns should be ignored. But Moscow was the first place to begin. And can I just also add to that, to the extent that there was an attempt to work with Russians. It was an attempt to work with the Russians by manipulating them. We were massively over-involved in their internal affairs in a way that I'd think many people today would want to defend. The notable example of that is the 1996 election

when US political consultants and money came in to support the election of Yeltsin, including media manipulation, political manipulations of all sorts, And of course, many people argue that was when Russian democracy maybe didn't die, but certainly it was wounded, and it certainly hasn't properly recovered ever since. And that was in 1990s before Putin was in power. So, yeah, absolutely right. This intervention, this engagement, quite apart from the economic level, and the development, the, you know, as Krikyyavlinsky endlessly says, you know, the neoliberal, the model of economic transformation. was catastrophic, and it still has a huge legacy to this day. Of course, it's used for political capital purposes, but it was also genuine, as you say. We all know Russia of the 1990s.

When you saw Babushki ladies selling family heirlooms, military medals of their husbands or fathers from the wartime, just to buy a kilo of potatoes, it was so sad. And this is one reason which inspires people today, in a complex way, but in general to support some of the achievements of the Putin system, which I think we often forget about its achievements. We can talk about its failings as well, of course, which they were there. But its achievements shouldn't be forgotten. I think that a lot of the political imaginations should have been directed towards harmonizing, I guess, this idealism with the political realities.

because as you began to say when you talked about your book was this idea of universalism, that it's quite challenging because often when we come with these ideas of liberal democracy, human rights, that this kind of universalism is only a positive thing. I like to go, you know, always use the example of Socrates saying, you know, I'm a citizen of the world. It's a, you know, it's a wonderful thing. We're all part of the same club. But then, of course, whenever I like that. Alexander the Great, he also says, more or less, I'm citizen of the world, but he used that to then build an empire because it diminishes.

Well, the universal claims will diminish the principle of sovereignty. And I guess this is the difficult thing when you develop an international system. How do you unify around universal ideals while still preserving the principle of sovereignty? So this, again, this goes right at the core of world order. and I think we've seen this before in terms of I often bring up the example of the French Revolution for example because this was also

based on a lot of the same principles and you know it was supposed to create a brotherhood of nations and instead it ended up with an emperor and an empire so how it was it turned on the sets and you can say the same with the Bolsheviks

also where idealist and internationalist, but also not intending to have real foreign policy, but then also developing an empire. It seems we kind of walked into this same minefield with the idea of a liberal hegemony in which we have this, you know, one can say, yeah, good values, which well-intentioned. However, at the same time, we see how they manifest themselves. As you said, we keep talking about human rights while committing this slaughterers from Yemen to now Gaza. So in this political imagination, we haven't seemed to really explore this sufficiently in terms of how, like Napoleon, you go from advancing these ideals to ending up with an emperor.

Yeah. It's underlying this is a sense, we used to have a sense, that history has a certain linearity to it that we can, what you're alluding to is the fact that history just is this endless cycle of good intentions leading to unintended bad consequences. And you're absolutely right that history is rather than this linear version of onwards and upwards, it's been endlessly going around in circles of the sort of, you know, René Ginnon and Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee at the beginning of the last century we're going on and on about. It's all cycles, empires, rise and fall,

and it's all the same sort of thing. In other words, that myth of Sisyphus is the one that works best. You're endlessly rolling up boulder up the hill, and it keeps coming down quite often crushing the people, pushing it up the hill. However, I couldn't stop there. And that's why I argue precisely, and why, you know, I say an alternative politics is possible. You know, we used to couch it in the language of socialism, as you've alluded to, Leninist or Marxist or whatever.

And indeed, I think that's still got a valid, you know, input into this. But or we could couch it in the language of, you know, good old-fashioned conservatism, Berkian conservatism, sense of community, which I think is important contribution to all of this. But the bottom line I'm trying to say is that if we can package this, if you like, in the language of marketing, in terms of Commonwealth, that to say, look, we're in the nuclear age, that humanity faces a global climate crisis of unprecedented character and many other things that, you know, we also have technological development in our times, which is just so phenomenal, you know, just in this little laptop I'm looking in now is, you know, it was almost unthinkable 20 years ago,

what its computing power. In short, the gulf between the aspirations for a type of Commonwealth or community or the common good, you know, our blue labour colleagues have a good language to describe this on the one side and this endless, you know, which is now increasingly suicidal politics of political west of empire. We see it in a completely avoidable, pointless, catastrophic, disastrous war in Ukraine to this day, of course, which could well be repeated over in the far east. So what is the language of this alternative? As I said, the United Nations system has matured. The states, there are now 193 states in the other nations, about 200 states in the world. They've matured. The post-colonial world, that 500 years of history, which you were just trying to

make your comment in, you know, that cycle of 500 years is coming to an end. The European phase of global history is coming to an end. And the Atlantic phase. And we're now going, you know, people use the language, multipalarity, which is a rather thin book to put it on. But yet, Yes, it's multipolarity, multi-order world. Some people talk about, Acharya talk about multiplex world. So we've got the key idea is pluralism. You know, then you could countering language of civilizational states. You've got the China civilizational state, the Indo one, the Russo, the Orthodox one in one way or another. And of course, the political West one. So, you know, there's this idea that, you know, multi-polarity. multi-order world within the framework of the international system.

But that requires one thing. And that is a simple thing, but impossible to achieve. And that is modesty in the political waste. That requires a United States that returns to becoming a normal great power. And this is what is her name, under Reagan. Right. No, no, the other one, the one who was, as a representative to the United Nations.

Amount the power? No, well before that. Yeah, but there was a whole stack of stuff. At the end of the Cold War, first Cold War, which said the United States must become a normal great power. Then you've got all the neocons of the Newland sort, Kagan's sword. He said, no way.

If we'll become a normal great power, the world will go to hell in the basket, in a handcart. And of course, it's now gone to hell with our US-UK interference. and endless militarism and so on. And of course, now we're in a stage where, you know, military budgets going up, but, you know, the world is arming people talking off a pre-war situation.

That makes, you know, I think discussions of the sort we're having now even more important to say, no, this isn't necessary, you know, that Russia, we've just started talking about it. Let's evaluate. What is its real goals? Is Russia a new emanation of Nazi Germany? in other words, that vision that it's always 1938, that any negotiation is appeasement, even any talk to Moscow is a privilege. It would actually legitimate, which is absolutely crazy.

You may like or not like the regime in Moscow. You talk to it. You're in the same for Beijing, New Delhi, and so many others. You've got to have go back to diplomacy. Otherwise, you know, we are closer today to the Third World War, to the apocalypse than we've ever been. We're hanging by a whisker, and yet that same insouciance of July 1914 seems to agripped the ruling elites in the political West, though one is chaired by the sort of language coming out of Beijing, New Delhi, and other places, South Africa, Brazil, which are saying warning signs. So the global South may save the political West and the global north from its own suicidal instincts, which is to go back to war like we did in 14 and 1939.

Indeed. You actually used the word fatalism about what happened in 1914, the fatalism in a kind of way of the great powers that were operating at that time, that they just mechanically moved forward because conceptually it was impossible for them to think otherwise. And can I just come back again, though, to what has happened in Europe, the price of the lost peace, because this is all justified in many ways on the basis of, you know, entrenching the supremacy of the West of the United States. You quote Krathammer, I can never pronounce his name, extensively about how important it is that if we don't have, you know,

we don't assert the United States, we'll have chaos around the world. That's why the Unipolian moment is necessary. We extend NATO Eastwood in the way that we do because that's also essential for, you know, shoring up our position and shoring up the West's position and increasing security and doing all of those things. Of course, what's all done is it's done exactly the opposite. We've actually seen the biggest, the fastest decline,

I think that the West has experienced. in modern history in a kind of a sense in the last 30 years. We've seen powers emerge around the world. And those powers are, when they're not unfriendly to the West, but they are very alarmed and worried about the way it's behaving and are seeking increasingly to protect themselves from it. Now, the rise of these powers was entirely foreseeable. It was foreseeable, arguably, I would say, from the time decolonization really began in the 60s.

It was already obvious then that one day China, one day India, one day Indonesia would indeed become significant countries. But instead of entrenching, consolidating an international system based on the United Nations, which gave the West itself. When you talked about the good West, it's important to remember that the United Nations is itself, to a great extent, a product of Western thinking and discourse.

I mean, it was Western politicians, Western diplomats, the Soviets were there too, who played the central role in shaping the United Nations at its outset. Anyway, it's over-trenching that system, which would have, in fact, secured the West in a changing global environment.

What we did instead is we embarked on a 30-year mission to try to keep everything at a kind of standstill to perpetuate forever the world of 1990. And of course, we're now in a situation where we have, instead of security in Europe, We have war in Europe and where the rest of the world is, I can't think careful in my use of words, worried about us, about us in the West, and is organizing its politics in a way that seeks to ultimately contain this, because that's what it seems to me we're starting to see.

Can I think two points in response to that? First, on the United Nations establishment, you're absolutely right that, you know, the major impetus came from the United States and United Kingdom at the time. But we should also say that the Soviet Union played a big part in all of this, and that China considers itself quite rightly. I found a member because it signed up to the UN declaration of, I think, January in 1942, as early as that. Of course, that was the Republican China. But so the United Nations really was, and of course the Arab world was quite involved. Later on, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was more a project of Eleanor Roosevelt. But again, it was major discussions, debates, the Arabic world was very active in it.

So that's just to say that broadly speaking, your point holds, but one had to say that United Nations, the charter international system really is a part of the patrimony of all of humanity. But the second thing in all of this, when you began just now, is that, you know, we can talk and talk for many hours. And then we suddenly, if I, hang on, we actually haven't talked about Europe, choir Europe at all. And it just shows that its geopolitical and intellectual significance in global affairs is so marginal that, you know, you talk about all this self-defeating West. But that's absolutely the case over the last 30-odd years. But the self-defeating Europe is a spectacular case of self-destructive. as a ethical entity, because the European Union used to be, you know, I used to be a great

supporter of the European Union as a peace project. Look at it today. Look at what Robert Fidzor said after Macron's talk about military things. And Fuzzo was such marvelous comment. And of course, Victor Orban is saying similar things for some time. And after the 26th of February, when Macron said there could be NATO forces, officially, openly, in Ukraine, and feature, I said, you know, what astonished me, there wasn't the word peace at all, this martial, this military spirit in all of this. And, you know, this is what's

happened of the hijacking of the European Commission by an American-style militarist like Ursula von der Leyen. It is when the history of books will be written, I think that the charge list against her personally and that commission of, you know, what is it, Joe, Jungle, Borrell, and so on, and Charles, you know, what a group of leaders without substantive political vision, their responsibility is peace in Europe. That's what we once used to support in your opinion. And they should be working might and main to find a way to end. end this dreadful war, instead of which they're doing absolutely everything to perpetuate it

and indeed to block the possibility of the war ending. How astonishing is that? How deep is the peace lost in Europe? And how hard will it be to recuperate it and to recover some sort of peace agenda when we have, you know, the, you know, that bomb from Britain, of course, the bombast, the bluster, the bellicosity with no limit. That's what's so frightening coming also out of the Baltic Republic's. And it sometimes even makes Poland a moderate when they say no direct forces, which is, you know, when it comes to that, then we know we're in deep trouble. You mentioned a hijacking of the EU. And, in terms of the diplomacy being replaced with this militarism.

But I was wondering if to some extent that would have been not necessarily unavoidable, but the path they were on, because it seems like the format of liberal hegemon, it creates this very uncompromising stance because it's very difficult to absorb any changes in the international system, simply because if it's based on, if it challenges the hegemon, it undermines the existing system or if it also is very difficult to compromise when things are framed as values in which everything essentially becomes any compromise becomes appeasement. And so this has become my concern because the way they speak now is they effectively suggest by, as you said, referring to Russia as the new Hitler or Nazi Germany, effectively put

himself in a position where security is dependent, not on finding a solution to live with Russia, but effectively peace depends on defeating now the world's largest nuclear power. That's quite an absurd position to put yourself in. And even, let's say, the EU and its American partners able to achieve this goal to defeat the world's largest nuclear power without sparking a nuclear holocaust, it wouldn't even be the end of, it wouldn't even be a return to the 90s, perpetual peace. It would be effectively China has already been listed as being next on the block by the Americans, because they also have to be defeated somehow.

It doesn't seem like the liberal hegemony has this flexibility to accommodate these new changes. Also, the inability, I guess, to bring together the world as well. Because if we even put Russian China aside, I think one thing that's really missing in the discourse now in Europe is that the rest of the world isn't following. us. We're all very, we don't seem to mention that the world outside NATO is not joining in on this in any way. So, you know, you can't dismiss it as being susceptible to Russian propaganda or not caring about democracy. It doesn't really explain this all. So it's simply not discussed anymore because it becomes inconvenient. And this is my concern now that we hear this rhetoric, especially from Biden, that, you know, we're going to more or less return to a new Cold War, where they're suggesting all liberal democracies will

unite under U.S. leadership. And we will essentially replay the Cold War again and knock out its key enemies. But the Cold War had such unique features. I mean, this was the ideological divide, was not liberal and authoritarian. You had capitalist and the communist. So the other serious world communist countries decoupled from economic states' craft, which all that entails. And meanwhile, all the allies were willing to subordinate or not subordinate,

but at least resolved their economic differences with the United States in order because the military confrontation had to take priority. I just don't see any of this being able to be replayed. Now you have countries like Russia, China, very deep in economic statecraft, especially the Chinese. You see the Europeans at some point they will, I can't imagine continuing on this path because what they're doing now stripping themselves

of all economic and strategic relevance so I'm just I'm not sure what your views are is there any possibility to absorb these changes in this current or not current of the passing liberal hegemonic system I am I mean you alluded to it

about what is a cold war and it's a big debate whether we should call where we are today a second Cold War. And I initially was rather skeptical about this way of framing. You know, how do we infringe, how do we frame conceptualize international politics day, not international system. You mentioned, by the way, earlier, this idea of world order. I have no idea what a world order is. So I don't use the term at all.

But you have an international system, the charter system. then you have within, well, I do in one specific context, then within international politics, we've got world orders. We've got the US-led one. So we do have, there's not a world order. There is a US-led world order. Then we have the, well, I was going to say opposed, but a different one. So let's call it even the political West on the one side

and the political east on the other. And the political east is a much different beast. So it's not the same as this block politics, this ideological unity, this alliance of democracy, as you mentioned just now, or hinted that. So we have the political west consolidating and look at the joy today in Brussels and in London and in New Washington about how this war in Ukraine has consolidated the bloc, given NATO a purpose and so on. And all of that rhetoric, which, as you say, is suicidal, it's rebarkative, it's hematic, it's simply capital. cannot take in ideas from outside of itself. Meanwhile, we have this dynamic political east, flexible, much more routine. It's not based on block politics. It's explicitly excludes it. Chinese philosophy excludes block politics. It's not going to be based on that

alliance system which we had before 1914 and we had in the first Cold War of the Soviet Union versus the United States. So we have this political east based on, and, you know, they rhetorically keep appealing to the UN Charter and they're absolutely right to do so. Of course, then people say, you know, what about their human rights and so on? You could say the same about ours in a different way. I mean, the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands

who have been unnecessarily killed in Iraq and Syria, we still have sanctions on Syria. What on earth is the purpose there to starve, tortured and destroyed civilized economy and society to this day. It's vindictive. And tens of thousands are dying because of those. These so-called Caesar sanctions imposed by Donald Trump and intensified by the Biden administration. So we have a political West, which is irresponsible, which is imposing costs on the global South, and we have an emerging political east. Very different. But it's key point. Its ideology is Soviet internationalism, But then we would say, and I would say, to both the political West and the political East,

yes, support the UN Charter, but also the values on which the Charter is based. And of course, societies develop in their own pace and their own time. But so therefore, you know, but still, it's a commitment which we have to insist on. Well, not as, you know, teach a master-pupil relationship, which is the way we tend to. to do these things. So we have a second Cold War, which is more dangerous than the first, but a very different one. It's like a game of chess. Each game of chess works out differently, but it plays by the same rules. That is, don't go nuclear, let the great powers not directly come into conflict with each other, and we'll come close to it in Ukraine, of course. So it's a much

more dangerous one. So I'm saying, you know, talking about, can I go back to your first point, which is to say that there's a zero-sum game, that peace depends on defeating the enemy. Indeed, that is a new element as well in the second Cold War. It was never there in the first one. So, so, but if we analyze it in this way, as we're doing, then we can begin to, you know, think about strategies or advice even to government. Because surprisingly enough, there's people in Washington, we saw all those people who were over the Palestine issue in the State Department, those letter 100 or I think it's 200 people, even in Belicose, belligerent London, we know that in the Minister of Defense, I won't name names, in the, and so there's going to be rooting

them out now, in the Foreign and Commonwealth office, elsewhere in government, there are people who, you know, who understand these things. And so therefore, you know, all is not lost. Absolutely. Can I confirm that? I mean, there's no doubt, well, confirm that. I mean, can I agree with that? I know for a fact, as we all do, that there are people in Washington, in London, in Paris, in Berlin, who do not agree with the direction of the policy has been taking. And they are there, and to the extent that they can, they are speaking out, and they're not being listened to at the moment, but they're still there, and they will continue to be. And can I just perhaps pose a question of a sort of rather more optimistic? point now, which is, you know, we're right in the middle of this horrible war at the moment, and it is deeply distressing, and we see this extreme period of, I mean, off the scale, belligerence, confrontation. I agree with everything you've said about the European Commission and what it's become, by the way. And by the way, I should also say, as someone who for most of his life was a strong supporter of the, you know, what eventually became today's European Union.

I feel, you know, deeply, well, questioning of but-a-but what I'd believe before and disillusioned and demoralized by what has happened. But is it possible that this is the dark moment before the storm, if I can put it like that, in the sense that, you know, I once remember reading long ago some passage, I think it was even Haldon, who said, you know, the very end of an empire, there is often a big show of force. It like, like, you know, the wick in the cat, he said, the wick in the, the light in the wick of the cat, which brightens up at the very end, and it looks like it's getting, it's about to get, brighter when in fact it's a sign that he's going out. In other words, all of this activity, this feverish activity, this attempt to militarise everything to seek victory over Russia,

fast and all of that is because there's somewhere an understanding that this is the last big throw and that it doesn't work this period of Western, a kind of Western hegemony, very ugly Western hegemony, ending and that the true point here is exactly the point that the global south the rest of the world is not joining in this you know 985 percent of humanity is saying this isn't something that we want to become involved in they are asserting the charter principles the united nations And they're also saying, this is, we are the forces, we are the rest of the world and we're becoming stronger. And whereas at the start of the 20th century, the West basically was the part of the world when all the decisions were made. That is not true anymore.

So that, you know, this is the last big flash, if you like, of that. that 500 years of Western policy and focus on Europe. And that once we get through this, which I believe we will, by the way, in spite of all the dangers, the world will reshape itself and it will become more stable and we'll just have to accept in Europe

and in the United States that we're part of a world's Commonwealth. I like that word, by the way. and that we have a good place in it if we choose to make the most of it. Absolutely. So we need to, and this is what I'm working on now, is a vision of what this Commonwealth politics could look like within international politics, within the framework of the international system.

You're absolutely right. So that if we do see our way through this, we should have ideas waiting at the other end of how we do it. One of them, for example, I mean there's many of them, but one of them would have to be a going back to that Gorbachevian idea, and I'm still a big Gorbachevian, like it, O'Lumpet, but, you know, of the common European home, or first what I'd be too, and if you want to put it the other way, a confederation of Europe so that all the states of Europe could live comfortably and happily in this capacious, pluralistic vision from Lisbon to Vladivostok,

including our friends in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, and, you know, North Eurasia, a huge North Eurasian Confederation, and that, as I say, from Lisbon to Vladivostok, that would be one of those visions, that we had to get away from this militarized Atlanticism, which is a leftover, a hangover, from the Cold War. And, of course, not for a second, am I saying that this should be an anti-American exercise? Absolutely not.

We work in partnership with Washington, with all those United States, because you, as well as I know, with all of our many, many friends in the United States, just this morning, in the last days, I was working with people in California. Blacks' peace international, peace movement there. And I'm doing many other of those events. So we know that these ideas resonate in American society deeply, deeply. So, you know, the idea of anti-Americanism, we're anti-militarism, we're anti-the-political West and so on, so they're absolutely clear. So, but I really do hope that, you know, remember I won't quote the author of the idea that as we get closer to socialism, the class struggle intensifies. Well, that's slightly, I'm afraid of your argument that indeed, but, you know, as you say, that just before a candle splutters is sort of, flares out and we're in that flare stage. But I just hope you're right. I really do. And,

you know, in this Confederation Europe, by the way, European Union may have its own place, but let them get on with it without its endlessly expansive ambitions. NATO may have a little corner and niche within all of that as well, those who, you know, it's obviously. And, you know, again, it's that substitution, like we saw the political West substituting for the Charter international system. And so NATO has substituted for that larger European security order, which never happened. I mean, it's skeletically in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, it was never given substance. So, and the European Union, it expanded and it claimed to be in a Brussels-centric Europe, which is impossible. Anybody looking at the map, as Glenn suggested

earlier, that we have Moscow there, the world's largest country, and now Europe's largest economy, which, you know, has to be brought in, but on not post-Cold War terms of victory as a subalton force to the political West, but a whole new political architecture. So, you know, I'm often accused by our friends in Moscow, you know, Fyodor Luchanov, in particular, that he always says my problem, that's saccharism, he's such an innate always an optimist, and I'm glad you'd join me in that, you know, without. hope where are we? Well, exactly. That's absolutely right.

Well, so we have to start to bring this to an end. I also want to, yeah, just bring any listeners' attention to Professor Sackwas, working on almost finished with another book, which is the political culture of the Second Cold War, just something for people to look forward to. And I hope I got that title right. Anyways, I really hope also I haven't been able to read. your draft or having access to it, of course. But I really hope you unpacked some of these ideas of what the second Cold War entails.

Because as you suggested and, yes, I was working towards was, what exactly is it? Because we don't, this idea that it's an ideological divide. It's sold in the West, but obviously no one in the East is seeing this is a conflict of ideology of liberal democracy versus authoritarianism, which would be a very weird way of an overly simplified way of organizing the world. We don't have the East is very averse to block politics, as you mentioned. So there seems to be, yeah, very different rules, which makes the question if we're even playing the same game in this new Cold War.

So I'm really looking forward to this. And otherwise, yeah, I hope I also try to be optimistic that there's some new ideas coming because again, this like the current format of Europe, the idea that the country in Europe with the largest territory, the most people, the largest economy, the most powerful army,

that they are the only one who are not allowed to be a part of Europe. This was the recipe for stability and security. I mean, this should have been predicted. So I'm really, yeah, I'm looking forward to your next book. That was a point. So any final comments,

Alexander? Just to say that I completely agree with the last point you've made, Glenn, but I also want to say that people can also read today, Richard's current book, the one we've been discussing today, The Lost Peace, it's tremendous to a force, if I can say, discussing international relations. It sweeps beyond Europe.

It looks at the whole charter system. It explains a lot of the history. It explains a lot of the thinking that has happened. and it discusses what went wrong and what we both lost and that's why I come back to the sadness but also it points the way to the kind of things that we might be able to do

the way that we can find our way through this situation that we're in today. So the lost piece. Thank you. I've just been marvellous talking with you too. Thank you.