The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Dialogue with Sarah Paine: the rise of the Russia-China axis

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

Most geopolitical experts agree that we have entered into a new cold war. The rise of the China-Russia axis and its threat to the international rules-based order is of growing concern to western powers. On this Munk Dialogue, we’re speaking with Sarah Paine, University Professor of History and Grand Strategy at the US Naval War College. Sarah explains what is motivating leaders like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin to act aggressively towards their neighbours, and how western powers should respond to these acts of aggression. In short: what can we learn about the wars of the 20th century to prevent a devastating global war in the 21st? The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 15+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Kieran Lynch  Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You don't help the poor by making everybody poorer. The media has a frame, and the frame is Israel is the oppressor, and the Palestinians are the oppressed. I shouldn't be forced to acknowledge my privilege unless I desire for that to be part of my interaction with somebody else. What I know to be true and what all of my fellow Gen Z know to be true is that this is the most talented generation yet. With respect to every indicia of disadvantage, there is still a racial hierarchy. And though I am, of course, an Anglo. I'm certainly not a fucking Saxon. Hello, monk listeners.

Roger Griffiths here, your host and moderator. Welcome to this, our continuing conversations called the monk dialogues. These are in-depth questions and answers with some of the world's sharpest minds and brightest thinkers. On each monk dialogue, we go deep into the big issues and ideas driving the public conversation. Well, most geopolitical experts would agree that we've entered into a new Cold War. the rise of the China-Russia access and its threat to the rules-based international order is of growing concern to Western powers. In this monk dialogue, we're speaking with Sarah Payne,

University Professor of History and Grand Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College. Sarah explains what is motivating leaders like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin to act with increasing aggressiveness towards their neighbors and how Western powers should react. In short, what can we learn from the wars and conflicts of the 20th century to prevent the risk of widespread conflict in the 21st? Sarah Payne, welcome to the Monk Dialogues. Thank you very much. I've got to begin with a disclaimer, which is whatever you ask me, whatever I say, these are my ideas.

They don't necessarily reflect those of the U.S. government, the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, along where I work at the Naval War College. I hope that's clear. Understood, understood. So we, yeah, we'll have a back and forth here and understand this is the voice of Sarah Payne talking to us, not the U.S. Naval War College. Let me begin, Sarah, with the interview of the week before last, featuring Vladimir Putin in conversation with Tucker Carlson. Two hours of a level of exposure, at least we in the West have not. had to Putin, to his thinking, to his kind of obsession with Russian and Ukrainian history.

I'm wondering if you could begin this interview by just helping us understand what should we have taken away from that conversation. What are some of the maybe useful insights about Putin's mindset, about what might happen next in the war in Ukraine? I am not confident to analyze Putin's mindset or anybody else's mindset, but I have a I will give you some concepts from teaching strategy that I think help you analyze all wars, this one included. And one of the key concepts are limited or unlimited objectives. Limited objectives you can negotiate about. Does Putin want half of Dombas? And you can negotiate over that one. An unlimited objective means at the end of the day, if the person with

the country with the unlimited objective wins, the other side is completely defeated. They have no say on whether they are totally annihilated or whether they're allowed to live under whatever circumstances they are. If someone has unlimited objectives, for instance, of the sort that Hitler had against the West or France and Britain back in the day, if you compromise with them, it's called impeachment because you're setting them up actually to come in for the kill.

If they have limited objectives, by all means, negotiate, because you will have something to say at the end of those conflicts. So if you decide that Putin has unlimited objectives, and I believe in that Tucker Carlson interview, he made very clear that his objectives are unlimited, he said there's no place for Ukraine to exist. then negotiating thinking you're going to get a negotiated settlement you won't it'll be the annihilation of Ukraine so I think it's very important to understand those differences when you're looking at different wars what did you either hear in that interview or in other statements from the Russian government that give you the sense that their objectives are unlimited other analysts are hypothesizing in fact that Russia may be open to a negotiated settlement. Putin almost seemed to have indicated as much in that interview. So I want to understand a little bit more about why you think there's a set of maximal calculations

still driving Russia's strategy and thinking when it comes to the war in Ukraine. I think you should take leaders seriously what they say, whether they're dictators or not dictators. When they make very public statements over and over again, I think you should take it seriously. And he has said over and over again that Ukraine doesn't exist and that Russia should own it and his objectives are totally. He said it over and over again and asked for a negotiated objectives. We've done that, the Ukraine did that before with the Minsk agreements, which Putin has thrown out the window. So you've already had one example of compromise in the past. which was no compromise.

It was just a breathing space to come back for the kill. But Putin's been clear on this. This isn't, I'm not making it up. He's the one who says what he says. Right. I guess what I'm struggling with, and maybe many people trying to process the statements coming out of the Russian government,

both in the New York Times weeks prior to this interview, now in the interview itself, is a Russia that obviously has, been pretty beaten up militarily by this war, which is experiencing extensive sanctions across its economy that is isolated in a way that it really has not been in over a generation. So I guess what I'm trying to figure out here is shouldn't these pressure points that we in the West have deployed against Russia militarily, executed diplomatically, technologically, the various kind of sanctions that are now limiting technological transfer.

transfers to Russia. Should we conclude from your argument that Russia's ambitions are still maximal means that our policies and approaches aren't working? I'm going to give you another concept, which this is from teaching for years I've been teaching strategy. I'm a historian by I've been teaching a course on strategy. And this is what I've learned. I'm going to pass to you the tools, the analytical tools, some of them I've learned. So then you can go apply them as you wish. Another one is value of the object. What is the value of victory? And you've got to define what that is for Putin, for the Russian people, for Zelensky, for the Ukrainian people, and for various countries and voters in different Western countries, etc. Putin has made clear that the value of the object is enormous for him personally. And now that he's made the decision to launch, it's probably existential for him. For the Russian people, you go, well, wait a minute, it's not remotely existential for them because Ukraine's never going to invade them. That would be crazy land for the Ukrainians to do that.

And they've never said that that was something they wanted to do in the first place. For the Zelensky, it's obviously existential since day one when Putin sent in the hit squad to kill him and his family. And it's obviously existential for the Ukrainian people. if you look what's happened to, I mean, it's not the normal thing to go kidnap lots of children and then forcibly have them adopted, which is going on. And the level of brutality and so much of it's gratuitous it's going on with the Russians. It's mind-blowing. So for the valley of the object for Zelensky and the Ukrainian people is enormous.

Then let's go further out to immediate neighbors like Baltic states, Poland. they think they're next as menu items. And Putin has also indicated that he thinks the implosion of the Soviet Union was one of the great tragedies of human history. And he wants to fix that one, presumably get back the Soviet Empire. So if you look at the Eastern European countries that for years were under Soviet domination, for them, slipping the leash has been the miracle of the last generation, where their living standards have gone up, et cetera, et cetera. The possibility of losing that, value of the object, high. Now go further west to Europe, going, all right, if Ukraine is the outer buffer where the hot war goes, that's a lot better than moving into down the coast of the Baltic or let alone getting into Poland. Then you look at the United States where way off, or Canada, way off.

you go, well, even if Europe all goes down, that'll wreck our economies, but we're a long way off, and then flip it around. Well, how expensive is it really for the West to provide adequate military support to the Ukrainians who are doing all the fighting, unlike in the wars in the Middle East where the locals had trouble for doing the fighting? You look at it, well, that's cheap, actually. And if you think about it, how much does it cost to support Ukraine vis-a-vis the degradation, of Russian military power that has occurred. It's been enormous. So it's a good investment. Now, let's go back to the sanctions and other things and why it hasn't gotten Vlad the bad to back off.

For him, the value of the object's huge. So when you think about what does sanctions really do and you can look over, I'm editing a book on sanctions. I'll figure out more after I've edited the book. But my sense of it now is that sanctions don't usually force. anyone to do anything. What they do is they're like the chemotherapy of the West where you're going to shrink the tumor. So that if you, what sanctions do is they decrease growth rates. So the cumulative effects of the growth that fails to happen over several generations is what North Korea looks like. You let it go on for three generations. That's how Russians are going to live. And it doesn't solve the North Korean problem. It's still there. But it's much smaller a problem than it would be if

North Korea had vibrant growth rates. So that's the purpose of sanctions. Why do it? Well, you really want to send Canadian young men to go fight in Ukraine? I don't think so. But sanctions is a very good way of imposing the costs right on Russia where they belong. If they want to take territory, this is the economic consequences of doing. it. And then I would want to add another footnote. What's truly tragic is Putin, and many other dictators, but Putin in particular, misidentifies the basis of power. He thinks it's territory. And if that were the case, you go, well, Singapore, it's located on nowhere. And it's amazing Singapore. It's the ability to have a commerce-driven economy. That's the source of

power since the Industrial Revolution. But that message has not reached Putin. And his background is a KGB agent. It's not an economist. If you're enjoying the Monk Debates podcast, come over to our website at triple w monkdebates.com. That's MUNK DebateswithanS.com and check out our free monk membership. As a complimentary monk member, you get all kinds of great perks and benefits, access to our weekly email, summarizing our best debates. Vance ticketing privileges at our main stage debates, special news information, and offers all courtesy of the Monk Debates. You can grab your complimentary monk membership again right now at triple W monkdebates.com. Simply look to the top navigation on the website and follow the links.

Thanks in advance for joining our community. Let's talk a little bit more about Grand Strategy. What's happened in the ensuing now soon to be yet another anniversary that will celebrate or mark for this war is that Russia and China have deepened their relationship. North Korea has been released from its international isolation to find a new and powerful and potent ally in Russia. Would you acknowledge that the strategy that's being applied to this war from the war, West is incurring costs for us in terms of larger geopolitical events that have seen the increasing rise and pairing of authoritarian regimes, non-democratic actors like China, like Russia, like North Korea, who are being forced out of necessity or desire to work more closely together to resist our theory of the case, to push back against the liberal international order.

Is that ultimately in our interest? All wars impose costs, horrific costs. They're the worst way for human beings to solve their differences. However, we don't choose if other people wage war on us. Ukraine did not choose to have Russia launched the day it launched. Ukraine had the choice of either don't resist and the Russians will roll right over and they had a long list of people who they were going to execute. In fact, that was apparently what was going on in their initial executions.

They had lists of people and they just capped a lot of people. Or if you resist, then you're going to get into these tradeoffs and costs. So without a doubt, there are costs. Now, back to the rules-based order. That's the order that made China rich. That is the order that makes people rich. Why? Because instead of fighting each other and trying to take over each other,

territory, you simply sign on to the treaties that you want to sign on to with the provisos that you want and work in the international organizations you want to and then influence them from within. And that is by far the cheapest, most efficient way to run transactions. And that's what a lot of our economic growth is based on. And in fact, if you look at the inter-Cole War period, which is what I call it between the last one and the current one, that's when this massive growth occurred. Well, that's over because Russia and China have decided that they want to flip the chessboard because they want to be in dominant positions. It's a horrendous mistake. They would do so much better joining the party with everyone else. And China's recent experience proves it.

And Xi Jinping, ever since he took power, has been unwinding at all. It's a mistake. It's a But he's a dictator, so he's going to double down on it. Is it a mistake, though, that we in a way have participated in, or at least exacerbated, both in Ukraine and in Taiwan, isn't the West and the United States military in particular pushing up against geographies that we know have those, quote, absolute values for belligerents like Russia and China, that their sense of intensity, their feelings of empire, history, and identity are bound up in territories that we seem at times unable to leave alone. So do you acknowledge that we have some role or some involvement in both the

creation of the conflict or the preconditions of the creation of war in Ukraine and the danger increasingly of war with China over Taiwan? I can't speak to Canadians, but I'll speak to America. Americans, Americans assume that the world hinges on what they do or don't do. And then we blame our presidents for whatever we think it is. And it's incredible hubris. You're talking about national identities of Russia and China. That has to do with what hundreds of millions of people think. If you add it together, it's well over a billion of how they identify themselves. And so that is, is fairly resistant to any outsider changing that. So to me, it's a presumption that what the United States does or doesn't do is going to change someone's identity.

But to go back to your other part of your comment about going right up to people's shores, the maritime rules-based orders, A, it is maritime. Why? Because all the trade, most of the trade that goes through, and most of the communication, for instance, our communication right now is going through undersea cables. That's where most of it goes. And it's all based on the freedom of navigation and the freedom to communicate. And if you think about the oceans, there's a world's original network connecting everyone to everything.

And freedom of navigation, freedom of information going over these oceans, this is key to the rules-based order. So when China goes, okay, we're going to own the entire South China Sea, East China Sea, right up to the Philippine border. order. If you look at a map, it's ludicrous. If that is the way of the future, the maritime order is done because you can't get anything through anymore. So you've pegged it that there are two fundamentally different ways of looking at the world. One of them is about universal rules and the oceans as commons and international law. That's one way. And if you're a continentalist like China or Russia, you go, this is outrageous. What are you talking about this hubris of international laws and rules. The other way is a spheres of influence. I have my spheres of influence,

Ukraine's in it. I'm going to do whatever I want to the Ukrainians and you have no say about it whatsoever. And then you wind up with these warring spheres of influence to expand where the rules apply. It's incredibly wealth destroying. Take a look at Ukraine. Look at all the wealth that's been destroyed by the cities. And even if Russia takes it, it's going to be a smoke. Hulk that it lacks the wealth to make any money come out of it. It is such a mistaken perception on Putin's part and Xi Jinping's part, but guess what? We can't change what they think. They have to come to their own decisions. So don't expect it to happen fast. It's a long-term thing changing. And if you think about why did the last Cold War end? There are many reasons, many things contributed

to it, but one key was the Russians changed their mind. Gorbachev's generation had a real rethink of who they were, who they wanted to be, what they wanted to do. And Putin and I don't think that was a terrible mistake. But ultimately, that generation of leaders came to its own conclusions. You can't force them to. You can't force them to, but as we are in Ukraine and as is happening in Taiwan, in terms of the extension of sophisticated military systems and other ways that will presumably allow the Tijuana to have a chance of defending themselves against a Chinese takeover.

Do these things represent a real commitment on the part of the West and the United States in particular to defend that international rules-based order? I guess what I'm getting at is when push comes to shove, Are we willing to put our troops, our militaries, our economies in harm's way? Because some might say that the example of Ukraine of fighting a war in a sense by proxy with Russia through the blood and treasure and toil of Ukrainian citizens and Ukrainian soldiers, but not involving NATO members or the American military directly,

why wouldn't China understand that as a model, as an approach that would suggest that we may huff and puff about the future of Taiwan, but at the end of the day, should China wish to reconquer this territory, it's theirs to do so? I have a question. What's the population of Canada, more or less? 40 million. Okay. So it's about twice the population of Canada. Taiwan, something like that, or Taiwan's 20 and change. If you look at all the countries in the world, like how big they are, 20 million, there are an awful lot of countries in this world that have around 20 million people, 25, whatever it is. And so Taiwan is not an inconsequential example, right, of what happens to that. It's not like some tiny, tiny island. It's a very, it's a

substantial place. And you're quite right that North Americans do not want to send their children to go fight in Ukraine or in Taiwan. It's generally don't want to. And this is where grand strategy comes in of leveraging all instruments of national power and where sanctions are key. If you want to have compounding growth rates and participate in trade, well, then you have to play by the rules. And so if China does the Taiwan event, it'll be a tragedy for all involved, they will get the most massive global timeout

that anyone's seen. And you will watch, it will also probably precipitate a serious alliance system in Asia, looking much more like NATO, as all of its neighbors will be scared to death if it does this sort of thing, which is self-containing.

So if China does this, they'll wind up with a smoking hulk that you can't make any money off of. And what's valuable in Taiwan? It's all the engineers. Isn't it also all the Chinese savings by their citizens, which buy your treasuries that allow you to sustain a highly financialized economy that is, as we've seen, very vulnerable to rising interest rates? I guess what I'm getting at is isn't everything a quid quo pro? and that your America's realm of action when it comes to Russia is far greater than that of China. Your levels of interdependency with China, the extent to which China is the world's manufacturing hub, that I believe something like 95% of all American high blood pressure medication is manufactured right now in Wuhan.

I mean, to what extent can America truly, quote, turn China into a smoking hulk without turning itself into a basket case? You would never want to turn China into smoking hulk, ever. What the Chinese don't perceive is I think most of the West would love them just to join the party, play by the rules, make lots of money. Forget about Taiwan. Just trade with them. But they're not. They're not forgetting about Taiwan because this is part of the Communist Parties of China's Hail Mary. It is probably the single largest political military and economic objective they have, which is the reunification of their country.

Correct. But they've also claimed a province from India, which has gotten India's attention. They are busy damning the headwaters of the river system in Southeast Asia, including the Mekong. They've got the entire South China Sea that's theirs. So you're acting as if Taiwan's the dessert. It may well be the appetizer. in the Chinese world order that they envision. And they want a world order with Chinese characteristics. You know full well that democracy is not a Chinese characteristic. And it is of Taiwan.

And I would venture the reason why Taiwan and Ukraine respectively stick China and Russia in the throat is because they are democracies. And dictators regard democracies as existential threats. Why? Because it begs a question. Why don't you guys hold elections too? Oh, Vlad, I guess you'd lose. You know? And this is the reason why what you're talking about is this wish, if only they would just leave us alone. We could ignore them. The tragedy is they won't ignore you. And then the question is, okay, I've got these people who live in a tragic worldview that is misunderstands actually the origins of wealth and power, which is trade, not blowing people up. And how do you protect yourselves and your

friends at the most efficiently? And this is where sanctions come in. So if China does Taiwan, who knows what the military event will be. It could be horrendous. But it will have the most incredible sanctions regime imposed on it. And supply chains are already moving out. And many countries are more than happy to move right in there. It's amazing how fast the supply chains moved in. You may find it's amazing how fast they move out. I would just think if inflation is a problem right now, try stopping bilateral trade between China and the United States.

That might have a rather pernicious effect on Federal Reserve policy and interest rates. But that's a debate for another day. I just want to, in our remaining moments, kind of refocus on this idea of, of where American power and where people who are concerned about American power are thinking today. Because you know the argument inside your own country. There is a maybe it's no longer a faction. Maybe it's a silent majority who have become deeply skeptical about the use of American power abroad. There are others who rightly are continuing to try to defend America's key role

in preserving the liberal international order, as we've discussed today. How real are these debates? Do you think they're highly contested? Do you think it's more of a media conversation, something that's manufactured, that's not actually maybe as important to average Americans as we'd like to think? I have no idea of the data on average Americans. And in fact, isn't that the problem with polling nowadays? Now that we no longer have landlines with everybody so that you could.

And also, since everyone's told, watch out for people who are trolling for data, so don't answer anything. The problem is our polling, we haven't figured out how to fix polling, how to get accurate information. So I don't know the answer to any of that. But you can see perfectly well in all of our newspapers and political debates. It's visceral on what to do about U.S. foreign policy. And I think that many Americans do not feel the connection of the maritime rules-based order and their own personal prosperity. I don't think they see it. And why would they?

Because on a good Navy day, the trade just flows, right? So it's as if nothing's doing anything. It's just life is normal, right? It's like breathing in the room. And the oxygen's there. we assume it, take the oxygen away, and you'd be very unhappy, very fast. And this is the problem with this maritime rules-based order. We just take it for granted. You pick up a credit card, you go where you want, and they'll let you buy, provided it's got enough credit on it to go buy

a Rolls-Royce, right, for a piece of plastic. Well, that's all based on everyone playing by the rules. And this is what is at stake. And there's another piece. I don't feel, that many people think that, well, things go really badly, that it'll have as horrible effect on me. Well, think about World War I, German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, gone forever. And then you have communism, fascism, growing on steroids as a result of that war. Changes everything. In fact, we're still dealing with the after effect of the gift of World War. War I of really giving us a serious communism to worry about. Or I think of also just, if you've

the Parthenon in Greece, it's just this beautiful building that's wrecked and it's a testimony for a civilization that went down. We Americans think, oh, that couldn't possibly happen. Well, in the last World War, you can go look up the Dr. Zeus cartoon. Before he was Dr. Zeus, he was doing cartooning. And it's like within days of Pearl Harbor, he has this America first cartoon with a Guy in his beach, you've probably seen it, right? Well, these wars will never come to us. Yes, indeed, they can indeed come to us. And therefore, now that there is precision nuclear strike, that was not the case in World War II.

The United States could gear up over three years and eventually get its act together. That's not going to be the way it is this time around if it comes to this time around. And so we better be wise. And think about these things. So you're doing a great public service asking penetrating questions that all of us need to get the answers right. Yeah. No, I appreciate your frank answers too.

So let's just end on the last topic that always kind of worries me. And you just mentioned it. That, you know, China is now in its Mongolian deserts building a large set of strategic missile silos that, you know, are part of a new international ICBM capability. Russia is perpetually bragging about its latest generation of hypersonic missiles. We have no serious arms control negotiations between Russia and the United States. How much does this concern you? We know that nuclear weapons exist.

Maybe some of us, in fact, think that they've made the world a safer place because they raise the cost, the risks often of conventional conflict. But they're not part of the broader public conversation, are they? And I'm wondering, do you think they should be? And are you worried about where the world finds itself today in another, in a sense, nuclear arms race, fully half a century after the last one? Of course, it's worrisome. And there's another piece. In many newspaper coverage and things of China, they say, oh, they're such long-term great strategists. I'm going to pop that bubble immediately. So my husband and I wrote a China text, and I did a lot of charts for it. And in the diagrams of all the different wars that the Chinese have been involved in in the last 200 years and trying to total up how many people die, it's incredible. It is so. such a bloody history. And then it gets even better. Who's doing most of the killing? Almost all of its Chinese killing other Chinese. All right, the mark of good strategy is not to butcher lots of your own. So if you're going to go assume the Chinese are great strategist, their history does not

bear that out. Oh, and by the way, choosing communism, that is a really lousy strategy. And they did that all in their own. We told them, guys, don't do it. It's a mistake. They did it. They were determined. So that is not comforting. of the lousy decisions that have emanated from China. And think about Mao, yeah, he unified the country, but at what incredible cost? And the great famine that killed the sort of medium estimate of how many people died in that one. 40 million? How do you kill that many of your own?

It's mind-blowing. And now they're coming to an epiphany of, oh, gee, the one child thing was a bit of a mistake. Well, they make these massive, massive errors. None of this is comforting. So leaving China to its own devices and say, hey, take Taiwan guys and go for the Philippines next, that is not a good solution. Now, is this incredibly dangerous?

Yes, it is. And isn't this one of the reasons why the choice on military aid for Ukraine is, oh, we don't want this thing going nuclear? is in the background. But just because the stakes are high and the conflict is incredibly undesirable, doesn't mean you can avoid it. If it's the other side that is making these decisions and don't think they're doing it because of what Canada or the United States does, it's primarily for internal reasons, right, of who they think they are. or in the case, the key problem for Xi Jinping is he, as far as I can tell, his key objective is to maintain a monopoly of power for the Chinese Communist Party. Well, at their level of development, if you want to keep developing, that is a non-starter because you have these educated people

who want a political say. And if they don't get a political say commensurate with their economic contribution, you get unrest. So what has he done? He's got this incredible 24, seven surveillance state going on. It's incredible. And think about how depressing that is for economic growth to spend all your time doing that and all the false positives of saying someone's a dissident when they aren't, et cetera, et cetera. So that's where we're at. That is no fault of any Western leader. That is the Chinese fault. Those are their choices. But we have to deal with them. And what can I say? I really enjoyed the inter-Colmore period the last 30 years. It was wonderful. When the Russians and Chinese ceased funding insurgencies, so the United States felt there was no need to do that either.

And there was unprecedented growth in Africa among other places, et cetera. Well, guess what? It's over. And it's not by our choices. Yeah. Wise words, Sarah. Thank you so much for coming on the program today, sharing your analysis. is an insights, greatly appreciated by the Monk Debates community and wishing you and everyone at the War College the very best. Thank you. That wraps up today's dialogue. I want to thank our guest, Sarah Payne.

She certainly gave us a lot to think about. If you have feedback or reflections on what you've just heard on this or any of our podcast, please send us an email. It's a podcast at monkdebates.com. That's MUNK Debates with an S.com. Also a friendly reminder that you can grab our. our current affair show that comes out each Friday. It's called You Got a Friday Focus.

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