The Paul Wells Show - Historian Margaret MacMillan on the shift in global power

Episode Date: February 1, 2023

What can history tell us about the world we live in? Paul is joined by acclaimed historian Margaret MacMillan, author of books including Paris: 1919, Nixon in China and History’s People. They discuss some of the major events shaping the world today, including the war in Ukraine, the fallout of Brexit, Xi Jinping’s regime in China, and where Canada fits in to it all.   This episode was recorded live at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. 

If there's a more famous Canadian historian than Margaret Macmillan, King Charles doesn't know who it is. I've done interviews that covered a lot of ground, but this one covers the world. This cannot be happening in Europe again. Coming up, my interview with Margaret Macmillan. I'm Paul Wells. Welcome to The Paul Wells Show. I guess I should be more surprised to learn that when she was writing the book that changed her life, Margaret Macmillan couldn't find a Canadian publisher.

So she published her history of the Paris Peace Talks after World War I in England first. It was a huge bestseller. It won a bunch of big prizes. And it was five years before the book finally came out in Canada under a new title, Paris 1919. That book ended Macmillan's quiet little career as an academic historian and established her as one of the small group of people who helped the world understand itself better. She followed Paris 1919 with one bestseller after another, Nixon in China, The War That Ended Peace. Her Massey lectures published his history's people. She moved to Britain, where her great-grandfather David Lloyd George was prime minister a century ago,

to serve as the warden of St. Anthony's College at Oxford. She's back home now. But a few months ago, she got a very special phone call from the King. And that's where our conversation begins. I interviewed Margaret Macmillan at the Monk School at the University of Toronto in front of an enthusiastic live audience, as you'll hear. Only 24 people at a time can be members of the Order of Merit. It is the highest civilian honour that the British Crown bestows. And as exclusive clubs go, it makes the Académie Française look like the Sarnia Riding Club. On November 10th last year, it had 18 members, including the physicist Roger Penrose, the conductor Simon Rattle, and the playwright Tom Stoppard. The next day, it had six new members, chosen by Her Majesty the Queen, bestowed by His Majesty the King.

And those new members included three Nobel laureates and Margaret Macmillan, who becomes... Thank you. ...who becomes the second Canadian to be a member of today's Order of Merit with Jean Chrétien. She is dividing her time these days between London and Toronto. She's a former provost of Trinity College. She is a former warden of St. Anthony's College at Oxford. I find these titles tremendously intimidating, so I'm just happy to call her my friend Margaret McMillan.

Thank you for joining us tonight. Thank you very much. Thanks. Do you find when you're a historian and there's an awful lot going on that people get in the habit of asking you what's going to happen next? Yes, and it's the question historians always don't want to answer. We're not good at predicting the

future, and we usually get it wrong. But people do ask us, or they say, isn't this just like the First World War? What do you think? And the temptation always is to go back and look for parallels. I am cautious because I don't think history repeats itself in a neat, precise way. I think you often get coincidences, you get similar things, but you often get differences. And so the world of 2023, 2022 is very different from the world of 1914 or 1939. Nevertheless, I think we can often see parallels or similarities between the past and the present.

My own tiny version of that is that I've spent two of the last three weeks in Toronto and I spent one night on stage with Bill Morneau and I can't count the number of people who've asked me who the next liberal leader will be and I haven't at the foggiest. Do you think the study of history actually helps you to see the future? I think where it helps is it opens up possibilities and so if you know the history of Russia and you know the history of Russia's domestic politics, it's quite legitimate at the moment to ask, is Putin going to last? Is there going to be a revolution? Is there going to be a palace coup? What might happen? Because this has happened before in Russia. So I think we can ask questions. And I think being able to ask a question often is the beginning of trying to understand something. If you can't ask a good question, you're not even going to be able to know where to look for answers. And I think it can also offer us warnings. If the coalition, the British and the Americans, had thought a little bit more about the history of Iraq, they would have known that the Iraqis have a tradition of not much liking foreign

invaders and not welcoming them with open arms. And history could have helped them prepare for that eventuality. Let's try and establish at least a basic list of the surprises we've lived through over the last year or so. I think like a lot of people, you were not expecting this war to even be happening. No, I was taken completely by surprise. And I'd kick myself in a way because looking back, there were so many signs. I mean, once the Russians started moving troops up to the border of Belarus and Ukraine, they were going to have to do something. And once you make that sort of gesture, if you pull back, it sort of fizzles out and you look a bit foolish. And so I think Putin

had got himself into a position. And I really do think it's Putin's war. I think without him, it wouldn't have happened. Although he obviously has support, at least from some circles in Russia. But I think once he'd got into that position, it was quite clear in retrospect that something was going to happen. But I was surprised, and I think I was surprised also, because like most of us probably in this room, I've lived in peaceful countries all of my life. And war has been something that, again, I suspect for most of us happened elsewhere, happened in the past or happened in other parts of the world, but not to us. Historians even talk about the long peace since 1945. And so I think there was a shock. This cannot be happening in Europe again. It was a shock. And it was also, I think, when you looked

at the cities in Ukraine, and I remember thinking this, I live just over here in a high-rise apartment. I thought, as I looked out my window, I thought, that's what people in Kiev and Lviv are looking at. But what they're looking at also is once the war started, the missiles and the bombs coming in. Do you think Putin knew he'd be invading five months before he went in, or was it a last-minute decision? I think, as much as we know, and knowing about how his mind works is a subject of immense speculation and not much evidence, I think, because he lived such a secluded life. I think he was prepared for it himself, certainly. He'd been talking about it. He'd been talking for a long time about how Ukraine wasn't a legitimate country,

how it had always been part of Russia. He wrote that infamous essay in the summer of, I think it was 2021, before the invasion, which I read. Not a great essay. If I were grading it, I wouldn't give it a good grade. But it was something he took seriously. He spent a lot of time on it, apparently, and he believed it. And so I think he'd convinced himself that Ukraine was part of Russia, ought to be part of Russia. And he'd got away, of course, in 2014 with taking Crimea. And the West had done nothing. And so I think he thought this is going to be a piece of cake. And I think there's another reason, too.

I think he found Ukraine increasingly irritating because it was moving away from Russia towards the West. And it was quite clear for all its problems. And goodness knows, internal politics in Ukraine were messy and difficult and was a lot of corruption. But Ukrainians were more and more wanting to identify with the West, more and more wanting to become democratic. And this was a threat, not just to Russia's influence in Ukraine, but to all the Russian influence around Russia. You know, what if Belarusians who had their own demonstrations and showed their own willingness to move out of the Russian orbit. Kazakhstan, you know, all these things I think were worrying him. But I think he also thought, I think he really had convinced himself that this was something that was legitimate.

And I think, importantly, he thought it would be easy. I was at the Halifax Security Forum in October and the head of the Polish army was there. And he said, Putin invaded Georgia we rewarded him with Nord Stream 1 he invaded Crimea and we rewarded him with Nord Stream 2 how are we going to reward him this time yeah which is a Polish way of looking at things and I think people further west have been saying well what a bunch of drudges what a bunch of grumps and suddenly they're turning out to be the ones who've had a clearer eye view of things, people in the neighborhood. Yeah. Well, the Poles have had a long and complicated relationship with Russia,

and they know precisely what the Russians are capable of, I think. And they have suffered. I mean, they've suffered from Russian occupation. They've suffered from what Russia did to them in the Second World War when it shed in the partition of Poland with Nazi Germany. So yeah, I think they don't have many illusions about what Russia is capable of doing. Second surprise, Zelensky lasted longer than the next weekend and Kiev has held until this day. He's extraordinary. Again, who would have predicted it? I mean, this was a man who made his name as a comedian. But what has come out, and I've talked to people, I've never met him, but I've talked to people who know him. And they say, you know, he wasn't just a comedian. He was someone, he was a very successful actor. He ran his own company very successfully. He was a businessman

as well as a comedian. He had a very good team of scriptwriters, many of whom, by the way, apparently have moved into the presidential entourage with him. And that's one of the reasons why his speaking is so good. He makes really great speeches. But even so, I mean, the fact that he wrote the occasion, I think what was so impressive at the beginning was his physical courage. You know, that famous moment, and whether it's true or not, I think we like to believe it, when the American said, we can get you lift out. And he said, I don't need a way out. I need ammunition. And the fact that he stayed there, and the fact that his wife has stayed there, and he has this capacity to speak to people. I mean, I've heard him speak on video, and you probably have too, but he has this tremendous capacity to address people and speak

to them. And I think he's been crucial. I mean, I think he's been as important as Winston Churchill was in May and June 1940, when it looked like Britain was alone, France was falling, it looked like the Germans were about to invade. And Churchill, I think, was hugely important, whatever you think of his record before or after. But at that moment, he was very important in keeping the British together, giving them some hope, and keeping them in the war. And I think that's what Zelensky's done. together, giving them some hope and keeping them in the war. And I think that's what Zelensky's done. It's one of the oldest debates in history between the sort of great man theory and more social history. You sound like you've got at least a bit of time for great man theories and great woman theories. I think it matters who is there at the moment and how much power they have. Take Napoleon. Napoleon was born in Corsica. If he had stayed in Corsica, he would have been a local notable and probably made his neighbor' lives miserable. But when he became head of France, the richest and, at the time, most powerful country in Europe, he was able to do a great deal with that.

I don't think history is made entirely by individuals. At certain moments of crisis, for example, it really matters who occupies an important office. And if there had been someone else in the Ukrainian government, the Russians apparently had a puppet government ready to install. They thought, again, this is going to be easy. If there'd been someone else in office, the Russians might not have had to install a puppet government.

They might have found a collaborator like the Germans did in France. But I think Zelensky was critical at that moment. But, of course, there's a lot more to it. I mean, it's not just Zelensky, it's the Ukrainian people. It's the Ukrainian willingness to fight. What's clear, I think, in the fighting is that Ukrainian morale is quite different from Russian morale. It's really important to the Ukrainians to fight. They're fighting an existential war for their survival. You don't hear reports, and I don't think it's just because the Ukrainian government is suppressing, you don't hear reports about Ukrainian soldiers fleeing or shooting their officers. You get a lot of reports like that from the Russian side. Early in the conflict,

I spoke to Melanie Lake, a Canadian army colonel who led the Canadian training mission of Ukrainian forces shortly before the invasion began. And she said that that permissive environment is huge. The Russians are not fighting at home. Ukrainians are. They're not welcome, and the Ukrainians are helped. And that that is something that doesn't occur to most of us who aren't in the fighting arts, but it's a big deal. And the Ukrainians, I think, have a much better military organization.

I mean, they've been fighting, of course, since 2014 when they didn't do well, but they've overhauled their armed forces. And I think this has been important with the help of the Canadians and the British and the Americans and so on. What's interesting now, of course, is the Canadian, British and Americans and so on want to learn from the Ukrainians because the Ukrainians are learning on the battlefield as they fight.

But I think it is different. And I think what has become clear about the Russian army is the corruption. You know know a lot of those trucks in that big long column that came down at the beginning of the war had tires that burst because someone had bought inferior tires and pocketed the difference. You know there's a lot of problems like that. Their logistics have been absolutely appalling and they also have a very sort of top heavy military. They have a lot of officers but very few non-commissioned officers. And so that's why quite a few Russian officers have actually been killed, because they've had to go into the field to try and encourage the men. Ukrainian army is much more, in a way, much more democratic.

And you get units that are very tight with non-commissioned officers with them. And so they fight as units. And the Russians often don't have that backbone and that support. Perhaps the third surprise on our list would be that when Zelensky asked for ammunition, the West, led by the Americans, were extraordinarily skittish about providing it, but they have progressively ramped up the provision of assistance and they're not done ramping it up yet.

That year-long story has been extraordinary to watch. It has, and I think we'll probably learn more about it as time goes by. I mean, I would love to be in a fly on the wall in the discussions that took place in Germany recently about the tanks. That must have been extremely interesting. But I think that's the sort of thing that will eventually come out. And I think it surprised, I think, a lot of people in the West that the West did actually manage to pull itself together. And again, I think Putin made the calculation. I mean, he has this view, which is shared by people like Xi Jinping, that the West is decadent, it's divided, it can never make up its mind, it won't fight. And I think it's come as a real shock, and perhaps shocked a lot of

people in the West as well. And at every step of the way, it's been terrifying. You and I both know people who say at almost every step of the way, look, this is dangerous. It's risky. Please, isn't it now time for Ukraine to sue for peace? Well, of course, it's dangerous. Any war is dangerous. And what is really dangerous, of course, is the threat that Putin's been using of it escalating to nuclear weapons. It's also dangerous and would be dangerous for the future to give way to that threat. I would hate to be in the position of having to decide how to respond to that threat. But I think what is important is that, you know, the Ukraine has fought. What is going to complicate making any sort of peace, I think, are a number of factors.

One is I don't see any indication the Russians are ready to talk yet. You know, they're planning fresh offensives and they don't seem willing to talk at all. And the second thing, of course, is what Ukraine will do, because the Ukrainians are the ones actually doing the fighting and they are going to have a say. And, you know, it's going to be very, very difficult, I think, for Ukraine to say, look, we can accept Russia having some of the eastern parts of Ukraine. We can accept Russia having Crimea. Given what they've gone through and what they've lost, will they be prepared to do that? I mean, making peace is always so difficult because you have a number of players and the big powers can do what they want. But I think what happens on the ground is going to matter too.

So what else do you want to talk about? Something cheerful. Not yet. You're a great friend of Britain. Is it disappointing? Do you have pangs watching how Britain is, to some extent, distracted from the role that it could have been playing in all of this by everything else that's been going on? Brexit. Yeah.

I mean, I thought at the time it was a bad mistake. The referendum was very tight. I don't think the Conservative government needed to have taken it as decisive. I think they could have taken it as indicative. Instead, they chose Cameron, and then after him, Theresa May chose to take it as sort of marching orders from the British public. It seemed to me very telling. The day after the vote, there was the biggest Google search. I think I'm right, is what is the EU? And these were people

who had voted to leave it. I think the recent polls show that something like only a third of people in Britain still think it was a good idea. But what happened at the time, and it shows the danger, I think, of referendums, is they pose a very simple question, yes or no, and often leave out all the complexities. And the people who were pushing for Brexit made all sorts of promises. You know, it's going to be wonderful. Everything's going to be absolutely great. You're going to be this money part. You're going to have all these wonderful things. Nothing will change. I think if the British had been told that they couldn't take their pets to the continent without getting special veterinarian certificates, it might have made a difference. It's caused tremendous angst. If they'd been told they couldn't stay in

their lovely holiday cottages in Spain and Portugal and France for more than 80 days at a time, it might have made a difference. But the Brexit campaign was a very clever campaign. And they painted a very rosy picture. And basically their slogan was take back control, which is wonderful. But they didn't really go into details. And the Leave campaign was hopeless. And the Leave campaign said, well, if you leave, you will be two pounds and 30 pence off worse a week. You know, it just didn't appeal to the heartstrings. And I think there's been a lot

of remorse. But I don't think either political party, either of the big political parties wants to reopen it at the moment. Labour is skirting around it, talking about maybe trade deals, but not talking about going back in. People I talk to say that they think it'll take a generation. But it's been an act, I think, there'll be many who disagree with me, but I think it's been an act of self-harm. And the latest prognosis, prediction of the British economic status is by next year, British people will have about the same average income as Slovenians. And Slovenia is a nice and increasingly prosperous country, but it's not a big industrial and economic power like Britain is. And I think

there's a lot, you know, the concern about the public services, the strikes that are going on, the failures of the national health. I had an email today from someone who was sitting in a hospital emergency room with someone who needed a scan, and they've been there for 10 hours. We know that these things can happen, but this is more and more common in Britain. I think it really is a worry. One of the lessons of history, he said to the famous historian, is that decisions are for keeps, whether you think they're going to be or not a lot of the time. They're sometimes very hard to reverse. And I think it would be hard now to reverse Brexit. I think it can be ameliorated. I think eventually the British will have to get, I mean, it just, that Britain would become a Pacific power,

become a global power. I started to collect all the different terms that various conservative cabinet ministers, I can't remember their names because they came and went like, you know, revolving puppets. Britain was going to be global Britain, Singapore in the Thames, technological hub of the world. My favorite one was, I can't remember his name, Dominic Raab, who's back in the cabinet, and he was foreign minister at the time. He said, Britain is going to go from being a whale into a dolphin. You know, what does that mean? But these were the sort of things that were being said. And I think, you know, that there were meant to be all these trade deals with Canada, with Australia, with the Trans-Pacific Group. It's not happening, or they're driving very hard bargains.

I mean, with the best faith in the world and with real interest in having a new solid trade deal between Canada and Britain, it hasn't happened yet. No. And we are very good at negotiating tough trade deals. Another thing that I found fascinating, I haven't quite, the statistics, the figure may be wrong, but on the day after Brexit, I was asking someone in Canada, how many full-time trade negotiators do we have? And it's something like 1,200, isn't it? And we have to, because we have to deal with the United States and other countries in the world.

Britain had 12. Yeah. Well, they haven't had to do it, because the EU had done it all for them. Britain asked whether we could spare some. Yeah. Could you send over Steve Verhoole or whoever, because Brussels has been doing all the negotiating, and suddenly we have to to negotiate with Brussels and we're told they're good at it. Exactly.

Exactly. No. And what the government didn't do, they had a very good representative in Brussels, a man called Ivan Rogers, who knew Brussels inside out and was quite a tough character. And I ran into him at something and I said, well, I guess now that the government's planning to leave, they're going to consult you because you never in Brussels. He said, they don't want to talk to me because they think I've gone native. He said, that's what they've said to me. They think I see the Brussels point of view. It's a depressing story, I think.

It's the only kind we're selling tonight. What's happening with the European Union minus Britain? What's happening with the European Union minus Britain? This could be kind of a moment of triumph for Europe with a common enemy and a common cause. It's really interesting, and I don't know, because I think there's a lot of bitterness among a lot of the Europeans about the British leaving and about the way in which they left.

And there's still the issue of the Northern Ireland Protocol. How is that going to work? I mean, you've got this absurd situation where Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, and the Republic of Ireland is part of the European Union. And how is that going to be managed? And so far, it hasn't been managed well. So I think there's quite a lot of bitterness. I mean, the British keep on saying it will not affect our relationship in other ways. And the security relationship does seem to be strong. But I think it has left Europe in some ways weaker on the other

hand there are a lot of europeans who say you know the british was such a pain in the neck when they were inside the eu they were always complaining and always wanting special deals were stronger without them so there was a piece in the financial times yesterday that suggested the center of gravity power influence in europe has been moving sharply east, basically east of Germany. Yeah. Well, Germany too, though. I mean, Germany's always in a way been the reluctant center of the European Union, and now it's having, and you can see the difficulties it's causing them.

There's apparently a new word in German, the schulzing, which means to dither this way and that, which the chancellor tends to do. But I think Germany is having to take more of a leadership role. It's having to take more responsibility for defense matters. And this has been, I think, an important shift. And yes, I think the Poles, the Hungarians, in their own rather peculiar way, at the moment under Orban, are making more running for the EU.

And I think you're right, it's moved that way. And if Ukraine comes in, it'll move still further east. We'll come back to my conversation with Margaret Macmillan in a minute. I want to take a moment to thank all of our partners, the University of Toronto's Monk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, where this show was recorded, the National Arts Centre, our founding sponsor, TELUS, our title sponsor, Compass Rose,

and our publishing partners, the Toronto Star and iPolitics. You spent several years, essentially seven or eight years mostly in britain with the gig in britain 10 years you've been spending more time home in canada since um do you get any sense that canada changed while you were busy elsewhere no because i always came back a lot and i mean i consider myself to be canadian i am canadian and i it's my home country I don't think we've changed a lot I think we're still a very decent country although sometimes when I read the papers you'd think we're sort of on a par with you know um North Korea as far as horrible regimes go I mean I we don't seem to have confidence in ourselves and you know most other people in the world think we're probably one of the nicest countries in the world but we are terribly good at seeing when I'm, I know we've got things wrong with us, but we do seem to take a very pessimistic view of ourselves.

I don't know if you'd agree, but. Yeah, I've been kind of going with the pessimism lately. I took the subway up tonight and I was like, everyone was eyeing each other warily. And it's been a bit of a rough week on the subway up tonight and I was like, everyone was eyeing each other warily and it's been a bit of a rough week on the subway in Toronto. And we didn't Brexit from anything, like we don't have anyone to blame for this. No, of course we have social problems. And I think, you know, COVID I think has exacerbated them possibly. And I think, you know, we have a real problem. I mean, I think, you know, these incidents on the TTC, I think, have been very worrying. And I don't think we know enough yet about why they're happening. And therefore,

we have to know something more about them before we can think of solutions. But if people can't feel safe in public transportation, that is a real blow to life and movement around the city. Okay, let's turn to something quite a bit more cheerful. You're working on a new book. Tell us about it. It's going very slowly, and I'm getting emails occasionally from my publishers saying, when can we expect to see something, which I dodge. I lose those emails rather quickly.

I'm writing a book on the Second World War. I'm moving gradually up in the 20th century. I've mostly written about the First World War. So I'm moving up to the Second World War. So I'm moving up to the Second World War, and I'm writing about the relationship between the big three in what was called the Grand Alliance. So the Soviet Union, Great Britain and its empire, and the United States. And of course, I'm going to write about the three people who were heads of those countries, because they were important, but also because they're fascinating, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin.

And I'm trying to look at how they tried to plan for the post-war world, because they're fascinating, Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin. And I'm trying to look at how they tried to plan for the post-war world, because we're living in the world still that they created. And so I'm trying to understand how it came to be created out of the war. And they spent a lot of time even during the war, as they were dealing with huge strategic matters, they just spent a lot of time thinking about what next. And so I'm finding it very interesting indeed. It's probably a touchy question. Was there any sense in which Stalin was trying to be constructive? I think he thought that he could work, and I think he hoped that he could work with Britain and the United States. He didn't want another war. He probably thought, I mean, given his

whole life and his whole ideological bent and the way in which he looked at the world, I mean, I think his ideology mattered enormously. He thought the sooner or later there would be a showdown between capitalism and communism. But he thought for a time they would be able to work together while the Soviet Union grew stronger. He also thought that if a war came, it would initially come between the two great capitalist powers as they fell out, because that was the way he and his colleagues saw the future, that capitalists were bound to quarrel about controlling the world. And so I think he thought he had time, and I think he thought he could work for a while, both with Churchill and Roosevelt. But I think he failed, as you wouldn't be surprised, to really understand the nature of democracies. And he didn't understand that in the United States and Britain,

governments had to actually pay attention to what their people wanted. And I think he thought he could outmaneuver them and do what he wanted. And I think he behaved in ways that actually alienated both the United States and Britain much sooner than they needed to be alienated from him. I should admit that I was asking potentially a terribly taboo question when I asked you about a book in progress. I don't like to be asked about anything I'm writing. Are you that extremely rare writer for whom this process goes more or less smoothly? No, of course not. Not at all. No, no. I mean, whenever I'm starting a book, and I've started this one, so I've got beyond that stage, but usually when I'm starting, A, I think I have to do a bit more research before I start. And then I said, you know, I reached the point and I said, I really have to sit down and start writing it. And then I think I'm coming down with something. I've got a headache. I think I've got flu. It's probably something more serious. I think I better go lie down. And, you know, I realize now that as soon as I start writing, I feel, oh, my headache's gone.

I feel much better. So I don't mind. I haven't quite reached the point where every morning when I get up, I just want to go on writing. I'm still struggling a bit. A friend of mine once said it's like going up a hill, and then suddenly you start going down. It just gets a lot easier. Have you found this? You can see the end in sight. So I wrote a big book about Stephen Harper a decade ago, God Save Me. And I remember writing the last page of it and thinking, I haven't enjoyed any of this. Could it be the subject? Steve Paikin nailed me. I was on his TVO show, and he said, do you like him?

And I had to admit that I did, and there are people who are still holding that against me. No, I think he's a very intelligent man and understands a great deal about politics. So it was only because you asked me a difficult question that I asked you. Yeah, well, there you go. Where's China in your book?

Is it anywhere in your book? It will come in because China was, well, Chiang Kai-shek was there at a couple of the big allied conferences in Cairo. And I've discovered he kept a diary, which is quite interesting. You know, it was expected that China would going to be one of the major fronts in the war against Japan. You know, until about the end of 1944, the Allies were planning for a major land offensive in China because the Japanese occupied so much of it. And I think it was felt that China was going to be a key player in the defeat of Japan. And that changed, of course. But I think Roosevelt in particular wanted China to be, he had this vision of the four policemen for the post-war world, the three allies and then China. And China would be sort of the regional policeman for Asia. And so China will come in, you know, because it was something that the allies thought a lot about, particularly because Roosevelt wanted to think about it. You see where I'm going with the question. China is the other big piece of the puzzle that we

haven't really discussed yet. And it feels like something's happening vis-a-vis China's position in the world in the last year or so. It's interesting, isn't it? Because I think there's been a sort of pessimism in the West, probably until very recently in government circles and elsewhere, that China's unstoppable, that it seems to know exactly what it wants to do. It has enormous economic power. It's got this huge influence around the world. Xi Jinping has got almost complete control over it, particularly since he's now been appointed essentially for life, as far as I can see, as head of the party and president of China. And now we're seeing cracks.

And it's quite clear that the lockdown, the complete and total lockdown didn't work, the complete and total lockdown didn't work, that people have fed up, that there is now, I think, more criticism and more resistance to the government than anyone had expected. And Xi Jinping's position, I think, is more in question. He's still enormously strong, but perhaps more in question than it has been. I mean, he's accumulated a huge amount of power, but if you accumulate a huge amount of power, then you get blamed for everything. Yes. And I think this is now happening. And it's quite clear also that China backed the wrong horse in Russia. You know, I think they thought that the Russians, like the Russians themselves,

thought they were going to have an easy time of it. And this has not, I think, helped China. And the fact that Russia has shown itself to be so incompetent, I think is the right word, militarily, doesn't make it look like a very reliable ally. And you notice the Chinese have been pulling back a bit. And I think Xi Jinping said fairly recently that the negotiations should happen. So I think his position is still strong. But there will be a great many people in China who will be looking for any sign of weakness. I mean, he has managed to alienate a great many people. I mean, his successive purges of the party, his, you know, attacks on big business. I mean, all of this has put him in a powerful position, but it's also made him a lot of enemies. And I think that if

anything goes wrong, it is quite possible that, quite possible that there will be those who think the time has come for him to go. I'm not expecting anything very dramatic soon, but it's looking different, isn't it? And there's also the demographic problem, which we're all now more aware of. For seven or eight years, it seemed like China was ascendant in the world and that he was ascendant both within the party and over the entirety of the Chinese population. And now none of that seems quite as sure. Yeah. You see it. I mean, he's also managed, if you think of his foreign policy,

he's managed to alienate most of China's neighbors. Relations with India are very bad. There have actually been clashes on the common border they share up in the high Himalayas. South Korea is not a friend. Japan is now thinking of upping its defense budget in response to Chinese moves in the seas around Japan and is contemplating, I understand, getting nuclear weapons, which is a rather alarming prospect indeed, but Japan could certainly do it. He's alienated, China's alienated the Philippines, alienated South Vietnam. I mean, you know, it's a long list. I mean, China's really only good local friend is North Korea, which quite frankly, if I was looking for friends,

I wouldn't look there. Well, they're kind of like Canada, aren't they? Certainly. Can Canada be anything but a spectator to most of this? So the Minister of Foreign Affairs brought down an Indo-Pacific strategy last month. Have you read it? No. Have you? Oh, God, no. I'm waiting for the movie. But I mean, it's an eternal question. Can we have any influence except as members of alliances,

and even then? I think we have to have influence as members of alliances. I mean, I think we have always been a multilateral power. I mean, we came of age inside the British Empire and became, I think, an important player within the British Empire, certainly by the time of the First World War and in the 1920s and 1930s. Then after the Second World War, we were one of the founder members of NATO. In fact, we played a very important part in founding NATO. We really pushed for that. And so I think we have a strong tradition of multilateralism, which makes sense. It is partly a balance against the United States. It's partly a way of influencing the United States. I think both of those have been considerations for us. I think we also have a sort of power, which is perhaps not multilateral and not part of a group,

and that is simply we have soft power. We set an example. We're seen as a good power. We're seen as a power which helps others. We have done a lot over the years, and we're seen as a power to emulate. And so in that, I think we have a sort of individual power. But I think we have to work within alliances. I think our fundamental problem is that we're not many people in a huge

piece of real estate. And it's a huge piece of real estate which has things that other people want. And I think increasingly we're going to have to, and we are thinking about the Arctic, with climate change, which of course is the existential problem. But with climate change, what is happening is the Arctic's becoming more accessible. I find it ominous that China now describes itself as an Arctic and Antarctic power. But it shows a sort of aspiration. But there will be things there that powers such as China want, and we're going to have to think about how we manage that. How does one get informed that one has become a member of the Order of Merit? I got an email which said, please phone the King's secretary

on this number. And so I thought, what's this about? And so I phoned and this voice said, Buckingham Palace. And I said, can I speak to the King's private secretary? He said, who are you? So I said, well, I got a message to call the King's private secretary. So I did. And so that's how I found out. And then he was extremely nice. And he said, oh, thank you for calling back. And I said, you know, what's it about? And he said, well, we've been taking advice on the order of merit. And so I thought, honestly, and I'm not making this up, I thought they're going to say such and such an historian has been mentioned. What do you think? And I said, well, how can I help? And he said, no, no, you've been nominated. So at that point, I sort of babbled.

I didn't make much sense. I said, what? Anyways, that's how I found out. These things are not competitive. But your great-grandfather was David Lloyd George, the prime minister of Britain. Was he a member of the Order of Merit? Yes. OK.

When I found out about it, I went and looked it up. Wikipedia has a list of everyone. So I went to Wikipedia and looked it up. And he was. And each one, I looked at the order. Each one has a number on it. And my number is 31. So I looked to see who was number 31. But I think it doesn't work exactly like that, because you have to give it back. And so it's recycled. Wow. A friend of mine had to take, can I tell a story about it?

Absolutely. A friend of mine had to take one back, when your heirs have to take it back. And a friend of mine took back one for someone he knew who died. And he thought, well, it'd be some sort of ceremony. So he rang up Buckingham Palace and said, I've got to return an order of merit. Oh, they said, could you pop it in an envelope and drop it at the gate? Anyway, mine is carefully hidden in Oxford. I'm terrified of losing it. This is why I have, as you might have heard earlier, just a tremendous sentimental attachment to all of this, even though my deal with the royal family is I support the institution

if I get to ignore the people. But this tie with Britain gives us all this weird stuff to think about. I know. I know. And I never in my life thought I'd get a decoration like this. But it is quite nice. And it's quite nice to think of others who've had it. And it's quite nice to be, I mean, more than nice to be in this extraordinary group of people. It is quite something. Well, it must be just tremendously touching. Yeah, it really was. Did you meet the king? I did, because he presented them to us. It was all actually done in St. James's Palace.

And we were each allowed to bring one person with us. I brought my youngest brother, who was very sweet and came especially for it. And we were told what to do. And they said, you don't have to curtsy if you don't want to. Because I was a bit, I thought I'm going to fall over for sure, because I'm very tall and rather clumsy. Anyway, but I did a sort of curtsy. And the king was very nice and presented this to us all. and then we had lunch, which was nice. What do you do when you're not doing history? I play tennis very badly. I see a couple of my tennis friends here, and they can confirm that. I read other things. For some reason, academics love murder mysteries.

Every academic I know reads lots of them. I don't know if you read them, but I read tons of them. No, not nearly enough. Very few, actually. No, I don't know whether it's academics sort of longing to murder each other and we just like to read them or it's an outlet of some sort. I don't know why, but it seems to be an occupational hazard. You wrote a biography of Stephen Leacock at one point. Yeah. Wonderful humor writer and prominent economist. Very interesting man. I mean, he was a great sort

of public intellectual. I've always found, but I didn't like all his writing, but he wrote some extremely funny things. And I still think Sunshine Sketches is absolutely wonderful. And I was interested, it was a series that Penguin were doing, and they said you could choose who you wanted, and they wanted sort of unexpected choices. And I thought, I'll write about him. And he wasn't an easy person. I think he could be very grumpy. I think we've covered the waterfront quite nicely. Have we left ourselves very depressed and everyone else very depressed? Probably. Well, that's why I wanted to end with Stephen Leacock.

Okay. Margaret MacMillan, thank you so much for gracing us with your presence. Oh, come on. Thank you for inviting me. And filling us in on current affairs. And I hope we get another chance to talk again soon. I really enjoyed it. Thank you very much.

Thanks to you all. Thanks for listening to The Paul Wells Show. The Paul Wells Show is produced by Antica in partnership with the National Arts Centre and the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. It's published by the Toronto Star and iPolitics. Thanks to our founding sponsor, TELUS,

and our title sponsor, Compass Rose. Our senior producer is Kevin Sexton. Our associate producer is Hayley Choi. Our executive producer is Lisa Gabriel. Stuart Cox is the president of Antica. If you're enjoying this show, spread the word. We'll be back next Wednesday. you