The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 192. Are We On The Brink Of World War III? (Odd Arne Westad)

Episode Date: June 7, 2026

How similar is today's world to the months before the outbreak of World War I? Could Taiwan, India-China tensions, or an unforeseen crisis be the spark that sets the world ablaze? Are our leaders too consumed by domestic politics to prevent a catastrophic great power war? Alastair and Rory are joined by Historian Odd Arne Westad to discuss all these questions and more. __________ Search IG.com to find out more and/or Look for IG in your app store. __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [e-mail] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Josh Smith Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Senior Producer: Nicole Maslen General Manager: Tom Whiter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members' chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's the restispoletics.com. International tensions are now at a much higher level. What I'm most worried about is some kind of world-class crisis that we cannot foresee at the moment would come along and then we wouldn't be able to handle it. And we'd end up in war. We are facing a world very similar to 1914. where leaders that events run away with them. China and India are locked in a conflict that is really, really difficult to resolve. I don't think United States or China are particularly well placed to become the predominant great powers of the future. If you look at a country like

India, I think they are much better placed. If we don't start acting now on these kinds of issues, then we could get into really diced territory very soon. This episode is presented by IG. So whether it's the vetting of senior political appointments or its costly policy U-turns. The last few months of UK politics have been a masterclass of what happens when you don't do your homework. And the consequences, as we've seen, can ripple out far beyond the initial decision. And the same rules apply when choosing your investment platform, because picking the wrong one can hit you directly and in a very measurable way. Some investment platforms charge hundreds of pounds more a year than others, losing you money that never got the

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This episode is brought to you by Activia. You might already be eating yogurt, but not all yogurts are created. equal. Activia contains over one billion probiotics per serving to survive and reach the gut alive. When it comes to gut health, Activia is the number one family doctor recommended probiotic yogurt brand. Choose Activia. Feel good from the inside out. Visit Activia.ca for more details. Welcome to the restisponist leading with me, Alecester Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. And today we have with us, Od Anivestad, who is a professor at Yale University, but has been a very distinguished professor at many other universities around the world. We're going to be

focusing on his new book, which looks at some very, very powerful questions around whether we might be on the verge of another war and what lessons we might be able to learn from the lead-up, not to the Second World War, so much as the First World War, which he's got into a lot. But he's also a very remarkable person. He's a friend of mine, he's a colleague of mine. He is somebody who, as you will observe, not only speaks his own native Norwegian fluently, but fluent English, like Alistair, French and German, but unlike Alistair, also Portuguese, Russian and Chinese. And that made him the author of an extraordinary book that I admired for many, many years on the Cold War, where he was able to do what I think very few people would able to do, which is to

look at the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union right across the world, chapters on what they did in Africa, chapters on what they did in Afghanistan, chapters on what they did in Latin America, bring the whole story together. Ani, thank you very much for joining us today. It's great to be rich, Rory, Alistair, looking forward to the conversation. Can we start with that very, very big question, which you've been resting with publicly and presumably privately as well, is it does sort of feel like we are in a very, very dangerous phase of history.

And I was reading a piece you wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine in March, where you quoted our then foreign, the British then foreign secretary, Edward Gray, writing in his memoirs, in the early months of 1914, the international sky seemed clearer than it had been. Well, the sky doesn't look very clear at the moment, but are we sort of in that very, very dangerous pre-war period and are we, to some extent, already fighting the outlines of a world war? Well, that's a happy note to start on Elvis.

I'm afraid that you had. at least halfway right in assuming that we might be in that kind of situation. I mean, as you correctly indicate, the problem here is in many ways that if you compare to 1914, for sure, but also a lot of other wars that's happened in the past, international tensions are now at a much higher level than what they were back then. And not just tensions in a sort of broad sense, but tensions also in terms of how great powers deal with each other and generally fail at finding any kind of compromise or any kind of stability in those relationships. So I think in overall terms, what I'm most worried about

is not, as you will have seen from the book, these issues in and by themselves leading to war, but it's some kind of world-class crisis that we cannot foresee at the moment would come along and then we wouldn't be able to handle it and we'd end up in war. One of the examples that you use to try to illustrate this point is the way in which the First World War came out of the assassination in Sarajevo. It's a very difficult thing to understand because as Alice that just pointed out, actually in funny way in the summer of 1914, things felt pretty peaceful. And many, many statesmen were looking internally at their own problems in their own countries. They weren't particularly thinking about international affairs.

And suddenly, a guy who's the heir to the Austrian throne is assassinated. And within a few days, we're beginning to steamroll towards war. Can you try to explain what's going on there and how a place that very few, I guess, British or French citizens would ever have heard of, ultimately becomes the trigger of something that leads to 40 million deaths. So this is the problem in our way. So below the surface that Gray was seen, right? There were a lot of tensions prior to 1914 as well. There had been gone on for some time between all of the great powers that ended up being involved in the war.

But then there was this one act, a terrorist act, in the summer of 1914, that got all of this going. And the problem was in a way that it came at the worst possible time. It came at the time when a lot of people in Britain, in France, in Germany, especially perhaps in Austria, were getting worried about their relative position. And you had that unexpected terrorist act. You had a weak ally, Austria, of a very powerful country, Germany, that took action in a way that unraveled the whole European system. and Germany wasn't willing or able to hold them back. That's the core of all of this, right? And there are those, you'll have seen from the book, these terrifying 36 hours

after the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, returns from his annual frolic in the Norwegian fjords. And he comes to Portsdam and he's furious because he says, you're calling me back for this, another Balkan crisis. I've already had 13 of these, right? And then there are that day and a half when he and everyone else realizes that this time it is really different, that it will be almost impossible to roll back because the wheels are already in motion. That's what I'm afraid of today. Very bluntly, why should somebody today care about this story about what happened in the First World War?

Why would that be relevant to a listener today? Because it could so easily be repeated. I mean, our own time, just like the beginning of the 20th century, one of the major problems that anyone would see is terrorism. are acts by non-state actors that could, as we have seen already, back in the early 2000s, change the whole international system. If something like that were to happen now, for instance, dealing with the situation in Taiwan or dealing with the situation in Korea, my fear is that you could end up in a situation where it would be really hard to hold back.

It doesn't have to be terrorism. It could be other kinds of misjudgments that could take place. but that's what I'm afraid of. And that, I think, is unfortunately quite likely at some point to happen in our own time, just like it happened 100 years ago. You made the observation that what has seen as the Great Wars, it's a very unfortunate use of word, but the really huge international conflagrations that they often happen

because the great powers don't take enough care with the smaller conflicts. Give us a broader explanation of that from pre-World War. one and pre-World War II, if you like, but also how that might be applied to what's happening today. We all know about Iran. We're all about Ukraine. But there are all sorts of other conflicts going on that are frankly just being left. And that is one of the problems. I mean, the idea before 1914 was that these could be kept in isolation, you know, a little bit like what people used to say, and you know, worry about the Middle East. What happens in the Middle East, they're in the Middle East. And that is less and less through today. It was less and less through

for instance, with regard to the Balkans in the period before 1914. So the point I'm making in the book is that, you know, we better try to bring these conflicts, the active part of the conflicts, the wars, to some kind of resolution. Because if events happen that we cannot foresee today, they could contribute to this overall conflagration that we encountered in 1914. Part of the problem was a complete lack of imagination, which I think is the same that we are facing today. There haven't been a significant world Great Power War for 100 years before 1914, just like what was the case of the 1945 in our own world. People get used to the idea that peace is something that would necessarily go on forever.

There's almost no one alive today who have experienced Great Power War. We have all other kinds of wars which are terrible for the people who are affected by it. But Great Power War is something that happens at a different level. I mean, in the first two weeks of the Battle of the Som in the summer of 1916, as many soldiers were killed, as were killed in all wars between 1815, the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the outbreak of the First World War. And that tells you something about the dimensions that we are dealing with. And people just aren't prepared for thinking along those lines.

You were speculating earlier, or you were suggesting when you were talking about where a conflagration might happen, the two places you mentioned were Korea and Taiwan, and I understand why. But it's just as likely, under the scenario your painting, that it might be in Africa or it might be in Latin America. We don't necessarily foresee. And then we see the sort of violence that's going on saying something like Sudan or some of the other conflicts in Africa. What are we missing that the world is not doing what you think it should be to try to bring those conflicts to an end? So a lot of different things, unfortunately. I would say, though, that in terms of the conflicts that I think are most likely to lead to a great power war today,

they are in the neighborhoods of these great powers themselves. So that's why I emphasize Korea, Taiwan, the relationship between China and India, which is getting increasingly tense. I think it's less likely that it would happen further afield, not impossible, but less likely. So what is it that we should do? Well, we should end those conflicts that are ongoing. We should have a ceasefire with regard to the, in my view, meaningless war in Iran and the war in Ukraine. I think we should put much more emphasis than what we do on trying to understand the strategic aims and motivations of other powers. This was one of the things that really went wrong before 1914.

There was a lot of talking, but very little understanding. I mean, these people spoke the same languages. They were able to communicate with each other. three of the heads of state where, as you will know, closely related, Kaiser Wilhelm, the Russian Tsar, the British King George. The Kaiser was the oldest and favorite grandson of Queen Victoria. She literally died in his arms. But that didn't prevent war because there was no understanding of the changes in the positions among great powers that are taking place before 1914. And then finally, I think we need to strengthen international institutions.

I mean, the UN was created for the kind of world that we are seeing now, for a multipolar world. It didn't really work very well during the Cold War or in the immediate aftermath. But it is in many ways, if we choose to make use of it, relatively well situated for dealing at least with some of the problems that we are facing today. But we are not making use of that opportunity. Can you tell us about Taiwan? What is the likely threat on Taiwan? How worried should we be about Taiwan?

why might China go into Taiwan? How might the US respond? I think we should be very worried about Taiwan worry. I mean, to me, using the First World War parallel, Taiwan is a little bit like Bosnia, Alsace, Lorraine, and Belgium rolled into one. It has the nationalist aspirations of people in the Balkans. It has the territorial implications of Alsace between France and Germany. And it has a strategic implication of Belgium. I mean, the only place that Germany shouldn't have invaded if they wanted to. to keep Britain out of the war. All of these come together with regard to Taiwan. The Chinese pressure

against Taiwan has been increasing, as you will know, over a long period of time. And I think there are people in Beijing who are now saying, you know, this reunification, which they see it as, is something that should happen in our own lifetime. The things might not be better in the future than what they are now in terms of achieving these aims. And that reminds me quite a bit of some of the thinking that you found in Germany prior to 1914. But it's also the problem from the American perspective, the United States has de facto been the guarantor for Taiwan for a very, very long time, that there has been no willingness of trying to deal with China on this issue,

except through very broad phrases, as you saw during the last Xi Trump summit. So I don't think these parties would easily agree, but there is a way out of this, at least for the time being, which would be simply for the American president to be, that the United States would, under no circumstance, support Taiwan independence, while China then, probably a bit further down the road, would confirm that they would not use force against the island unless it declares independence. I mean, that's what some of us are calling the Shanghai plus solution, going back to what

Henry Kess and Jory and Joe in Lydid in back in 1972. Is that likely? It doesn't look like it at the moment. Is it possible, for sure? I think it's entirely possible both on the U.S. and the Chinese side. and the alternative could be really, really hard to imagine. What did you make of the Trump Xi Summit that you mentioned? Roy and I talked about it on the podcast recently,

and I was fascinated by the fact that Xi Jinping himself mentioned the Thucydides trap and the need to avoid it. And that seemed to me him saying to Trump, you are losing power and we are gaining power. Basically live with it rather than let it lead to war. Am I reading that right? Was that what he meant by that? And was it deliberate? I think that's exactly what he meant, exactly what he meant. I mean, I think that was, to me, one of the most fascinating outcomes of what we know from the public part of the summit.

This is the reason. A lot of people have been surprised about this. Why Graham Allison's concept of the sedative a strap, Graham is a former colleague of mine, a professor at Harvard, why it's become so popular in China? Because it actually doesn't look all that good for China. When you think about Professor Allison assuming that most of these kinds of rivalries would end in war, the point is that it gives China a big face, that it recognizes China as being the rising great power and therefore the United States using that simile as a great power in decline. And that was the reason why He and Ping was so eager to state this. I mean, you know, looking at the visuals, just how this was presented in terms of the summit, he might have something. going for him in saying that. I mean, this was staged in a way that presented China as the great power, working towards stability, working towards resolving issues, which of course in reality

is not always true, but that was how it was presented. While Trump was the bumbling foreigner who came into this really without having any solution so much of a strategy at all, and those visuals, as you two will know, matter. I mean, they really matter for their own countries, but they also matter for further afield. Amongst the commentary about your book and about your sort of analysis more generally is that because you're so focused on systems and how they come through history that maybe you underestimate sometimes the importance of the individual. Are we not with Donald Trump dealing with a phenomenon that we really have never seen before?

Certainly in our lifetime. Possibly in our lifetime. I mean, so individuals matter enormously with regard to this, as you will have seen from the book. I mean, it's always a question of individuals making decisions. The First World War could have been avoided by people making other decisions. Structure doesn't create war. Individual decisions do. And what I say in the book is, of course, that not just with Donald Trump,

although he symbolizes this better than most, very clearly, we are in a time now when all the leaders of major powers seem to me to be incredibly unsuited for many of the issues that they need to deal with in a very rapidly changing world. I mean, this is one of the parallels that I draw with the period before 1914, is just how difficult many heads of states, many leaders of governments, find it in order to navigate the kind of terrain that we are in at the moment. And therefore, it's very easy to take refuge into one or the other explanation for international affairs.

Either that structure decides everything, which certainly isn't my view, or that it's all about individuals. it's all about limitations on great powers. The truth I think is that both of these matter, but we have to understand the structural part of this if we are going to try to be able to do something about the global situation through individual action. And that's what I hope that people pick up from the book, at least some of the starting points for what that could be.

Is it possible even for someone like Donald Trump who came to the presidency the first time now, more than 10 years ago, unprepared in many ways for what he was? doing to pick up enough through the practice of power that he could steer his own country and therefore also the world in a more stable direction. For sure, absolutely. We've seen that in the past. Is he willing to do so? Well, that is a different story. He seems to me to be overly preoccupied with what happens domestically in the United States and very little willing to deal with other issues, which in many ways mirror Xi Jinping. I mean, some of my French in China, Soto Wachar referring to Xi Jinping as China's Donald Trump because he breaks all the rules.

He is much more preoccupied with his own battles inside China than what he's with international affairs and so on. So it's a general problem, I think, Alas, in terms of the quality of leadership that we are facing at home. One of the things that makes you very different from many other commentators is that you read Chinese. And in fact, one of the things that was striking a Cold War book is you read Russian too. So you're able to hear both sides of the conversation going on at the same time. What do you think you have picked up over the years by being able to read Chinese, read Chinese newspapers, read Chinese books of Chinese perspectives, which maybe some people in the West are missing?

I think it's really important to be able to do that. I mean, in original, if you can, but even in translation, it's easy to get translations, as you know these days, even though they might not always be the most accurate. So I think on the Chinese side, one of the most important. important issues to pick up is exactly what we talked about. I mean, how domestically oriented most of the discussions within China are. But also the level of fear that you now have under Xi Jinping's leadership that anyone who is stepping out of line would be punished for doing that.

Also, how difficult it is to get the top leadership's attention. I mean, this is actually one of the things that remind me of the world before 1914. Not that there was a lack of of communication, understanding, but how difficult it was because of the way the political systems were set up to get the top leadership's attention when it really matters. Shee-Ping seems to me today to be existing within an echo chamber to a much higher extent than any other international leader that I know of. And Putin, of course, although I think his circle, in many ways, is actually wider than what Xin Ping says, is caught in some of the same trap because of his insistence on the war in

Ukraine. And it's only those who pass muster in terms of supporting that war fully and totally that would get any kind of credence in the Kremlin at the moment. And this limits political choices. And I think you see that more clearly when you look at the kind of public output that you have from both of these two sides. You mentioned Ukraine there. Is it possible that Ukraine is one of the danger spots that leads to a great war between the great powers? And how likely is that, given that we've already had four years, as it were, of since the all-out invasion? It's impossible to rule that out, Alas though. I don't think it's highly likely at this point, but clearly things could happen as long as that war goes on.

That could put us in a much more difficult situation among great powers than what we are seeing at the moment. It's the whole framework around this that worries me. And again, I think the parallel from the early 20th century is quite striking. In Ukraine, you have a great power in decline, which Russia most definitely is on most, scores, which has quarrels with almost all of its neighbors, not just Ukraine. I mean, look at the Baltics, look at Poland, further away field. And that great power is allied, or in this case, you know, allied, to the most important rising power in the world that happens to be just next door in Germany's case, Austria, in Russia's case, China. So you have that kind of situation where

easily, I think, if something goes wrong in Russia's wars of aggression, or which there have been a few now, that could lead in the direction, not just of a wider war, but also that China would be, and the United States for that matter, could be drawn much more directly into this conflict. So that's the reason why it's so important to get a ceasefire with regard to Ukraine, not a ceasefire that accepts Russia's land grab, not a ceasefire that leaves Ukraine out in the cold. Ukraine needs to be integrated in a European setting as quickly as possible. And Russia needs to be excluded from meaningful interactions with the West until it has been willing to negotiate a full peace agreement that the Ukrainians would also be willing to support. But that's not the same thing as saying that we don't need a ceasefire. I think a ceasefire given what has happened at the front line,

and out of fear that this could be a further destabilizing factor in a global sense, is much needed. Put yourself inside Xi Jinping's mind now. What does he actually want to happen with regard to Iran and with regard to Ukraine? There he is. We're talking around the time that Trump's just been to see him, then Putin went to see him. I presume those conversations were very, very different. What was he saying to Putin about what he'd like to happen in Ukraine?

And what was he saying to Putin about what he'd like to see in Iran? So I think with regard to Iran, I think the Chinese point of view is almost entirely connected to the fact that so much of China's energy needs come out through the Straits of Homo's. So they need that blockade in all of its forms to end and set up a free flow of oil and gas out of the goal. I think that is the key aim for China. The worry on the Chinese side is that the longer the U.S. blockade goes on, the more of a hold,

more of control on China's critical energy needs, the United States is able to get, is able to be in a position to control. That worries China a great deal, and that's one of the many reasons why a ceasefire and an opening of the straits is so important from Xi Jinping's perspective. When it comes to war in Ukraine, I think this is a typical example of why we are living in a multipolar world today. I mean, it wasn't the Chinese that got the Russians to invade Ukraine. It's something that the Russians decided to do for the most possible motives themselves, and then they got stuck. The Chinese have been gently pushing for some time to find some kind of end to the active war, meaning some kind of ceasefire.

I'm sure that came up during the conversations in Beijing now as well. The Chinese were surprised by the lack of success of the Russian military with regard to Ukraine. I remember meeting one Chinese leader at the provincial level who was explaining to me that, you know, he said it's really hard to explain to the comrades. He said, why the Russian army, which we had such tremendous respectful, ended up in this kind of situation in Ukraine. And that, I think, informs the Chinese point of view. It's not very high up on the Chinese agenda.

China in many ways likes that American resources up to recently and European resources are bound up to the Ukrainian conflict rather than looking more closely at China's own neighborhoods. But I think on balance, and this is actually rather important, on balance I think China would be in favor of a ceasefire in Ukraine. One of the things that I think is surprising compared to the kind of Cold War period is how often we're not really looking at two big powers against each other, but smaller powers spiking things off. So maybe the most dramatic example is Israel, which has over the last two and a half years launched these huge conflicts in Gaza, attacks on Lebanon, attacks on Syria and now attacks on Iran. But you could also have a similar story around UAE, where there was this standoff with Saudi and Yemen and now UAE involvement in the war in Sudan. You could find some examples in Asia where things are spinning back and forth across borders. We're beginning to get a sense that medium powers, particularly in the Middle East at the moment, are behaving more like rogue states. They seem to feel that they don't have to ask for permission from the great superpowers before doing things.

Yeah, and that's exactly the kind of fragmentation that we had in the early 20th century as well. It's part of the challenges of multipolarity is that you have a diffusion of power at all levels. And what we saw in the early 20th century, I mean, part of the reason why these challenges are so difficult to handle was exactly that, that you had medium or even smaller countries that engaged in behavior that if you had had, had, as we had back in the 19th century, more of an understanding among the great powers about rules of the road and general behavior probably would not have happened. I mean, it's part of that age of fragmentation that we live in today, that you see that kind of behavior.

And then you see great powers, as in the U.S. relationship with Israel, that are trying to draw on what these middle powers are doing for their own interests, for their own strategic satisfaction. And that's a dangerous game. I mean, this is very, very similar to what we saw before 1914. And I worry about it quite intensely today. I mean, this is one of the reasons why the Middle East, for instance, you have worked a lot on, that we're seeing today. I think in a global sense is entirely different from what we saw only a few years ago. And all of that has happened over the last two to three years. One of the other parallels you draw from different periods of history is the sort of very broad theme of global.

and also technological development as well, and the role that globalisation's ups and downs have played in preparing the ground for war and technology as well. So bringing that into the modern era, what can we draw from previous experience of the rise or collapse of globalization and the development of technology that maybe should make us less or more worried

about the period we're in now? No, that's a good question. I mean, it was actually the end of globalization or globalization that first got me interested in writing this book, because it seemed to me that their own moment is so similar to what we had in the early 20th century, with a very long period of globalization economically, socially, but had been going on for a very, very long time, and it seemed to be very successful for most of the countries involved, until what was then the predominant powers started turning against.

it because they felt that globalization was not working for them. Just like the United States in many ways was the leader in trying to break away from a globalizing international economic system that the United States itself had created in the middle and late 20th century. And that is really striking. I mean, how quick those processes can be, right? I mean, I remember when I was working in London in the early 2010s and some of us, I was at the LSC, a good place for this, started talking about industrial policy.

And people were saying, industrial policy, isn't that like the 1950s? It doesn't belong to our time. And then you see how quickly things have changed, including to a very high extent for Britain itself. Right. So that is a similarity. The other similarity that I find is with regard to technology, both civilian and military technology. The world around 1900 went through a technological. revolution, the like of which the world hadn't seen up to the telephone, telegraph, railways,

steamships, you know, the first aircraft, all that kind of stuff. And people just weren't able to handle it. I mean, very similar to the kind of situation that we have now with AI and other forms of technological transformations. Instead of creating a better connected world, what happened back then and what is happening now, I think, is that it filled people with fear. Fear, that that others would be able to take advantage of these technologies, especially in military terms, and turn them against their enemies better than what they would be able to do. And this was one of the biggest problems in 1914, was that debilitating fear, very much technology-dependent, that you found when things were starting to move towards war towards the end of July in 1940.

One of the things that strikes me is that it's not just the rise of China, but the collapse of Europe and the West, part of this story. Take the story back not very long. In 2003, the Chinese economy is still the seventh largest economy in the world. It's smaller than the Italian economy. And when Alistair was in office, Britain, France, Germany were in relative terms much, much more substantial powers. You know, their economic weight was bigger than that of China. And cumulatively, they were closer to the United States. Even in 2008, the size of the European economy was the same size as the American economy. It's now 50% smaller very quickly. So is part of the story here that we've lost what Britain, France, Germany, the European Union was able to contribute maybe from 1989

through to the mid-2000s in terms of a third leg to this stool? That's in part to, at least, I think, where I mean, the main issue is what you pointed to in terms of the speed. with which these transformations have taken place. I mean, the speed of the rise of China, and I think other rising powers following not far behind China, such as India, it's not only the dimensions in it. It is just how quickly it has happened. So it's not surprising that other countries, maybe especially Europe,

find it very, very difficult to catch up. I mean, I often make this point when I'm in China, that as an old-fashioned European myself, I do find it difficult to catch up, as I sometimes feel in the United States, which I then use to make the point that the United States and China, at least in some respects, for instance, with regard to technology, have more in common than what either of them have with Europe, certainly at this point. So it's not surprising that people find it difficult to catch up.

What is more surprising, I think, in a European context, is that so little is done to try to deal with the consequences of this rapid change, that it's only very very, very important. recently that you have found the large-scale movements in terms of the major European countries towards looking at their own industries, looking at developing industrial policy, developing the kind of integration within the European Union, which could be Europe's greatest strength, in order to facilitate research and development and the project development that comes out of that. And then finally, and perhaps most importantly right at the moment we're in now an integrated European defense, which I think is overdue.

I mean, hopefully as a leg within NATO, but if needed be, even outside of NATO, the way that alliance has worked up to now. The European security situation is really difficult at the moment because the American guarantee, the Article 5 guarantee under the NATO treaty, in many ways, is no longer believable. So that integration has to happen. much more quickly than most people, I think, foresee at the moment. And Bretton, of course, also needs to be a part of that for the sake of its own defense. What your explanation, particularly about the speed, makes me wonder, is the extent to which China has had an

incredible advantage in terms of its own development by not being a democracy. And I sometimes wonder whether one of the reasons why Donald Trump displays such dictatorial tendencies himself is because he's very conscious of that. He wants things done at speed, whether that, and okay, we may see them in terms of his own personal wealth and his own personal status and what have you, but he doesn't want all these obstacles in his way. And Xi Jinping has managed to, you know, to get rid of an awful lot of obstacles that might have been in his way.

So should we be worried maybe that ultimately there's a bigger battle going on here and that dictatorship and the lack of democratic values is projecting itself as being far more efficient, far more effective, and in the end, far more lucrative for people than the democracy that we have on to. And that's certainly what the current Chinese leadership wants us to believe and has been able to sell quite successfully to many people in China, not everyone. I constantly meet people who are deeply skeptical of that authoritarian argument in China. In many cases, are willing to voice the skepticism. But overall, it's not difficult if you live in China and look at what's happening into the United States of late to say, thank you very much. I much prefer the kind of system that we

live under, even if it's non-democratic, because it's stable, it's safe, it seems to deliver year-on-year economic improvement for most people. It seems to be better able to deal with issues such as inequality. I think that's a surface judgment, but it's a judgments that you can see being made. So I think the main issue is not that we should try to understand what does happen in China or elsewhere as a success of authoritarian route. But it is a success of planning. And the question is whether democratic systems are capable of thinking in terms of medium term, at least, hopefully also long-term planning. Now, I really use this term, as Rory will know, because we have been teaching together that history shows.

But history does show in this case that if you have democracy without the ability to think long term, to have some degree of priority set at a national level, you end up in a lot of trouble. But a good version of this is that democracies have had the capacity in the past. Britain is a really good example of this. To learn from history with regard to these issues and understand that even in a very comprehensive, competitive, democratic electoral environment, it is a good thing to have longer-term plans for national economic development. And I think that's what we have to learn. And if we have to learn from the Chinese in part how to do this, well, so be it. I think there are a lot of things we can

learn from China when it comes to long-term planning in terms of how they have, over a very short period of time, been able to catapult the biggest country in the world in terms of population, out of poverty. They are proud of that. And there are good reasons. why they're proud of it, and we should learn from some of the directions that they have taken. But the lesson is not authoritarianism. The lesson is being capable of uniform action that would also be in place some years down the line. That is the big challenge. Alistair, Arne, let's take a quick break and then back for more. This episode is brought to you by Vauxhall. Electric cars have become part of life on the road

and Vauxhall is supporting the UK's transition to electrification. Well, how are they doing that? Well, to start, their Electric Streets of Britain initiative aims to support local authorities in accelerating the UK's on-street charging infrastructure. And it's exactly what you want to see from Vauxhall, which is, of course, a British brand, a proud partner of Team G.B. Vauxhall's also supporting the next generation of athletes on their journey to the 2028 Olympics. And there's more. Their new Vauxhall Grandland Griffin, a large family SUV, features a premium specification at an affordable price. Whether you choose an electric, or mild hybrid version. Even better, going electric can get you an additional £1,500 pound discount thanks to the electric car grant. Any questions you have about electric cars are probably answered by the Vauxhall Grandland. Search Vauxhall Grandland or visit your local Vauxhall retailer today. Electric grant teas and sees apply. Visit voxor.com.ukau.com for more info. China, going forward, how do we balance one story, which is this is this amazing planning country.

You actually were a professor at Sinai University where we hear they're producing the best engineering graduates in the world. They're catching up on AI. They're right there with rare earths and critical minerals and renewables. That's one story. And the other story is they're in real trouble. Their population is declining. They're getting old. There's youth unemployment.

All the shops and restaurants are shut in Shanghai. property sectors collapsed. China's about to hit the kind of wall that Japan hit in 1990. What's your instincts on this? How do you think about a world, put in really brutal terms, are you imagining a world where in 20 years time, China is wealthier and more powerful in the US or less wealthy and powerful in the US? So I think the general direction now, when we look at what's happening inside the United States and what's happening inside of China, is that China, relatively speaking, will do quite well over the next decade.

But there are significant problems on the Chinese side as well. You mentioned demographics. I mean, Chinese demographics is an absolute disaster zone. That could be said for a lot of countries, but it's much worse in China because of the speed with which it will happen because of the, in my view, misguided one-child policy. I mean, even people who are mathematically challenged like myself can figure out what happens to your population when you have a one-child policy. The problem is that at half the 10 will remain after a generation, many of them will be old and sick.

China will be the first country in the world that is old before it's rich. I mean, the Chinese GDP per capita is still only about one-seventh of what it is in the United States. So there is a great need to catch up. That's why China needs two things. It needs peace in order to be able to do that. And it needs to be able to deal with the consequences of its own part. policy, first and foremost, in terms of demographics, but there are other economic challenges as well. If you were to ask me, Rory, I would say that if you think about the longer

term future, I don't think either United States or China are particularly well placed to become the predominant great powers of the future. If you look at a country like India over time, I think they are much better placed to achieve the kind of integrated form of development over time that China has benefited from more recently, not least because they would have a much younger population. Are there any other countries that you can see with that kind of potential? Yeah, I think it depends on the time frame, Alasso, that you look at this too. So I think the first beneficiary of that kind of development, you know, what we see in a healthy

demographic profile, a development of basic education, an element of involving people in terms of the economic transformation. The region that is best placed in my view is Southeast Asia by far. I think we're going to see the highest growth potential in that region compared to anywhere else in the world over the next half generation or so. I think India is not very far behind. The big question is what's going to happen in Africa. I mean, as you know, last year, 2025 was the first year in human history where we had no natural population growth in any country outside of Africa. And the consequences of that are going to be enormous in the longer run,

which basically means that we will find predominantly, we will find young people in one continent only. And of course, that is going to have a tremendous impact in terms of reduction and in terms of where things are actually happening. Not in ways that are unproblematic, for sure, for African countries themselves as well, but gives an enormous amount of potential when you think about it's slightly more long time. So it could be Nigeria. It could be Indonesia. I think both Nigeria and Asia are going to be massively important when you look at

generation down the road. Indonesia is going to be by far the predominant country in what is the most successful region in the world in terms of growth, Southeast Asia. And Nigeria, if it is able to avoid tearing itself apart over its own domestic internal conflicts, of which, of course there are many, it's also extremely well placed for economic development, both in and by itself, but also because it is the center of a much larger region in West Africa that is growing very fast. Okay, well, then that maybe shifts us off the U.S. European focus that we have. Talk us a little bit about India-China relations and whether that couldn't be the possible

spark of a conflict. I'm really worried about relations between China and India. They are bad now. There has been this idea in the United States, and I've seen it reflected in Britain as well, that because of Trump's policy emphasizing trade advantages with regard to India, that India would pull closer to China, don't wait for it. I mean, it's not going to happen. China and India are locked in a conflict that is really, really difficult to resolve. A very important part of it is Pakistan. I mean, India, especially on the Modi, but I think any future prime minister that I can imagine,

is going to be set on being the predominant power within its own. its own region within South Asia. And as long as China is there backing up its regional rival, Pakistan, that is going to be very difficult. That's what creates a kind of relationship here that is really, really problematic. And in addition to that, China and India are the only great powers that really have an ongoing border conflict amongst themselves. And that conflict, as we have seen very recently, could easily end in a greater war, in a greater confrontation. as it has already done in the past. That worries me a lot.

And I spend a lot of time both when I'm in Beijing and elsewhere talking about that relationship. I think in Europe and in Britain, we do not pay enough attention to that critical relationship, both in terms of the potential instability that is there, but also the overall significance of this in terms of the future. And, Ani, what about your part of the world? We did a mini-series on the rest of politics

a few months ago now about the Arctic and the possibility that the Arctic is the place that lights the spark, not least because the so-called great powers are all engaged and all involved. So two questions in one really. How realistic do you think that is that it could be the Arctic that kicks this off? And secondly, the role of the middle powers like Norway, like Canada, like the UK, what role should they be playing that they're currently not playing to try not to fall into the trap that you talked about before of the way,

world not doing enough about the smaller conflicts? So I think when it comes to the Nordic countries and when it comes to Northern Europe as a whole, I think the main point is to have a better coordination, both of foreign policy and maybe especially at this point of defense policy amongst them. I mean, I think that is critically important because, as you say, it's very clear to me that the Arctic area, Britain large, is going to have mainly, and unfortunately, because of climate change is going to have a much greater significance over the next generation than what it has had before. And you see that when you're in China, when you talk to Chinese leaders about this. This is one of their main interests which in regard to Europe has to do with the northern

areas, has to do with communications, has to do with resources. And of course, you see it even more clearly in terms of Donald Trump's somewhat fosical, but still, I think genuine preoccupation with taking over Greenland. So this is going to be significant. Will it be, in terms of potential, the cause for a greater conflagration? At the moment, it doesn't look like that. But I do think that if, for instance, there were going to be a direction, I think quite likely over the next generation from the Chinese side,

that's going to emphasize China's role in transport and communications across the North Pole. That, of course, that strategic picture will change. and it will change to becoming perhaps the most important communications area in the world, a little bit like the Homo Straitz or the Straits of Malacca are today. Hormuz, I can see big problems coming there. The Chinese economy at the moment, they've got big oil reserves, but it will begin to hurt them. They get a lot of their oil from the Middle East,

and they are a manufacturing economy that depends a great deal on this stuff. and the South Korean economy, the Japanese economy, a lot of the Asian economies are now under strain because of what's happening there. At some point, I can imagine a situation where senior Chinese leaders say enough, right? The United States and Israel are basically choking our economy here. We are going to send in the Chinese Navy to start escorting the oil that we've paid for, the gas that we've paid for from Qatar through the Straits of Hormuz. We're not going to allow them to block the straits. can we get there? What would happen to make us get there? Why haven't we got there yet? What's going on here? We haven't got there yet for one good reason. You already referred to it, and that is China's

refugee oil reserves, which are very, very significant and which will carry them through in the short term future. But it's absolutely clear that China cannot allow an other great power to control its essential access to energy. It just will not happen. Now, I think American leaders really, I mean, I don't, you know, there is strategic stupidity and strategic stupidity. I mean, there's choking of Hormuz forever trying to control China through controlling its oil inputs. I don't think it's on the book even with this American administration. But of course, the longer that locate goes on, the more people in China will think exactly along the lines of what you have said, that the real aim here is to prevent China for controlling its own energy future. And you saw in the first reports that we have of the meetings between Xi Jinping and Putin,

how significant the energy aspects of that relationship now have become. And it gives Russia opportunities in order to sell more of its energy to China longer term, in order to achieve that kind of strategic stability that Xi Jinping so often talks about. And it's very, very interesting to see the consequences that that has for the Sun-O-Russian relationship, as well as China's worries. So, I mean, to answer your question more directly, could we see a Chinese attempt at forcing the streets of Homoos open?

Absolutely. There is nothing else that China could do at the point when it really starts to run low on oil. It would kill the Chinese economy, and they will not allow that to happen. And my final question relates to the picture of human rights and all the stuff that we used to say about China, you'd see these succession of leaders go to China

that all raise human rights. rights and today we would raise the Uyghurs. Am I right that part of the deal with China at the moment is that if you want to get on with them, you've really got to be very, very careful about even raising those kind of questions, which we used to do as a matter of course. And is that a reflection of their own feeling of their own power now? Because they still do an awful lot of bad stuff. And yet we don't have the Western leaders going through Beijing saying, hey, deal with the Uyghurs better, liberate your freedom of information, etc., etc. Is that just an expression of their own power that they're basically saying to people like us, just

shut up about it. They certainly do. And that's been part of the approach that He and Ping has had to international affairs ever since he came into power. And it's more to go on now, as we have explored, in terms of being able to say that. So how should one react to that? I think it depends obviously on who you are and what kind of situation that you are in. It's somewhat easier for countries further away from China, although they may not themselves always believe that, to stick to these kinds of principles, valuable principles in public, than it is for countries that are closer to China or more dependent on China. Under any circumstance, I think it is important, and you will know this, to differentiate among two kinds of approaches here. One is what you declare in public, and I can see

good reasons why political leaders in many countries, including in European countries, As we saw, by the way, in my own country, in Norway, over the conflict, over the Nobel Peace Prize to make sure war, when Norway had a complete retreat in terms of Chinese pressure, that is easier to say things in private to the Chinese about human rights than it is to say it in public. And I think, you know, I would understand that. I do think that in terms of the direction that you now have, in terms of global economic power, I can see why many leaders are unwilling to engage publicly with China and human rights. But one of the lessons to make that comparison for once in this discussion that we can draw from the Cold War is that it's different in terms of what you say in public and what you say in private.

I mean, some of the Western leaders who are more successful with regard to Eastern Europe, and for that matter, the Soviet Union in the latter stage, in raising human rights issues and problems, were those who were able to do so in private and to do it persistently and consistently in terms of dealing with Eastern European and Soviet leaders. I think overall that is the policy we should follow with regard to China. On your book, The Coming Storm, Now Out, Highly Recommended. And I just wanted to finish my own final question with thinking a little bit about the question of personalities and strategy and culture.

Because part of the story, I think, is a story about how accident judgment, individuals can suddenly trigger us into these horrible global conflicts which you can't

really see coming. And there was some strange resonances. One of them is you point out in your book that people really struggle to get

Austria-Hungary to define what its strategic objectives are in Serbia, right? And that of course echoes with

what on earth is the US strategic objectives supposed to be in Iran? I mean, it keeps shifting around. Then the second one,

which is this strange sense that Kaiser-Vilhelm the German Kaiser alternates a bit like Donald Trump between sometimes sounding like he's on the side of peace and isolation and then sounding like he's on the side of reckless intervention. And one of the very odd things in those few days that you describe is that his position seems to shift around in 12, 24 hours between it's all going to be fine, no need to do anything to we're going to push forward or something else. So maybe just finished by developing

some of these questions because I do think this, the oddity of the inability of policy elites to define what their strategic objectives are and yet nevertheless go to war, the sense that people who we trusted to be on one side suddenly end up being on another, and that actually their ability to read each other so bad, because part of the reason they all go to war is that they all assume that they can get away with it and the other one isn't going to respond and finally that it's their last chance. I mean, this is something we hear a lot from Israel. We've got to go into Iran now because we don't go in now. This is our only opportunity. They're going to get strong. that can be good one. Well, that is the problem. I mean, as you and I know, because we've been

teaching in the grand strategy program at Yale and trying to get to grips with some of these issues in a more generalized discussion with wonderful undergraduates who have a fresh mind on these kinds of matters, you know, it's difficult. But the problem that we are facing at the moment, in my view, is that for all the great powers, that strategic understanding of the other powers and certainly about one's own strategic objectives seem to be pointing downward in terms of understanding rather than upward. And I think some of this is connected to domestic issues

and the preoccupation with domestic issues and how that works. Some of it is connected to personalities, to people who are coming into power and they're finding it impossible to stake out in relatively simple terms, which is what you have to do, what their own country's strategic interests really consist of.

And then going from there, trying to understand often the very different basis on which other leaders and other countries are going to act. Instead, we are facing a world very similar to 1914. Where leaders let events run away with them? I mean, that they are incapable of finding out, how are we going to, on the one hand, pursue our own strategic interests as best we see them. On the other hand, create the kind of at least medium stability in international affairs where we can avoid great power war. And that inability, I think, which you can explain,

and I'm sure future historians, hopefully writing about how we avoided war in 2026 or 2027. When they explain that, I think they're going to put a lot of emphasis on the ability after at least of some leaders, of thinking through those kinds of issues and deciding we may have to take a few steps back. We may have to find compromise where it's possible to find compromise. We have to play for stability, even if it's not the kind of stability that we ideally would have wanted to see. So those are the kinds of things that I find missing up to. Now, can we get that for sure? It's not given that we are in some kind of pre-war situation. But I'm fearful, worry that if we don't start acting now on these kinds of issues, then we could get into really

dice territory very soon. On that very, very happy note, thank you for your, thank you for your time. I've said about this book, Alistair, that it's not something you should read late at night. No, no, no. Unless you have strong drink or whatever you need to calm yourself down. I would still recover it. Don't worry. So do we. So do we. Anyway, lovely to talk to you. Thank you, very much. Thank you so much. This was great. One of the things that I was just thinking right at the very end that he was saying there is he was talking about compromise, not always getting everything that you want, not always getting the absolute security.

And that really resonated with me when I'm thinking about Netanyahu in Israel. Because there is a real tendency there to say we need absolute guarantees, absolute security, and this is our opportunity. And we're going to push on until we get the regime change, we get the no nuclear weapons. And one of the things that makes that possible, I think, is modern technology. the sense that suddenly you have weapons that give you the illusion, that you can win wars with no consequences, that you don't have to compromise. I thought you were going to say that that made you think of Trump, because Trump is very kind of, you know, win-win, not really quit pro quo, I'm always right, etc. Listen, I thought he was great. I thought he was absolutely fascinating. I just love people who've got so much knowledge, but they wear it quite lightly. But I just think the way that he relates, you know, you can't apply every.

everything in history to what's happening now. But I just think the way that he does it is so kind of clever. Look, I think he didn't quite say this, but the sense you got from him is his point about sort of the quality of leaders that we have, I think is a really big part of this. Because having read a lot of the stuff that he'd done, I thought that he was very much, much more about, you know, it's not really about the leaders, it's about the systems, etc. And there's a lot of that. But I think he is, he was much more pessimistic than I thought he was going to be. He was much more, he was, I've always sensed he's got quite an optimistic outlook. He thinks we'll somehow work our way through this. But to admit that you shouldn't read your book

and he's not helping his sales here, that you shouldn't read the book before you go to sleep. Because that's where most people do read books, I think. But no, I thought that was great. I'm really glad we did that. I think our listeners will love that. Great. And such a lovely, without sounding to pro-European, such a lovely advertisement for a Norwegian. I mean, massively multilingual, effortlessly comfortable talking about speaking to Chinese generals, being in India, Indonesia, Africa. Anyway, I thought great. Thank you for joining us, Alistair. And by the way, that is so important. I mean, I'm struck by, you know, traveling around the place, and you quite often run into diplomats from different parts who are stationed abroad in different parts of the world.

And you do meet quite a lot of people and I say, you don't need to worry about the language too much because everybody speaks, everybody we deal with. he speaks English. But you get so much more if you can, particularly a country like China, you know, because you're not having just to read and understand, you're having to analyze it as well because they don't necessarily communicate in the same way. But no, I thought it was great. Really good. Thank you, also. Have a great day. Bye-bye. See you soon. Bye.