 A very important session, which is, I'm going to hand over to you for that, to John Bue, who you'll know from Kings, but also currently on loan to Number 10 Downing Street. John, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Can everybody hear me okay? Excellent. I think we're just waiting for Ian V to turn Neil on the screen, if you're going to say it. There he is. Welcome, Professor Ferguson, to a virtual event at King's College London. I hope you can see everything in the room okay? Yes, I can. Professor Bue. Excellent, excellent. Nice to see you. No, you have Neil's truncated, but nonetheless very kind biography, but just for a memory refresh. He is the Millbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, not Institute, as you insist correctly. Also still a member of the faculty at the Belfort Centre at Harvard. The most impressive thing about Neil, he has a very uncanny and rather alarming ability to write books that very much capture the zeitgeist. And sadly his last book in 2021 was called Doom, the Politics of Catastrophe, which suggests Neil may have known a little bit more about the events of the succeeding 18 months and perhaps he should have done. So our job in this session really, and I hope to bring in the audience, and it's good to see so many friends and colleagues in the audience, both from government and also from the academic life, is to try and elevate the discussion. I don't mean elevate in terms of getting away from the previous quality sessions, but I mean elevate in terms of the scope and the range and the context in which we're talking about the events in Ukraine. So what do they mean, broadly speaking, for the structures and contours of the international order, and how should we think about those events in Ukraine and the associated events and the broader crisis of European security in a historical context, and where does it sit along the historical continuum. So I'll do so by asking Neil a series of questions, and I will studiously deflect anything he asks back of me, and I will open it up, ladies and gentlemen, to the audience with about 20 minutes to go, and we have 45 minutes for this session. I have not given Neil much prior warning as to the questions we might ask, but I have given him some prior warning to the first question, and I think it is a fair question to ask of a historian who's written, thought about global geopolitics, who's written thought about conflict and war, and it's a question, I think, in government that we asked ourselves very much in the early phases of the conflict, because oftentimes you have events in global history, events in European history, where our media sort of rushes to tell a story that something is the most unprecedented or the most shocking, and then the mental focus and the political focus dissipates and goes elsewhere beyond that. I think we are already past that stage vis-a-vis the events in Ukraine, but I wanted to ask Neil, and this is the question I gave him prior warning of, which is how big or transformative an event is Putin's decision to invade Ukraine, or is it to paraphrase someone else in history too soon to tell? Neil, over to you. Well, thank you, John, and it's a pleasure to be with you all, albeit virtually. I'm afraid I won't be able to get to London until June. Let me suggest that, and I'll just have to tweak my own volume settings, or I'm going to hear myself rather disconcertingly. Let me suggest that at this point, it's not one of history's big wars, the one that has been raging for what, 10 weeks in Ukraine. Just as COVID-19 hasn't been one of the really big pandemics in history, one of the arguments I tried to make in DOOM was that we have a problem with orders of magnitude when it comes to disasters, whether natural or man-made. We struggle a bit to grapple with power law distributions. World War II was an absolutely vast conflict. Today in Moscow, President Putin tried desperately to relate what's currently going on in Ukraine to World War II, but it's a huge stretch given the vast scale of World War II, and the relatively limited scale of this so-called special military operation. I think the unknown at this point is whether this war fizzles out or escalates, and that we don't know, John. There's a general assumption, which I have friends who share, Francis Fukuyama, Elliot Cohen, that Ukraine is winning and it's all going to end quite happily. There are people in the US administration who think not only that Ukraine is winning, but that this can lead to regime change in Russia and all other kinds of good things. I think it's much too early to be confident about that. As both Bill Burns and Henry Kissinger said at a Financial Times event just a couple of days ago, we are dealing here with a nuclear armed power, and it seems unlikely to me that Putin is going to accept conventional military defeat when he has a nuclear option. We certainly can't rule out the nightmare scenario that he resorts to using a tactical nuclear weapon to salvage the situation. So let me answer the question with two possible outcomes. Outcome one is it's the 1970s, and this is 1973 only, somewhat more protracted. In other words, it's like the unsuccessful Arab attack on Israel of October 1973, which had, of course, profound consequences, economic as well as geopolitical. Option number two is it's much worse than that, and it turns out actually to be the first time that a nuclear weapon has been used since 1945. I still say my base case is the 1970s, but it's certainly too early to rule out the 1940s nightmare scenario, and I just wish more people in the US and indeed in the UK were worrying about that, because I believe the situation in Ukraine is much more dangerous than is conventionally portrayed in the media and by some government spokesman. Thank you, Neil, for a bracing opening response, and you've put on a few markers as to where I'd like to take the conversation. You mentioned a few people who've been prominent exponents of certain theories about the war, those associated with prior crises, Elliot Cohen, Francis Fukuyama, Henry Kissinger, and I'd like to come back to all of those individuals in a different way as to tease out some of what you said, but just to follow up very quickly in the context of the Victory Day parade in Moscow today, and it's another question for a historian, but I think an important one as to reflecting on this crisis. In the early concept or thinking about a Russian invasion, a lot of emphasis was placed on speed, and speed of action, and the agility and swiftness of the Russian forces, and a lot of expectation that they were able to achieve what they wanted to achieve very swiftly. What subsequently transpires is a lot of the training weaponry, which seemed broadly quite limited in those early phases of the conflict, actually gave Ukraine more of an ability to defend itself against the initial spur of invasion, and now we are entering a sort of second or third phase of the war in which a sort of new pattern has established itself, and Kiev for the moment looks relatively safe. So my question to you in the context of today's events is presuming that we're still talking about a conventional conflict. On whose side is time? You've got these larger Russian military forces, but you've got Ukraine that's being armed more and more effectively has seemingly more and more friends in the West, and crucially I think and more than anything else, and I'll come back to this in a moment, has more full Square support for the United States and seemed necessarily likely in the early phases of the conflict. So on whose side is time best on the current correlation of forces? Well, John, you are in many ways better placed than I am to answer that question, and I want to make it clear that I approach such questions as an academic with humility. I don't have access to classified information only open source intelligence. With that caveat, time is clearly not on Vladimir Putin's side. And this is something that almost nobody foresaw, including me. I got the outbreak of war right, I predicted on January the 2nd war is coming, and I consistently said that we should take Putin seriously and literally about his intention to alter the status quo and challenge Ukraine's bid to become an independent democracy outside the Russian sphere of influence. But my assumption was that if he did launch an invasion, it would go far better for Russia than it has. And that was because I underestimated the extent to which the provision of Western and not only Western equipment, Turkish drones and Western training and constant conflict in the east of Ukraine since 2014 had together raised the game of the Ukrainian army. And I also overestimated the Russians, failing to see just how poorly prepared this special military operation actually was. The most staggering feature of the last 10 weeks has been the devastating losses that have been inflicted on the Russian invasion force, which in the space of weeks, of 10 weeks exceed the losses suffered by the Red Army in the entire 10 years of their campaign in Afghanistan after 1979. I don't think anybody saw that coming. Indeed even the people I've spoken to who were involved in training the Ukrainians didn't expect that any more than we expected Volodymyr Zelenskyi to emerge as a churchilian figure and authentically heroic leader in time of war. Who saw that coming considering that the man had played the part of an ordinary guy who becomes president in a sitcom and while entertaining showed very little prior to the outbreak of war of truly historic greatness. So nobody really anticipated this. The critical point when one looks forward is the impact of sanctions on Russia's ability to sustain this war. As we continue to arm Ukraine and supply higher level weaponry, we've moved beyond stingers and javelins over the last several weeks. At the same time the sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies on Russia are eroding the capacity of Russian industry to manufacture sophisticated weapon. Unlike the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation relies very heavily on sophisticated imported components to manufacture its armaments and Russia is running out if it hasn't already run out of 21st century weaponry. It's already increasingly fighting a 20th century war against 21st century defenders. So I think from Putin's point of view the situation is an extremely uncomfortable one. He can't easily scale up Russia's military capability without throwing into the fight raw recruits with barely any training and an acronistic weaponry. So I'm somewhat skeptical that he can sustain the war. Many people are writing that this war is going to drag on for a long time but I'm skeptical about that actually because I don't think Russia can do more than try to get its Donbas offensive to something like a respectable conclusion and then seek a ceasefire relatively imminently. Unless, as I said earlier, Putin decides to escalate by using chemical or potentially nuclear weapons to try to extricate himself from a dangerous situation and let me add one final point John, it's very important. Armies don't gently lose wars. The time of defeat is a time when the morale of an army, its ability to continue to fight collapses. And my great concern at the moment is that in rushing into another offensive after the failure to take Kiev, the Russian military is overstretching itself, particularly after the casualties that they've suffered and could in fact begin to unravel if they encounter really effective resistance and even counterattacks from the Ukrainian side, which is what we're seeing. The offensive is a grinding to a halt just as it did in the first phase of the war. The thing to watch is whether the morale of this Russian force begins to crumble and then we, I think, enter the moment of maximum danger when Putin is confronted with a choice between defeat and escalation. That was such a brilliant answer. I'm not going to let you off in what you just falsely described as academic humility because there is no such thing. I want to ask you a converse question before getting back into our narratives and actually the role of some of the people you mentioned and the role of academics and big ideas in understanding this conflict. But it's a question back as a mirror image of this, because I'm very interested in your view of this, which is what's the plausible minimum scenario on the Ukrainian side? So what's the scenario? Has President Zelensky passed that initial point of danger whereby his country may collapse or he would be overwhelmed to reach another sort of potential sort of form of status? You mentioned a version of a future in which President Putin is able to declare, if you like, some form of success as per military, limited military operation in the Donbas, but presumably that does not mean the Lambridge or the Black Sea. What's the minimum that Ukraine needs to survive or enter a perhaps a new phase in which the intensity of the conflict is not there? And I ask you that with no prejudice, but just the kind of the mirror image of that uncomfortable status quo, is that obvious? Is that clear to you? Well, I am not in direct touch with President Zelensky, others are and so I have to rely on second hand insights and media coverage. Interestingly, from quite early in the conflict, President Zelensky signaled that he was open to some kind of peace deal that would take NATO membership for Ukraine off the table. A version of the deal that Henry Kissinger had in mind back in 2014 when he recently argued that continuing to talk about Ukrainian membership of NATO might lead to war. So the idea that I think still has some life in it is that Ukraine would enjoy a neutral status that would be guaranteed internationally, rather in the way that Belgium's neutrality was guaranteed in the 19th century. I noticed also just a few days ago that President Zelensky carefully indicated that not all bridges had been burned, that there therefore is in his mind some possible path to a negotiated settlement with Russia. However, one must bear in mind that with every passing week of war and with every atrocity, with every school that the Russians strike with every revelation of atrocities that have been perpetrated by Russian forces, it gets harder for Zelensky to reach some kind of compromise because the sentiment of the Ukrainian people has been dramatically altered by this war. A nation is being born, if ever there were any doubts about Ukrainian national identity, about the viability of the Ukrainian state, that doubt has been entirely effaced by this conflict. I've been to Ukraine pretty much every year for the last 10 years and followed closely developments there. And this is one of the most significant changes that the war has brought about, certainly not the one that Putin intended. So I think with every passing week it gets harder for Zelensky to do the kind of compromise peace deal that I thought was viable two or three weeks into the war, when it really seemed that there might be a way out. And my peripheral involvement in those efforts to find an early path to peace gave me some brief glimmers of hope. It's got much, much harder now. And of course what Putin is talking about still seems to me far beyond what Zelensky can accept because if one reads carefully the transcript of Putin's Victory Day speech today, what he's essentially saying is that the Donbas, the two oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk are in fact Russian territory and not just the relatively small areas that were supposedly autonomous republics after the 2014 invasion. So that speech, although in many ways it was a great deal less aggressive than many Western analysts expected, still contained a claim that I think it's hard for Zelensky to exceed to. So I think that the diplomatic room for maneuver is much, much smaller than was the case even after two or three weeks of war. Right now the most I think that we can hope for is some kind of ceasefire which will come about mainly because of Russian exhaustion rather than of a decisive military breakthrough. Okay, thank you Neil. I'm going to ask you two conjoined questions. The first I think you've already given an indication of your answer to it. And the second is perhaps parochial but may sound intellectual, which is the role of our friends and colleagues and their ideas about this conflict and how they've they've born up. I mean the first I think I knew your answer to this is is that I would suggest to you that from your writing and from what I've read and what you said already that it's slightly myopic and clumsy of us to characterize this as a transformative new era. Since since Putin decided to do this and this is kind of classic sort of Western short-sightedness and sort of you know rushing to the run parts of new concept, new era, and actually we've been living in an era like this for quite some time. So you know this sort of history ended on ecstasy actually something is misleading. Correct me if I'm wrong in that but it tees up the second question which is you know who's got it right and who should we be listening to. I know there's a controversy in the United States about the ideas of John Meersheimer vis-a-vis Ukraine. I know there are periods in which Henry Kissinger's ideas and of course you're a biographer of Henry Kissinger or Durigur or that people studied them very carefully. Kissinger wrote an article I think in the New York Times early in the conflict which had a different response. You have thinkers like Elliot Cohen writing the Atlantic who in many respects as a kind of never Trump neo-conservative I think he would self-describe as that is not particularly fashionable in the last few years and yet people have seized on his articles and setting a kind of a new model. Who's got it right? Who should we listen to? Or is there a different way of looking at this and saying you know perhaps all of the above have a point and we need a different framing. I say you mentioned some of those individuals you talked to them as well. The final one I drop in is Francis Fukuyama. Well I never agreed with the view that is now most closely associated with John Meosheimer that somehow the war was all the fault of NATO and specifically of NATO enlargement. That is I think a misreading from the point of view of the Baltic States or Poland or indeed any of the former Soviet or Warsaw Pact countries that are now NATO members nothing illustrates better the importance of NATO membership than what is happening in Ukraine today which is a consequence of President Putin's I think ultimately vane dream that he can resurrect the Russian Empire. Not the Soviet Union I don't think that's what he's trying to do but the Russian Empire. My view is that there was a specific miscalculation which was made with respect to not only Ukraine but Georgia which was to talk about their becoming NATO members beginning in 2008 but never to deliver on that. The worst of all possible worlds is to be offered NATO membership with a deadline of never and I think Kissinger was right to say in 2014 that there had to be a better way forward. I think if we were never really sincere about Ukraine's joining NATO and I don't think we were sincere about that then I think the whole idea should have been taken off the table by diplomatic means there was certainly a better way forward and I think Kissinger was right about that in 2014 and his article from that year has stood up well. I think that the neoconservative view that it's 1989 all over again has found some unlikely bedfellows in the Biden administration. Joe Biden's speech in Warsaw which ended with the headline grabbing a call for Putin's removal of power sounded uncannily like some of the things that Francis Fukuyama's been writing. Now, Frank is a good friend and a colleague here at Stanford but I was amazed when he ran into print early in the war and said Ukraine is going to win and this is going to be awesome. We're going to have a kind of second 1989 reaffirming that the end of history is still a viable concept. By which he obviously meant not that history was stopping but that liberal democratic capitalism had won and all alternative models would fail. Now I think about the situation very differently. I don't think it's 1989 all over again and I think it was very reckless of Joe Biden to make that speech. The entire speech appeared to be a call for a comparable disintegration of the Russian Federation to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. I don't think that this is prudent given the scale as I've mentioned of Russia's nuclear capabilities and I don't think it's historically very probable. So let me offer an alternative framework which is one that I've advocated for more than four years now. We had an interwar period after 1989-91 and that interwar period is now over and Cold War II is underway. Cold War II is a kind of mirror image of Cold War I in the sense that in this second Cold War China is the senior partner and Russia is the junior partner and in this second Cold War the first hot war has broken out not in Asia as it did in 1950 in Korea but in Europe in Ukraine. One cannot understand what is happening in Ukraine today apart from the broader global strategic competition rivalry between the two superpowers of our time which are the United States and the People's Republic of China. That's the way to think about this in my view and we should remember that if the interwar era is over and Cold War II has begun we're at the most dangerous phase potentially of that struggle because in the early phase of Cold War I there were crises that by the early 1960s had the potential to wreak catastrophic destruction. So embedded in Cold War II is as with Cold War I the risk of World War III that is how we need to think about the new era we find ourselves in and that is why ultimately the fate of Taiwan probably matters more in the great scheme of things than the fate of Ukraine. So I hope that's a helpful alternative framing. It seems to me to match much more closely the reality of our situation than the notion that we are going to reenact 1989 with regime changer in Russia and the breakup of the Russian Federation. Thank you Neil. I will open it up to the audience shortly or I can see some people I will definitely not a large answer a question who I used to work with. It could be trouble but I ask you one sort of final question and again it's a conjoined question I'm very interested in your perspective on this and I will say that I have not said much about our own UK government perspective it's not for advisors to say it's for ministers to be very clear on that and they have been. But one thing I will say is that in the last few weeks in particular one thing that has been underscored for all of us working on this challenge has been the shugeness of the United States in terms of when the US gears up for involvement or focuses on a question whether it be through defensive support or whether it be through work on sanctions or whether it be through humanitarian support I mean the scale is huge. So just a question and I'm interested in your view in this what from where you're sitting do the roles of Europe collective including the United Kingdom and the role of the United States what does it look like and what does it say about the US of today the path it has chosen about which there is nothing I think inevitable in the early phases of this of this crisis and after that I'll open up to the ladies and gentlemen here so you've got about a few minutes if you can Neil I must keep time for questions. Well obviously we've seen that the Transatlantic Alliance NATO is a great deal stronger than President Putin assumed. That's one of the common places of this year but one needs to recognize and I'll be brief a couple of meaningful problems. The first is that both the US and Europe expected too much of sanctions. First as a deterrent and then as a weapon of war but sanctions operate relatively slowly and were never likely to cause a complete collapse of the Russian economy so long as the Europeans continue to pay for Russian gas and oil. It was clearly a mistake not to make an oil embargo a part of the sanctions regime at the outset but as you know John the German government was not prepared to do that and is still digging in its heels even when it comes to a more gradual phasing out of European imports of Russian energy. The second point I'll make is that it's not clear to me what the US administration's aims actually are. In my view the big difference between 1973 and now is that in 1973 the Nixon administration moved extremely swiftly to end the war to make sure that the war didn't escalate and really we see the opposite today it's almost as if the Biden administration wants the war to keep going it's not really present in the diplomatic process it's not using the leverage that it has over both sides after all as you said it's the principal supplier of weapons to Ukraine it's also the principal driver of sanctions on Russia but that is not the role that the US is playing and it's a disturbing thing to me that at least some people in the administration seem to think that letting the war continue is good for the United States because it's bleeding Russia dry it could lead to regime change in Moscow and if that happens it'll send a signal to Beijing don't mess with the West some people in Washington clearly think that's the right strategy and my view is that it's extraordinarily risky to let this war keep going for the reasons I've already alluded to as well as being highly economically destabilizing not just to Europe but perhaps more importantly to pretty much all the developing world so my view is that the big concern is not so much mission creep as a tendency for the aims of the United States to become ambiguous to talk of regime change to say that the goal is weakening Russia these things make it harder to end the war and as long as the war continues I think there is this meaningful risk of escalation which would be I think disastrous from any vantage point Brilliant thank you Neil we have a few minutes to open up for questions and I will try and take a bunch of them to start off with the gentleman there in a purple jumper I think from here and then just to be fair a gentleman over on this side as well with glasses on thank you Yeah, Merrick Chairman macro analyst you spoke you spoke Neil about the shift from Cold War one being proxy fights in Asia and now Cold War two proxy fight or not not so proxy actually fights in Europe we know we all know what happened to North and South Korea and the difficulties that has posed ever since so is there an analogy there with thinking about what happens to Ukraine and how it's already divided or is that not going to settle that way okay and we'll take the question for the gentleman here first yeah Robert Tyler from New Direction the Foundation for European Reform if we're in Cold War two then where are our modern answers to Buckley Kissinger and Kennan to keep the West on focus great questions Neil well thanks Merrick and Robert for those questions Merrick I think the analogy with Korea isn't perfect because of course the US led a UN backed coalition into that war and fought directly against North Korea and then of course Stalin got Mao to do his dirty work and so it was a proxy war for the Soviet Union but not for the United States and its allies however with that caveat I think we could see a world an imaginable future in which the war rather like the Korean war proved very hard to stop still waiting for a formal peace to end that war and ends up being a kind of messy draw with a partition line of some kind I've certainly heard that kind of scenario discussed by both Russians and Ukrainians but clearly the fighting determines the location of the line and whatever may have inspired Putin at the beginning he's clearly not in a position to achieve the partition of Ukraine that was discussed in Russian state media early on that would have reduced Ukraine to a landlocked rump state that's because I don't think the Russians have the capability to fight and win and hold on to territory in the region of Karassan much less Odessa so this isn't going to be a division like the Korean division indeed I think the Russians will be doing well if they end up with any more than they started with i.e. with any more than their 2014 gains so in terms of duration there's a parallel but I think the outcome will not be anything like the partition of Korea Robert the problem in cold wars as you suggested is partly sustaining domestic support for the relatively high defense expenditures that you have to make if you're dealing with a totalitarian rival and I think the United States and its allies have entered Cold War two in the less resolved state of mind than they entered Cold War one it's fairly obvious that the United States is a deeply divided society you don't need me to talk about that if you want more detail read the square in the tower which was my book before doom a very polarized America in which every issue becomes politicized doesn't seem well equipped to sustain a protracted competition with China which will require really significant investments in everything from artificial intelligence to quantum computing and now it seems a big increase in conventional and nuclear military spending so your question was how do we deal with that problem and I think it's hard because certainly the American left is not really open to the argument that we're in a Cold War indeed every time you use the term the left will respond by saying that you are actually just the warmonger who in fact wants there to be a permanent state of conflict so I think we enter Cold War two domestically in a somewhat weaker state than we entered Cold War one and that's why when I use this analogy I'm not saying don't worry we always win Cold Wars the sample size at this point is 1.5 or two but I think the real point is we don't necessarily know how Cold Wars will turn out in many ways it was just luck that Cold War one did not become World War three there were a number of occasions when it nearly happened and I mean the second point I'd make is that the outcome the ultimate American victory in Cold War one was not something many people could have predicted in the 1970s when it seemed to be the Soviet Union that was winning the Cold War so if we are in Cold War two and I think we've been in it for several years now we shouldn't assume that it'll last 40 years we shouldn't assume that it'll just take the form of proxy wars and technological competition and we shouldn't assume that the West will automatically win by comparison with Francis Fukuyama I'm a great deal more pessimistic about the supposed arc of history because I don't think there is an arc of history Thank you Neil A few more hands have gone up there's a gentleman here and a lady in the front row and apologies to all those I think we'll have to scratch it after these two questions can we get the microphone on the front row here thank you and then a gentleman in the blue suit about halfway done thank you please sir Peter Wilson Smith from Meritus Consultants could you say some more about China which has sort of had surprisingly little attention really in this I mean the conventional wisdom is that the resolve of the West in supporting Ukraine will deter China and make it more cautious over Taiwan is that correct you think and secondly the increasing noises about war aims in the West being to weaken Russia you mentioned regime change and so on is this going to make China worried or is it an advantage to China if Russia is severely weakened and mained more dependent on China and then if you if you go for your question as well we'll we'll try and know if you can wrap up and in response thank you is it's um you you obviously know Ukraine very well I'm just wondering let's just assume for the moment that Ukraine prevails how much depth of leadership is there behind Zelensky who you described as Churchillian to ensure that there's no backsliding in any final outcome thank you Neil well thanks for those questions Peter Wilson Smith asked about China and I'm glad you did because in my my impression is that the discussion of the great strategic questions of our time has lurched away from China since the invasion of Ukraine and that's that's dangerous because China's the the real concern I think it's wrong to assume that Xi Jinping is watching all of this and thinking gee I better not try anything with Taiwan I don't want that to happen to me the reality is that Xi Jinping's rationale for his extended time in office is to resolve the Taiwan anomaly and bring Taiwan under the direct control of the Chinese Communist Party he's not about to throw that goal away especially when the legitimacy of the CCP is under a great pressure from the decline in China's growth rates and the ongoing problems that they confront not just with the pandemic but with their entire system which is is beginning to malfunction in in all kinds of ways that I wish I had time to go into so I don't think Taiwan is off the table but I think the timetable has changed there was some talk of there being a move against Taiwan this October ahead of the the party Congress I don't think that's remotely likely Ukraine is a reminder to China that war is difficult and if you think invading Ukraine over a land border was hard an amphibious invasion of Taiwan is substantially harder from a military point of view so if they are intent on doing this they need to make sure that they have shock and or overwhelming force and of course they lack the kind of combat experience that the Russians have it's been an awful long time since the People's Liberation Army did more than than exercises as for the western western rhetoric I think that positively helps Xi Jinping because it reduces just as the sanctions do Russia's autonomy and drives it increasingly into the subordinate relationship that I talked about it's not as if there really is great amethy between China and Russia historically there's only been relatively few times when they've been closely aligned with one another and Cold War one it didn't last very long so you all know but the relationship between Xi Jinping and Putin is an extraordinarily important one and the very high frequency of their meetings the pre-Olympics declaration of eternal amity all of these things mean that from Xi Jinping's point of view this is not a relationship to be discarded but it's one in which its seniority has only I think been affirmed and from a cynical Chinese point of view you are now going to get Russia cheap you're going to get Russian resources very cheap now and so it's really quite a good deal in that respect for China finally you know the thing about Ukraine is the paradox the paradox of its chronic inability to cure its own malaise domestically the problem of corruption which was the recurrent topic of discussion every time I went to Ukraine and its unexpected ability to fight war of national independence with George Washington levels of leadership and commitments what I think we will see if Ukraine is not reduced in Talaid's rubble is that there will be a much more meaningful reform era after this war that the transformation of Ukrainian national identity that a war like this is likely to bring about will mean that the oligarchic domination of the Ukrainian economy will not long survive peace in fact I think there will be a positively revolutionary spirit in Ukraine after this war is brought to an end so I think the domestic issues have bedivilled Ukraine for so long the sheer difficulty of cleaning up all those post-soviet pathologies may in many ways be swept away by the searing effects of the conflict on the Ukrainian people and the national psychology I know that I've got to shut up at this point and John I want to thank you very much for so modestly being the moderator and an interrogator when you really know a great deal more about what is going on right now than anybody outside government possibly can and I want to thank you for taking time out of your obviously very demanding schedule to do this conversation I also want to take the opportunity to thank Ian Martin for inviting me to be part of this I wish I could stick around and listen to the rest of the discussion and I hope that I've at least made some small contribution to it thanks everybody thank you thanks back to you Neil it's always very difficult for us academics in the UK to look at these Californian backdrops where the sun is shining but thank you for punishing us with that and the real reason why I have to stop and hand over to Adam shortly is actually someone asked earlier I can't remember who asked this in the audience where are the kind of future cold war thinkers where is the kind of intellectual heft in this place and it's certainly not with me but the next sort of phase we have today and I hope you can be part of some of those discussions is with war study students from Kings who've been thinking about this quite intently so thank you again Neil for a tour of the force and I will get off the stage and hand over to Adam thank you very much thanks John