 Hwn. Mae'r cymdeithas ynghyd yn gyflawniaeth yma. Nid yw'r cyflwytu cyflwytaeth a'r cyflwytaeth yn beth. Mae'n gofio'n gwybod. Felly, ddiw i'ch rhaid o Llywodraeth Llywodraeth i'w ddiddordebeth i'r defnyddio ym Llywodraeth. Mae'r cyflwytaeth i'r reall ac ar y cyflwytaeth ar y cyflwytaeth. Mae'n ddiddordebeth o'r cyflwytaeth a'r reall a'r cyflwytaeth i'r sefydlu o'r ddiddordebeth o'r ddiddordebeth ..y'r cysylltu'r bwysig o'r swyddi i'r defnyddio a'i dweud. Yn ymddech chi'n dweud, mae'n ffyrdd o'r cyd-dwyllg... ..y'r cyfeilio'r cyd-dwylliant o'r defnyddio... ..y'r cyd-dwylliant a'r cyd-dwylliant o'r Ffèbryd yma... ..cyrydyfodol rhesweddol, ac mae'n ffyrdd o'r cyd-dwylliant... ..y'r cyd-dwylliant. Mae'n gweithio, ymdyn ni'n i'n gwybod yn cyd-dwylliant... …di'r myfyrdd i ddweud exercodau i rhodoedd ysgrifennu i Moscow… …yna'n meddwl i'r ysgol. Elisgynnau. Y rôl oedd y West yn supportedr i Ychryn… …azwod yn ymbylchedd ar y cyfrifyddeithas… …yna'r cyfrifyddiad o'r cyfrifyddiad… …ath yn ymddefnydd ymddefnyddio. Y cyfrifyddiad yn wider a'r argynnu… …y ddau ffyrdd i Moscow i'r ddweud… …y ddau'r cyfrifyddiad o'r cyfrifyddiad… …y'r ysgrifennu. But along with all this, we've also become increasingly aware of the risks associated with escalation in the war. Whether in the part on the part of NATO and its assistance to Ukraine, or in the part of Russia and what it might be prepared to do to impose its will. Russia's veiled and not-so-veiled nuclear signalling has also been an important part of the war to date. Mostly focused on deterring NATO's direct intervention but also potentially signalling that Russia could resort to low yield nuclear use. wrth ymlaen i chi'n cael ei gynnwys i'r cynghwyl yn ymddangos iawn. Byddwn ni wedi cael eu bod ni'n ffobl ymlaen dda i'r unrhyw gwaith yw, ond bydd ni yn gweithio'n bwylltio, ond byddwn ni'n gwaith yn ymlaen gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. Rwy'n creu'n meddwl â'r admin. Rhyw bifrwyr arfer yw'r tymp yn gyfanyddol ar y dyfodol. Felly, y ffair alarm yn yw'r gweithio, mae'n gweithio, ond mae'n gwneud y byddai a llunio'n dwylo'n gweithio'n gweithio. Mae'n gwneud yw'r gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. Ddod, rydyn ni'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. Welcaf i'r Ffwrdd y Ddefnyddio Yngrif Weinidog. Yngrif Weinidog yn cyffredig, wrth gwrs, byddai'n gweithio'n gweithio a'r amser o Gweithio Llywodraeth. Rwy'n lle pethau, y dwi'n gallu ei ddefnyddio'n gwneud gyda fydd ei gynfennydd yn Llywodraeth, i'i ddifyn nhw i'r dysgu ei gynfoddol pan rydych yn dod i ddod, fel bod eich gweithio'n gweithio, a ddiddordeb yn eu ffordd, i ddelw i'r llwygoedd Gymdeithasys Llywodraeth. Dîm y gallwn cyd-Mackai, mewn gweithio, ymgyrch yn cael ei ddechrau, gan rhaid fathogwad, oerdog, ac i ddim yn gwneud. Fy'r gweithio i fynd i fynd i'w ymgyrch, dweud, fel Y Llywydd. Mae'r cwmffrin sy'n ymgyrch gyda'i ffosibl oherwydd y gweithio gyda'r gweithio cyhoedd, eu cyfnod y ddweud, oherwydd yma'r gweithio'r gweithio. Efallai'r ddweud i fynd i'r hyd yn y ddwylliant. Ond mae'n ffosibl yw Cran, mae yna'n i'r ddweud. Mae'r rhaid i, mae'n gweithio mor cyfnoddau i'r cyfnoddau i'r cyllidion ffraeg yw'r rhai wladau hynny ond ond y wneud i'r ffraeg a'r prysbyrdiadau. Ond o'r rhaid i'r wneud, mae'n gweithio'r cyffredin o'r Eurchran yn ynwyr i'r cyflwyffaeth yw ei ddweud. Mae'r cyflwyffaeth ei ddefnyddio. Mae'n gweithio'r dreflu'r cyfnoddau i'r ei wneud i'r Eurchran, mae'n gweithio'r cyffredinol. Yn ddweud â'r sefyllfa yma yw Adam Bolton? Yn ddweud â'r sefyllfa yma yw Mark Urban? Gweithio Mark Urban i gyntaf gyda'r cyffredinol. Ddweud. Yn caes i gydag. Rydyn ni'n fyddeithas i ni. Rydyn ni'n Mark Urban. Rydyn ni'n gwybod gyda'r cyffredinol. Rydyn ni'n gwybod ei gilydd. Rydyn ni'n gwybod ei gwybod eich lŵr. Rydyn ni'n gwybod ei gwybod ei gwybod ei gwybod. Mae'r llwyddiad i'r Llyfrgellllion Llyfrgellion. Felly mae'r llwyddiad yw'r llwyddiad, wrth gwrs. Mae'n amlwg ar y cwestiynau yma, mae'n gweithio'r cyffredinol yn y cyffredinol ar y gweithio a'r effektol ar y gweithio eu defnydd. Mae'r gweithio'r llwyddiad yma a'n amlwg ar y cwestiynau. Mae'n gweithio ar y cyffredinol yma. Mae'n gweithio'r cyffredinol, mae'n gweithio'r cyffredinol, ac mae'n gweithio'r cyffredinol ar y gweithio? Mae'n gweithio'r cyffredinol yn y cyffredinol. Mae'n amlwg ar y cyffredinol i'r 30 minuteau o'r cyffredinol, felly mae'n gweithio i'n gweithio i'r panallus o'r 30. Dyma'n gweithio i'r gweithio i'r cwestiynau, oedd eich cwestiynau gweithio. Mae'n gweithio i'r cwestiynau, yna, gallwch chi'n gweithio'r panell i'r unig. Cymru. Felly, mae'n rai'r cerddoriaeth. First on my left is Will Jessett, who was in MOD for many many years involved in drafting defence reviews, military planning at the highest level. Then General Sir James Everard, Armored Corps, cavalry officer, I think, by formation and instinct, then involved in commanding brigade in Iraq, and later on, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, which, for those of you unfamiliar with the shape system, there's a lot of alliance management in that job, so fantastic to have you here as well, James. Professor Helen Thompson, Professor of Political Economy at Cambridge, author of a fantastic book, Disorder Hard Times in the 21st Century, who will, I think, give us a lot of insights on geopolitics and the way that will play out in the coming months and years. And then, finally, Tim Marshall, formerly a colleague of mine in the Diplomatic Corps of Correspondents or whatever you would call us, author of all sorts of fantastic books on geography and interstate relations in general, and somebody who's been trying to make sense of these developments as they've been going on. I'm going to go left to right here, so let's start with you, Will. I mean, I guess looking at what we've seen in the past two and a half months, is it, to an extent, sort of good news and bad news for Western Defence? Good news in the sense that are approached things like combined operations or the fusion of intelligence and those sorts of things looks to be much better than that of the Russians. Bad news in the sense we'd run out of ammunition in two or three days. Well, I suppose I'll start off by saying, you've got to put this crisis into context and put defence planning into context. So you go all the way back to the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review, where we were saying confidently no major state threat at present, no state currently has the combination of capability and intent needed to pose a conventional threat to the territorial order of the table of the UK. So 12 years ago. We then stepped through a series of events, Russia invading Crimea in 2014. We take account of that in the 2015 review, where we get back into, you know, state-based threats when it being a big deal. All the way through to the 2021 integrated review, where we're saying Russia continues to pose the greatest nuclear, conventional, military and sub-freshhold threat to European security. So quite a journey, I think, over 10 years. And that manifests itself in what we're planning for. So in 2010, we're planning to be able to rule and want to brigade of forces through Afghanistan because that was what was on our minds, and international terrorism was the thing. By 2015, we were back to war fighting at scale being the kind of thing we needed to challenge. And then as you say, Mark, we're now into complex multi-domain operations against aggressive state-based actors. And that manifests itself, doesn't it, in the way that budgets, capabilities, plans come together. So from taking 8% out of the defence budget in 2010, we then start to increase the budget from 2015 onwards, and then there's the huge influx in 2020, the 16th or 24th. And I put it that way just to kind of put this thing into historic context and to say that over the last 10 years, 12 years, we've been building, we've been rebuilding our defence planning, we've been rebuilding our defence capabilities. So the three sort of headmark joint forces that we were asserting we would build in 2020, 2025, 2030, I would contend have most of the right characteristics associated with them. But your point I think is well made. It's something James and I were just talking about to say this needed, this needs and needed to happen more quickly than it currently has. So the reasonably well documented shortage of munitions has been a thing for several years and it's not just munitions, it's fighting vehicles, et cetera, et cetera. So there are clear capability shortfalls, but if you put this into the historic context, I would say that we have built the capabilities that we would require by and large if this crisis continues to unfold. Thank you very much, Will. General, I mean I look at this, what we've seen and in a sense a reminder of the First and Second World War artillery, the big killer, shocking in a way. I mean I reckon at least 20,000 military dead, probably double that civilians, level towns. But I wonder for you what are the stand out impressions of this sort of re-emergence of state to state warfare in Europe and how do you interpret what's happened? Well it is really my New York Times this morning that was a Ukrainian major describing it as a war of position and a war of artillery and I think the big lesson you take is while you're drawn to new ways of warfare, that the Germans don't disappear and that is a challenge and I could talk to NATO and we NATO don't have a formal approach to Ukraine because Ukraine is not a NATO member. Indeed NATO would say that Ukraine is not a crisis because that allows them to use peacetime plans and measures they have to cohere alliance activity. I think they've got some very good plans for the future that we could talk about if you like. But when it comes to Ukraine we're currently I think observers giving them enough not to lose, not enough to do much more with and we'll see where it goes but I think the big point is that the pattern of war hasn't changed and when you look at things like the integrated review which was I think pretty widely applauded in the alliance for its intellectual rigour. They didn't always like the punchlines but you would think that we now had to go back and visit this, not just in the light of Ukraine but the lessons learnt from Afghanistan and indeed NATO's future plans for the deterrence and defence of the European economy. Alan, I mean a lot of people put the emphasis on economic action both to avoid this, to threat of sanctions and now to sort of end it on terms that would be to Russia's disadvantage. I mean to what extent do you think that's viable and to what extent do you think the underlying geopolitical realities energy and all the rest of it will dictate the outcome? Well I think we have to distinguish between two different things here where energy sanctions are concerned or perhaps even three different things. The first of them is that I think that Putin has been taken aback that there have been any energy sanctions at all so the fact that the US and the UK made a relatively quick commitment to cut out Russian oil and the fact that the fifth round of the EU sanctions included an outright coal ban. But on the other hand he might have been shocked by that but I don't see any evidence that this has actually changed any calculation that he's made during the course of the war. So then the question would become if the EU really can put in place an oil sanctions agreement and there's not such an agreement yet the discussions have been going on a long time and if you listen to the language of the Hungarian government over the weekend you wouldn't be particularly optimistic that the agreement is coming soon. But if that were to happen would that make a difference? And I think the difficulty here is that even at best we'd be talking about trying to phase out all Russian petroleum products and that crucially involves diesel only by the end of the year. So how does that sort of change anything in the immediate term? That allows Russia the possibility of improving its capacity to export more petroleum products to Asian countries. The shipping costs of that are quite considerable. Extra shipping costs are quite considerable from the Russian point of view. It seems to me that the only thing that could really deliver would be something that was done quickly would be an immense shock not just to Western economies but to the entire world economy citizen we'd all have to be prepared for that and that I think has the possibility of changing or at least making Putin reconsider. On the other hand the counterpart to that would be well if he's going to do that they would also have to come off quite quickly and I don't think that they would have to come off quite quickly as well because I don't think the world economy can withstand it and the sacrifices that would be required for very long. I think there is a medium term to long term issue though the way in which the sanctions and the atmosphere around the sanctions has made it much more difficult for Western oil companies total energies accepted to stay in Russia and that that will have an impact because Russia's future as an energy well at least as an oil producing power depends on developing alternatives to the Western Siberian oil fields which are probably peaked in terms of their output and they need Western capital and technology to do that particularly where the possibility of developing shales concerned and it's not so clear to me that the Chinese and Japanese companies could provide that and they're more willing to stay. So if we think of it as do these sanctions make Russia's energy choices much more difficult in the medium term I think very much so. Do they thus far change the course of the war I think no. Thank you very much Tim. I mean I guess one factor in that is that Western Europe is plumbed in to Russian energy with your geographical hat on to what extent do you think geography will define how this current round of fighting ends and basically it will be inevitable that a certain level of both commerce and other types of interstate relations with Russia and other Putin states or goes will have to be part of what comes out of this. Thank you very much morning. Geography underpins this and I think it's the best example and it will partially determine how it ends. The background being I mean I start by looking at the geography of a situation layering on the history and then laying on the politics and then I think it comes together and the real experts drill down. The geography of Russia no warm water port Crimea flatland in front of it Ukraine and Belarus and Poland it has been invaded through that direction for so many times over so many centuries and genuinely does fear I think wrongly there's no justification but it genuinely fears it and that's the deep background to it it under someone like Putin cannot allow a vibrant democracy which is looking westwards in Ukraine. That's the geography of it and then there's this history of them being invaded and the low water mark for Putin was probably 1999 Kosovo which we were both there and it was Putin who whispered into Yeltsin's ear in 1999 said get yourself to Pristina and they came down from Bosnia and made themselves a player. I think that was the point where the tide stopped coming into Russia and they started pushing back out and when you look at everything that is done on foreign policy it is about pushing back out from Moscow not just in front of them but also further round to well actually 360 degrees they've been trying to push back out and in 2014 they could only give themselves a small buffer zone and guarantee their warm water port which the lease was up in 2042 and they've spent the last few years preparing to push that tide further out and then to everybody's surprise they've come a cropper. Now as for the geography of it now again the military experts will know more but they struggled because through the pre-apet marshes it was boggy it was only frozen for a short period of time General Frost was back in fashion and had a vote now with the tank battles in the south it's flatter, harder ground it's going to be some very tough fighting and overall the Americans I think when they went to cube three weeks ago Lloyd Austin went and at that point I thought I saw a shift the Americans have gone from containing the situation and managing the situation giving the Ukrainians enough to just to manage I think they've made a strategic decision to now inflict a serious defeat upon Russia and I think that Liz Tross' speech last week to the mansion house put Britain on that same page and this is again part of geography at the biggest picture the Americans have always intervened when they see one big dominant power trying to dominate the continent of Europe if it looks like it's going to do it they step in they've done it again Absolutely well I mean I just wondered picking up from Tim's point they're almost about sort of warrains I mean it's still relevant to those questions how does it end and the West and to what extent the West is willing to just carry on fuelling Ukraine in its desire to retake all of its lost territory even if that includes Crimea I mean is that a realistic and wise thing for western countries to commit themselves to Well it seems to me that we've got a there is still a need to try to reconcile that Ukraine is looking to get out of this what British politicians and other western politicians are saying what's being said in the EU what's being said in NATO doesn't seem to me to be quite reconciled at the moment and it's important it's important that there is the best possible alignment on that because it is the the Ukrainians' Excellentski who's going to have to go to the table and do a deal and there's an issue associated with this isn't that Mark which is the growing risk of some sort of escalation of the crisis as Ukraine does begin to push back at that order we've all been reading haven't we the nuclear doctrine the nuclear policy that's been coming out the increasingly assertive statements that Putin and others have been making and measure that against the kind of the language on what is existential for Russia exactly Tim's point and you've got quite an unhealthy mix of issues there which do require a bit that seems to me greater clarity than we have currently got about the reconciliation of western and Ukrainian ends in order to see some sort of ends to this When do you think that gets untangled or sharpened because an attack on Crimea is if that's what the Ukrainians want to eventually press on to do is a real red line for Russia it is now as far as their concern part of Russia so I don't see how and when this does begin untangled particular we were all weren't we listening with interest to the speech this morning that doesn't seem to have gone anywhere particularly new so that doesn't add very much to this we've heard Zelensky being increasingly been boldened I think by what is happening but I don't think we've yet really heard at least recently what his goals are some weeks ago they seem to be potentially more limited than perhaps they have begun General you said in your first answer the old ways of war have shown us that they're still very much part of the way that states when they collide will try and resolve huge questions like this I just wonder just picking up on what we were discussing with Will about the possible Ukrainian reconquest of lost territory firstly whether you think they can are they capable of doing it and whether if they're not some kind of stalemate does inexorably lead towards a negotiated outcome well it comes to that when does this get untangled I don't think it gets untangled until the current phase of the war stops I think Putin's generals will still think that they can win in the east and establish a new front line along the river Niper secure the south and that would be their start point I think for that but I look at the evidence and I don't think that they can achieve that without escalating significantly conventionally or potentially some form of nuclear escalation tactical nuke, not massive nuke but again I think for Putin that would represent for me a failure at a grand strategic level I think the consequences would be hugely negative no he doesn't go there but I think that we're at the start of a long war for Ukraine and a new Cold War for NATO I don't think that Russia would allow crime here to be retaken I think that's just I know people talk about it, it just seems very very difficult to me and when it comes to end states we're probably going to vote in the west because we're supporting them so much but in the end I think it has to be Ukraine that decides whether the end state is the status quo ante or something more or less than that but I don't think that can be decided until we have a sort of pause in the battle at the end of this phase Helen if that does happen say at some point later in the summer or something like that you were talking about the facts of life as far as energy are concerned the fact that there isn't any easy answer to this there's been a lot of emphasis in the EU on looking for alternative sources of supply to what extent have those things delivered by the end of summer or the end of the year and to what extent does the energy dependence still define the outcome from a western point of view I don't think that there's any way of changing the energy situation and the energy choices by the end of the year and if you want to look at the one factor that tells us this most clearly at the moment it's diesel prices diesel prices and gasoline prices are pretty much completely separated on each other diesel prices are now at their highest ever level and that is true despite the fact that the price of crude oil is about $70 a barrel cheaper than it was at the previous height of crude oil in the middle of 2008 then when you throw in that diesel is the fuel that basically keeps the supply chains of the world economy going through shipping and trucking that this is a massive issue I think in terms of alternative supplies in the situation for European countries particularly where gas is concerned is what we need to understand is that once Germany next year or I'm at a point of view hopefully next year is able to import liquid natural gas so it's able to import seaborn gas and move away from pipeline gas from Russia which is a very significant proportion obviously if it's gas imports that is going to be a pretty massive shock to world gas markets because there has not been a world gas markets in which Germany does this and in 2021 I've already seen a huge shock to natural gas markets because China's demand for gas imports went up 20% in 2021 causing huge price shock both for Europe and for Asian countries Europe for those countries that were importing liquid natural gas so I just don't think we can underestimate how difficult this energy situation is now that doesn't mean that we should just say ok we can't have objectives we in the West can't have objectives put in support of Ukraine but we must do so with open eyes about what the energy consequences of what we're doing are and then have strategies for dealing with that and that's probably going to me looking at significantly reduced energy consumption Thank you Tim, I mean we've been talking a bit about does this stutter to a halt later in the summer or later this year and I suppose what I sense is in the West a lot of people yearling for signs that either Putin will be finished by it's an overthrown or in some ways so weakened I suppose it's the Lloyd Austin line that he never thinks of doing anything like this again but I wondered to what extent regardless of what happens to Putin personally the geopolitics and the underlying attitudes in Russia will mean that the threat will not disappear or even that a leader worse than Putin in the sense of being more nationalistic and doing what the army thinks is necessary to subjugate Ukraine might emerge Yeah, just as Trump did not come out of nowhere the conditions of it produced him and just as when Xi and Modi have disappeared the Himalayas will still be there these underlying things that we discussed at the beginning are still in place whether it's Putin or not Putin now if there was a genuine Czechoslovakia situation after the fall of the wall where you get someone like Vaclav Havel emerging and leading Czechoslovakia in now two countries into democracy liberal democracy then Russia could take a different turn but there's been no period in Russian history when they've really had civil society especially once you've moved outside of the two main cities they've never really had democracy so I don't see what would produce a Havel in Russia so consequently take Putin out of the picture you might get a temporary solution but there is a solution to this as long as Russia is the type of country that it is and that is manufactured by its geography and its history and I personally think this will go on all year I think the economics of it are very just as equally as important if not more important than the military and it never finished after 2014 there's actually been fighting constantly for the past eight years more than that now so basically it doesn't finish until Russia changes and Russia isn't changing I'm going to open this up at about eight miles to fulfil my commitment to giving you guys half the session in terms of questions so what I want to do in the last portion of this is be in a sense more detailed or literal about lessons for western defence and maybe start off well with the idea of kind of revisiting defence reviews I mean I was in Kiev until a couple of days before the war started there was a day when the ATMs weren't working one or two other things happened and people said oh yeah this is the cyber attack and then they were back on in three hours and I thought to myself is this it? Is this what all these experts in various departments and think tanks have been telling us about for years is this, have we not seen it? and those other types of warfare that have been very much emphasised in the latest review should we be just pausing a little bit and thinking about numbers of missiles we've got or numbers of F-35s I suppose is the crude term before we're investigating quite so fully in those I guess non-kinetic or other domains Well I think cyber hasn't featured as widely in this crisis as many of us expected to of course we won't necessarily be seeing some of the behind the scenes things that are happening inside and of course it's a relatively new domain it's still developing as an art so I don't think we have yet seen enough to conclude that cyber hasn't had a role won't have an increasing role as we go forward but I think your wider point about the need to run a rule again over where we got to in the latest review feels to me to be right I heard Tony Radican, David Williams from the MOD doing a thing at the IFG a couple of weeks ago where I thought that they were actually quite measured and were saying it's too soon to rush into this but it's all very well to run through the series of reviews that I described using a set of planning assumptions that we might be in a big scrap this is now changing we're not yet in a big scrap but the situation is a lot worse in terms of stability and security in Europe we were expecting so I think it does require and James will speak to this looking again at some of the choices that were made on platforms numbers of platforms as you say this has been very largely missile war hasn't it we've known for a long time that munitions and stockpiles are low we're scrambling now to make some more but as you say it's also about whether the platforms that we're developing bring into service are the right ones this debate about mass I think is really interesting and really important a lot of people I know are moving very quickly to say huge mistake to reduce the size of the army to where it is and we must begin to recruit a bigger army from now on to which I sort of say well maybe not yet proven picking up a world's description of this as a missile war does investing a huge amount in a carrier that has to be really quite close to the enemy coastline because of the range of its aircraft makes sense to you now general or equally tanks or equally manned aircraft the things that in a way define the culture of our armed forces those prestige platforms do they look vulnerable now? I was done in Portugal last week at striking force NATO looking at the lessons they learnt from the Truman into the NATO order of battle these are aircraft based in the Adriatic which are striking targets in Estonia they make a huge difference so you definitely need aircraft carriers as I made the point these new ways of walking of warfare are right you can't forget the old ones you need troops to season hold ground you need troops for urban fighting and you need huge quantities of artillery and rocket ammunition and I mentioned it earlier I think the integrated view was people liked its intellectual rig that didn't like the punchlines configuring to operate below the threshold of warfare and returning to war fighting at graduated winners a modern division in 10 years and a course of reduction of combat power to NATO which doesn't make sense given the fact that our leaders have signed up to a new concept for the deterrence and defence and I'll just it's based on a very simple idea that in order to deter you have to unambiguously demonstrate the ability to defend the defence requires you to control geographic areas and the domains of warfare simultaneously so it's a very simple idea but it needs combat power to make it work and hugely expensive of course Helen you've been very direct about the dependencies diesel fuel the gas infrastructure the other things that mean with one bound Europe cannot be free in this sense to what extent can you be prescriptive and say what would help what should Europe as a collective be doing in the coming months to try and change the calculus I think that the energy transition is obviously part of this but at the same time we need to understand the ways in which the present tense situation with fossil fuel energy is itself a constraint on the energy transition because very high fossil fuel energy prices mean that the inputs for the energy transition for green energy are more expensive than they would otherwise be and nothing that's happening with the war changes in some sense the physical difficulties of the energy transition it doesn't in itself provide the technological breakthroughs that are necessary for storage of concern the thing that I think in some sense is positive or encouraging about where we now are on the energy side is that I think all illusions that people have had about energy and its importance in every respect has shattered geopolitically because nobody is any longer going to say that dependence on Russian energies of geopolitical consequence you didn't need too much paying attention to this to understand the ways in which Putin was deliberately creating reinforcing European energy dependency through the last couple of decades and the way in which he was using the pipelines for that I think that nobody can any longer have any illusions about the fact that there are some structural reasons why the prices of oil and gas and perhaps surprisingly coal were actually as high as they are and that was true in the autumn before the war came and I also don't think anybody can any longer think that you can separate out those energy issues from the energy transition that what everybody has to do all governments have got to do to hear an energy strategy that deals with all aspects of the energy situation as a whole and I think that the space for doing that is greater than it was before the war because mines have been focused Tim, I'm going to ask you one last question and then we'll throw it open but you don't just do geography you do all sorts of aspects of human interaction I'm thinking about lessons and do we change things and at times in this it's occurred to me that Putin going for professional armed forces was in a way a massive self-own because he now faces this dilemma do I have to mobilize the country which he's politically very reluctant to do and our western countries I mean we see now Ukraine able to mobilize literally hundreds of thousands of people we look at Finland and say well the great thing about Finland is they have a system where from a standing army of 22,000 they can go up to hundreds of thousands and indeed Poland has tried to have a sort of hybrid system is there a lesson there even for a country like this one which traditionally doesn't engage in prolonged continental wars and think it needs lots of military man and woman power no you think it's not it doesn't really expand no because and this takes us back to cyber the snake by Putin is not that he doesn't have a conscript army it's just that they have used the army that they have incredibly badly talks about it I saw some footage of a day of some tyres on one of the armoured vehicles had USSR on it they're using tyres of 40 years old to fight a war in 2022 that's one of the reasons they're losing not because they don't have a conscript army it makes sense for Finland and the Baltics I think Lithuania has conscription now reintroduced it a few years ago it doesn't make sense for us and going back to cyber because that's part of this answer I think they haven't used it because it's held in reserve they are very good at it but so is Ukraine but also so is the United States and increasingly the UK I don't know of the degree of plausible deniability we could have but there is a price to pay for fighting cyber war in the longer term we are in this movement where mass is still important I suspect mass will always be important but mass is increasingly controlled by cyber and anyone who doesn't put money into that is going to lose great thank you do we have roving microphones? yes we do on each flame the gentleman at the back on this side was the first person I saw raising so let's open it up I'm David Lloyne, former colleague from the BBC now visiting senior fellow here at Kings and I want to go back to a comment that Will Jessett made right at the beginning about the pivot from Afghanistan to state on state warfare in this last decade and of course the attack on Crimea in 2014 came coincidentally with the end of NATO combat operations in Afghanistan and I wonder if we are in danger in moving towards tanks and big mobile armies which armies feel very comfortable in training for in losing the lessons of Afghanistan and losing the lessons of counterinsurgency and these complex interventions which we fought over the last 20 years and may well have to fight again is that directed? it's principally at Will but I'd like to hear the general's comments as well well so we we spent a lot of time thinking about what happened in Afghanistan and what went well and what went badly and let's bear in mind how it ended and let's be realistic about what sort of conflict it was but James will recall just how much effort went into thinking through the lessons that we picked out of the successful parts of the counterinsurgency operations so kind of you know very strongly I think embedded into British military doctrine and certainly informed all the work that has happened since so the big policies that get most focus out of the most recent reviews are the white papers themselves but it was an integrated operating concept that was published as a preview to the integrated review and the command paper that are in many ways the most interesting and they do, as you've said Mark take us a long way into sub-threshold and grey zone and cyber and space and all of that but that's not all they do I think those documents are actually quite sober about the sorts of conflicts that we'll need to get into and they don't they certainly don't expect that we're not going to get into further difficult counterinsurgency style operations into the future I don't think that they're immediately foreseeable but I don't think they're ruled out either so I think the picture is rather better than us simply forgetting the hard one hard learned lessons about Afghanistan it does feel to me like the essence of those has been incorporated into that update on doctrine but Joan So start with the return to collective defence and big armies I mean I think these armies won't fight the way that armies have been fighting even as we're seeing at the moment I mean this is the era of multi-domain operations I mean it's not yet working as we want it to but we will get there and what you might call distributed mission command in the old days as a tank command if you penny package your forces people would condemn you but now you penny package to survive when you're given huge autonomy and you don't concentrate force to kill the enemy you concentrate fires to kill the enemy and I think it's interesting that how do we judge progress in this war we judge it by the land that is seized and is held you need large numbers of troops and to manoeuvre troops around the battlefield in a way that they can win the fight and survive still requires combined arms groupings just cleverly used so we will screen with drones and clear with artillery your distributed mission command much smaller packets of forces all these ideas are in the process of being delivered the third division last year was an America experimenting on many of these things and cyber of course will be a big part and there's a very good if you haven't seen it Microsoft open source report on the use of cyber in this campaign and there has been significant use of destructive cyber by the Russians against the Ukrainians and chatting to a Ukrainian the other day he described that you needed a can do attitude and I think that is quite interesting because the can do attitude has made it seem to us as though there hasn't been any but there has been a lot it's a very good report but it just tells me it's not quite the decisive arm that some of us hope it is going to be lessons learned Afghanistan I think there is lots to learn there I think in capacity building in particular and there's a very good NATO report that's just about to get in production which sort of says that capacity building in support of fragile you know sovereign states doesn't work very well I would have thought David that all that investment in hunting terrorists fusion of intelligence i-style all those other things is one of the pay backs isn't it for the war on terror if you look at the number of Russian generals but that's the point those skill sets get built into your model for your defense and war fighting it was a 20 year campaign and we didn't know in 2001 any of the lessons that we knew in 15 years later and I just fear that we might be losing some of those more complex lessons that aren't as technical but they're about troops on the ground and counterinsurgency and how you fight wars among the people my fear Thanks David Suzanne Raine is sitting in the midst of a centre in the most hard to reach position for any microphone wielder Thank you Mark Suzanne Raine I'm a visiting professor at King's and also with Mark on the board of the Imperial War Museum I have a question about capability we talk particularly at the moment about material as a capability and about building material capacity and obviously in the middle of the war that's the thing that you see the bit that sits behind that and arguably before that is the decision making capability and decision making capacity and part of that is actually built into the integrated review in a way but also you could argue that it's at the heart of some of the things that Will was talking about about do we have the best alignment in Europe in terms of what we think we should be doing next and if you're talking about deterrents deterring Russia you have to be thinking how do we alter Putin's risk calculus so all of that is essentially about how we think and how we project our thoughts in a credible way so I'd be really interested in your views on what more could be done to improve decision making capability and capacity in the UK but also very much in NATO and in Europe so that we can really affect as Helen was saying really anything that we've done on the economic side yet changed how Putin's thinking how could we improve that thank you I'd like to I'll have a jump in on this I'll have a quick cut and say I don't know as a matter of fact where the decision making is being done in the UK on this I assume very largely through the NSC or some sort of small group of the NSC where you would need to bring everybody together including very importantly the energy component of this and in the national debate that doesn't yet seem I think to have featured as widely as maybe we should expect for reasons hadn't spoken about but it's how you then sort of the point I was getting to on war aims I suppose is how do you then align that better across western nations because again James and I were talking on the way in and saying we've been reasonable I think American leadership on this but you know you've had American positioning you've had something different in the EU you've had something quite different in NATO and something different here so there doesn't really seem to be a multinational multilateral forum in which you're already bringing together you know key decision makers to talk about those big issues that kind of you know the war aims and all of that you know you're still doing G7 you're still doing all these kind of groupings but they're at this stage in something that's important as this one would have thought by now there would be a kind of a bespoke piece of international machinery and maybe a bespoke piece of national machinery maybe there is maybe there are both but I can't see what they are sort of contact group Helen did you want to come in on the deterrence point I mean clearly Putin was not deterred because he didn't believe the threat all I would say is this is I think where the energy sanctions are concerned the only possibility to change the character list is something that's very drastic and very quick because anything that allows Russia a longer period of adjustment which means essentially replacing European market share with a higher Asian market share I think at least allows him to think that the risks of continuing are worth it what we have to understand though is is that anything that would change his character list in terms of the size of the energy sanctions and immediacy of that would be a seismic shock to the world economy and you have a number of developing countries in the world that are already on the precipice where a set of issues around fuel and food are concerned so to take that as the option and I'm not saying it should be ruled out but there has to be a strategy for what that means too now I have no idea how these things are thought about in the people who are making the decisions in the UK but I slightly worry that it can be seen that the decision making can be what's the way of putting this not sufficiently focused on the worldwide consequences economic sort of contact group but with an element is what's needed to sort of but with an economic element as well as a strategic and political element next question yes the woman there we've just about put the microphone in time there to Hi my name is Christine Chang I'm a lecturer here in the study in the department of war studies and I have a simple question for you do you think military escalation is basically inevitable and I ask that just with a bit of background framing so the way that I see this playing out is basically that Putin is backed into a corner he this has become essentially an existential fight for him and then on the NATO side it has also become we have turned it into an existential fight both for ourselves and also for Putin and it's obviously an existential fight for Ukraine there is now no incentive for anybody to back down that whole structure of peaceful negotiation has fallen away now it feels like we're in for a very long insurgency as some of you have already indicated but is there a different way out is there a different way out I know that's a really hard question but I'm hoping to some of you can imagine a different way out because I personally can't and I'm looking for a little bit of hope here Tim do you want to give hope the moment you said it was a very simple question I thought now it isn't there is a way out sure and it's compromised but that's in short supply and Benet and Macron and others were trying to put together some sort of compromise deal about three weeks in the vague outlines of what could be achieved and that would be something along the lines of February 24th which is a bit of a problem for Putin but if you can manufacture it if you can lie convincingly enough that he got something out of it you could go back more or less to February 24th he definitely keeps Crimea various beautifully crafted worded statements that allow him to sell something but that's the only way and no I'm not hopeful I think Putin is in trouble as we said as you said I think when Finland and Sweden joined NATO he's even more trouble because he's trying to stop NATO expansion and partly has failed and Ukraine his any way out is to escalate I don't think NATO are yet caught in that trap I think NATO haven't needed to make a decision yet you know it's not a crisis for NATO at the moment and building up to the summit in June I think they will form an opinion and give it and NATO spent a lot of time working on the decision making come back to your earlier question decision making at the speed of relevance is a big subject we all tick about it when you look at the evidence every time they are presented with an immediate challenge they make a decision I think our challenge though is the fact that many people have never been through this before understanding the theory of deterrence people are terrified to provoke Putin but if you're not prepared to escalate when you deter you can't so I think it's education of our leaders is one of the challenges but I think NATO haven't had to make a decision yet I think when the current phase that the war runs its course I think NATO can then decide what its strategy is going to be I suppose the other potentially difficult conversation in NATO in terms of the sort of compromise that you were talking about Tim is at what point does pressure get put on Ukraine not to accept the permanent loss of I beg your pardon either way there will be pressure on Ukraine at some point either way certainly in the days running up to the war in Kiev I had a lot of resentment that Schultz and Macron had tried to put pressure on Zelensky to concede something in Donbass or somewhere else even the idea of it was really violently opposed I think in Kiev at that time and of course since then they've achieved extraordinary things this gentleman here had a question I think he's raised his hands so you can probably say I can be held guilty of favouring this side of the room and the other microphone wielder has had no actual battle experience yet there's someone there but let's this one first and then all that Neil Collins I'm a financial journalist I have a question for Professor Thompson I think that attacks on Russian oil and gas where the proceeds are paid to the IMF would mean that there's never going to be a shortage of it but it would start to produce a various substantial sum which could be used for rebuilding Ukraine it would demonstrate how much of the world is prepared to pay up for Russian gas and also gives a huge incentive to find alternative supplies and it wouldn't matter if the whole world didn't join in if the major Western countries did that would be sufficient I think at the moment you can buy Russian oil at about a $35 a barrel discount from the world price which gives you some idea of the amount of money that could be available and best of all it would make Putin absolutely furious well I definitely think there's got to be creative thinking because we both have agreed that the supply side particularly in the short term is really, really difficult I think though you've still got to be really clear about what your objectives are with this I mean it would be one thing to say okay we're doing this because it will when peace whenever it comes or relative peace Ukraine's recovery but do you think that that makes any difference to Putin's calculus right now I mean it can infuriate him without changing anything in his strategic judgment about what he's doing and I think the question still has to be are Western countries really serious about energy sanctions actually as something that changes Putin's calculus so that needs to be like thought through in terms of what the implications are for the for the world economy now I'm not saying that finding some extra money for Ukraine financing it for the future is insignificant I'm just saying I think it's a secondary question to whether any of us think that energy sanctions can actually change the outcome of this war Paul at the back there another ex-calling Mark what are we learning what a straight question what is the optimum size of a deterrent force that we're going to have to deploy if we presume that the conflict gets frozen in place the Russian army remains something like what it is Russian armed forces what size do people think a NATO force is going to have to be but in the context of that what are we learning about the way the Ukrainian system works so you've got reserves paramilitary national guard national army interoperating what are any lessons emerging from that early though it is it's a very good question I think as NATO now move to implement this new concept that I've talked about it's accompanied by another bit of work called the new force structure work which tries to much more cleverly integrate the forces of all the allies you know at the moment people contribute forces to NATO and they keep perhaps a bit fat themselves the idea here is that in large parts your forces are part of the NATO response so I don't think we know the answer to that question yet particularly because of course we now recognise in the future that you can have significant effects in individual domains be they maritime strike air strike you know space targeting all these sort of things so it's a very good question I would have thought there would be an answer in June if it's requested but probably not until then and what you learn about about Ukraine well for this sort of war you learn that the combined arms grouping is still important and it's very interesting to see some of their tank brigades have three tank regiments and three artillery regiments the weight of the weight of artillery that they can bring to bear now of course queued shooter descensor very quickly by drones has been the battle winner as someone said I mean end laws javelins yes having an effect but what's really killing people is our tournament so we need more of it need more of it yeah thanks paul another gentleman here Andrew Adamson ex armed forces now work in defence industry what the panel or the extent to which they think that this is an opportunity to recalibrate the relationship between the armed forces and governments and industry I'm thinking particularly in terms of partnerships between the customer and industry on setting requirements weapon stocks and dynamic stock piling that sort of thing and also the sovereignty of defence r&t and how much of that we ought to be outsourcing and how much of it should be sovereign thanks it seems to me that the answer to all of that is there in the fairly recently published defence and security industrial strategy I think the need is simply now to get on and deliver that because the questions you're asking kind of you know are as old as the hills aren't they I've been doing this which is 30 plus years we've been talking about the need for stronger more strategic more trustful relationships between government between the department the armed forces and defence industry and I think you know realistically one has seen quite a lot of progress against that but the fact that we're still publishing things like the industrial strategy and saying there is need to more needs to do more on this demonstrates just that point there's big machinery being built in government to do this now I think that this crisis will accelerate the pressure to do this much more quickly as you were saying earlier Mark and this is kind of you know in munitions in particular you know we're now having to kind of go very very quick on this and very much like urgent operational requirements in previous campaigns we're rather good at doing this when we really need to do this we're much less good at doing it when there's not pressure on it so surely a big part of the answer is to you know capitalise on what we're learning out of what's being done in the context of this current crisis and applying that logic straight away to doing exactly what you're describing time is almost run away from us but we're going to take two last question two final questions we'll take them both at the same time and then we'll feel those two questions so please Hi, I'm Ian Matheson a retired former British Foreign Service Officer My question really is about the future of Russia I was struck by Tim Marshall's gloom about this which I think most of us will probably share to some extent but it does make me think the title is really a title that asks the defensive view of against Putin or against any likely successor to Putin and I wonder really if that's a realistic end I'm sorry the Ukrainian ambassador's not here but I'd like to know what the Ukrainians think the future of Russia is I wonder if there are Ukrainians in the audience who could tell us that but there might be scope for a little bit more optimism and a little bit more sort of creative policy making about how to deal with Russia in order to will the ends that would be better than most of us are now expecting the Cold War as I remember Cold War I ended much much more suddenly than people at the time expected and I don't think we should rule out that changes could happen very quickly I just wonder if anyone on the panel know what the Ukrainian view of the future of Russia is OK Great questions Robert Tyler from New Direction the Foundation for European Reform I just want to ask the panel very quickly about resilience obviously we see in the defence concepts of countries like Poland and the Baltic states a huge emphasis on this by example in Latvia's 2020 defence concept they even outlined the role of the church, the government universities and primary schools why in the west do we not have a sort of similar concept Shall we do Russia with Tim and then we'll see because we've got about three minutes I live in hope but not expectation of things getting better I was with the Ukrainian ambassador last week because he was kind enough to ask me to host the charity event where Zelensky's fleece was sold for auction for £90,000 a quick aside on that one Boris Johnson was there as well and I was supposed to be introducing him and this was election night and he swapped in was supposed to come on the stage within two minutes and go but Zelensky we couldn't get him up for 20 minutes so Boris Johnson is standing there now you know his life it's lived in 10 minute chunks I think it says an awful lot that he stood there ruffling his hair for 20 minutes was patient enough and I know it's a sort of anecdote but it does show you the resolve and the relationship sorry briefly well I'll try to be brief on Russia again you just look back at the geography in the history look back at what happened after the Cold War why are they going to change I hope they do as the resilience I think NATO is now again back in fashion found its raison d'etre I think that Schultz will look at Macron's strategic resilience and think it's not going to be very resilient so I think Germany if it's going to spend this 100 billion which it says it is mostly within the NATO framework and that is aimed sadly it's not aimed eastwards it's defensive shield is against is eastwards just so I think on Russia I mean I deal with the Ukrainian military so I mean at the moment they're very in the moment so the only good Russian the dead Russian and perhaps more refined views will come over time but I don't know and on resilience of course again it's lined up to some pretty hard nose resilience objectives and enhanced resilience objectives in recent summits actually the UK resilience doctrine is very good but how far down that line we are I don't know but I think it is interesting to alluded to this UK don't tend to educate their populations on the true nation of the threat unlike perhaps Finland and Sweden and Estonia which makes I think delivery of some of these things much more difficult Thank you all very much indeed so we are out of time for this session there is a 20 minute break now we hope that we may have the Ukrainian ambassador with us but we certainly have another great session to follow after 11 so I look forward to seeing you all back and please join me in thanking our fantastic panel I'm just slightly chipping you all along because I don't want the time to run away with us on this session so session number two is more focused on the European dimension how Europe responds to this crisis and what could be done to respond better to this crisis and what kind of new security order might emerge in the European context from this so we've got a fantastic panel and I hope you'll join me in welcoming them on stage now on the ground yes please yes Anna go to the the file seat Anna and then Beatrice and Elizabeth yes Fabian I guess if you come in and then we'll leave so General Adrian Bradshaw is not here yet he's been decorated apparently not with an icing sugar or something like that but a Belgian medal so we'll get to Adrian in a bit if he appears General Bradshaw I should say probably so first on stage Anna Fottiga who was a foreign minister of Poland and senior European politician who unsurprisingly given her background has been keeping a close eye on the Russian threat for many a year then we've got Professor Beatrice Hauser historian political scientist and somebody who's worked in NATO looking at these and at Kings so you've got the benefit of the home audience Elizabeth Braugh journalist scholar specialising in deterrents you were at Russie weren't you and now at the American Enterprise Institute and has just flown in so thank you very much Elizabeth for coming in and I should say by origin Swedish in case the question turns to the Nordic flank of NATO or whatever we can get some expert exactly expert opinion on that and then finally Dr Fabian Zuleg chief executive and chief economist of the European Policy Centre in Brussels specialist on EU and EU accession but also of course from Germany and able to look at that country and it's obviously key importance in defining what goes ahead well let's kick off with Anna Fottiga because Anna I guess that if you're Polish a lot of people will have been saying particularly since 2008 in Georgia or 2014 in Crimea and Donbass look this is a thing that needs to be urgently addressed and with varying results among European countries some I think probably preferred to ignore it so do you think now there can be no further argument about this or do you think there are still some European countries who don't understand the magnitude of this and the type of change that needs to happen me to start with thanking UK for distance for actually for many years already and in particular in recent times I think it is over political divisions in the country over political opinions in this country I think that in terms of perceiving the threat the imminent threat from Russian Federation since beginning of previous year and mounting of arms around Ukraine five eyes so the old alliance were right and actually it was the most accurate assessment of the situation in saying this I would wow I wonder because listening to previous panel I put the question how to deal with the country that is that develops like current Russian Federation nurturing ages old ideas and it is not only Putin because now this war in Ukraine is online actually and we see all effects of this war so the near imperialism that is legacy of older ideas because for ages being a tsarist Russia the Soviet Union or the Russian Federation modern Russian Federation there is anormous expansion accompanied by unbelievable atrocities when we see what happens in Ukraine and try to remember Chechnya I was reminded about this you know how they used to get grosny and now to do same atrocities exactly same atrocities so extermination of those who are not willing to assimilate is part of policy and the question is when we deliberate how to deal how to build strong security environment in such circumstances the question is how to deal with country nurturing older ideas not reforming structures because KGB guy runs this country and he is not alone Russia is like mafia type country the economy of Russia is fully fully regulated by colleagues of Putin and these are links with the west collective west and this mafia has nuclear arms are we able to stop this once and for eternity it's a very good moment to bring in Beatrice then in terms of does Europe share that perception those things we've been hearing from Anna I mean because in the past obviously there were differing responses based on geography, economy, energy all the different interests variable geometry can that survive and is it inevitable that some countries will not feel that strongly or do you think this is a true paradigm shift remember Saint Malo or Brussels Treaty or Modified Brussels Treaty we were able to to say or the west collective west was able to say at that time that military cooperation close between France and UK possible possible not only transatlantic links should be accompanied by economic links and I believe it, I'm economist in my background it should be innovation cooperation so links are not sanctions again you've put your views over very clearly let's get a perspective from Beatrice on that one of the things that really surprises me is that we are no longer in an east west ideological contest and nevertheless we find that there are people in the west and throughout the west that seems to be influenced by the Russian story or seem to buy into the Russian story and I find that absolutely extraordinary also there seems to be no proper line up with particular ideology so you find in France for example both on the far right and on the far left people who are very much in sympathy with Putin how is that possible that's something that really really astonishes me and the other thing we have centres of excellent for strategic communication all this sort of thing we seem to have absolutely no way of affecting public opinion within Russia and the Russian hinterland we have some access to academics and a very small elite in the Moscow and St Petersburg cities but the vast majority of the Russian population seems to have absolutely no exposure to an alternative story on this whereas throughout the west there seem to be people who've got the exposure to the Russian story and buy into it and I find that absolutely flabbergasting Elizabeth I know you were looking a lot the open society in its enemies that's what we experienced absolutely and in terms of Greyser I know previously when we appeared on a platform you were talking a lot about that this is whatever you want to call it red this is not about shades of grey in terms of the scale of the aggression and the scale of the shock but does it shift relationships on meaningfully does it provide the necessary impetus to come out with a more coherent European response to threats from the east it does and I'm going to be rude Mark because I've been talking to talk into the microphone no no please it's very important no no Mark I think that the challenge is that we are so well set up militarily but the weak part is our civil society it was a fantastic quote in I think last weeks in New York the report had gone gone to Ukraine or was based in Ukraine was based in Ukraine and nice to see you ambassador and he was happened to be at the gas station or petrol station that was manned by volunteers who made sure that people didn't get more petrol than they were supposed to and a car pulled up with Lithuania license plates and apparently that's something that happens quite a bit in Ukraine I'm not an expert on Ukrainian license plates but apparently people do this people register their cars elsewhere to save money and so this volunteer at the gas at the petrol station said no petrol for people who don't support our state and I thought that was brilliant and it told the people in this car support our army support our people then you get your petrol and that's what it's about our responsibility as citizens to support our country and if we don't have that then what's the point of having strong armed forces if behind them in our civil society we have this mush of people who may not have feel any allegiance to our government to our society more generally and so extremely receptive of what you for example just mentioned Beatrice and for other forms of aggression and everybody admires Finland well Finland has spent decades educating the population about national security threats and as a result they have 77% of the population willing to defend the country with weapons then personally defending the country with weapons should they be asked to but how do we get to that I think it starts with feeling commitment to society and maybe this is an investigation for you Mark I would love to see an investigation into the connection between tax evasion and willingness to defend one's country I promise you anything in Finland they have low rates of tax evasion but that's for you investigative journalists Thank you Fabian Germany always so central to European debates and hearing Elizabeth talk about attitudes there to defending the country things like that we know and education indeed about national security threats that is not the case in Germany and the numbers are much lower of people who say they take a gun in their hand as it were to defend the country how big a transformation do you think is necessary in terms of German attitudes because the Chancellor in announcing changes more defence spending changing energy priorities suggested that he was going to lead the country to a different place is that doable in the foreseeable future do you think I think firstly I would say that Germany has already changed a lot in the last weeks there have been many taboos which have been broken we shouldn't forget that for a long time Germany was told not to do these things it was told that it could never engage again in any kind of military adventure yes there was a change already over the last years but it is still a major change not only to policy but also to the psyche of people there was a belief that Russia could be controlled through trade, through interdependence clearly we now know that didn't work but this is a big change which has to come now there are some people in Germany who traditionally have believed in non-military means so there is that peace movement which is saying that whatever has happened the best way of addressing this is through peaceful means but I think they are in the minority now so we are seeing much more willingness to address this we are seeing that German weapons are going to Ukraine which is a major change that's not to say more doesn't need to happen clearly there is more which has to happen but I think overall actually Germany is going in the right direction and a big recapitalisation of the Bundeswehr absolutely things we've known for quite a long time which have to happen but not only that I think we have to look at the whole package the sanctions, the energy sector which is much more difficult for Germany and some Eastern European countries than for others we have to look at also the response to the migration question so it's the whole package and in all of those areas a lot has changed not only in Germany but across the European Union we have now been joined by General Adrian Bradshaw who, like General James Everard in the first panel is a former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander and therefore very much steeped in the alliance management issues and questions of collective security and so it's great to bring you in General perhaps on this question one or two of the panellists more or less say well we're kind of there on the military in terms of European I guess spending or full structure but do you feel that there is an effective European military capability do you feel that NATO essentially can serve all the requirements of people in the European space how do you see things developing in terms of concerning and improved collective response to what's happened in Ukraine Thanks for that there's quite a lot in that question Firstly I think we all need our sight and vendor and one is delighted to see the realisation in Germany which is not at all surprising but I think collectively in Europe and in the transatlantic domain we need that realisation but I was reflecting this morning that Mr Putin has committed two heinous crimes with respect to Ukraine on the macro scale one of course is embarking on this terrible war and unleashing this unacceptable aggression in the heart of Europe but the other is in managing to lie to his own nation to quite such an extent and to get a nation to believe so many things fundamentally completely untrue and listening to the Radio 4 this morning the interviews in Russia on the eve of their parade one reflected with horror the degree to which Russian people have drunk the Kool-Aid have got the message and so coming back to the point that has been made actually already on this panel we need to remind ourselves that warfare is hybrid by nature we all started talking about hybrid after 2014 it's hybrid by nature it's an all of nation collectively all of capability affair it's not just about armed forces it's about winning the information battle it's about winning the economic battle it's about winning the war of ideas and it was easy enough in the cold war to have a great idea which was opposed to a grim ideology we need to generate the great idea about the importance of democracy and freedom and the rule of law and of truth and how important it is that that wins in the struggle with these autocracies criminal autocracies and so what I would wish to see in our defence structures firstly is a an acknowledgement across NATO particularly from the nations who aspire to be in the lead of European defence that the transatlantic nature of NATO is absolutely vital that our link with the Americans is incredibly important and that NATO is the organisation for transatlantic military strategy making and for executing the military collective requirements of Europe and the North Atlantic area the talk of European strategic autonomy in defence should be quietly reduced and more talk should be made of the nature of the relationship with the United States and the EU and NATO need to start working together properly we have the Berlin Plus arrangements which have so far managed to command three operations since 2003 which is a lamentable state of affairs they were very successful the counter-piracy operation down in the south of the Balkans and most importantly the U4 operation in Bosnia in Bosnia Herzegovina which is incredibly important for the stability of that part of the world but it demonstrates that using NATO command structures NATO facilities Europe can execute military operations without duplicating military structures within the EU what actually needs to happen is that NATO and the EU need to be able to formulate strategy together which I might say is impossible you would be amazed that during my time as deputy SACUR it was impossible to have strategists from the EU and NATO in the same room developing joint strategy despite the hybrid nature of warfare today we could not coordinate military strategy a NATO economic strategy NATO political strategy NATO financial strategy because it was not allowed because a couple of nations one of which is a member of NATO but not of the EU and another member of the EU but not of NATO and it so 29, 30 nations can't do the business the vital business of today which is coordinate grand strategy so that's my observation for this morning sorry there was a moment when I thought we were going to disagree and I actually then found that we have lost lots of common ground there because one of the things that I've been preaching all my life time in academia is that what we need is a European pillar of NATO along the Berlin plus that you've discussed and then basically we had that we had that in the WEU and the WEU as you recall was not only closed down but its vital defence clause was absorbed into the Spent Treaty with Brexit, the United Kingdom was no longer part of it my question is always, my challenge is always can we not somehow revive something or reinvent something like this European pillar of NATO the WEU, the Western European Union that existed and basically it cannot possibly anybody's disadvantage if the Europeans can act more autonomously if need be because one of the things that I think is absolutely clear that's been said over generations of American presidencies is that the Americans would like us to shoulder more of our own defence burden that they'd like us to be able to do more together and the other thing that is clear taking a much, much larger perspective now than the Ukraine war or even the US departure from Afghanistan is that simply over the decade since the beginning of the North Atlantic Treaty and before that the Western European Union the United States has gradually declined in its commitment to Europe in the total the sum total of its commitment to Europe I'm not saying it'll withdraw I'm not saying it's going to the end is in sight I'm not saying the Americans will not come to our rescue if they can and if the situation is urgent but what I'm saying is that it is absolutely clear that for a long time the tilt towards the Indo-Besific has been a very important factor which means that it is everybody's interest including the United States that the Europeans can do much more for themselves is described the political will of actually saying why can't we then in that case get together those member states of both organizations that are in both organizations and sorry the others have to stay outside why can't we do things together is absolutely would be in the sense of that thing and that the Western European Union was actually embedded in NATO it left to NATO everything that it was doing its organization that would be a very important answer there goes I've said it before in the context of what you said general that the sort of emphatic lesson to be drawn I suppose from Sweden and Finland being members of the EU is that they don't feel safe within solely that structure that they want NATO membership and that is the effective response in this crisis from their national perspective but we're going to take two more views on this and then I'm going to try and open things up to the audience Anna you wanted to come in quickly to agree to enlarge this extent with general Bradshaw it was a very important statement when we speak about European pillar of NATO it should be well understood of course the Barden sharing so taking much more responsibility for defending Europe is important but in terms of decision making it is slightly different and when we speak about transatlantic alliance well we have a proof a war on Ukraine actually it is US in lead and many countries simply following US or aligning with US and then step by step Europe I think that the EU I think there is much more consolidation and observing things in the EU I see that this actually perception of threat from Russia is much more common within the EU and we are able to better communicate but it's still much to do and US, Canada, UK also Turkey in many ways remember Montreux Convention that was quite important on this so NATO transatlantic link is of vital importance here strategic autonomy a quick follow up from Fabian and then Elizabeth and then we'll open it up to one of the questions no problem I just wanted to follow up on your comments and disagree with you slightly on one of the points I think it's very clear at the moment that the transatlantic relationship is the most important relationship not only for defence and security but including that but I would disagree a bit on the strategic autonomy question because I think that's misrepresented and maybe the term isn't very helpful in that but really what we're talking about here is addressing the vulnerabilities of Europe and addressing the vulnerabilities of course also means taking into account where the resources come from the kind of relationships are behind it that there is a big difference between a relationship with an ally and with a potential rival or with a potential enemy as we have seen now and then addressing those vulnerabilities but this is exactly what we should have done years ago when we look for example at the energy field we should have looked at where our energy is coming from and how that makes us vulnerable and clearly that should have led to action in the area of dependence on Russian gas and oil so I think this is a useful concept to look at it is also a useful concept because we do have to think in the long term what is the situation going to be what are the contingencies we have to take for example in relation to a different president in the White House for example in relation to a possible security guarantee which has to be given by the EU rather than NATO dependent on what happens between Ukraine and Russia so I think there are many issues there which should be addressed but I think none of that really questions the transatlantic alliance Quick response from maybe then to Elizabeth The points you make are entirely fair and I didn't mean to be too hard on strategic defence autonomy for Europe but I'm hitting at the use of the term in a political context particularly from one of the member nations when they seek to create more defence autonomy within the EU as opposed to reaching out to NATO and making use of shared structures and I think that is potentially damaging if it suffers to damage the relationship with the United States that was the context I think we should we owe Ukraine a big huge deal of gratitude for having demonstrated in a very unfortunate situation that everybody can play a role in keeping that country safe so let's learn from Ukraine not by waiting for a war Ukraine didn't wait for a war they didn't have the luxury of the sort of preparation that we can do but what we should learn from them is that everybody can play a role in keeping that country safe in organising themselves and if I may hope I'm not too polliannish but isn't the problem in our societies that most of us don't feel any sort of allegiance loyalty to our societies or to civil society to societal structures we are seeing very dramatically in the U.S. but also in other countries and I think it started with what Robert Patnam documented 20 years ago the bowling alone phenomenon and as I said I'm not trying to be polliannish about it but if we look at the challenges facing our societies especially national security it stands to reason that we can all get involved in some way and by getting involved we create that sort of buffer that tells our adversaries that if you try well you can try but we will have the entirety of our society or large parts of our society will be organised and will deny you the advantage of taking whatever it is you want in our countries that's what Finland did in 1939 and kept the Russians, the Soviets at bay for 105 days and what the Ukrainians are doing today great we do have the Ukrainian ambassador here now so the last part of the session is going to be remarks from him so we've got time for a couple of questions certainly let's see how we go so let's start with one or two questions I think you were just fractionally faster in getting your hand up there so let's start there and then second question here yes thank you Merrick Chapman I'm a macro strategist I'd like to ask about the commitment of this is directly at Germany in particular where we've heard that there's been big changes in their orientation but it's striking that the 100 billion fund that they've committed to their military is actually extra budgetary so they're going to continue with the debt break and they're going to pretend that they've not got this fiscal commitment so it sounds like they're not being entirely honest with themselves I wonder if you could comment I think Fabian and General probably should talk to German I think many countries play around with budgets and putting things across different years and in different ways but personally I don't think it really matters what matters is that the money is spent and that it's also spent well and I think this is one of the great concerns for me the number sounds great but really it isn't only about spending that money it is about spending that money effectively so that increases European capability European capacity that it contributes better to NATO and that also means we have to look at all defence industrial sector because in the end we are already spending a lot of money on defence and security the question is whether we are doing it effectively and I would think that if this hundred billion really does have the effect we want to see then we need to also make changes to how we procure defence and security how we organise that whole sector Well only to say that it really has a special contribution to make for the future in that it lies in a particularly significant area of Europe from the point of view of getting stuff from A to B and it's noteworthy that the means of doing so have been reduced hugely since the days of the Cold War so for example where there were dozens of trains that could carry main battle tanks that are now rather few and tend to be dedicated to commercial interests so the amount of spending that is required on infrastructural support to the means of responding to a threat are enormous and it's quite possible that defence spending in Germany would not be in the shop window if it were going to be very very effective I would just make that observation Major Alan Broughton Royal Marines my question is to Fusion we've spoken a lot about how the UK can cohere its social, political, economic and military levers we've seen in the in response to the Ukraine crisis an unprecedented response from our civil institutions or civil institutions around the world such as McDonald's, Visa, IOC but those institutions have made those decisions unilaterally whereas in comparison Russia has a national defence management centre which is able to cohere its political, social, economic levers now it has that luxury because clearly it's an autocracy and we're a democracy in the UK we're able to do that with say counter terrorism where we have the counter terrorism extremist network is it feasible with us talking about Fusion for us to actually cohere our foreign policy in a way where we could have security lines of effort and direction to say something like the BBC or is that inherently undemocratic Elizabeth first and then Beatrice I leave the BBC to Mark well maybe not but the UK government is actually doing I hope I'm not revealing anything untoward but is doing really pioneering work on working with the private sector because obviously in as you say in a democracy, in a liberal democracy the government can't tell privately owned companies what to do but it can engage with them to help them better understand their role in furthering the national interest and by the way this is a lot harder than it was during the cold war when companies did that because CEOs are often from a different country than the company and the company may be ultimately owned in yet another country but the UK government is doing some fantastic pioneering work there Can I address your question in a slightly different way it's not what you extended into here and it should be Professor Helen Thompson who comments on this but one of the things that is happening is that what we're doing the sanctions are affecting the entire society and if we're talking about how we're educating the population to come along with us it's actually a small people who are paying the price of our sanctions now Professor Thompson would be able to liken us to the effect that the sanctions have had on the gas and oil prices and to what extent they were going up even before the war but I keep getting letters from former friends or old friends who are saying I can't pay my gas bills in this country my electricity bills in this country so one of the things that is clearly happening also is that throughout European societies the fact that these prices are going up are something that is seen as challenging the prosperity they've had and very briefly therefore also on Germany for example one of the things the Financial Times quoted Chancellor Schultz this morning saying that they had to weigh the disadvantages of this impeachment or this impounding on the prosperity of our societies against the help for Ukraine this is one thing that particularly western societies are really not used to any longer that people have to make sacrifices in that way and to some extent one could even say you turning down the radiator is your tiny contribution to our sanctions on Ukraine this is not happening so from that point of view this all of society approach isn't taking place although the fact though it's an all of society effort that is being made to a large extent it is not perception of threat because we learned something in Poland recently over 3 million people coming through our borders and a lot of them actually it is the biggest wave of refugees real refugees after I think that after a second world war not that is true and without governmental lectures with full support of government of course of all levels of government but each and individual family each person took this on his her own and they host people at home it is not very easy I know it from my family experience as well but they do this that's understanding threats and solidarity who I'm sure will reflect on that but Fabian and then General Bradshaw I think this question of the cost of living crisis is really important because it plays much bigger in politics than the war itself maybe that's because it's not communicated in the right way but it does have an influence on how politicians act and I think there's also a question of solidarity how can we actually manage to distribute the costs which are undoubtedly there so that the most vulnerable aren't suffering the most because then we're not going to maintain the public support for any kind of action in Ukraine and that also means doing this across countries there will have to be some form of solidarity between countries because countries are affected very differently now just on Germany I think what we have seen there is frankly it's the wrong way of making the argument there has been far too much discussion around the economics of it the argument in Germany is about historic responsibility it's about moral responsibility it is about learning from what happened in the Second World War that's an argument where Germans can also be convinced that sacrifices are necessary and that there is something here which is more important than the immediate effect but talking about the economics of it is not going to convince people in Germany right thank you thanks I think your question was about our ability to be able to fuse strategy and the Ukraine war has served to force us to think about the relationship between economic and defence and security and information strategies but as yet our mechanisms for fusing them are not that great which is my point about the EU and NATO working together in the face of somebody like Putin who has his hands on most of the levers you need a very quick response between the military and the diplomatic and the political and the economic if you're going to be effective in response to his latest move which implies in the context of NATO and the EU that they need to be able to work very closely but within our nations sadly we've lost the ability to do that during the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns they were largely subcontracted out to defence and security so for example in the United States the strategy for the invasion of Iraq whether you think it was a good thing or a bad thing to do it the strategy went very rapidly to SENTCOM who did an immaculate job of developing military strategy but what one needed in Iraq was a holistic strategy so when we arrived in Iraq the only people on the ground by and large were from defence and the intelligence services one needed people for reconstruction for education for rebuilding political structures for information and all of that was missing Ukraine has forced us to confront the reality all of that needs to be combined and I think it starts at the top in the cabinet office here in UK in the NSC in the United States which needs to have much more power to bring ministries and departments together and co-ordinate stuff before it's pushed out I did want to sort of come back and come back to the question in the sense of saying well isn't our NSC system supposed to give us this capability but I think we are quite limited on time and I think all of us would very much like to hear from the Ukrainian ambassador so if I can call on that impristika to come up on stage and I think his remarks on this topic will obviously be particularly important and interesting to the conference Good morning I hope you can hear me Can you hear? Thank you I'm sorry to get in the way of such an interesting discussion I would love also to be a part of the discussion and mostly what I appreciate when talking to the audience like yours is being able to react because that's the way how we built up our messaging as well I understand how many different things here around and I'm sorry that I came a bit late I was in another meeting with this audience like yours in our museum where the secretary Ben Wallace was also giving his address and we'll be happy to see him again just a couple of words to tell you actually I came with the prepared speech but I understand the appetite here is understand what actually Ukraine was one of the question earlier today was actually Ukraine once this work can be ended it was actually end of the work for Ukrainians I don't want to tell you how the situation on the ground I have total respect in your media and the people around the government which are making all decisions knowing what's actually the situation all about in Ukraine I just wanted to tell you how Ukrainians see and how we can bring this to the end First of all we had six rounds of negotiations with Russians sometimes very difficult to believe but we are sitting around the table and negotiating with them I have to tell you that in usual Russian manner they came with such a high expectation such a high sort of demand that I'm not even going to tell you because you will see how unrealistic they are how unjustified they are and everybody understood that that's the negotiation position so what we came at the end of days to how we managed to bring together us and Russians around what the items there are just a couple of them please bear with me so the Ukrainians are asking now not how we finish up the work but how we will be living afterwards and what is the afterwards security picture this is something very close to what we are discussing right now and I will be more than happy if you engage in this trying to understand what future of our order if you wish will be so the idea came that at the end of the war we will sign the treaty and ratified by the parliaments which is very important I have to remind you that Minsk agreements so called were not apart never been signed by anybody by Ukrainian presidents no Russian and never been ratified by Ukrainian parliaments so there are major guarantors as we call them guarantors which we offer to become Ukrainians guarantors after the war is ended in the Kingdom in Canada, Italy Poland, Israel was mentioned and in the initial stage even Russia was mentioned and Belarus as a guarantors that was two inputs from Russian side you can imagine that so we hope that all the guarantors will be able to support our way towards EU you can see that NATO is not mentioned here in the next 15 years we agreed with Russians that the fate of Crimea will be decided this is very interesting diplomatic way of telling that we don't know what to do with Crimea right now the fate of Lugansk and Donetsk so called Lugansk and Donetsk people republics is also set aside and given to the presidents President Putin and President Zelensky to decide when they meet it's again very purely diplomatic trick how to allow the negotiations progress knowing that the re-stumbling block is here the sanctions and legal actions again Russia should be discussed only when we finish the peace treaty with Russians not before as some of our colleagues in Europe now are doing telling the Russians you know what to do something we will start lifting the sanctions and the last one that everything we discussed with Russia will go on referendum with Ukrainians if Ukrainians decide that we still have to go find the place under the umbrella of NATO security security guarantees so the Russian Ukrainian negotiations will be restarted that's more or less I understand it's complex that that's more or less what we did last official negotiations were on the 29th of March obviously Russians are not happy with the result of negotiations and they believe that they don't have to go along them they will fight and will achieve something on the ground on our side the same we started to receive more support sometimes militarily support sometimes political stand financially and the both negotiation teams and their positions departed each other so just to finish that if we will have one minute and somebody will have questions on this structure I will be happy to respond but just a couple of things to tell what Ukrainians feel what is our biggest pain right now this is the lack of security structures which would allow us as a nation to survive we are not talking about everybody knows the faith of we are not talking about the partnership for peace with NATO didn't work with us the NATO in our water didn't help us either the European sorry the future is not is not helping so the Helsinki final act we have to admit that Russians just threw this paper away OAC didn't work it was biggest and most expensive mission OAC over the whole existence of organization didn't work either I don't want to start with UN and UN Security Council so what Ukrainians maybe we are to hasty in our observations and our assessment of the existing structures in the world but that's what nations have when it is at war against the very big powerful nation with the nuclear weapon and the part of the security council so what Ukrainians believe can be done right now we offer it maybe it's half baked I understand but we offer it an idea to the world and we call it united 24 meaning that we offering an idea that will become basic for the new security arrangement I'm not talking about organization which arrangement if anything happens to the sovereign state in the world the nations guarantors of this security will come together in three days will finish up all the consultation just three days then the next move is nations guarantee that sky over the particular nation will be closed against any enemy on this planet third the nation in need will be provided all the assistance they require financial and everything I know that it sounds like a fiction but that's the best we could come at the moment right now let me stop it here if we have a second I would be more than happy to reply if not thank you very much do you just have time for one or two questions so let's the first hand I saw there obviously we have got the ambassador so questions to the ambassador all the panel but let's see how you were talking about the terms of a settlement there are three issues I think were very very important for many Ukrainians which ought to be or perhaps I like your views whether they are a condition of a settlement or a condition of sanctions being lifted war crimes in other words the pursuit of war criminals at the height of the Russian leadership down to the troop level of Russian forces that's point number one the issue of reparations for war damage inflicted by the Russian aggression on Ukraine and certainly the very humanitarian issue of the deportees not the refugees who have fled to western Europe but the compulsory deportees from the occupied territories who have been deported into Russian territory and are being currently reeducated as it were those three issues are they part of your conditions for sanctions being lifted in other words that has to be resolved before some sort of semblance of normality returns to relations with Russia thank you what I gave you this is official party line if I may if you talk to a hardliner like myself I will tell you that for example I can't see why we have to look into pockets of western taxpayers money for the after-war reconstruction that we built I believe Russia has to pay for everything so everything you mentioned is not even a question that's the way I would describe I can't see how can we get out with reparations not to be paid by Russians or all those committed the crimes won't be prosecuted and there are so many other things I guess the best way out of it if Ukraine wins militarily so if you allow yourself it's very difficult to believe I understand but if you allow itself the idea that actually Russia can be defeated on the field of war you would allow yourself to think and find the way how to do it what to do maybe it will be even better for Russians themselves a quick question from Fabian I just wanted to ask because you mentioned EU membership and I wanted to ask what is the expectation of Ukraine in terms of EU membership and also time scales it's very easy we believe that that's actually what initiated the war what was the last drop when Russians lost their patience remembering 2013 that was the case why they went against us and why they went to take over the Crimea so it's not even NATO that's that much because in this audience I don't have to explain that NATO is already all over Russian western borders just another piece is not changing the strategic strategic concept of Russia being able to defend itself so this is EU we are just departing Ukraine showing that they are not ideal but we are departing somewhere thus creating the conflict within Russian society creating this threat to Russian society that somebody like Ukrainians can live differently they don't need Russia to follow the case we can build up our Slavic finally Slavic Orthodox nation can live western way this will be blow not to Russia not to Russian population not to huge Russian territory but the way they run themselves Russian dictatorship whatever the way system of power we will be in thanking very much a UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace on stage shortly there will be a little bit of hiatus so I will ask the panel to join me in leaving the stage but please also let's thank our panel for today where I'm also Professor of National Security Studies I'm delighted to welcome the Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace to join me in a conversation as part of our conference today Mr Wallace has given a big speech this morning at the Army National Army Museum and has raised some of the issues that we've been talking about this morning I've been thinking about how one might start with this as many people have said it's the 9th of May Russian Victory Day Vladimir Putin has spoken he's accused the west of preparing an invasion of of Russian land NATO being a threat and you selected this day to make a keynote speech on the Ukrainian conflict you're a former soldier as you've watched this conflict unfold what are your thoughts about the course of the conflict and where we may go next well I think I mean the reason I did the speech was despite how it appeared in some newspapers it wasn't about necessarily Putin it was really about the failure of the general staff of the Russian army to both I suppose speak truth to power but also to prepare their forces properly now I had to be slightly careful because I didn't want to show any sympathy I mean I don't you know what the Russian are engaged in is an illegal invasion and every soldier whether they're junior or senior has a responsibility in that but from a professional point of view as a soldier you have to marvel at the sort of you know betrayal really of many of those people and many of those people who are not all in support of the war will get no voice and it's quite important if you're ever going to try and penetrate the Russian system to make the point that suffering does not excuse culpability today will be a whole excise in the Russian I mean remember it is the Soviet effectively union who fought the Second World War not the Russians alone you know I think Ukraine marked the day before but nevertheless it was a collective endeavour but you won't hear any culpability in any of it no one ever asks whether suffering is actually a sign of failure at high levels and so the purpose of the speech was to make sure that President Putin doesn't wrap it all up put the cloak of this great defeat of Nazism around himself and use it for his own imperial ambitions which is exactly what he has been doing and I think that is very important to challenge that assertion and you know if you read his essay he wrote 2020 it's another piece of amazing fiction that he positioned himself as the saver at World Russia or the Soviet Union as the saver of the world and actually we all know it was much more complicated he plays down the Ribbentrop pack which effectively allowed the Russians to dismember Poland transport people from the Baltics and that's all forgotten he never registers that Britain really stood alone for 2 years before they turned up I think it's just important to register that today there are lots of people dying suffering unnecessarily strategically because of the illegal invasion and then tactically because of utter incompetence in the Russian general staff now I don't want them to be successful so don't please make that mistake but that's why the army museum is important to remind people that the people who pay the price of imperialist ambitions or rewriting history or indeed general staff who like to have lovely parades but don't actually deliver the effect on the ground is the young soldier and that's where we get to now and even worse than that it's the people that are their targets which is Ukraine obviously we're holding this conference and we're going to hear from our student panel at the end of the day who are providing the conclusions and hopefully a summary of the day so I asked the students if they would give me some questions for you as well and they've been quite forthright and on this question they were saying were you intending to wind up the Russians with the speech and are you hoping to achieve something specific they've read it and they thought that it was a challenging speech but I think if you ignore the sort of sub-ed written headlines in the newspapers and read the actual speech in full I wasn't trying to wind up I think I was trying to make the point that there is culpability in this, the culpability within the Russian system I remember going to St Petersburg years ago and being told you don't understand more people died defending the city than the whole of you lost in the Second World War I remember saying slightly sheepishly from the back of a minibus at the time I think to the guide as a soldier I'm not sure a casualty rate is a sign of success and when I went to Moscow about a week before the invasion and Shoigu said to me no one suffers like us as a sort of boast and I said in the meeting I don't want anyone to suffer I remember saying I've seen too many of my own soldiers buried when we were trying to persuade Russia to stop it and they were slightly thrown when I said I don't want Russians to suffer I mean it's not a and the problem it's been used to avoid culpability and I think there are now body bags coming home in their tens of thousands potentially into Russia if they haven't been cremated or hidden there are therefore tens of thousands of injured Russians coming home they can hide that, they can bully it shame the widows into not speaking which we saw when the curse went down I don't remember the lady was in fact injected by an agent in the middle of an audience you can see on live on YouTube when one of the wives of the curse actually says well where is it and they inject her as she's complaining so they can do all that but I think it's important that we point it out and make it very very clear that huge amounts of what is going on is unnecessary and the generals the truth to Putin by now So you were security minister and long serving security minister at the time of the Salisbury attack has that shaped your approach to Russia I mean you were one of the people who spoke out quite early about the challenge of Russia Yeah I mean I think you know to deploy nerve agent on a country soil is a really big step they won't have been taken freelance that would have been, I think I remember I said at the time authorised at the highest levels of the Russian government this is nerve agent right this is not running somewhere over the car it's a proper deployment of a military capable chemical weapon when it was deployed on our streets and there was a bit of debate inside government about why were they so bad in doing it and so far as you know they all got caught they appeared on Russia today talking about cathedrals and actually started to look a bit comical dangerous let's carry out that and were they ten foot tall or did they not care and you know I think at the time and I've been to visit Ukraine I've been to Ukraine five times both the security minister and defence secretary and you know what goes on I know what they do in many parts of the world you've seen what Wagner's done in Libya you've seen what they've done in Syria and the world has not been paying attention to the nature of the regime and I think we forget too much because we either look in our own backyard and nobody cares about that or we remove the person and in a sort of effectfully a totalitarian regime the person's more important than anything else and you can have all your analysis you like but if there's someone who takes that view of the world and as you can see in his own writings he's convinced himself all sorts of things you have to take that seriously and you have to prepare for that because you know he is he's got a view he doesn't seem to want to change it doesn't seem to listen to anything alternative and it's a dangerous view so we're going to have to live with Russia for the moment we have to live with with President Putin there have been references today already in this conference about whether or not we've returned to a new cold war I'll be interested to know whether you find the analogy even the term useful but no one can deny that there have been repeated references to nuclear weapons and to questions of escalation little talk about the management of it to be frank how far do we have any off-ramps in this crisis when the rhetoric at times seems to be going in an extraordinary warring direction for the public there's one thing that's difficult to read which is some of the tools we usually relate to being less escalatory like sanctions, economic tools actually in the Kremlin have the opposite effect they're more escalatory in some of their minds because it's harder to hide from your public economic punishment it's much easier potentially to hide military casualties they have a track record in being able to do that in 2014 in the Donbas there were lots of unmarked graves actually fun enough even the great patriotic war one of the characteristics of the Soviet side at the time was they didn't ever really seek to find out what happened to many of those people there were many many families in the Soviet system who never knew what happened to their father and grandfather whereas we had a sense of trying to account for it let's not forget the effort the world took to try and persuade Putin not to do this this was not like we didn't all try we didn't all bend over backwards my ministers people went to the Kremlin people still do as we see President Macron is often trying to engage with President Putin asking him not to do it it wasn't like he wasn't asked and I said to Shoigu that I said look you don't understand that if you didn't do this the world would relieve a really big sigh of relief and we had no plans to invade Ukraine it was only about 10 days before I was born yesterday I think we are dealing with a difficult issue cold war analogies I'm sure someone out there is desperate trying to look for another phrase a modern iron curtain phrase I think the key thing here is to ask NATO which we did at my last defence minister's conference they need to set a long term plan whatever happens in Ukraine I think Putin will still be there I mean Putin certainly in the short and middle time 70 years of age plenty of time in a sense so the question is how do we contain Russia how do we reassure our allies and how do we provide resilience to other allies to make sure they are not victim or subject to sub thresholds lashings out or manipulation at the end of this conflict a war and I think that's the challenge we have to do so we have to get the international NATO membership to think long term now whether that manifests itself in a cold war an iron curtain or nothing like that for anyone right section of defence is calling for a new iron curtain I'm not we need a plan, we need to see a plan across the whole of the international community through NATO I'm going to come on to NATO in a minute but you mentioned sanctions there needs to be done with the sanctions tool to make it a more effective coercive part of your armory in effect it doesn't seem to be achieving the ends we want yet I know Americans have talked about like a 12 week, 4 to 16 week time frame or whatever but can we make the sanctions more effective Britain's been quite vocal and wanting to be harsher on the gas sanctions I wouldn't underplay however that when eventually that does happen in a broader sense that won't have an effect Russia is fighting the war in Ukraine with 65 to 75% of its land forces they will have to be refurbished they will have to be re-equipped that won't be able to be done the time they get around to trying to do that I suspect the sanctions will be much harsher anyhow they'll already I think there are a number of consequences of sanctions that haven't yet been felt but will be photographs of people at cafes in Moscow is not actually a benchmark of whether sanctions are working look at the ruble, look at its long term challenges when it has to both get knowledge, people services and technologies huge amounts of what's been exposed here as a large part of their military capability is based on western technologies or components or that's not going to happen so I think we've been more vocal that gas and we have to effectively be tougher on that Britain has tried to move that further I think we'll get there is oil I think is the latest one they're talking about but in many other areas they're already finding it difficult but we knew they built up reserves and he's got lots of reserves which he will try but he cannot miss the fact that the western international community plus Australia and others are actually quite unified in a converse way if things moved towards negotiations of some sort which might involve parties other than the Ukrainians and the Russians do you think there would be a withdrawal this comes from the students by the way do you think there would be a withdrawal of sanctions relatively quickly potentially or are we essentially looking at a posture that has done something I accept well certainly the characteristic most of these sanctions are punitive rather than deterrent and I think to be fair the Ukrainians were often asking for sanctions earlier as a deterrent rather than punitive you'd hear a number of the international community saying well he hasn't done it yet so being punitive they have to be punitive let's be honest for what he has done or what the regime has done look I think it is and we have to be very careful here it is for Ukraine to choose its future and where it wants to settle or not settle or go with this conflict and I think it would be quite wrong for me to sit here and either put conditions on Ukraine or tell Ukraine what piece it has to make that is for Ukraine the thing worth fighting for for all of us is the freedom to choose of a sovereign nation that chooses with that choice with that freedom is entirely up to that it's the same as Finland and Sweden President Putin would love it because it would fit with his narrative that NATO is there trying to seduce Finland or Sweden or is encouraging them to join we're not actually we would absolutely understand and recognise the importance of the freedom to choose but Sweden and Finland will be very close allies of the United Kingdom whether they choose NATO or not we have a squadron of British tanks and Finland right now I think the first time ever but my God I would stand up and defend their right to choose and if you listen to the president of Finland's speech of the new year it was a very good speech about that so I think I'm not going to start putting stipulations on Ukraine that is for Ukraine I do of course want to help them negotiate from a position of strength not weakness that's why we're standing by and will continue as long as they wish us to do so you're teasing me with NATO so NATO summits coming up next month the Sherpas will be out there they'll be already drafting the communiques which will say solid things how resilient do you feel at the stage the NATO alliance is as we face potentially a summer continuation of this conflict well into the autumn so I think NATO has worked incredibly well contrary to the allegation that was brain-dared it's actually the opposite look it's harsh but it's true Ukraine is not in NATO and I've been open about that for months and weeks for years a number of nations wanted to move at different speeds but it isn't but within NATO's borders NATO has very quickly stepped up in military support around those borders for example we've got a company we've got six Typhoon aircraft in Romania we've got two battle groups at the moment in Estonia we've got a good few hundred troops Royal engineers and infantry in Anlite cavalry in Poland we've got ships deployments etc and we're not alone and there's a huge amount I think there's a hundred thousand United States troops in Europe at the moment so NATO has responded it's remain consistent we didn't cancel cold response up in the high north 35,000 troops including actually troops attached from Finland and Sweden and actually we have come together very well and we yes some countries move at different places but there are 30 members but we've all got there so I think it's worked well I think the next challenge for it is long term what are we going to do with this Russia as it is we've got resilience and containment and reinforcement but fundamentally I think it has worked very well on that looking forward what does success look like for NATO forgive me putting Ukraine to one side here because the challenges that this invasion crisis has thrown up some people talk about it being existential for a number of entities in Europe what does NATO need to come out of this stronger rather than weaker well I think it needs to have shown that deterrents it can deliver deterrents that's why we come together it's a defensive organisation contrary to allegations by President Putin it is and that you you provide defence through deterrents and if this conflict doesn't over spill Putin for all the words doesn't escalate and if anything does happen we are in a position where we can provide that resilience and reassurance to our fellow members and that's absolutely what works for NATO but you know I mean that's ultimately more there for we are a self defence organisation and anyone who claims otherwise is wrong so there's lots of talk about expansion you sort of semi-referenced it in an earlier answer how could NATO expand at the moment without giving President Putin an excuse to take action somewhere else or to demonstrate to his support whatever it is I told you so all along it seems that NATO is likely to expand very soon isn't it to expand into Russia so you know I mean I mean it is it's quite interesting I think I've lost count of the number of international statements signed up by Minister Lavrov or indeed Putin on the right to respect a nation's freedom to join an alliance I mean I funnily enough when I went to Moscow having seen how Lavrov played games with the Liz Trust I had in detail their so-called draft treaty I then looked at compiled all the times Lavrov or Putin had declared that we respect a nation's right to choose an alliance and that goes back to I think 1991-1989 we've got declaration we've got declaration of declaration where the Russians put their name to it I remember George Robertson telling me that you know at one stage and Putin put his name to it so just because a country is small doesn't mean to say Putin gets to pick and choose when his declarations and Lavrovs come into force so I think the reality is that if President Putin wants to make an excuse to do things he's already proven he'll make it up I mean he's already made up that apparently the Nazi hordes of the Ukrainians are about to come and invade Russia he's made it up he's just talked about it again today and I do I think if Sweden and Finland join NATO it'll be provocative I don't think so, I mean he was told I mean 2014 he was warned you do this the consequence of invading Crimea is more spending on defence and more NATO and that's exactly what he got no one hid that very very clear that's why the EFPs are in Estonia, Poland they were very clear we warned it publicly everyone talked about it, I said it in Moscow that if you do these things you'll get more NATO so he can't be surprised and the reality of he makes his strategic blunders more than he makes his strategic successes it still doesn't sound like many of France though out of this crisis this seems to be and this was mentioned this morning by our first panel we seem to be in a position where it's almost doubling down by every party to this terrible conflict at the moment except for the four civilians who are there NATO's doing it to reinforce its deterrent posture but the question is how will we get out of this crisis you must find it a bit dizzying I'll ask you, is it dizzying the latest thing at the weekend was that there was some speculation that there might even be a referendum in Switzerland about NATO membership it's quite extraordinary in a matter of months there's a referendum about everything in Switzerland I genuinely hold very true to the tenant that effectively people choose NATO and NATO doesn't NATO is not some country that goes around the world trying to absorb things it is an organisation that people with the same values who believe in self defence not offence choosing off ramps there may be lots of off ramps we've already seen President Putin shaping today potentially a sense of about the Donbass I'm here to defend the Donbass defend our people in the Donbass and he may he's certainly capable of writing a story that fits his narrative if he wishes to do so but the world can't stand by and watch him invade sovereign nations commit war crimes well his forces are committing war crimes and go around bullying the world and not expect us to stand by our values freedom isn't free that's the motto above the South Korean War Memorial and let's put it another way at the moment there are a number of components that you would expect a successful army to have technology, leadership intelligence support of the population well he's wrong on all those four so turns out that the Ukrainians don't want to welcome him with flowers and banners turns out that his superior technical forces the way they're deployed don't work they're not as necessarily superior in some areas as they would lead to the belief his intelligence was clearly wrong in many areas and the his judgment of international community was wrong there is one component he still has in his back pocket which we should really worry about which is brutality which is if you win your war by killing, murdering raping, bombing civilian territories breaching all human rights all Geneva conventions corruption and that becomes the battle winning component the message that sends around the world to other adversaries is incredibly dangerous that you don't actually need to have all the best kit or the best training or appropriate rule of law you just need to be able to be more brutal than the other person and more prepared to destroy everything in your path that's been said in generals and philosophers have said those for decades that is still the untested component they're not interested in occupying Maripole they will use it they will use the port but they're hardly invested in something to save there and where we see it it's destruction so I think that is a really important thing it's why it matters to the international community it should matter that if Putin is successful in Ukraine then watch out I don't want to fall into the narrative of Putin about this being Russia versus NATO but just before I move on implications for Britain NATO as an organisation it's leading nation what very long ago had a president who was questioning it's relevance and it's future that person those views could easily be part of the next election in America European allies continue to question the role of NATO in European defence to other security and defence structures as you know and as you will discuss I just go back to this question of how far this and we're trying to look at the future as well how far the defence of Europe and ultimately NATO's role in it will be affected by this crisis are we already seeing that some of those difficult questions about the relevance of NATO are now essentially being put to bed well I mean I I remember when President Trump was the president I remember the December NATO leaders summit and having lunch with him and a few others of us had lunch and you know actually my reading of President Trump's questions on NATO was more about a view of are we in the United States taken for granted by other members of NATO who aren't paying their way as opposed to anything else President Trump was always about money he was about money right so he'd be saying I'm putting in x% 3 billion billions and billions into NATO and these countries are getting a free ride as he would view it and I think the 2% club wanting to get people to pay more for their security I don't think that's unreasonable and I think actually I'm off to Washington after this that's heard across the aisle there is a sense of how much is Europe going to put in the pot to help contribute to its collective defence I think that's perfectly reasonable that many countries including the UK have all taken peace dividends over the last 30 years and been very quick to bank in the end of the Cold War but not necessarily step up when the security got going so I don't think that was him actually fundamentally saying he doesn't believe in the collective self-defence or anything else I think it was a sense of I did an interview saying taking for granted what I meant was I think America we in Europe must not take America's support for granted we must recognise that they spend a lot of money to do it and what I would say is this incident has jolted a lots of countries to come forward with the planning spending increases to actually spend their way back into it and also the point about other European nations it's Sweden and Finland that seem to be big European not in scale but very respected European members of the EU who first point of call is actually I think maybe will explore NATO it's not European Union thingy which is always developing it's been developing into some form of strategic compass or whatever it's calling so and I think what's been interesting in this position is when it comes to security people do trust that Britain does what it says it does come and stand by you we might not have everything to do it with we don't have past divisions to do it with and I know a lot of my colleagues and everyone would like us to have more but we do turn up we are there on day one in fact in Ukraine we were there on day whatever many years ago 2015 we did orbital we were there on the ground and we've got a squadron of tanks in Finland right now so we do and I think that's something to be proud of so let's turn to Britain then the papers are full of a cost of living crisis you're talking about increased spending by some members of NATO is the UK going to spend some more on defence it's going to be a difficult ask isn't it the public don't actually link even though we may intellectually link it do the public link the cost of living crisis with the crisis in Ukraine not entirely how are you going to get the resources that you need to encourage your colleagues in NATO and other fours to support you I think at the time we got the 24 billion extra we were the first to have a big jump and the Prime Minister was very supportive it was the biggest single jump since the Cold War and it was very important at the time when the threat was what it was to make sure that we modernise the army and when the army's land fleet is woefully behind its peers and you can lay the blame on all sorts of reasons but fundamentally it needs definitely to modernise we needed to take some strategic decisions on type of complex weapon systems and all sorts of things were incredibly important and we did get that funding for it and as I see here now we've got the extra funding for operations to support Ukraine and our lethal aid that we've been doing that was in the media over the weekend the 1.3 billion and we will continue to be able to meet the current commitments of course and I said it all the way through the process as a threat change we should also be prepared to change I don't think it's impossible to persuade the public of the importance of stability the one thing I bring from being the security minister is the world is a very fragile place I remember the Home Office was very clever at making its case the Treasury for more money after a terrorist attack the Treasury would manage to always present economic consequences this terrorist attack here costs the economy 1.4 billion it would show how much it costs to prosecute a terrorist it would show that loss of business to let's say Central London when a terrorist event happens is X and make the economic case to the Treasury that you want to invest in counter-terrorism because a consequence of not is this and I think it is it is possible to persuade both inside government the importance of security and that food security energy security is all in there matters and I think if I go back to the 1980s and things like that the public perception of where defence fit in was much higher I don't think that's impossible to turn that round I think you just have to have a concerted campaign to tell people the importance of defence I mean you'll know in your world you're constantly trying to make it relevant to people why you need to understand defence I think it's a really important it is a really important issue but nothing's for nothing so a number of distinguished writers about British defence policy and British defence reviews over the years you oversaw the defence component to the integrated review and one of the things many of these authors have always written is that the one thing defence secretaries have to avoid is saying anything too big lest it be proved wrong the integrated review did a tilt to the Indo-Pacific and we end up with a crisis in Europe it's a law defence reviews that if you do anything new it may not appear to be the right thing as you look back on the review and as you think about the next step how well do you think the review is standing up I'm sure you will say it's doing very well but I suppose looking forward six to twelve months do you see a need for what the Tony Blair administration had to do after their well received review of 1998 where they had to have a new chapter to the street defence review I know you're not going to say there's going to be a massive change but do you feel in terms of reviewing our posture and our approach we're pretty well set at the moment or will there have to be a look in the coming year let's say I think you've slightly mischaracterised the integrated review because the Pacific tilt was not just about defence it was about culture and science British engagement culturally around the world it wasn't just about we're going to send aircraft carriers every week to the Pacific Ocean and it also clearly identified Russia as our number one adversary it also identified NATO as the cornerstone of the security of Europe so I think those were absolutely true I think for what is worth the mistakes of the past of defence reviews have been A that the appetite of number tens let's call it that it's never matched by the budget and defence MOD's either tried to accommodate the ambition without telling them the price tag and in some cases some of those defence reviews were funded by rather fictional what looked like efficiency savings and targets that were never really true but then the department spent those savings before they'd have them I think the defence review before the one I did where the George Osborne's one I think it planned 11 billion pounds of efficiencies of which the department was allowed to spend 13 billion it was that plus a small amount of new money and you know if you say to any department in theory you've got it you have to keep really tight hands on the purse string and then if you then get ambition from number ten or foreign office or whatever you have to be a bit of a I'm a bit belligerent by nature at two people to say no I think defence is a department where it can very quickly run away from you if you are not careful it can become very expensive very quickly and you do have to spend some of your time fighting your corner to either say no to one department or no to somebody else because you know there is it can get very quick very expensive and so I think you have to have your hand on that till I I think historically senior leaderships in MOD talks about the need to run the budget hot which it sounds like you're moving away from that in other words having natural overspend this year I'm going to come in on budget I think it's the first time in 30-40 years so you have to what you've got to also see the long and the short term I mean the treasury doesn't like seeing long term it finds it particularly difficult you have to be quite tough with the arm services about make your mind up what are we going to put on this new ship you're building right now because if you don't make your decisions now let me tell you the bill will be much higher later and we have that all the time so you just have to be rather sometimes pedantic about it but you also have to remind people of the ambition you have to say if you want to do more that's fine but it's going to cost you more so the course and the navy was seen to be the winners in the last review is it the army's turn now or let me put it a different way can you see a move back to perhaps a slightly larger army the army got 5.2 billion pounds in investments in new equipment I mean numbers sorry not spending the winners and losers in the review what I would say is I think we're now in a place where our funding cycle slightly matches the cycle of the three services at Stratcom even though Defender Digital is one of the biggest spending of the lot is that the RAF RNA cycle where its investments typhoon upgrades the F-35 is coming on line P-8s, E-7s their cycle is in the right place the navy type 26 type 32 Dreadnaught the next generation of attack submarine they're all in a place where some of the decisions have been made and it's now in their sort of delivery cycle and the army was the one that was woeful behind so if you look over the sort of ten years of the defence command paper some of the army stuff was brought forward because the gaps in them was too much I mean gaps in land EW gaps in armoured vehicles all of those were too high risk to tolerate and we should never they got where they were we need to defix that so I think they're in the right place the size of the army I think it's quite interesting people are already spending the money that we may or may not get one day I'm getting lobbied for more tanks or more precision weapons or more deep fires that's constant and depending on usually what stable the person comes from it is often linked I don't know if I got some new money would I suddenly trouble the size of the infantry I'm not sure if you look the lessons from Ukraine are showing real impacts on how you might fight a future war so the lack of counter UAV is something that we should all worry about really worry about now if you buy a lot of UAV batteries there will not be huge human resource there will be lots of capital there so you're focused on the effect rather than counting ships numbers but you can't deploy a division I was in one of these divisions in North Germany it usually turned out to be about a brigade and a half and in fact when we last deployed a division it was two brigades and a commander brigade in the second Gulf War the thing I really wanted in that command paper is to do what it says on the tin now people might not like me for that but we get lots of top Trump collectors look at all these type 45s none of them work what is the point in boasting you've got so many units if they're not properly wrapped and what you're seeing on the road to Kiev is Russian forces that can stack up on parades but if they don't have the proper comms the proper protective armor measures to protect them from the proliferation of hand-held anti-tank they can't integrate with air they can't communicate because their comms are so rubbish they get exploited they run out of fuel the soldiers don't have any situation awareness we've even found examples of downed SU-34s with GPS things stuck to the dashboard or cockpit so you can boast you can line them all up I think when you were in the army I recall lots of officers telling me that they used to use mobile phones I remember the early nickname for Bowman was better off with map and Nokia that's right so whatever people say and they may not like the defence command but I'm sure they don't if they said we wanted more tanks because I wanted to say do what it says on the tin rather than these big hollow forces that we've all served in we can argue about and they were under resourced all along that should have been fixed and that's probably right I served in those places I remember we never had a laser range fighter on the warrior we had lots of warriors but no laser range finders so every round you ever fired was discarded because you have a first round discard I remember on my rangers qualifying for firing 30mm I probably paid for a laser range fighter every time I missed but no one made those decisions so it sounds like you are focused on not over committing to things that Britain couldn't deliver I guess my last question as we approach as we come to the end of the session is how far are we making an assessment about what peer let's say peer competitors might be taking from this crisis so as we look to the broader defence of Europe and not just Russia are there any implications that you are seeing that we need to think about seriously which could have implications for spending as well and actually even before this I think the last time I was up at King's College was going to see a wargaming is that we've set up SONAC which is a net assessment centre for us we've just appointed that Johnson is our leech I'm delighted about we absolutely need to incorporate red teaming, wargaming understanding our own vulnerabilities and really ask the difficult questions of ourselves and our services about the decisions they are making I think that is the most important thing I think if Minister Shoygood had a SONAC and it was up and running some of their assumptions may well have been tested correctly and I think it is really important that we keep this as an ongoing process I mean if I am successful of making the department truly threat led then part of informing what that threat is will be informing of our own vulnerabilities and therefore things like net assessment centres things like academics academia telling me that I've got it wrong or I've got it right or where we need to invest more money into R&D and it's over 6.6 billion into R&D so we get to see it because the one thing I'd say about my own service it is the most conservative of them all the army and letting go of certain capabilities to invest in others is sometimes quite hard it's hard for the innovative generals who want to change something it's quite difficult and you're only going to do that if you invest in R&D but then having invested in the R&D you actually incorporate it into your military many of us in this room would have gone to experimental days and saws be played and you say okay so where is it we'll come back next year and you'll see the same thing going round in circles so we have to sometimes take some leaps so is Britain leading that debate that's the last semi question to this the United States gets to lead a lot of that debate because it has such vast forces that it can take risk in one part while holding on to holding on to yesterday's battles with another it gets that choice we as a smaller partner always will have to either follow their learning or take some risk now sometimes we do it very well and I think that's what we've got to get politically comfortable with it's also what many in-arm chairs have to get politically comfortable with that you know if I'm always trying to defend against yesterday's war then how much will we move forward as an arm forces unilactually now I can do that I don't mind being unpopular but you know it is a risk because who knows and that is the challenge of defence security Secretary of State thank you very much indeed for filling my questions thank you we've achieved the key thing which is to finish on time for lunch and can I invite everybody to break now we will return will we convene at quarter past two thank you very much indeed and it's a triple pleasure really for me to be helping out with this afternoon's session partly because this very building is where I started my journalistic career in England working for the BBC external services partly because I'm editorial adviser to reaction and partly because I'm a fellow of King's College having been on the council for nine years so however it is not about me as you all know we are here to discuss the economic warfare and the implications for investment for the private sector coming from that in the next stage of our defensive Europe panel I should say we're going to talk for about half an hour then we will be taking questions for the panel from the audience when that happens there will be people with microphones please wait for the microphone otherwise those people watch you online or afterwards won't know what you're saying but without further ado let's welcome our panel Pauline Neville-Jones who is a former chair of the joint intelligence committee also of course former security minister and next to her Dr Martin Navias who's a banking and finance lawyer and a senior visiting referred search fellow here at KCL then Merrin Somerset Web contributing editor to the financial times you'll certainly have seen our output if you're rich enough to read the money section of the FT on Saturdays and finally we're joined by Jacob Geer who is head of surveillance and tracking at the United Kingdom Space Agency welcome to you all Pauline obviously we know about warfare in terms of fighting but it seems to me and I hope you agree that there are many many other components of modern warfare as we've seen in Ukraine particularly the whole question of economic muscle and indeed used in the form of sanctions it's worth I suppose outlining excuse me briefly I think you can say that there are basically three categories of sanctions that I can think of there's a primary sanction there is a secondary sanction when the operation of the primary sanctions is monitored and reinforced possibly by secondary sanctions of a kind which put extra pressure on those who are not conforming and not joining the sanctions and the third is counter sanctions which we've just seen the Russians impose the way in which they've asked for oil and gas to be paid for and also the way in which they have done something which I think is to their long term disadvantage which is to deny the Polish and the Bulgarian markets now that says something about Russian behaviour which they never did in the Cold War they always fulfilled their contracts and now they've broken a contract which I think tells you that this is now a political weapon as far as the Russians are concerned which is bound to have the West response it increases the pressure to move away from supply by Russia the other thing I think it's worth saying just about sanctions is if you have UN support and you have a UN resolution you're likely to get obviously a good deal more buy-in from the rest of the world most of the I think increasingly that's hard to get in the case of Russia we clearly won't get it because you've got a member of the Security Council capable of blocking any resolution so clearly adherence to the sanctions regime is going to be voluntary on the part of other states in the world and as we've seen not everybody is in agreement so as far as the sanctions on Russia are concerned it will be a partial it will be a partial feast however as the western democracies and particularly European countries are a major purchaser of oil and gas and effects what kind of effect is a different issue I mean the object often of sanctions is to undermine the economy of the country concerned in order to change the policy via popular pressure on the leadership the difficulty with this thesis which is I think true pretty much all sanctions is that the countries that are the object of sanctions are usually run by people who don't actually have much care for or track with the welfare of their populace therefore the likelihood of being impressed by popular discontent and opposition is rather low the eye of solos you can name a number I don't however think that for that reason sanctions are ineffective they don't always have the effect you want and they can be absolutely counterproductive as we are finding with the shock and I think use the word shock is in terms of the cost of energy so you have to think it through before you go down the sanctions regime Martin just how unprecedented are the sanctions we are seeing on both sides I mean what are we seeing because we are seeing government sanctions we are also seeing businesses making we are useful to people I forgot you know state on people Magnitsky et cetera say sorry we are seeing a full spectrum kind of sanctions that are targeting Russia I work on application of sanctions on a day to day basis my view is from the ground it's not standing back and looking at overall and so my perspective comes from the application even before this war in this country sanctions have become a very significant part of UK foreign policy the last time I looked at the office financial sanctions implementation on the website there were over 30 regimes I think about 34 different sanctions regimes that we have to navigate around on a day to day basis and to which we have to apply EU sanctions which will diverge ultimately from UK sanctions, US and US secondary sanctions and there are thousands of people across the city of London and the continent trying to apply this and it's costing billions of pounds and then the war came and we saw a whole stroth of new sets of sanctions being applied trade sanctions financial sanctions immigration sanctions I mean in this country alone over a thousand people people have been designated sanctioned over 80 to 100 oligarchs over 100 over 100 entities so the question is how effective have those been well in the short term I think they're irrelevant to the battlefield in the middle term in my view they will strengthen Putin in the long run that's a different story in the long run the question is do we want to have sanctions in the long run because there are a number of questions that I would want to ask policy makers who are developing these sanctions that we are asked to apply firstly what are the purpose of these sanctions are we trying to influence the battlefield are we trying to sanctions in respect of Ukraine are articulated in that kind of way to get Russia to desist from its destabilising actions in Ukraine are we trying to actually affect the battlefield are we punishing Putin are we punishing his friends are we trying to punish the Russian people are we trying to affect regime change and most importantly from what I can see what do the Russians have to do in order to get out from under the yoke of sanctions right look the North Koreans know what they have to do and the Iranians also know what they have to do what do the Russians have to do so that is the first point I would say the second point I would say is that not only do we have to have an articulation by the government on the purpose of the sanctions but we also have a realistic expectation of what sanctions can do there is a literature on the effectiveness of sanctions we have been applying sanctions on North Korea, Cuba, Iran and many other countries for decades how is that going the second point I would point out there has been a lot of self-congratulation amongst policy makers and others in respect of sanctions on Russia Joe Biden said the ruble will turn to rubble the ruble looks pretty strong to me at this moment I understand the reasons for that and they may not be long term but that is the fact the second inescapable point and you see this working I don't like saying the front lines I don't like those military analogies but on the ground both sides of the war we are actually financing both sides of the war and other reasons are explicable we know that we cannot pull ourselves out of our gas consumption and our oil and coal and other commodities consumption but this is outrageous it's immoral isn't it we are in an ironic position that as we seek to curtail our imports of Russian commodities and oil and gas we are pushing the price up but earning more than they've ever earned as a result of oil and gas so over the past two months according to some figures the Russians have earned over $44 billion from their exports to Europe as opposed to $140 billion during 2021 they're almost 50% in terms of income of their projections for 2022 and there are other effects of sanctions too which you previously said these things have to be thought through and sometimes I don't think they are thought through there's a problem of de-risking effectively on the ground you don't really expect financial institutions to sit around and look is this individual subject to sanctions is that individual subject doesn't work like that people will totally de-risk from anything Russian so all many people will not do and finally my last point is that there are third world countries there are other countries that do not have a dog in the spot that are suffering the consequences of these rising energy prices so my answer to you is the sanctions at the moment in the long term they will hold out somehow but in the short and medium term the consequences are there for our economies and our allies economies are pretty significant thank you for that you were talking about the impact on the private sector on business there and these days companies and investors they want to respect ESG economic and social and governance issues they want to be seen to do the right thing but how easy is it to really do the right thing in terms of wanting to have an impact to put the pressure on Russia to stop the war this is really interesting some things I've been writing about for a while there's been a huge amount of money pouring into ESG strategies for investing since about 2015 based on the idea that if you invest in a way taking into account all these different factors you will also do better so over time you'll outperform a re-index under the sun if you just behave well at the same time but the question is how do you behave well is the outperformance bit true and we don't know about the outperformance bit but we do know that it's verging on a possible behaviour when it comes to the corporate world we do an awful lot of box ticking which makes the whole thing very very rigid but we also have a million different organisations creating the boxes which makes it incredibly flexible at the same time which of course makes it completely meaningless and one of the things that I wrote about a few weeks ago was about the defence sector now if you run an ESG fund of any kind over the last five years or so you will have been absolutely determined to avoid the defence sector because it doesn't tick any boxes at all, it's not environmentally friendly it doesn't appear to be socially friendly it doesn't perhaps encourage good governance so if you look at any defence company you would go well that's not ESG so what do you do, you exclude it and in excluding it you make it unpopular you get to the point of beginning to starved of capital you move defence companies into the private sector and all these are they are not good things, they are bad things and along the way you take an industry that in fact we now look at and say well in fact this is an S and this is a G because without defence companies how can we preserve living standards how can we preserve life even so suddenly defence is an S it may be a G, gosh it may even be an E if you fiddle around with the numbers enough so the concept of what is ESG and what is not is shifting all the time and the other big part of that which reflects partly what you were saying is the fossil fuel industry which has been treated as an absolute pariah by ESG for the last decade constantly being excluded from ESG portfolios being treated as though it is in itself a genuinely evil thing and we see that extending into governments of wealth and as we starve our big oil companies of capital and as we push our industry businesses not that short of it right now not right now but they have been in the past and that's on a part why we are where we are at the moment we have discouraged fossil fuel production in the west in countries which we might consider to be friendly including our own for that matter and that has left us overly dependent on external sources so you might say what we've done is effectively kind of advanced self sanctioned ourselves with our ESG strategies and that means a very big conversation in the investment industry right now Now what about the final frontier then space how is the war impacting on space both in terms of government and increasing private sector investment Well firstly let me say hello and thank you for your invitation I represent the UK space agency we're an agency part of government we look after civil matters so defence and war isn't my normal subject matter and there's people here that know more about it than I do To answer your question space is inherently a dual use sector a dual use environment everything in space can be used for civilian purposes or indeed for military and so I think we've seen the recent conflict in Ukraine and just how dependent they are upon space assets or what a difference satellites in the right place at the right time can make to your war effort A couple of examples if I may Russians have been denying or jamming GPS all around the Don Pass region and down to the south as well so they've been using local assets to jam the signals coming down from space degrading Ukrainian armaments targeting communications on the side of the Ukrainians Earth observation data pictures taken from satellites of the ground so that there's a famous picture of the Russian convoy inching towards and then away from Kiev all taken by commercial satellite companies that just provided their data for free to Ukraine in the world just there you go you've got an eye star capability for free on data of the war fantastic the one web satellites a British government owned company had 36 satellites and a launch pad in Baikonur in Kazakhstan the Russian said thank you very much we'll take all of those and are busy looking at the various different hardware and software that's going into them as well that's an effect of war on our industry as well so we've seen recently a recognition of space as an important domain we've seen NATO recognising spaces of war fighting domain we've seen the UK space command stood up joining the French US now the Australian space command Japan the military's getting more interested in this on the civilian side I think we're starting to see a lot more procurement outside of the US the US was always a procurement led space sector government was underpinning that area I think now in the UK and other areas we're starting to see lots more chunky government contracts for space capabilities coming out we've started that conversation about sovereignty about independence about requiring national protection of the supply chain for example because people are recognising how important space is and that is starting to be felt across the space sector here in the UK and how does space do well in the ESG I don't think it gets many ratings yet but I suspect that well as I say ESG is everything and nothing there'll be some people who'll be able to find lots of boxes to take for everything in space to be a good thing it'll be a bad thing the world's two richest men are going into space aren't they they are and again Twitter is an absolute classic of the ESG conversation so I mean again I wrote another column a little while ago last week when we were talking about Elon Musk taking over Twitter and I looked at its ESG ratings and it has very high ratings but would you necessarily give it a high rating under under S so once you start looking at it properly and will you give it a high rating on S once it's owned by Elon Musk then you've given it when it's owned by the market how much do we value free speeches free speech in S is it a G we'll find out if I can come in there the same satellites I mentioned that flying over Ukraine giving free imagery to the Ukrainians about six hours later they're flying over the Amazon looking for deforestation for new changes in the main forest there that's pretty much their environmental ways and debt before this conflict and now they find a new market to buy or supply their services to Pauline Evans Jones as the almost politician here what do you say to Martin's view that sanctions basically are pretty flawed the question we do have to ask is what's the alternative you said rightly that we're financing both sides of the war if we didn't have any sanctions we'd be financing the other side of the war even more so it's not ideal it's not perfect but I think you have to argue and have to accept that it's a contribution to policy I think sanctions are always overwritten as to what they can achieve they don't have the whole bring down regimes but they can do them quite a lot of damage I would say that this war combined with the economic penalties that it's imposing on the existing globalised system is going to have long-term consequences because I said I don't think we're going to go back to a status quo ante with the Russians so I think we have this is permanent change in the game I think I think it's a unless I'm quite wrong about how quickly this war ends we are going to find I think that we revert to something that Ben Wallace used the term twice in the previous session containment and they were going to see quite a lot of old old policies resurrected Martin you said that you thought in the medium term this would actually strengthen Putin the regime but why because of the money well because he controls the media within Russia he controls the narrative we don't have access to the Russian people directly and he can explain the hardships that are occurring to the Russian people by our actions and one of the things that's missing in our policy is any kind of counter information I'm old enough to go back to the cold war when we had in the foreign office something called information research department which was a polite title for actually interfering in other people's politics we did it very actively and rather successfully and the Russians do it to us but what have we done so far? it should be said I think the BBC World Service the Russians are doing it all the time to us with their cyber operations now I'm not suggesting we emulate all of the tactics they use but we do need to try to penetrate what you've just tried correctly identified as being Putin's monopoly at home the other thing I would say is that though it does take time I think that globalised trade it isn't now a question of sending out finished product or stopping finished product or the supply chain and I think it is going to be the case that he's going to find that there are things missing in the supply chain which is going to hamper not only the economy but actually his military capability as well there's more inside Russian armament of western origin than people realise so this is not without I think real impact actually on fighting capability I agree I agree with what you say you raise the issue what is the option right there isn't an option I agree absolutely that we should be sanctioning the Russians for their aggression what I would oppose and we haven't come to that yet is secondary sanctions what I mean by secondary sanctions is the US does it in relation to Iran and Cuba is that we sanction other countries that are dealing with the Russians I would feel uncomfortable about that because many of those countries would be countries that have little choice because we are already feeling that the consequences India would be an obvious example India Sri Lanka there are a whole raft of countries that are feeling the consequences now in the short term I think we agree the impact on the war will be minimal Putin doesn't need doesn't need us to do anything for him to prosecute the war in the short term in the midterm as I said in the long term because his weapons system his economy is dependent in the long term we will force down his GDP and in Russia we will reduce investments and we will create a lot of problems for what we've got to ask ourselves and that's another question which the government has got to provide us is as I was what does the Russians have to do to get out of it and how does this relate to our end game you've asked that question but isn't the answer stop the war not invade Ukraine that's fairly simple isn't it that will be settled on the battlefield and what I'm asking is do we want to be in the position and we've been down this route before where we continue to sanction a regime that feels defeated lost resentful we've done this before and it didn't end very well we don't want to make the pipsqueak so what I'm saying I mean reparations is an interesting question when you see the destruction that's being done reparations is a good good talking point but practically I don't see it happening I mean we can't seriously believe right I mean the Russians are facing some form of defeat right whether it's spinnable or catastrophic but I cannot imagine a circumstance where we will occupy in Moscow and force them to pay reparations like we did to the Germans in 1918 that's dream time I remember one of the obvious questions of sanctions is kind of disinvestment isn't it to get companies out and companies aren't pulling out so in that sense they're working aren't they for companies yes so if what you want from the listed companies around the world is for them to divest themselves of all their operations in Russia immediately then yes you're getting that an awful lot are in fact the majority have and you're also having what you just said about lack of discrimination when it comes to dealing with for example Russian people in the city etc instead of looking at those sanctions and who isn't you're getting a sort of mass pullback of all business with people with Russian connections etc so you are saying that happen absolutely but it's a bit late in the day I think is the thing to say there you know and that there is this G in ESG and all of the fund managers and investment managers who over the last four or five years have been heavily invested in Russian companies should now be looking at themselves and saying well was I actually paying any attention to the G or for that matter to the S so for example take the big Russian oil and gas companies now if you looked at the ESG ratings on those even through March of this year quite a few of those big companies had better ESG ratings than for example companies operating in the North Sea supplying gas to the UK and better ESG ratings than a lot of the companies that you and I would think of as being perfectly reasonable and providing perfectly adequate goods and services to consumers here so that just shows you that the wrong boxes are being ticked because if you had looked at those companies and thought well hang on a tick you know the natural resources curse is something we've all known about for a long time and we all know, we should know if we studied any economic history, that if you support companies in resource rich countries the taxes of which go to support non-democratic governments you tend to end up with some kind of crisis or another and this of course is one that affects us all so were you sitting around a couple of years ago looking at your ESG portfolio and looking at what you had ticked and what you had not and had any foresight around the G possibly you would have invested differently so there's a big wake up call here for the industry when it comes to G I certainly think of a lot of space as international cooperation we had the international space centre and all the rest of it but are we entering a new era of national competition to a certain extent I think it does appear that we are the cooperation in space so the international space station which was always a Russian U.S. coalescing around that that seems to be now being something the Russians want to pull out from and stop doing the Russian support to exploration missions going to the moon, going to Mars things that have no military consequence at all seems to be lessing now they've stopped launching our science payloads there's a particular rover that's been built in Stevenidge called the Roslyn Franklin rover needs a Russian system to get down to the surface of Mars to go back, spend about four or five years and quite a lot of money finding a new system somewhere else in the world to do the same job so there are impacts of this and it is becoming quite apparent that the Russians see their space capabilities as something they can trade and take away or put back to suit their traditions and one final point we'd yet to see how China are going to mirror this or otherwise do they see this as a playbook they can do the same thing with there's been no change in their cooperation with the international partnership at the moment but they have started talking about Russian-Chinese space stations, Russian-Chinese moon bases so again with those allies in the military sphere seem to be coming together into the space domain as well and that will as I said earlier have military implications in the longer term right we're going to take questions in just a moment so if you could raise your hands what we're trying to do is get the people with the microphones to you in advance so we don't have sort of awkward pauses so anyone who's got a question already one there at the back we'll bring you in in a moment anyone else, second question okay well we'll have those in a moment but I want to before we go to the floor I want to ask you what's something about we haven't talked about so far magnistically sanctions in other words personalized sanctions a lot of media focus on oligarchs and of course we've had the Brownwich Chelsea situation all the rest of it are those a good idea well there's been there's been I think a feeling that the whole Russian investment personal oligarchic in London dirty money needs clearing up and that's been around for a very long time and rightly I mean we do not want to become a washing machine for dirty money and the city is probably absolutely involved in that and I'm not a legal profession and all that other things so I think not particularly savoury does the present sanctioning of given individuals make much difference in real life no it makes it difficult for them to travel Mr Putin now clearly can't leave Russia and a whole lot of other people can't leave Russia safely I mean they will they'll be subject to international arrest so I mean it has it has effects on personal freedoms but I'm to be frank a bit skeptical about it so what do you think Mary? Well one of the problems with it as you said earlier is that you know Russian money is shot through our entire system in one way or another and lots of well off Russians living in London they're very fully invested in our financial system and if you have sanctions on individuals no one knows who's going to next or who is connected to who so you do end up bunging up a lot of stuff and that may be okay but there are a lot of unintended consequences in the financial world from sanctioning a few prominent people I should add I think then they're not as complicating a factor I mean it enables us to express disapproval and people like me on to do that but it's not as complicating a factor as the allegations about war crimes and all the other charges of nature which will now make it quite difficult to know whether you can actually deal with any of these people and you have to find new interlocutors who haven't actually been given these labels in order to have a negotiation that's also quite tricky Yeah I mean the oligarchs have got a lot of bad press and rightfully so but sometimes the reporting has gone slightly over over the line oligarchs have infiltrated our society and their monies everywhere within two seconds the government rolled them up overnight and no oligarchs have ever had any I'll come to that one the one I'm thinking about if these people had infiltrated our society as it was claimed they were as effective as the Russian Air Force in the first two weeks of the war which means they weren't very effective indeed there was one case that I looked at of a Russian oligarch that owned some newspapers and was in the house of laws and his dad was a former KGB agent and I thought gee words that looks pretty awkward but he's still there and we're still doing what we're doing so I mean we have a problem in this country of where we cannot determine the provenance of funding that's coming into it on predators and I'm not talking about Moscow I'm talking about Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt they have the same problem ours is bigger because our economy is bigger but ultimately this is a criminal problem that can be managed and is being managed to the best of everybody's capability right let's go to the floor gentlemen there and then we'll come there next he's got a microphone yeah carry on I have a question about talking about secondary sanctions so with reference to India in particular buying discounted Russian energy products which are kind of undermining the sanctions but on the other hand how would you deal with a country like that because on one hand it's causing problems when trying to counter Russia but on the other hand long term thinking with China you wouldn't want to alienate India because of course you have to think with the Pacific region India would be a very important country to deal with well if I heard the question correctly I mean it seems to me that it would be a mistake for us to try to impose secondary sanctions on India if you really want to get support what you need to be able to do clearly is to offer them an alternative in the short term that may be difficult in the energy market but you certainly do think that one needs to continue to talk to countries like India an exchange of views and actually explaining each other's difficulties is not a silly thing to be doing similarly one wants obviously to persuade people that aligning themselves with China and this is not a brilliant idea and the Chinese themselves have been as far as I can see quite careful they haven't in fact endorsed they haven't in fact endorsed the takeover of of Crimea I think they regard that Taiwan issue as being the law on their side we might disagree with that but therefore I think legalism is actually quite important in this game so I don't actually see them as coming in right behind the Russians I think they won't discard them but I think they'll be quite careful so it may not be this sort of great coalescing of two autocratic countries and we need to prevent that happening and that is going to require a very skillful diplomacy and it's diplomacy we keep on coming back to in this that needs to accompany the military and the economic I agree with that and what was said about secondary sanctions there are many many countries out there India is a primary one that do not see the war the way we see the war and even if they did see the war the way we see the war do not have the economic capability to divest themselves the Russian connections there's no obligation you and obligation to do so absolutely and just lastly just push back on something you said you said the easiest way to end sanctions is for the war to end but it's not exactly like that because what happens to the Russians to determine tomorrow will just stop will stop, will sit in place does that mean and there they are does that mean that sanctions are your definition of what the end of the war looked at it is a great risk Adam I just want to ask you about this I don't know what you call it I mean one of the things about the city which has grown the financial sector is basically they take anybody's money and now there's a kind of element of nationalism if not racism perhaps in some cases coming into it and presumably that will mean a much smaller city in the long run well not necessarily it depends on how you look at our competition if everyone behaves in the same way then the city doesn't necessarily get smaller and I don't see why you can't be an entirely open financial centre while still having in place filters to prevent dirty money coming in and that's something we haven't been particularly good at is the filtering but we can get better at that without being quite as indiscriminate as we're being at the moment rough guess how much of the percentage of the money going through the city is dirty money I think that guess I'm simply not privy to that information I mean are we talking 10th? No, I mean this is the city is a hugely successful place and the majority of the money inside it is legitimate it's one of the greatest service centres in the world the city of London is a phenomenal place taking away the dirty money around the edges is going to be marginal OK, next question Hi, yeah it's the principal job of all governments and what can defence and aerospace firms do to reach out to investors retailer and institutional to let them know that investment in those industries is important secondly, the amount of foreign investment in Russia is dwarfed by foreign investment in China is the panel's feeling towards that positive what could potentially happen with a situation in China you can speak to that, that would be great Why do you want me to share that first one the first thing to say is that they can stop telling them that it's bad so we've spent the last five years listening to the investment industry encouraged by every lobby group under the sun and this is fair, it makes sense so after the great financial crisis the financial industry was deemed the most evil thing in the world so they need to find a way to claw back from that depth of misery and show everyone that they're really really good people trying to do really really good things and ESG is partly in effect of that fantastic marketing campaign that they've been doing but in doing so they have simply announced ESG this is good, if we follow these rules this is a good thing, what they haven't done is stop to explain to the end invested to the retail investor, the beneficial investor the actual owner of all assets what that means, if we do this the consequences are I'm not entirely sure to be fair they thought this through themselves but now they're getting a good lesson on what the consequences are of the way in which they have invested and the way in which they have marketed so what we need to see now is a reversal and we are getting that already you are already seeing a lot of the big fund managers as I said earlier saying, well yeah, defence new maybe that's okay and fossil fuels actually turns out we need them and oh do you know what the coal we need to make this deal to make the wind turbines maybe that's not so bad after all so we're seeing that reversal already it's beginning to become more nuanced so we need to see a much more nuanced marketing approach from the city a much more nuanced approach to what is good and what is bad and also one of the things I talk about a lot of my work is a kind of radical transparency from the fund management industry to their end clients this is what we're doing this is what the companies we're investing in do these are the consequences of how we and they invest in what they do and how do you feel about it so there is there's been a huge information gap between the industry and the beneficial owners of the assets that industry manages and I hope that if there is any silver lining at all to drag out here one of them may be a change in that dynamic Martin if we're moving towards as Pauline says a containment era does that mean pulling back in China as well well you know that the president has been set now the way we have treated Russian individuals and Russian money in this country can be used against Chinese money as well and other individuals that we do not take too much to at the moment I mean if I can just say one thing about the oligarchs and the city Member of Parliament got up and named and shamed lawyers who were defending oligarchs for reasons that you've set out because they were representing the oligarchs and apparently defending their money I think that is wrong the lawyers follow the law Members of Parliament do not like the law then they must change the law and as law panic you said quite explicitly oligarchs the way we work we have due process in this country and we do not appreciate ourselves from Putin's Russia and mass murderers like oligarchs both of them have the right to legal services as you and I agree with what you said the city is a massive a massive component of the British economy I don't think that dirty money impunes the reputation of the totality of the city or problem but the reputation of the city its capabilities, its employment strength is massive and I don't think we should go around adopting some of the talking points of our competitors Do we need more regulation? I want to say something about China in that respect we just passed an Act which is intended actually to make it harder to make investments or co-operate with China in areas which the government has defined as being technologically or industrially very important and I think there's a large agreement about their definitions not necessarily going to be so easy to implement but nevertheless what you can see this has really nothing to do with what we're talking about Ukraine its a much longer term trend towards on-shoring the Americans are doing it more vigorously than we are but I think we're all going to do it and even companies like Germany seeing their IP stolen absolutely consistently by the Chinese now are much less keen on investment in China they'd rather do it at home in exports so there is a change in structures going on which I think what happens now in Russia of course is going to reinforce I mean all of these things if you regard globalisation as good news which broadly has brought a lot of prosperity though some inequalities I would say these are all in a sense backward moves but I think now they've got the wind behind them and I think we are going to see it happen Jacob in your area of space do you see any difference between Russia and China in terms of attitudes towards co-operation rule of law and all of that six months ago the Russians were more co-operative than China were and the paradigm has shifted quite substantially it's interesting what you were just saying we are now seeing the onshoreings the word you used I mentioned sovereignty earlier, independence we are seeing that push in the space sector as well export control being talked about much more openly and now just a fact of life for companies it used to be the US companies were hot on that and UK companies sort of shrugged now companies start to have the export control officers they're getting used to that way of working as well and actually you can see it it's a good thing for the UK economy as long as we don't try and shift and cliff edge the capability to the supply chain we need we gradually move them over and onshore them as you say Is there room in space for co-operation with China? Yes very much so it is fantastic the academic collaboration we have with them at the moment on a number of areas it's the actual missions you give us that bit and we'll give you that part that isn't quite working just yet Good afternoon my name is Roman Cusini I'm the most asset manager and previously I was in the British Army for almost 10 years I just wondered if the panel could comment on one particular sanction which I think has been perhaps particularly remarkable both in the context of this particular conflict but also perhaps more broadly the impacts that we might see down the line and that's the US freezing of Russia's foreign effects reserves Yeah I mean I mean almost I think 300 billion of Russian reserves were frozen and like 100 billion of they go Yeah I mean this was part of Putin's war chest that he put in place to get Russia through the sanctions right and I will agree that that was one aspect that he that he did not did not expect but I will say that he has undertaken a number of other methods to shore up the ruble I mean Russian imports are decreasing anyway right so the balance of payments position in Russia is not as bad as one would have thought would be the situation by now but obviously yeah for sure that has been a powerful move however it raises questions and the last point I made raises questions about how much countries can trust American dollar denominator system because if the Americans and the West can do this well maybe it's not the safest but maybe we should look at the Chinese system and of course the Chinese have their own their own problems that I mean at the moment they don't even allow free foreign exchange to go out which is why the Russians couldn't put their money there in the first place but yeah I would say that has been one of the more powerful sanctions that have been put in place unlike the oligarchs which look good when we get hold of their boats and we chuck their girlfriends out of their houses in Kensington those kind of foreign exchange freezes are very important I was going to say I think a very important point has just been made I do think it has results that potentially go wider than just Russia and one of the issues is going to be how could you keep that kind of freeze on how long could you keep that kind of freeze on but you know other countries are going to look at this I would put some money on the Chinese reducing their dollar reserves and seeking another thing which is trying to get international contracts written in renminbi euros reducing the impact which the Americans exploit to the full of the dollar being the currency of international settlement they are putting that at risk I think they really need to think about how far they take it just agreeing not entirely that's been talked about for a long time but this might be one of the triggers to it what direction would you think it will shift in what currency would you buy right now what currency would you buy right now are you trying to get me on crypto currencies where did you buy crypto currencies I wouldn't what currency would I buy right now probably still the dollar stuff doesn't happen quickly right now definitely the dollar and this is a gradual change do we end up with not one main currency being the settlement currency across the world think about the way that the world has moved was this period of globalisation where we all do everything together but we are moving towards a much more fractured world and that may affect the currency markets as well and where is the UK going to be dollar zone or the euro zone dollar zone moving me into lots of gas work here this reduces the impact of secondary sanctions because essentially secondary sanctions are pursued by the US are pursued through their ability to stop people's contracts but the reason that Americans can be so aggressive is because they reasonably confident what are the alternatives what are you going to do people do find alternatives but for large, large sums and for huge percentages of your economy if we're looking at French shoring, onshore and reshoring whatever you like to call it we get that currency fracturing anyway okay let's get a question there and then we'll come to the lady there Tim Stickings I'm a journalist at the National if the world settles down into a long battle in the east at what point do we think Western governments start losing interest or cracking on sanctions or stop being able to sell sanctions to the public as being politically necessary because of the dire situation I missed the beginning of the question well if the war grinds on at what point do we get bored with sanctions I think the question is a good one how long can we keep up this level of enthusiastic unity it will require a lot of effort and when we get into the autumn and it starts getting cold and everybody has a domestic crisis as well it's an excellent question and the government's got to work hard at keeping people in a sense inspired by the good cause I mean Marty does history tell us anything about how long you can sustain these sort of sanctions this is not my area so our domestic politics I know who little is it but I would have met what I do know anecdotally is that most people most people are influenced by domestic issues and economic issues not by foreign policy issues and the fact is Ukraine is far away what we know about that conflict is you know what I mean not so far and of course if we have a danger of escalation we may be in an entirely different political military situation and the question was what happens if it grinds on but if it grinds on with May Wills as we heard this morning and I think it's right it may well be escalating will pressure mount do you think from the city and elsewhere to drop these things well it depends on inflation numbers and cost of living crisis political fuss you know as long as inflation remains high you know you can look at the sanctions and look at the war and say you know this is where it's coming from it isn't necessarily by the way but that's the obvious place and so how long does the political unity remain to allow that cost of living crisis to just carry on do you think it might if it does go on further fracture international cooperation I think it might it's interesting what you say about the cost of living crisis let's wait six months and inflation going up and people can't eat their homes or buy their food or whatever it may be and then the cost of sanctions becoming clear to the UK public it might be difficult to continue selling that but you're right it's the autumn and winter time when this is going to get really really in people's faces hi my name is Emma Cosmo and I'm an MA student at King's we've talked a lot about China and changing away from the dollar and I've been looking at Armenia a lot and their alignment with Russia and with Iran and my question is as they move towards the ruble what does this mean for Iran, what does this mean for Armenia that has quite a close relationship with the US how is that going to change I mean turning to Iran right I mean this is a separate topic in itself I mean there are strong efforts at the moment to reach an agreement with Iran a revitalisation of the JCPOA and then there will be a relaxation of sanctions against Iran in the hope that that relaxation on the sanctions will come with an ability to moderate Iran's proliferation behaviour right now is that a good idea well I don't want to go into that but if sanctions are reduced on Iran well then that will be one area where commodities may derive from and may help like ameliorate some of the pressure that that is on us and I think that is some of the thinking behind us but whether it's a good idea in itself that is a totally separate issue but from an economic issue I can see an agreement with Iran whereby Iran is able to export its commodities to us will relax some of the pressure certainly relax pressure on those developing countries that are really starting to suffer from Russian well won't you really talk about the converse though yes I think exactly I think the Russians have a potential interest in undermining the parents of the JCPOA negotiations in order to form a little ruble family along with Armenia and possibly some others this is the kind of counter counter sanction which we must expect to happen do you see that happening Meryn? sorry you are outside my area here really currencies I thought that was important well the details in here of Armenia and no no no I just wondered whether you see the possibility of having a ruble group so I meant earlier when I said with the pullback of globalization and the pullback of the dollar over time you are going to end up with much larger currency groups competing with each other and this is symptomatic possibly possibly of that beginning put pressure on Kazakhstan and Georgia lady up there hi Anna McDonald from Amati Global Investors I wondered what effect you felt that if we do decide to roll over on our sanctions when times get a little bit tough at the end of this year what kind of precedent that sets when we look at Taiwan and China and Taiwan still makes 80% of the world's semiconductor chips Pauline one for you what do you think the impact of what is happening in Ukraine the sanctions and all the is going to have on calculations about China and Taiwan on both sides I guess that's a $64,000 question was that right? well first of all I think they'll watch very carefully I don't think they'll do anything for quite a bit until they have sized up I suppose how serious we are I think we're probably turned out to be more serious in opposing Russia than they expected and they will have taken notice of that and I'll say well if they can do that there perhaps the Americans a bit more seriously over Taiwan they will look to see how the rest of the world reacts and whether we manage to alienate other people such that actually they do have a congregative people in their corner and I've no doubt that they will pushing out a message of a kind which increases their level of support and I think that one is frankly all to play for but I think they will they will be careful because what they now know is that actually contrary to previous expectations the western world can be quite serious and they'll wait to see whether we're actually willing to use force I'll say one French foreign policy expert and Cynic said to me if this goes badly for Russia and I was China I wouldn't look at Taiwan, I'd look at Siberia but I mean one of the you asked right at the beginning why were we engaging in sanctions I think right at the beginning you said that I think for a long time we've been engaging in sanctions because we wanted to evade military action I mean it's a substitute policy for actually Yes The day is going to come I think I'd be very surprised if we get away with what's happening in Ukraine whether we don't have to take military collective action I agree that China has been watching what is happening with our sanctions very carefully and they have been quite surprised by the unity of effort and the strength but my own view in relation to China and Taiwan is that the main decision, the main point that will influence their decision will be a military one can they do it militarily and not if they can do it militarily I don't think sanctions as it comes That's an open question I think That's a separate issue right but I don't think sanctions in themselves no matter how effective against the Russians will ultimately determine what course of action China adopts against Taiwan if they do anything it's because they will be confident that they can do it Can I chip in on that it's what I was talking about earlier with the whole ESG thing another area where the investment industry has been fairly lax in its analysis has been looking at the G around China so there's been an awful lot of focusing on individual companies in China in individual areas of growth and an awful lot looking at the fact that the companies that people are hoping to make large amounts of money from over the next decade or so are encased inside a system that doesn't necessarily fit either the S or the G that would suit the ordinary retail investor where they could stop to think about it and that's another thing that the industry has to sit down and have a really good think about over the next couple of years Right, this is going to be our last question from gentlemen there George Pernache, Royal Canadian Navy I'm just curious as this sort of discussion trends towards talking about the long term goal of sanctions which might be along the lines of containment how do you, one, keep them effective over a long term without secondary sanctions understanding the reason you wouldn't want to impose them but they're not usually effective without them and how do you avoid getting further into the cost of living crisis but the wider supply chain crisis we already talked about semiconductors as being sort of one of the next battlefields the things that go along with that globalization issue seems to be the next questions we have to solve strategically and how do we start doing that? Right, a question about secondary sanctions driven by the Americans particularly if this goes on won't you have to use secondary sanctions for the sanctions continue to be effective, Martin? Yeah, over time sanctions the power of sanctions will dissipate the United States will no doubt try to impose secondary sanctions I would say that against the EU and the UK the US tries secondary sanctions and we have blocking regulations right, they're blocking regulations that prevent UK and EU companies from complying with American sanctions now the truth is, right the truth is that in many circumstances between a rock and a hard place you either comply with American sanctions you comply with UK or you comply with UK or EU sanctions what to do, right the unofficial answer is you comply with American sanctions because the consequences of not doing so can be so huge in terms of financial penalties that many companies ultimately end up complying with Americans but the various legal strategies that you can do to avoid that dilemma OK, I'm just going to ask you all finally for a final thought to end what has been an absolutely stimulating panel Jacob I would say that the crisis in Ukraine has shown how important spaces to all the military nations that are involved here but also I think it shows how important cooperation is internationally to Mars and the Moon and that is now starting to suffer the most important thing that comes out of this is the importance of the financial industry, the industry I watch doing an awful lot not less in the way of a box ticking and marketing an awful lot more in the way of thinking very carefully about what is good and what isn't good for us as a whole very different things sometimes you often read financial warfare weapons of war, financial weapons of mass destruction I saw financial shock in the financial times the most important thing to remember financial war is not real war real war is boom boom financial war is something completely different often used as a panacea a substitute for real action Corey I would like to think we were advancing I think we are on a even if we win this war my starting proposition I think the future is going to be less good at the moment we could go really bad so I think we are in a very difficult beginning of the century on that cheering note thank you very much to my panels, thank you and I think we have got to pause now about 10, 15 minutes please be back because very exciting things coming out with Neil Ferguson a continuous session until the end with certain elements at the end you'll all want to hear what Professor Sir Lawrence Friedman has got to say summing up the conference and he is going to be speaking after we've heard from King's students their declaration about what they've heard this afternoon but before that a very important session which is I'm going to hand over to you for that to John Bue who you'll know from King's but also currently on loan to Number 10 Downing Street John, thank you 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 can say there he is, excellent 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 you have Neil's truncated but nonetheless very kind biography 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 Belford Centre at Harvard the most impressive thing about Neil he has a very uncanny and rather alarming ability to write books that very much captured 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 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 as often times 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 dissipates and goes elsewhere beyond that. I think we are already past that stage vis-à-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 and I'll be it 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 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 struggled a bit to grapple with power law distributions World War 2 was an absolutely vast conflict today in Moscow President Putin tried desperately to relate what's currently going in going on in Ukraine to World War 2 but it's a huge stretch given the vast scale of World War 2 and the relatively limited scale of this so-called special military operation I think the unknown at this point is whether this war ffizzles 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 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'd 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 down 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, Elliott 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 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 second or third phase of the war in which a 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 are 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 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 on whose side is time best on the current correlation of forces. 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 second 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 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 Zelensky to emerge as a Churchillian figure an 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 sign proud 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 weaponry. Unlike the Soviet Union the Russian Federation revised 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 anachronistic 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 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 potential form of status? You mentioned a version of a future in which President Putin is able to declare some form of success as per a limited military operation in the Donbass, but presumably that does not mean the Lambridge or the Black Sea. What's the minimum that Ukraine needs to survive or enter a new phase in which the intensity of the conflict is not there? I ask you that with no prejudice but just the mirror image of that uncomfortable status quo is that obvious? Is that clear to you? I am not in direct touch with President Zelensky others are and so I have to rely on on second hand insights and media coverage. Interestingly from quite early in the conflict President Zelensky signalled 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 but 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 a 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 at the Donbas at the Donbas at the two oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk are in fact Russian territory and not just the relatively small areas that were that 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 accede to so I think that the diplomatic room for manoeuvre 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 OK, 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 born up I mean the first I think I knew your answer to this is that I would suggest to you and what I've read and what you've said already that it's slightly myopic and clumsy of us to characterise this as a transformative new era 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 ecstad is actually something is mislead and correct me if I'm wrong in that but it teased 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 Mirshimer 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 a Trump neo-conservative I think he would self describe as that as not particularly fashionable in the last few years and yet people have seized on his articles as setting a kind of a new model who's got it right 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 frame and 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 that is now most closely associated with John Mirshimer 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 vain 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 they're becoming NATO members beginning in 2008 but never to deliver on that the worst of all possible worlds is to be offered NATO membership 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 bedfellas 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 but 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 2 is underway a cold war 2 is a kind of mirror image of cold war 1 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 2 has begun we're at the most dangerous phase potentially of that struggle because in the early phase of cold war 1 there were crises that by the early 1960s had the potential to wreak catastrophic destruction so embedded in cold war 2 is as with cold war 1 the risk of world war 3 that is how we need to think about the new era we fight 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 re-enact 1989 with regime changer in Russia and the break up of the Russian Federation thank you Neil I will open it up to the audience shortly 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 advisers 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 on this what from where you're sitting on the principles 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 crisis and after that I'll open up to 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 on the public 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 recognise 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 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 certainly risky to let this war keep going for the reasons I've already alluded to as well as being highly economically destabilising not just to Europe but perhaps more importantly to pretty much all the developing world so my view is that the big concern is 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 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 I have a gentleman over on this side as well with glasses on, thank you Yeah, Merrick, Chairman, Macro Analyst You spoke Neil about the shift from Cold War I being proxy fights in Asia and now Cold War II proxy fight or not so proxy actually fights in Europe 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? We'll take the question for the gentleman here first Robert Tyler from New Direction the Foundation for European Reform If we're in Cold War II 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 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 defence 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 2 in the less resolved state of mind than they entered cold war 1 it's fairly obvious that the United States is a deeply divided society you don't need me to talk about that but if you want more detail read the square in the tower which was my book before doom a very polarised America in which every issue becomes politicised 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 war monger who in fact wants there to be a permanent state of conflict so I think we enter cold war 2 domestically in a somewhat weaker state than we entered cold war 1 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 2 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 1 did not become world war 3 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 1 was not something many people would 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 2 and I think we've been in it for several years now we shouldn't assume that it will last 40 years we shouldn't assume that it will 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 are going up there's a gentleman here in the front row and I apologise to others 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 down, 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 go for your question as well we'll try and Neil if you can wrap up in response, thank 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 Zelensku 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 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 dangerous because China's 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 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 beginning to malfunction in all kinds of ways that I wish I had time to go into 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 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 was 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 awe 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 exercises as for the 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 extraordinary important one and the very high frequency of their meetings, the pre-Olympics declaration of eternal amethy 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 so it's really quite a good deal in that respect for China finally, 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 Talid's rubble is that there will be a much more meaningful reform era after this war 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 so modestly being the moderator and interrogator when you really know a great deal more about what is going on right now than any 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 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 a couple 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 King's who have 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 Well thank you very much I go upstairs and listen to Laurie Oh there are two mics down here How nice Okay panellist disagreed on whether Putin may remain in power yet a rush without Putin could be even more concerning similarly we agree with the panellist that's strengthening European defence and security structure is crucial it was understandably a foremost concern for guests honouring the ambassador Pustayko has been said about the 2% goal in defence spending with several governments seeking to defend their budgetary flexibility democratic governments nevertheless tend to defray peacetime investments in the armed forces in favour of election winning commitments to other public services as we have heard this approach comes at a price the outbreak of war in Eastern Europe unforeseen as it was to too many throws this folly into sharp relief European governments are scrambling to invest in long neglected forces with immediate capabilities too often exchanged for future capabilities we risk sunsetting capabilities before we can bridge the gap to sunrise capabilities we face systemic deficiencies in material, munitions and vehicles in the midst of a global supply side shock stop start spending is destructive moreover to defence capacity strategic relationships and subsequently deterrents but spending more is only half the solution it is as important to spend effectively for too long investment in humans has given way to platform centric capabilities and budgets for example allied intelligence has proved such a vital asset in preempting the Russian narrative and yet the UK military consistently under recruits intelligence analysts one of our strongest national assets today's conference also highlights the need for sophisticated decision support including through wargaming and red teaming and in turn leveraging the natural and social sciences to precisely target our adversaries weaknesses it's not just professionals we have seen the symbolic departure of high street shops from the streets of Moscow and ethical hackers broadcasting anti-war propaganda on state television the government could and should coordinate these hitherto unilateral actions in support of the overarching national strategy while adhering to the constraints of democratic governance but while an offensive strategy like this is all very well we also need to establish a whole of society approach defence societal resilience and weaning ourselves off clear external vulnerabilities such as Russian energy is a national security priority it should have been since at least 2014 we need societal resilience stronger supply chains larger stockpiles the end of just in time indeed the good times are over further greater domestic capacity in two key areas is desperately needed economic crime enforcement and energy security one fine was issued facilitating sanctions breaches to UK financial and legal firms in 2020-21 one the London laundromat needs to end similarly UK energy policy has long left itself vulnerable as Helen Thompson spoke about earlier we have known about Russian strategic use of energy supplies for years yet done nothing to address it nuclear power plants falling off the grid with no replacements our cultural and political institutions must also be protected our politics have been vulnerable to Russian action from misinformation to buying influence whether hosting parties in Italian villas or donating political parties the West needs to strengthen its soft power including cultural empathy and a strategy to deal with the full spectrum radicalization threat that the Russian regime is demonstrating the disinformed are victims too this includes ensuring the proper resilience of citizens their cultural strategy for the individual inculcating democratic values and preventing the spread of misinformation lastly a word on the future Russia's war in Ukraine has supplanted not replaced the security threats of the 21st century climate change failed states and great power competition thank you thank you very much Adam it's good to be reminded of my age it's been a good day I want to congratulate the organisers on the speakers on the panels say lots of food for thought and some big issues are rising indicating the uncertainty of the moment in which we find ourselves at the time of the end of the cold war one of my favourite jokes was of Adam and Eve leaving the Garden of Eden and Adam turns to Eve and says you do realise we're entering a period of transition and the idea was that we were moving from one state of affairs to a new state of affairs that was dimly understood but was certainly going to be better than the old state of affairs of course what we found ourselves in was something that was much more complicated fluid dynamic and certain and stable than in many ways the cold war we had left behind I'm not one of those who was nostalgic for the cold war there were too many alarming moments in that and it involved the suppression the repression of half of Europe but it did have a sort of uncertainty and stability at least towards the end despite some alarming moments we're now moving into a period of great uncertainty and I think we have to keep in mind that this may be transitional some of the discussion today has sort of assumed that we've entered a new normal which we know of a hostile Russia of sanctions in place of a war that can't quite be brought to an end but that may not be so I've learnt through this last few months to be careful about the business of prediction but it is a fluid situation the starting assumption we have to recall was that there was a Russian steam roller being set in motion that would overwhelm whatever defences Ukraine could put up and even those like myself who didn't think who could never see how the Russians could conquer a population of 44 million in a country the size of France a bit larger than France assumed that at some point this might have to be an insurgency rather than an old-fashioned positional defence so it was even those who were more optimistic on the Ukrainian side were still nonetheless ended up being impressed by what the Ukrainians turned out to be able to do against the Russian steam roller we have the Ukrainian tractor pulling away all those burnt out tanks and BMPs and a lot of the initial assumptions a lot of the initial responses by NATO countries and EU countries assumed success they assumed that the new normal was going to be one in which Russia effectively dominated Ukrainian territory along with its new ally Belarus possibly taking in Moldova as well the sense of reconstruction as much as possible of the European part of the old Soviet Union and that we had to reorganise ourselves occasionally in terms of defence spending in terms of our foreign policy to talk about a new containment a new cold war and in some ways that's still the mindset that we're in now people assume that the war is not necessarily going to end like that indeed it seems almost impossible that Russia can revert to its initial war aims but instead we're now imagining a stalemate a long war of attrition in which neither side is able to gain advantage but I'm not convinced of this neither I think we have to address the possibility that Russia will lose it's been a while since it's been clear it can't win we've now moved to a potential draw but maybe it can lose now this is again not a prediction but it's something we need to think about because that will start to raise issues different from the ones with which we've been concerning ourselves for the first months of this of this war now I heard what Neil Ferguson said I think we have to be clear this is not a question of an American war aim an American analytical dispute as to what may or may not happen what we'd really like to see it's not about us it's about Ukraine and the war aims that it has set out which are not excessive given where they're starting from assume effectively a Russian defeat and there are reasons why that is possible first the sociology of armed forces of a military that has already suffered huge losses the Russians have lost about a quarter of their fighting force that's staggering they've cobbled together units to carry on the fight in the second phase of the war which is now being going on for a month upon which so much depended and they've made a few kilometers of progress in certain areas and in other areas are starting to be pushed back organisations even with those as disciplined as the Russians can be can be quite brittle and one should not assume that there are forces there that will put up with anything for all time moreover the key development and I think we will look back and see probably the Ramstein conference as being a critical moment in this war the key difference is now being made by the movement of advanced weapons into the Ukrainian armed forces which they are perfectly capable of using including in particular some of the most advanced western artillery this is an artillery war it was an artillery war in 2014 it's still an artillery war the anti-tank weapons, the drones are all absolutely critical and important but in the end the damage is done in these wars by artillery and if there has been any Russian progress in recent weeks it's because of concentrations of artillery making certain positions untenable but now the artillery advantage is moving to the Ukrainians and the Russians know that that's why I believe today was such an important date in Putin's calendar that it was set as some sort of artificial deadline by which bring me bring me some achievements bring me Mariupol or wherever that hasn't even been achieved but I think the basic reason was that the Ukrainians were going to get stronger while the Russians don't have allies supporting them in that way their defence industry is struggling to keep up partly because of the component parts that are required from the west to make their advanced systems work but also because just the sheer amount of loss that has to be made up and some of their elite units are the ones that have suffered most so we have in a different times the Russians might have found a way to pause the conflict to keep it ticking over while they work to reconstitute their armed forces but they haven't given themselves the time to do that now Neil Ferguson and others have raised the issue of escalation and something one of the things people were waiting for today and I think if I'm quoting correctly Neil used the phrase about salvaging the war by using nuclear weapons well you can't salvage the war by nuclear weapons you can add to the risks you can add to the dangers you can add to the pain but you don't fix any political or military problem by using nuclear weapons unless you use battlefield nuclear weapons which is a big misnomer their effects will not be contained unless you're using them in numbers a man how do you make sure that you're separating them their effects from Russian forces what do you do about fallout it's very notable that Belarus Lukashenko who's doing his best on census to distance himself from the adventure in which Mr Putin invagaled him was very down on the idea of nuclear war remember that Belarus suffered from the fallout from Chernobyl more than anyone else so nuclear weapons don't solve any problems now Putin has made some pretty stupid decisions and damaging decisions destructive decisions who can say that he will not make such decisions in the future but it will be his choice and his decision it's not our choice and our decision and there's no point in us scurrying around trying to think of rational things that we can do to stop him doing something that is wholly irrational there is nothing going on at the moment that obliges him to use nuclear weapons indeed he is using his nuclear weapons in a way that is wholly rational within the framework with which we understand nuclear deterrence he made it clear from the start and he reaffirmed it not long after the start of the war that if there was any direct engagement by NATO powers in the war not indirect not supporting Ukraine not coming in and fighting Russian forces then that would be a different matter and NATO has taken that message so the argument that this war shows that deterrence doesn't work isn't true deterrence is working exactly as one would expect it's deterring NATO countries from getting into a direct fight with Russia and it's deterring Russia from attacking NATO countries this is being fought on a non-NATO countries territory if we are acting we are not acting out of support for our ally we are acting in support of a country defending itself under article 51 of the UN Charter which is the inherent right of self defense the same basis in fact on which we the United States UK during the Falklands campaign so it's not that there aren't risks here and not that we should dismiss them but we have to be very clear about how these risks could actually materialise and whether there's anything that we or the Ukrainians should do differently and certainly the Ukrainians shouldn't stop winning just because the Russians react in an unhinged manner on any rate after all the hype about today's speech by Putin it was a bit of a damn squib there was an army parading at a much for obvious reasons much smaller than the normal parade fly past didn't take place so the skies were blue and the speech seemed to be pretty downbeat there was no mobilisation announced but this is still in Putin's term a limited operation and he described it in its original terms of it says before the expansive ambitions with which he announced it on the 24th of February which is about the demilitarisation of Ukraine where it was clearly about conquest and regime change we're back to preempting a pretty fanciful Ukrainian threat to Crimea to Luchansk and Donetsk and even to getting nuclear weapons I wanted to take a positive from today you've got the basis you've got the talking points for a discussion about a peace deal because the talking points that were there before the war I think also this debate about objectives and about how the war should end we do have to be careful about not substituting our aims for either peace or war for those of Ukraine they're the ones who are suffering they're the ones who are doing the fighting and I'm it's not a particular feature of the British debate but certainly of the American debate where it's assumed that American war aims or American peace aims are the ones that Luchansk should be pursuing and they're not they're the ones who have to take the risks and who have to make the sacrifices however it's important that we start this is why I think it's important to start to think through the implications of Russian military failure continuing Russian military failure because if we start to move to those issues of a peace deal based on the issues that were there from the start Ukraine's future security status what you do about the enclaves what you do about Crimea then we could find ourselves with different views if we say Ukraine has got every right to take Crimea well it does because of the way it was taken from it but if we say you really should that's a different question because Crimea is a far bigger military challenge than anything else that might be envisaged I don't think there necessarily going to be the issues obviously when we heard the ambassador this morning tell us about the new security order and security guarantees and so on these are really difficult questions because essentially Ukraine is after the sort of security guarantee you get by being a member of NATO without actually being a member of NATO fine it's a good trick if you can do it but there's a basic problem with all security guarantees even if you are a member of NATO for some time I suspect Ukraine will anyway feel has to rely on its own resources I think the big issues that are going to be coming up are going to be sanctions and we heard a bit about that in the panel on the economic side from you if it is a Russian view that they can't withdraw their forces without a commitment to remove sanctions when they do what does that mean if you think about the future position of Putin and one suspects the belief in the west that when you've got Russia on the ropes or just because of the way that Russia has behaved you can't remove sanctions while Putin is still in power if that is the position then recall what happened with the sanctions against Iraq in 1991 when Hussain stayed in power what about issues of reparations and war crimes do we forget about those do we forget about war crimes I think there are going to be at that stage of a negotiation if we ever get that far there are going to be some really big and difficult issues to talk about but what happens if Putin does go we've got no idea what it seems to be of the discussions in and around the Kremlin at the moment Putin didn't look very happy this morning and no doubt people are making some instant diagnoses of his health as a result of that maybe he's very ill maybe he's not maybe there are elements in the FSB that are really annoyed with him maybe they've already been purged maybe the military are alarmed and frightened as to where this is all leading and want to bring it to a quick conclusion maybe they feel their pride is at stake we don't know enough about that but just because we can't imagine the processes by which you have regime change in Russia doesn't mean to say it won't happen and just because we might like it to happen doesn't mean to say that it's going to produce the sort of characters that we saw in Russia under Yeltsin who desperately wanted to mend fences with the West we could see ultra-nationalists in power as much as anybody else because they're the ones who have the media platforms at the moment again I come back to the point this is a fluid situation in which a variety of things are possible so can we think at all about how this may end or where it's leading I find it very difficult to believe that the war will be going on in this way for much longer I just don't think either side can sustain it you can have exhaustion you can peter out for a bit and pick up later on but it can't be sustained at this rate just simply because not enough ammunition can be generated at this rate something will have to give at some point how quickly I'm not saying but it can't go on at this level it is possible that if Ukraine does find it difficult to make breakthroughs as it moves, as it has said it would in the next couple of weeks to more active counter-offensives then you could find some sort of stalemate but we don't know that yet and we're not there I think one can say already that the aura of Russian power that Putin has so carefully cultivated has been broken there's going to be a lot of countries that have either depended upon Russia or feared Russia who will be making their own new calculations at the moment about where does this leave what does it mean for Belarus what does it mean for Moldova what does it mean for Georgia what does it mean in Central Asia what does it mean for China all these questions have been raised I mean Xi must be really wondering whether he made a particularly good bet by inviting Putin to Beijing at the start of the Winter Olympics so there's going to be a lot of new calculations doing secondly there are going to be second order consequences of this that are going to be enormous particularly because of the inflation in food prices and energy prices already references being made to the impact on developing countries that too is something that may leave us with secondary crises that turn out to be as big and as serious and as difficult as this one lastly what does it mean for us what does it mean for how we think about military power we went through our own hard lessons being learned about the limits of military power the idea that the decisive use of armed force can solve a nagging political problem has affected us as well as it has now affected Putin and you learn that military power has its role has its importance but really it doesn't the only limited number of problems and by and large these are defensive problems and somebody else has used military power that they can solve it's an important lesson to learn it may not be a pacifist lesson but it's a prudent lesson about the dangers of assuming the fallacies accepting the fallacies of the decisive military move that leaves your opponents gasping and beaten and looking for capitulation it doesn't happen but not that often so first is to recognise the limits of military power keep on recognising it secondly when we are looking at our own defence capabilities to recognise that we simply take the case of the UK in one of what has been I think one of the most significant UK interventions geopolitically for a long time hence that the UK was to the fore in trying to support Ukraine even before the war began has been important in organising the donors group is that the donations are really important and the arsenal of democracy role turns out not just to have been in 1940-41 but has relevance now the ways that you can support other countries are many and varied and that's something that we're going to need to think about and I think that argues when we're looking at the aftermath of this not to get fixated on a particular scenario for future war but to have the broadest base of capabilities available and to be able to use them in such a way as to respond imaginatively to crises as they develop and lastly diplomacy diplomacy has been really important in this war in keeping a focus in supporting Ukraine in demonstrating a willingness to explore alternatives to war but it hasn't solved the war it hasn't produced an answer to the war and it may not quite possible that this may come in right at the end but the idea of some grand peace deal in which everybody goes away with a bit of satisfaction doesn't seem to me to be very obvious at the moment but it is a reminder of the importance of international politics of the role of diplomatic activity and of alliances and that in the end that what holds alliances together is not just geopolitical interests but values as well and the importance despite all the things and the many things that may divide the countries of NATO and their domestic politics and their attitudes to the EU and each other in the end there is a common set of values which to its credit Zelensky has understood and played upon which is a reminder of why in the end not only is it possible that Russia can lose this but it is actually important that it does. Thank you. Just before you go thank you for being a patient audience we have some final words from the fathers of the feasts the head of the school of security studies the principal of King's College London and the chairman of reaction. Over to them. Thank you for your attention this afternoon. Thank you very much Adam and many thanks to Laurie and many thanks to our students just before that for helping us draw to a close the afternoon in such an insightful and impactful way we've had some great speakers today some great discussions and I'm sure we've all gained new insights into the ongoing war where it's all headed the longer term implications for Ukraine and for defence in Europe and international security more broadly. We're just going to give us some brief remarks here and some brief thank yous Ian mentioned this morning at the start that we had six weeks to organise this event starting back in, what does that put us into early April or whatever and Lord Swarff's bringing in came up to have a chat with myself and John Gears and I think to pull this off within 42 days of the decision to go for it has been no mean feat and everyone I think organising today across the two organisations clearly deserve a good round of applause. So there are many people to thank from across reaction and across kings on the reaction side there's been literally an army of people involved but let me thank those we at kings have worked with most closely Ian Martin of course Lord Salisbury, Nicole Gray Conshar, Olivia Archdeacon and Steve Moore there are others but those are the people that we dealt with most closely it's been very rewarding working with reaction over the past few weeks and I hope it's not the last time that we do so perhaps an annual event or a group would be good or something on the future of NATO I think an earlier speaker mentioned as well on the kings side many thanks to my co-conspirator John there in the front John Gears and to Lizley Elland our school comms lead who never flaps and her great communication team to Julie Weldon our faculty comms lead to Emma Hardy the college on the college comms side Hilary Brithford centre for defence studies with King's venues and Alan Gilbert and the entire King's security team we also need to thank the speakers of course especially the Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace who's now gone off to Washington and the Ukraine Ambassador Vadim Pristako the interviewers are guest compares Mark and Adam and you the audience of course without the audience we don't have events like this watch this space I think for future events on this and similar topics so many thanks for coming for helping to make the conference such a success I'll leave my comments there and hand over to Lord Salisbury Sir Robert please Well when you were brief but comprehensive and I'm not going to repeat the list of facts I think perhaps one thing you'll allow me to say is that behind as is well known every good woman there's a good man in this case behind every good man there's a good woman and we mustn't forget Fiona Martin not only for doing so much to make this work but also putting up with the vagaries of our husband throughout the last 42 days Fiona it's been a pleasure to watch you at work as always it has been a great pleasure for us at reaction to be able to work with you win and all your team it's almost as though we've been working together for years instead of merely for six weeks and I'm delighted that you agree with us that it would be a shame to throw away what is clearly a winning formula and we accept with the greatest of pleasure your implied invitation that we should repeat this performance perhaps thinking about the future of NATO at a future date and if we have as distinguished an audience then as we've had now and say successful a group of speakers then this will be the beginning of something really really great so I would like to echo of course everybody's all the thanks that you've uttered today and above all to you the audience who've made this such a success it's been a great pleasure to be here and thank you to Kings for being such splendid and admirable partners may I just add one other thing it would be odd for a commercial organisation like reaction not to give itself a puff and certainly even odder for the chairman to fail to do so but we thought that this was such an important subject and that the timing was so important that in spite of our extraordinary struggle to break even we have done this on a non-commercial basis and I hope that if there is any surplus from today's events that we will at least have a modisum to give to a Ukrainian charity nominated by the Ukrainian ambassador and I was particularly grateful to him for coming as well as course to the secretary of state thank you for your kindness my name is Shiddish Kippur I'm the president and principal of Kings College you might be wondering how many people does it take to close a conference but look the reason I really wanted to be here because I couldn't be here for most of the day other than Sir Laurie's speech and I remember it was about six weeks ago a win when you called and the principal's office gets a lot of such requests we'd like to organise a conference so I thought alright he's probably talking about summer of 2023 so I think it is remarkable but quite fitting for what is needed here that we've been able to move so quickly and particular thanks to our partner's reaction and perhaps it was you who prodded us to move so quickly but the one thing I'm reminded of is some of us who are old enough would remember that when the Berlin Wall fell there was a little aphorism that was going around the end of history as people said then and I'm reminded as someone else wrote that on the February 24th history is back with the vengeance who would have thought that we would have needed to assemble like this in a hurry to talk about the defence of Europe but I'm pleased that we could and I think this is where I'd like to acknowledge that even though we've been able to come together for six weeks we've been preparing for this for 60 years the fact that we can convene scholars and expertise of this level is not an accident it is the work that was started by Sir Michael Howard ably taken forward by Sir Laurie Friedman and it is because of the depth of that work and the comprehensiveness of those connections that we could be here that we could talk about this but I would like to add another element of course we could just have been a very good policy or a think tank but we're more than that and I think what has also happened here today and I certainly got a brief glimpse of it is the declaration from our students and the thing that touched me about their declaration as I read it were two aspects one they reminded me who's sort of a middle generation here is that they had grown up never knowing war in Europe and that's something to reflect upon but the other thing that the declaration ends with saying is of course that today we are preoccupied with the Russia-Ukraine war but it doesn't take away the main challenges and realities of the 21st century which probably likely will still remain climate change failed states and perhaps the accelerated and coming great power competition that is ahead of us this might just be a catalyst that brings all those things forward and makes them all the more important but I'm pleased that we could get together and discuss this many people have been thanked you Wynn Bowen and John Gerson and also my special thanks to our partners at reaction Ian Martin and Lord Robert Salesbury thank you to all of you thank you to the audience may also put a special shout out to our venues and security who had to go the extra mile to make this event possible especially with all the VIPs who showed up today and with that may I wish you a very good evening and for those who are invited thank you very much