 Stephen Lowey, Deputy Chairman of the Lowey Institute, board members of the Institute, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. Welcome to 31 Bly Street for the first Lowey Institute event of the year. I'm Michael Fulilove, Executive Director of the Institute. Let me begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which the Institute stands, the Gadigal of the Eora Nation and pay my respects to their elders. Also, ladies and gentlemen, happy Valentine's Day. We're very flattered that you're choosing to spend Valentine's Day not with your loved ones but with Gideon Rackman and me and what could be more romantic than Gideon and me whispering sweet nothings at each other. There's a lot to whisper about or to shout about at the beginning of 2024. It may be that this is one of the most consequential years in recent memory in terms of democracy, peace and prosperity. Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine is about to tick over into its third year. The conflict in Gaza sparked by Hamas's vicious attack on October the 7th continues to royal the Middle East. Iran's proxies have attacked shipping and disrupted global trade and killed US servicemen leading to retaliatory strikes from Washington. China continues to throw its weight around the Indo-Pacific. For all the recent talk about a thaw in relations, we all saw the shocking suspended death sentence that the PRC handed down on an Australian citizen Yang Hengjun. This year, more than 2 billion people across 50 countries will vote in elections and I guess the one we're most focused on is the United States where we will find out whether we all face another four years of orange-tinted chaos in the form of a second Trump presidency. So there is a lot to discuss and there is no one that I would prefer to have on stage with me than to discuss these issues than Gideon Rackman. Gideon is the chief foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times a post he has held since 2006. He joined the FT after a 15-year career at the Economist which included spells as a foreign correspondent in Brussels, Washington and Bangkok. He's the author of a number of books including Easternization and The Age of the Strongman. He is spending a month in Sydney with his wife Olivia as a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute and he's writing his FT column here at Bly Street. So we're very happy to have you with us. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Gideon. All right, Gideon, let's jump straight in to the very unromantic topic of conflict and war. Let me ask you about Ukraine. Ukraine's counter-offensive last summer was not a success. The longer the war goes on the better it seems Russia is adapting its tactics. Solidarity with Ukraine around the world is fraying especially in the United States and we just saw President Zelensky replace his top general. A year or so ago Putin who was replacing his top generals now it's Zelensky. What will 2024 bring for Ukraine? Well it could be quite bad I think. There is I think a real danger that people have got used to talking about the war as a stalemate but that might be a bit complacent actually because the Ukrainians already running short of ammunition to the extent that they're having to ration the use of artillery on the front and this has been a war where there's been a lot of exchanges of artillery fire and just to give you an idea of how intense this has been the Ukrainians at one stage were using as many artillery shells in a day as Britain produces in a year so if the West isn't able to gear up and match the what the Russians are doing the Ukrainian situation could get progressively worse and what the Russians have been able to do is firstly put their economy on a war footing ramp up defense spending but also basically turn themselves into a war economy producing for the war and also get a lot of supplies from North Korea from Iran and they're gradually beginning to make that felt on the front line the front lines are still pretty static and you know anything has to be cautious because I think one of the things we've learned or any assessment of how the war is going to go has to be hedged around because I think one of the things we've learned is that even the experts have consistently got this wrong so I mean I remember being at the Munich security conference which you're about to head off to I think tonight so two years ago which was four days before the invasion and the British and Americans who had very good intelligence were completely confident that the Russians were going to invade and that was right but they were also if you thinking back they all said oh and Russia will win within a week you know they'll be in Kiev very quickly and the Ukrainians will lose and that was totally wrong as it turned out and then you know more recently there was an assumption the Ukrainians would make quite a lot progress with their counter offensive and that turned out to be wrong so any judgment as to how this fight the fighting is going to go has to be provisional but I think Ukraine's situation is weaker and getting progressively weaker and just to finish I mean I was last in Washington at the beginning of December and speaking to some of the senators who just voted through the aid package yesterday unfortunately it still has to go through the house and may well get stuck there but one of them said to me look if we don't get this through by Christmas you'll be feeling it on the battlefield by January and I think that's true and would you agree that perhaps the biggest factor in the the war in Ukraine is what happens in November in the United States it's yeah I mean I think it's you know obviously what happens on the ground is critical but it's already having an effect and I think that you know what's interesting is that we all thought well you know they've got until November and then if Trump wins all bets are off but I think what's happening is that Trump has already actually undermining American foreign policy that's why the package is not going through Congress because he has said to his followers in Congress don't vote for this and he said more or less in very kind of crudely open terms that he wants this is an election issue he wants the border as an election issue he wants it you know he doesn't want to see Biden solve the border whatever that means but equally as he said quite clearly sort of elliptically but that he has a very equivocal attitude to what America's commitment should be even to its NATO allies let alone to Ukraine he has a history of antagonism towards Zelensky of bizarre relationship with Putin which there's been lots of speculation about so we knew that that Ukraine would be in trouble if and when Trump would be elected but I think the new factors we've realized that actually that troubles begun well before November because of his effect on Republicans in Congress all right what about the war in Gaza brought on by Hamas's vicious attack on October the 7th how is how is the Israeli effort proceeding how do you think the war will end well I mean I think that beneath the surface there being some tensions even between the Americans and the Israelis from the beginning which is not to say that the American expression of support and horror etc. were insincere I don't think they were at all I mean I think that Biden and the people around him were deeply upset by what happened and did feel the need to express solidarity with Israelis and and meant it but I think that you know Biden early on said look remember the mistakes we made at the time of 9-11 and when we were blinded by a grief and rage etc. etc. and don't make the same mistakes now he didn't elaborate on what those mistakes were but I think what he meant was that you just want to after something like that just wipe out your enemy and you think that's that's the only way to go and that the Americans discovered in Afghanistan now Afghanistan's different for the Americans because they couldn't walk away from it Gaza's right next door to Israel but the Americans discovered that you know they fought a 20 year war they how many times did we hear they've killed this leader the Taliban they defeated the Taliban here they overthrew the Taliban who's running Afghanistan the Taliban so that you can you can have an organization that is both a terrorist group but also has political and social roots and that you can kill the entire leadership of Hamas it doesn't mean that there won't be another Hamas like organization or Hamas too and that's where I think the disagreement between the West and Israel comes and you saw there was a example ready yet but I got the gist of peace by William Hague our former foreign secretary in the UK saying more or less this that you know you'll win the battle but you might lose the war if you you know create the next generation and then behind that there's this there's this obvious disagreement it's now explicit about whether the way out of this is a two state solution even the US says this repeatedly that has to be the way out they look and I think the Israelis and I think in this respect Netanyahu my understanding is probably at the moment speaks for most of Israel when he says no you know that's just too much of a risk for us so in that sense Israel there's a gap between Israel and even its closest allies in the West you know we've lived with those ambiguities though for many many years now the West has been pushing a two-state solution the Israelis at time sounded willing to play ball at times not of course there's also the question about you know who speaks for the Palestinians are they capable of negotiating the wider regional context so this is not something that's ever really been resolved and maybe it's unrealistic to think that it ever will be if you're if you're trying to be optimistic I guess you could say that the Israelis may complete military operations to their satisfaction I think they probably have to somehow at least kill Sinwa capture the key leaders inside Gaza and be able to start winding down the military operations and that will take some of the heat out of it I think a key hole for the Americans from the beginning has been to prevent a wider regional war that looked like that we were very close to that a couple of weeks ago but the Americans have now done their retaliation and it it seems to be in the box and maybe you'll see a winding down of the military operations the next you know by the middle of the year maybe sooner and at that point maybe people can begin to take stock of where we are politically and have a more serious conversation about what you need to do let me ask you about some of those wider dynamics Iran projects its power across the Middle East through various proxies including Islamic resistance which killed the three U.S. servicemen and that led to the U.S. response striking back against that group and other proxies the standard question that is asked is how concerned are you about a wider war escalation into a wider war but the other question I'd like to ask you is will these are these U.S. strikes enough to restore deterrence what does the United States and the West do about the Iran problem in the long term I don't know whether they're enough to restore deterrence but I think that one of the things that the Americans are relatively optimistic about I mean you know relatively because mostly it's pretty terrible in in in most respects but that they don't see that Iran wants to go on in on this how much Iran was behind what happened October the 7th in an explicit planning sense we I don't we know I mean clearly they've been long term supporters of a mass but I think the Iranians you know this is a regime that's really bent on survival above all that is internally challenged you know has had consistent problems domestically and repressed them with a fair degree of brutality but probably knows that the one thing that would really sign their death one is if they go into war with the United States at that point I think they would probably be toppled the Americans don't want to do that for their own reasons they've had enough wars in the Middle East thank you very much that they don't really want to take on a country of 80 million people if they could avoid it so and I then I think the the sense that that is Iran's number one priority which is survival and which means keep out of a war with America has been slightly reinforced by their behavior recently that they've they've gone for provocations but not for all out confrontation and they've gone for deniability you know so that one of the escalation scenarios people worrying about at the beginning is okay you know his Bilal go for Israel Israel goes for his Bilal all that sort and then what if the Iranians blockade the straight circle moves to which arms oil flows something that wasn't on anybody's sort of bingo card but then that happened was that the hooties would start shelling ships going through the Red Sea but that is what happened and I think most analysts I've spoken to think that they wouldn't do that without Iran say so so Iran certainly in the trouble making business but but it also has a little bit of deniability and it and because the Americans don't want this direct war with them either it's not in their interest to say this is actually Tehran we're going directly after the Iranians I mean ask one other question about the Middle East and then move on one of the points of optimism before October 7th was the normalization of relations between various Arab countries and Israel the big outstanding one is Saudi sure that's on pause at the moment but do you think in the long term after the war that normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel is likely I think it's certainly a possible bordering on likely if you know what I mean I think it was likely in fact it was you know it's really close to happening before this war and I think that the Saudis wanted but I think that they're it's much much harder for them to do now because the whole Arab world is up in arms about not literally thankfully up in arms but emotionally up in arms about what's happening in Gaza and so the cries of betrayal would be much much louder if the Saudis normalized with Israel they're also very worried about ceding the Palestinian issue to Iran which they might do so their ask to Israel has to go up they have to be you know it was the deal before I think Netanyahu very tactlessly said that the Palestinian element would be a box taking exercise in other words be some tokenistic thing that I don't think the Saudis can settle for anymore. Certainly now maybe in two years time he knows what the atmosphere will be so they will have to ask for I think they've said you know irreversible steps towards the Palestinian state but as we were saying earlier Israel's tolerance for that has always been low particularly on the right and I think right across the spectrum now there be deeply wary of that so while the Israelis want normalization of Saudi Arabia if the price genuinely was irreversible steps towards a Palestinian state now I'm not sure Israel would would do that or would be able to do that so it may be that we've hit a roadblock but I think that broadly speaking Saudi Arabia is a really interesting place right now because obviously Muhammad and someone we know is a deeply ruthless guy and who had you know I'm pretty sure must have ordered the murder of Khashoggi and who has a dreadful human rights record at home but he's also engaged on a project of the modernization of Saudi Arabia which I think is both in his country's interests and in the West interests because they're no longer this inward looking regime which is encouraging fund crazy sort of fundamentalists all over the world they are now engaged on a more sort of classic modernization globalization project trying to make Saudi Arabia a more normal inverted commerce state and to attract investment and take over the world of golf and frankly I prefer they took over the world of golf and invaded their neighbor you know so he's not all negative I think that he's an unattractive leader and a ruthless person but what he's doing is actually one of the more hopeful things that's happening in the Middle East all right let me come to the cockpit of global politics Washington DC let me ask you first of all for a quick answer what do you think the chances are now of Donald Trump returning to the presidency look I mean I think he's you know the fact is if you look at the bookmakers he's the favorite so and if you look at the opinion polls he's the favorite because we know from the way the electoral college works in America that actually for a Democrat to win they need they don't get in most votes isn't enough they need to win in the electoral college and that usually means having to be about two or three points ahead of the Republican on voting day and Biden is an average of two three four behind right now and there must be a fear that the American people have made up their mind about Biden in some senses his poll ratings are very low the whole is he losing his mind question has come back because of the slip that he made the other week now Trump is also old and also you know confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi and said you know you've got to meet this great guy all about he's the leader of Turkey I mean you know the things that Biden would be crucified for but Trump is has never made much sense so that's nothing new and and also is physically more vigorous than than Biden who just looks and sounds old so yeah I think it's many months to go and I you know American politics is such a soap opera there'll be so many twists and turns between now and November who knows a lot will happen but at the moment I think Trump's the favorite all right and if the bookies are right and Mr. Trump is elected what does that mean for the rest of us you wrote a column a couple of weeks ago you said like that character in The Godfather who says to Don Corleone I believe in America you Gideon said I believe in America yeah I was a couple of weeks after that the Donald Trump said that you know if there are any deadbeat allies I'd actually encourage Russia to so tell us why you're optimistic about the United States even if Donald Trump is elected well optimist it's probably overdoing it but I think they'll get they'll get through it I hope but when I what I mean I'm not just finishing what did I write but I think what I wrote was that you know when he said I believe I mean in a way I'm trying to be ironic because the person who says I believe in America in that movie is a mafiosi or rather somebody who's appealing to a mafia don so it was meant to be slightly double-edged I think as Coppola saw it but but what I what I meant is that I believe in that there are two that statement could mean two things that are kind of geopolitical sense I mean there's a backward-looking statement which is that you know anybody who's been interested in politics in the Western world there's always been anti-Americans and pro-Americans and broadly speaking I've been in the camp that believes that America's been a force for good in the world as have you although I think like any great power it will it has done terrible things you know from you know Vietnam the excesses of the war on terror but but in the great conflict of the 20th century it was not only on the right side it was decisive you know it's why we in Britain certainly you know still live in a democracy essentially so in that sense I believe that they have been and continue to be a force for good in the world the question second question is do you believe it's all come into an end and there I suppose that was more of a kind of with my fingers crossed but I think that you know people make the question is is Trump would be autographed I think he probably is could he do it I think he will do some pretty drastic things when he comes in partly because he's on a vengeance drive partly because he's learned from his first term in office and is not going to point relatively conventional figures like H.R. McMaster or Rex Tillerson who will appoint radicals like people whose names will get to know like Kashpatel and Rick Grinnell and who are you know crazies basically and they will have an agenda to take on the civil service maybe even take on the US military it was interesting when I was in the Pentagon talking to some of the okay the Democratic appointees but they said that they felt that Trump you know he's talked about sending Mark Milley the head of the Joint Chiefs to prison he feels that the military top brass are not loyal to him but that the men are you know that the lower ranks believe in him and that he might try to set up some sort of conflict between the top and the enlisted men so all of that's deeply dangerous and then what he might try to do the courts etc etc so how can you say will you believe in America despite all that so what I the argument I made but is that I just don't think it's that easy to turn America into a dictatorship I mean if you look at say what a Victor Orban did in Hungary, Hungary is 10 million people and he had a super majority and he was able to pack the courts and rewrite the Constitution and muzzle the press and he is where he is but there are so many different you know America's federal system it's a huge country there are lots of different forms of wealth and independent sources of power right across the country there's a deeply entrenched system one thing I think all Americans believe in pretty much maybe with the exception Stephen Miller and a few people around Trump is freedom of speech I don't think you can just shut the whole of America up and shut you know turn it into a dictatorship in four years I don't see it happening what I do think is that I think you would have an immense turmoil and that would be dangerous for America's allies because I think you know we pause Trump statements about NATO about allies about Russia and they do matter but I think one can't underestimate the extent to which is preoccupations of domestic and his enemies of domestic and he will turn them and you will have a kind of huge fight inside America which will make it very difficult for America to act as a you know stable predictable actor in the world let alone what the policies are all right let me ask you you wrote a book about strong men so let me go from a would-be autocrat to two actual autocrats at the moment Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping how would they be feeling at the beginning of 2024 unfortunately I think Putin will be feeling more confident I think obviously here's a moment of maximum danger may have been around about last summer when you have this pregosian mutiny and incredible pictures of them putting up fortifications around the Moscow ring road I mean that was how how bad it looked and but that as we were saying the Ukrainian counter failed pregosian is dead what a surprise and I think we can say probably safely that Putin will win the Russian presidential election next month so praise yeah close but so he's he's and the Russian economy as he said I mean he was bullshitting when he said it's the strongest economy in Europe but it's I think what you know one of the things is that Russia did much worse militarily than we thought it would do as I say everyone thought that would very easily but it's done much better economically than we thought it would do when I remember all those Western sanctions will be in place people saying oh the Russian economy will shrink by 20% they'll be ruined not true our sanctions were less effective and I think also the Chinese have been immensely helpful to keeping the Russian economy afloat the Indians are buying that oil so yeah he's in relatively good shape I mean I think long run obviously what he's done is a disaster for Russia you know if you think about it I mean Russia's had many wars which he revels in the memory of but as but I don't think they've ever been in a position where they have no allies in continental Europe at all you know if you think of the Napoleonic Wars or a second world war they were always in coalition with somebody they don't have any friends in Europe so they've thrown on to into China's arms and China's much more powerful place may even one day have designs on you know bits of Russia because you know China's obsessed with its unequal treaties that it made with the European powers but one of them was with Russia a lot of China modern Russia was ceded by China sometime okay so so I don't think it's a healthy at all for Russia to be in that situation and then of course they've lost a lot of able people you know who've emigrated they have a demographic crisis they've lost hundreds of thousands of people killed and wounded I mean it's a disaster but unfortunately he is secure I think what about Xi Jinping yeah I mean the same it's like all these places you have to make any judgment provisional because unlike you know America's problems all out there on display and we can see and the fight goes on in public in China or in Russia you know there's some mysterious the Defense Minister suddenly disappears the Foreign Minister disappears you know some people you've never heard of a sentence to death but it turns out they've been running their nuclear force who knows what's going on it's like that you know I like the Churchill has a quote for everything but well I think one of his better ones was about trying to understand Russia was like watching dogs fight underneath a carpet so that you can see like you know there's a fight going on and somebody's biting somebody but all you see is just there's a lot of movement in the carpet who's actually winning nobody knows and I think the same you know you look at the purgers successive purgers in both Russia and China but particularly China it doesn't suggest this is all calm and stable and then you know I've talked to Richard McGregor your China expert you know there's a lot more about it than I do but they do have deep economic problems but they've sort of arrived it's a great power now it's no longer a question of saying oh will this stop them they have the world's largest Navy at least in terms of numbers of ships they have a huge economy they're the world's largest exporters steel producers manufacturers they're gonna have a lock on EVs there's you know China's it's arrived you know it's it's troubles but it's it's a huge power all right let me go to another permanent member of the UN Security Council your own country United Kingdom it's it's been a tough few years for for Britain I mean it used to have Britain used to have a reputation for excellence for terrific civil service for very astute public policy that was before Brexit it was before the chaotic response to COVID it was before the Prime Ministerial churn that you've endured that would make even an Australian blush even if you watch Nemesis I think you guys are leading the run run right there so what has happened to Britain over the last 10 years well I mean I think we've had our populist moment and you know I I think that's Brexit and the election Donald Trump I've often thought were kind of related events in the sense they both happened in 2016 they were both appealed to similar constituencies non-metropolitan people who felt like the system wasn't working for them and I remember seeing Steve Bannon say that the moment in you Trump would win was when Britain voted for Brexit so he saw that felt that there was a kind of mood afoot that they could take advantage of and that unleashed it was certainly a very unpleasant period in the UK our politics tends to be relatively civil we don't generally have this sort of people that hate each other usually there was a period of two years where there was a really bad atmosphere in Britain and people were calling each other traitors and it was kind of American style brutal politics and I think even though I oppose Brexit and part of me wanted us to have a second referendum and just reverse it and I do think it's been damaging in some senses it was right to go go with it because I think that reversing it would have fueled a betrayal narrative that would have been very damaging to our politics in the long run and now we just have to live with consequences and I think that you know on the more positive side we're going to have an election where both leaders are really boring technocrats which I think is good you know that if you look at you know France they're living in terror that Marine Le Pen will be their next president in Germany the AFD after 20-25 percent in the polls the Dutch have just may have a far-right Prime Minister the Italians have Maloney who's behaving relatively well but is certainly from the far right tradition Spain is in terrible kind of internal strife of a sort that's too complex to attempt to explain but it's not good and we have these two relatively boring politicians from the center ground and I think that may be partly because in our case populism was very closely associated with a particular project which was Brexit which was passed and now is generally according to opinion polls deemed a failure something like 70 percent now say Brexit was not a success and then we had another sort of worked experiment with populism which was this trust coming in and saying you know ignore the experts I know best I'm gonna slash taxes you'll see the economy will take off and in fact she causes you know the kind of run on the UK Treasury and is gone within days and so I think that that has made for the moment slightly inoculated Britain against these popular slogans and led people to say well maybe we'll go for the boring centuries for now I don't want to be too complacent there there are quite scary opinion polls about faith in democracy in the UK particularly amongst young people the number of people who say actually you know a democratic system is always best is below 50% so you know there could be trouble to come but for the moment our politics looks okay and even our economic growth I mean it's been very if you take it over the last decade it's sort of a lost decade they've been very no real gains and real incomes and certainly for the young you know that's struggling to get on the housing ladder and all that so they're deep problems but it's not it's not collapse you know it's like a it's weakness or a boring a boring technocrat from the center is right up the FT's alley and the Lowey Institute's alley let me ask you about Labour's technocrat Kia Stammer what would prime what would a Prime Minister Stammer be like how would he be similar to or different from Prime Minister Blair well I think Blair is a very important figure in the background he set up this Institute which has you know hundreds of employees were and is working on a full agenda and I think talks to Stammer a lot Blair's a strange figure because you know he was Britain's most successful politician probably almost charismatic politician he won three elections in a row he won the third one even after the Iraq war and yet there's a substantial proportion of the population particularly on the left who hate him and regard him we will describe him as a war criminal etc etc and you know if you into if you go to the Tony Blair Institute to just give you a sense of how much he keeps his head down there's no thing on the door saying Tony Blair just says number 44 whatever the number is yeah so you know they don't they keep their heads down and yet he is rich influential and I think because Stammer wants a bubble to win he pays a lot of attention to what Blair said and I think broadly speaking he would govern in that sort of Blairite tradition I also think that Stammer is quite a ruthless guy and I don't mean that I mean I think you have to be probably to succeed in politics and you look at the way that he took on the Corbynites he he there was nothing of like well you know you should probably shouldn't have said that but let's give me a second chance with out you know he expelled Jeremy Corbyn from the party and but he waited for an opportunity waited for him to say something that would you know that they could get him on and then they kicked him out and I think and he moved not only ruthlessly but quite calculatingly so that when he came in the people he put into a shadow cabinet included some of the left and so on and and excluded some of the Blairites but over time he's moved towards a much more sort of basically perched the left and and put in the kind of writer center people around him but he did it deliberately and step by step he waited for his chance what about a Stammer foreign policy I mean as Blair's premiership went on he became more and more invested in foreign policy and then Iraq as you say was his cardinal sin where he really invested in the sort of democratization agenda to such an extent that he went in with this grand folly of the Americans do we have any kind of hints about what kind of foreign policy premier Kier Stammer would be well you know the big unresolved question for Britain is the European Union and you might think well 70% of the public say Brexit was a mistake we know Stammer opposed it that actually was pushing for a second referendum well surely he would come in and say okay let's at the very least get much closer to Europe actually he's not doing any of that and that's I think partly because he is thinking above all about winning the next election to win the next election he has to win a lot of seats in the north that voted heavily for Brexit I think he feels that he's not going to take any risk so any suggestion that he will reopen Brexit would be seized on by the Tories who have nothing really as an issue but if they could say actually he's this elitist who's going to betray you and you know then then they'd have an issue so he has come out in terms and said not only am I not going to reverse Brexit I'm not going to join the customs union which would make it much easier to trade with Europe and I'm not going to rejoin the internal market which would make it much much easier to trade with Europe but would also mean taking a bunch of laws which Britain no long has a vote on so he's basically hoping to do a kind of bespoke deal with Europe improve things at the margin start with maybe student ability then maybe health and safety standards for food little niche itty bitty stuff and maybe leverage the fact that Britain remains a relatively powerful military player in Europe at a time when Europe is suddenly scared to use that as a way of building a closer relationship with the Europeans and I think that's sort of what he's going to go for All right I'm going to ask one more question that I'm going to give you all an opportunity to ask a question to Gideon so start thinking now and please catch my eye if you'd like to get the call Gideon final question let me ask you given that both the UK and Australia are members of the West broadly speaking what is behind the sort of collapse in belief in the West you get on the left as you mentioned wiring numbers of younger people saying they don't believe in democracy and that the West is hypocritical but also on the right increasingly in the United States we saw Tucker Carlson on stage a couple of days ago saying that you know what a wonderful country Russia is and Moscow is prettier and better run and cleaner than any country in in the United States what's behind this sort of collapse in confidence on both the left and right yeah I think I I think that basically they have different forms of critique but if you take the I think that the right probably have more chance of enacting their criticisms if you like because Trump is close to power and it's the right populace are doing better in Europe than the left populace so they have a different view of the West I mean I think they see it as a kind of cultural slash racial so that their view you know whereas when say a liberal or a Biden people talk about it it would kind of be an enlightenment based view of the West but it's based around certain ideas democracy equal rights constitutional government etc etc I think Trump would say no you know it's about he gave a speech in Poland which I think was written by Bannon and Steve Miller in his first presidency and you know I can't quote from the Basin but if you're interested you can look it up but it's you know there's this bizarre passages about sort of you know you know we're we're our castles our operas our religion doesn't quite say our white skin but there's kind of in there so I think that's the view of the West and in that sense they think that Biden is not defending Western values he's selling them out partly through mass immigration you know that that this is why the whole fuss is going on about about the border that they will say look in what sense are we still the West or America if white people are no longer the majority in the United States and Trump you know will say this occasionally he said why are we taking all these immigrants from quote shithole countries why don't we take them from Norway and so that's sort of the view I think and you get some of that in Europe well look I don't want to say that everything these guys say that it's all nonsense obviously there is anxiety about the integration of particularly Muslim minorities say in France you know you've had big terrorist incidents it's not absurd to say these these are not things you should think about but we are also we are in a period of mass immigration some are a lot of it uncontrolled so right across Europe people are worried about boats crossing the Mediterranean it's very hard for politicians to make the case you know well to control the flows and if they don't they look weak and ineffective and so on so there's a sort of decline of the West in that sense much more cultural than sort of ideological view of the West and on the left you know the litany that were hypocrites and it's all about power and white supremacy and you know the exploitation of of other countries the legacies and periodism etc etc all right fabulous who would like to ask Gideon a question when when I give you the call if you could project a little bit I'm advised we have an issue with our handheld microphone so if you can project your question and then I'll probably repeat the gist of it just for those who are listening to the recording afterwards so please catch my eye and then ask a short question if you if you would so we can fit as many questions in as possible we love questions rather than statements I saw this gentleman's hand first Gideon in your analysis of China you didn't manage to squeeze in the character of the assassination of the President Xi I did or didn't I can't remember okay I'll try again He has drifted a long way from the reformists that preceded him yeah What is destiny I don't know I mean I think that you know one of the difficulties for all these particularly in that style of leadership is that I can't see how you avoid becoming a megalomaniac over the course of you know 10 years in office and she shows plenty of signs of that you know when you rewrite the Chinese constitution to put Xi Jinping thought into it when all members of the Communist Party are meant to study Xi Jinping thought every day it goes to your head I think so it doesn't suggest that you're a kind of modest retiring type I mean and they do actually I mean I remember last time I was there just before the pandemic I haven't been since but talking to a friend of mine who's very westernized I think he may even have an American passport but he's a real loyalist you know claims to me and I said a couple and you know you don't seriously study Xi Jinping thought every day do and he said oh yeah yeah I've got it there's an app on my phone and he kind of called his phone up and he said oh god I haven't logged in today you know they'll notice like you know and so it's it's a real culture personality which I think is a characteristic of this whole strongman style of government that you accumulate power towards yourself you begin to believe that you're judged that you're irreplaceable and also frankly it's personally dangerous to you to be replaced because you've probably locked up a lot of your enemies or kill them or your family has become very rich so you can't leave power and then you kind of create a culture personality so I think it's yeah and I don't think his records been great for China actually because they can't some of what's been happening to the economy might have happened anyway as they you know become richer they're not going to grow at seven percent a year forever but things like taking on the big tech companies which were sort of independent sources of power and I don't think he liked some of the things that Jack Marl was saying or the fact that Jack Marl was receiving Western leaders himself like he was the big guy you know he kind of took him down but then that had an effect on one of the most in dynamic areas the Chinese economy so I think he has been quite damaging and also there's a price to pay for the antagonism with the West I mean maybe the Americans as the Chinese would say were always at some point going to take fright about the rise of China and start trying to block them in various ways but the fact that she has built military bases across the South China Sea that he's talked about this no-limits friendship with Putin and so on has given America every reason it might have wanted to say well you know okay we're not going to restrict technology exports we're going to tell our companies to be much more wary of investing in China and so on all right go to the gentleman in the center flows yes let me let me just summarize that just so the people on the recording can hear it it's a question given that the West has somewhat lost its ability to dictate terms with the growth of the the diffusion of power the rise of the the global South what does that do to the ability of Washington and the Atlantic countries to really have their way yeah I mean I don't know how much we were ever really able to dictate terms there was a period after the Cold War when there was less there was more a big ideological confidence in the West because our system had won there as it lost and also Russia and China China was still hadn't risen Russia was flat months back but even then you know the US couldn't get the votes it needed to get a second resolution for the Iraq war for the UN so this idea that we could just sort of say well this is what we think needs doing and the rest of the world would fall in line that wasn't all that was never really true and I think now it's a mixed picture you know it's true that I think the West was a bit shaken by the fact that so many middle ground countries you know your Indonesia's India's etc they didn't necessarily take Russia's side but they didn't take our side they said this isn't our fight oh and by the way the way you're conducting the fight is damaging us economically because it's raising grain prices raising oil prices and we have a lot of poor people and that's our concern not enforcing the rules based order we don't really believe we think it's selective anymore and I think that that Gaza's damaged that case further because the West is having the charge of hypocrisy thrown at a lot over that you know when you make a fuss about Mariupol why aren't you making a fuss about Gaza there is an answer to that which is that Israel was attacked and Ukraine was not attacked but it's it's to me that's a proper yeah I mean sorry Ukraine was attacked by Russia and Israel was attacked by Hamas so but I and I think that's a reasonable answer but it's not one I mean I've seen Western diplomats attempt to make that case in Turkey at a conference and they get no you know it's not an argument that makes that works in the global sound how much it actually you know damages Western interests in direct ways it's hard to say and also I think the fact that people accuse the West of hypocrisy or don't sign up to our agenda on Ukraine doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to fall in line behind Russia or China I mean if you look at say the votes in the U.N. on Ukraine I think only about three countries endorsed Russia's annexation North Korea, Belarus, Iran you know and then there were a lot that sat on the fence so I wouldn't want to exaggerate the extent to which disillusionment with the West or accusations of hypocrisy mean that countries are going to say okay well we're going to take the Russian line or the Chinese line it's just that there's a big group in the middle that are kind of sitting on the fence Yes Josephine Ballard in the middle so Gideon the question is about this question is about the frailty of the East and which is not doesn't have the magnetic quality for immigrants has to keep its people in rather than attracting them what about the frailties of our opponent system? Yeah no sure I mean I think that people voting with their feet is always something to watch and the fact that you know our biggest problem is that too many people want to come into our societies does tell you something not many people clamouring to get into China, North Koreans quite a lot of people trying to swim across that river but but yeah it's true we're relatively wealthy I mean wealthier than Russia wealthier than China and Friere and it's you're less likely to and we do have rights you know you're less likely to be brutalised even as a migrant if you're in the west so I think that and it's a fair point that a lot of the people you know the Russians and the Chinese who like to lecture the west also like to have an apartment in London or New York or to send their kids to be educated at western universities and so on so there was a lot of hypocrisy there that said I mean I think that you know I don't think Russia has much soft power I think China does to some extent that in this region I was interesting when I was in Indonesia last did more or less this time last year it was closing me that that one of the reasons that Chicoi was pretty plowed China was that there was a lot of money coming in from China you know and all his infrastructure projects the money was more likely to be coming from Chinese companies than from American companies and I remember an Indonesian saying to me you know America just had this ASEAN summit and they'd come up with some aid package and he said you know it's pathetic you know it was was like a single Chinese investment the amount of money that they're coming up but they don't have the cash and I think Larry Summers said you know I don't know whether it's a made up quote but he claimed that somebody said to me you know the West gives us a lecture and the Chinese give us an airport and we have to be a bit worried about that you know that that development focused we're pragmatic we're not going to tell you what to do think has a certain appeal and it would be a mistake for us to think oh well you know they're actually remind me just to wind up seeing Nikki Haley I saw her I was at a conference in Singapore and she gave what I thought it's incredibly naive speech notes I don't want nobody wants to speak ill of her she was our last hope but but she she said you know well you know you guys you're just going to have to choose between China and America and obviously you're going to choose America because why would you choose China I mean you know they're horrible and we you know go with us and it was just just I thought no sense of like the power cultural and economic power of China in Southeast Asia and that this was not the no-brainer that she presented it to to her audience so we can be a bit overconfident all right last audience question from Steven Lowey just to repeat the question for the for the for the benefit of the recording the question is about how we should think about an Iran with nuclear weapons how do how do nuclear weapons change the the the calculation for Israel for the United States and for the rest of us when we think about Iran well I think probably substantially and as you know this question of Iran being a nuclear power has been hanging around for 20 plus years you know I as you mentioned I took this job up in 2006 and you know certainly every time I went to Israel I would be told they're months away you know but this has been going on for a long time and we'll have to take action etc etc it's been and it's for me took on a slightly crying wolf quality because you know I would say but you told me that four years ago you know they're there for months away and but the West certainly took it very seriously there's a a kind of group I go to a couple of times a year which is mainly diplomats Americans and Europeans and they would have a daylong session and there would always be a session on Iran and you would always hear from the team working on the Iran dossier about efforts to either stop them getting there through diplomatic means or other means Jake Sullivan and Bill Burns the head of the CIA were personally in charge of these negotiations with Iran that took place in Iran so it's been a big issue for a long time and again we're here and again they're very close whether they would actually risk crossing the threshold I don't know because I do think that if we thought that they were genuinely going to assemble a bomb that might be the trigger for this military action which there's no doubt that the West has been is not keen to do so maybe the Iranians want to get close but not cross the line maybe it's a threat they want to hold over our heads but sure and we would also have to talk to our our allies in the reach I mean the Saudis are more terrified of you know of Iran they're probably setting up there with the Israelis in their concern about that and I think actually one of the interesting things about the global reaction to Gaza is that although and an emotional level the Arab countries feel it probably more powerfully than anyone on a geopolitical level actually they have quite a lot of sympathy with certainly the Saudis with the Israeli effort to take out a mass which they is not you know an organization that the Saudis look on with any favor it's the Muslim Brotherhood who they're deeply opposed to and they're closely alive with Iran so I don't know we certainly answer your question I mean it's I'd say it's been hanging around for a long time and if they were to ever get there it would change the equation sure because it would make them pretty and vulnerable to attack I mean we're not going to attack North Korea because they have nuclear weapons and I think it would take the idea of military action against Iran not a direct assault on them would be off the table you might have clashes with them sorry I'm rambling a bit but I think partly because it's we're having to rethink what the possession of nuclear weapons does to the way you deal with a country right now in the context of Russia so that the fact that Russia have nuclear weapons initially made the West very nervous about what we were going to give to the Ukrainians that's one of the approaches that's been given to the the American administration you were too cautious but they were cautious because they thought they didn't they didn't want to provoke Russia into using a nuclear weapon as this war has gone on we've come less cautious and we have given the Ukrainians more in military terms and become less convinced that Putin would ever use nuclear weapons so there's the whole question of what does the possession of nuclear weapons how much freedom does it give a country how much freedom does it give you to aid their enemies we're rethinking in the context of Russia so I don't quite know how it would change the country as if Iran has nuclear weapons but obviously it wouldn't be good All right last question Gideon we've got 30 seconds given that it is Valentine's Day give us one ground for optimism when you look ahead at 2024 Boy that's a tough one look I mean I think that the Western economies have proven a lot more resilient than than we thought despite all the turmoil in the United States the American economy is doing incredibly well at a time when the Chinese economy is in trouble and all these confident predictions that China would be the world's largest economy by right now actually you know it seems to be receding long into the future so maybe our systems work better than than we thought and maybe they're much more resilient to political turmoil than than we might have feared that there is a kind of dynamism to the western particularly the American way of doing things but I think Europeans as well and Australians that that is quite hard to replicate and that is associated with having a relatively free society the functioning Western economy I don't know how romantic that is I don't know how much romance we've delivered but personally I could listen to you speak to me all day every day oh my god so um so fortunately I'm not you know I'm not going to put that to the test so ladies and gentlemen I hope you've found the conversation as interesting as I have please thank Gideon Rackman