Is it 1939 in Europe?

[00:00:00] The Why Curve, Phil Dobbie and Roger Hearing

[00:00:03] Is Ukraine about to collapse?

[00:00:06] The government in Kiev say they're desperately short of weapons they need and were promised.

[00:00:11] Is Europe's largest and longest war since 1945 about to present Vladimir Putin with a clear victory

[00:00:17] as the US Congress holds up vital arms supplies?

[00:00:20] And does all this put Europe in a place of enormous danger?

[00:00:24] A position the Poland's Prime Minister says feels like 1939.

[00:00:28] Has the West taken its eye off the ball and could we all be the victims?

[00:00:33] The Why Curve

[00:00:36] So I mean it does get down to, I mean this shows the importance of America in all of it.

[00:00:40] Oh yeah, well it's huge and its support for Ukraine has been the dominant factor in everything that's happened so far.

[00:00:46] And if they don't show that support what happens?

[00:00:48] Does Europe then say well okay we have to manage by ourselves?

[00:00:51] And America I'm sure will still happily sell weapons and armaments to us.

[00:00:56] We'll just have to pay for it all ourselves.

[00:00:58] Which is a little more of a problem, yeah and also you've got all the political change coming in America

[00:01:02] and it's bad enough now who knows what happens if Donald Trump gets into the White House in November

[00:01:06] in terms of or in January because it may well mean that these arms supplies

[00:01:11] and indeed political support for Ukraine dries up as well.

[00:01:14] And he's a strong man.

[00:01:15] I mean he's not only going well he has a strong, with Putin he's a strong man who's taking back control

[00:01:21] and he's a man who used to be a comic actor.

[00:01:25] Well you could see his view of the world.

[00:01:28] I mean he's a very simplistic view of the world but he's a man of a very simple...

[00:01:32] But is it all a moment of enormous peril for Europe?

[00:01:35] I mean Donald Tusk who's the Polish Prime Minister has talked about 1939.

[00:01:39] This is what he says it is and all the implications of that.

[00:01:42] You know that you have someone who is a strong leader but may not stop necessarily at the border of Ukraine.

[00:01:47] So what is he saying about that? Is he saying this is the start of World War 3?

[00:01:50] Well effectively yes because he's saying that if you have a strong man who wants to expand in Europe

[00:01:54] coming up against the borders of NATO now potentially if Ukraine collapses.

[00:01:59] So a very perilous moment.

[00:02:01] And he's more of a border with NATO now because Finland is joining.

[00:02:06] It's sort of like he's created a situation which might play to his benefit of course.

[00:02:11] Because all of a sudden he can say well look the West is really against us.

[00:02:15] I mean the Iron Curtain is back again isn't it?

[00:02:18] But it also looks successful that's the thing.

[00:02:20] He said he would take Ukraine if he does manage to in a way he's coming up with the goods

[00:02:24] which in the end is what justifies the strong man in me.

[00:02:27] Isn't it bizarre that we are talking about a country that after the Soviet era became westernised.

[00:02:32] People were welcoming McDonald's restaurants as though that was actually the good of the West.

[00:02:37] I mean actually that's what I would con.

[00:02:39] It's rather sad if you see there's one of the benefits of being westernised.

[00:02:43] But all of a sudden that's flipped on the head.

[00:02:45] I wonder now whether the average person in Russia is very anti-West as a result of all of this.

[00:02:49] Possibly but I think what they remember is the chaos that came after the end of the Soviet

[00:02:53] period and how awful that was.

[00:02:55] And so you know in a way that strength is what they're after.

[00:02:58] But will that then have a knock on effect of putting Europe in engraved peril which

[00:03:02] is certainly the suggestion of many who form that border.

[00:03:05] Well let's talk to someone who knows about this in some detail.

[00:03:08] David Galbrith, he's the Professor of War and Technology at the University of Bath

[00:03:12] and he joins us now.

[00:03:13] David I mean you go into a war to win obviously.

[00:03:16] Who's going to win this one?

[00:03:18] I think it's really hard to tell.

[00:03:20] I think that if you look at the literature in terms of the way that wars have been studied

[00:03:26] in terms of the way that they win or who wins.

[00:03:29] It's really a complex picture.

[00:03:31] I mean the correlates of war study that has been done really since almost the

[00:03:36] end of the 1960s has looked at all the different correlates or variables of war

[00:03:41] to suggest that actually it can be about resources.

[00:03:45] It can be about allied help.

[00:03:46] They can be about whether or not you're targeting civilians or not.

[00:03:51] It could be about the morale of your troops and things like this.

[00:03:55] And we know that actually those things really are a problem on both sides.

[00:04:00] Actually although different degrees in different areas.

[00:04:04] And so it's really difficult to say at this moment what it's likely to be.

[00:04:09] What we do know is that Russia has a longer in a sense kind of set of resources.

[00:04:16] Will that be people or will that be the ability to produce armaments

[00:04:21] or the ability to produce missiles?

[00:04:23] Not to mention that it continues to get support for others.

[00:04:26] Unlike Ukraine at the moment which seems to be struggling.

[00:04:29] So that is something to keep in mind.

[00:04:32] Well yeah clearly that is the issue of the moment

[00:04:34] that Ukraine appears to be being starved of resources.

[00:04:38] And very interestingly Donald Tusk the Polish Prime Minister

[00:04:41] really making a point about the danger of this moment.

[00:04:45] I mean he talked about 1939, the equivalents.

[00:04:49] If Ukraine loses the implications for Europe.

[00:04:52] So I suppose if we disentangle that.

[00:04:55] Is it a lack of resources in the end that's going to decide the outcome of this?

[00:04:59] Is there a feeling that within the next six months to a year

[00:05:03] potentially Ukraine could collapse

[00:05:04] because it simply doesn't have enough weapons?

[00:05:07] I think that's it's really difficult actually

[00:05:09] because what we see in many cases so at the moment

[00:05:12] Ukraine and Russia are really fighting each other like for like.

[00:05:15] And that means that actually when it comes to missiles and drones

[00:05:18] and and trenches and tanks and soon to be

[00:05:23] you know more aircraft that actually you know

[00:05:26] that they're really in a sense facing each other the same way.

[00:05:29] But if you think back to the way that the Taliban

[00:05:32] fought NATO and American forces,

[00:05:35] they didn't try to fight American forces or NATO forces in that way.

[00:05:39] They actually sought to do it in a through an insurgency.

[00:05:43] And we could easily imagine that the Ukrainian situation

[00:05:46] will in a sense kind of move towards much more of an insurgency

[00:05:50] should that sort of resource start to dry up.

[00:05:54] That means that actually the type of resources

[00:05:56] that they need really are totally different.

[00:05:58] And it comes down to the many in many cases

[00:06:01] the things that we did see in Afghanistan and Iraq for that matter.

[00:06:05] And also that we saw in Vietnam and Indonesia

[00:06:08] and other places where we've had large scale insurgencies.

[00:06:11] This is a Russian insurgency that you're talking about.

[00:06:14] I do know that I'm sorry,

[00:06:15] that's an insurgency against Russian forces

[00:06:18] because we imagine that Russia will continue to try to fight

[00:06:20] the war that it wants to fight.

[00:06:22] And that means that it has, you know, at its disposable

[00:06:25] artillery, you know, heavy artillery, missiles,

[00:06:30] you know, the ability to target really in the sense,

[00:06:33] you know, far west of Ukraine, even overflying

[00:06:37] in the sense as we saw in the case of Poland most recently.

[00:06:42] So we suspect that Russia will continue to want to fight that way.

[00:06:45] The question comes is whether or not Ukraine can continue to fight that way.

[00:06:50] If we do see a continue blockage

[00:06:54] of American parts predominantly,

[00:06:57] although that we do see continued supply of weapons from European

[00:07:02] and also other Asian nations, I mean, think of South Korea

[00:07:06] in particular as sending quite a few weapons, especially

[00:07:12] individual held anti-tank and anti-aircraft.

[00:07:16] What are referred to as toes and man pads, in fact.

[00:07:21] So so there are, in a sense, there are things that are continually changing.

[00:07:25] But we could imagine that Ukraine itself could could transition much more towards

[00:07:29] what's referred to as a punishment phase rather than this kind of

[00:07:34] this kind of attrition.

[00:07:35] We see if the Hamdavis effectively what you're saying is there could be

[00:07:38] a breakdown in the front line so the Russian forces can push through,

[00:07:42] push west, perhaps even take Kiev.

[00:07:45] And then the Ukrainian resistance goes into this insurgency

[00:07:50] phase beneath the surface.

[00:07:52] I mean, that is going to be a very dramatic moment in the war.

[00:07:55] If that happens, yeah, it could be a dramatic, a dramatic situation.

[00:07:59] I mean, the question if you're Ukrainian, though, as you asked yourself,

[00:08:04] do we, in a sense, you know, where do we see our strategic

[00:08:09] you know, future being?

[00:08:11] Do we think that we're going to be able to fight them in the way

[00:08:13] that we're they're fighting us or do we imagine that

[00:08:17] they're going to overrun us if we continue like this?

[00:08:19] So why don't we melt into you into the scenery and just come out

[00:08:23] and punish them?

[00:08:24] And and of course, that's a very effective.

[00:08:28] We do see that the defender in an insurgency always has the advantage

[00:08:34] and that's something that maybe they would like to play to their part.

[00:08:37] Now, you're absolutely right.

[00:08:38] That is politically very problematic, both for the continued support

[00:08:42] in some quarters for Kiev, but for others.

[00:08:45] I mean, Poland is a good example.

[00:08:47] Poland would be, in a sense, you know, considerably even more heightened.

[00:08:51] Should we imagine that the big cities of Central and Western Ukraine

[00:08:57] were to fall to Russian forces?

[00:09:00] What we do notice is that these kind of insurgencies

[00:09:03] are really punishing for occupying militaries.

[00:09:07] And we've seen some of that in the early days

[00:09:10] of Russian forces as I thought to to take care before.

[00:09:15] But we, you know, it would be a huge change in the war.

[00:09:18] I do accept that.

[00:09:20] And what is this one's going to be from America if that happens?

[00:09:23] So they're going to go, well, actually, this is not war.

[00:09:25] So we'll just so many particularly if Donald Trump is president.

[00:09:29] Do does he just accept it?

[00:09:30] And and and what's the reaction in Europe?

[00:09:34] I mean, Europe is not going to be happy to see Russia

[00:09:38] seen as being the taking ground and being the winning force,

[00:09:43] or at least, you know, heading in that direction.

[00:09:45] I mean, it's that's unthinkable, isn't unfathomable for all of Europe?

[00:09:49] Well, I think that, you know, you have to consider it.

[00:09:51] You know, what are the alternatives?

[00:09:52] The alternatives are a complete Russian victory.

[00:09:55] And and, you know, if things were to, in a sense,

[00:09:58] to go terribly for the for the Russians in terms of continued supply.

[00:10:02] So I think that we imagine that life is going to be difficult

[00:10:08] for Ukraine under a Trump presidency, regardless.

[00:10:10] I think Trump very much sees that that the, you know,

[00:10:15] the best way to get the Russians out of Ukraine

[00:10:17] is to actually gift Ukraine to the Russians.

[00:10:21] Now, that doesn't make sense to me.

[00:10:23] It may not make sense to many of your listeners,

[00:10:25] but I would say that actually there's a large extent sense to one man, I think.

[00:10:29] Well, well, yeah, Trump possibly in Putin.

[00:10:32] Yeah, you're absolutely right.

[00:10:33] And and there is a there's a feeling that actually

[00:10:37] that Trump doesn't really have an interest in maintaining any of these.

[00:10:42] You know, he sees as an extension of NATO,

[00:10:43] which is very highly skeptical of in the first place.

[00:10:46] He sees as an extension of interests of Europeans,

[00:10:49] which is very highly skeptical of.

[00:10:51] So there is a there's a feeling that actually that Ukraine

[00:10:54] really kind of drags the United States in a direction

[00:10:57] that Trump doesn't want it to go.

[00:10:59] And and partly that means, in a sense,

[00:11:01] kind of coming up against Putin and he's shown time and time

[00:11:05] his admiration for Vladimir Putin.

[00:11:07] But but I believe that Trump has a different interest at heart,

[00:11:12] much more in the sense anti Chinese,

[00:11:14] although Biden is largely taking that, you know, taking that ground too.

[00:11:18] So there's not really a lot that kind of distinguishes them.

[00:11:22] As far as that that's concerned,

[00:11:24] if we do see another Biden administration,

[00:11:27] that will also be interesting because we do know that Biden is under

[00:11:30] and considerable pressure both to constrain, say, for instance,

[00:11:34] its weapons supplies to Israel.

[00:11:37] And quite often what he's been able to do is use this kind of policy linkage

[00:11:41] between Israel and Ukraine as a way to continue to fund Ukraine.

[00:11:46] And we do see that actually that this is starting to break down

[00:11:50] as the question of Israel and its support continues to break down.

[00:11:53] We're in a very, very difficult and complicated

[00:11:57] interface of all these various crises, of course.

[00:11:59] But I suppose one of the one of the things that the Europeans are thinking about,

[00:12:03] one thing we wanted to address in this day, it is what about if Vladimir Putin

[00:12:08] is successful? How much of a threat to the rest of Europe?

[00:12:12] Would he then become because the implication has always been

[00:12:14] if the Ukraine isn't where he's going to stop.

[00:12:17] There isn't there isn't an end to this.

[00:12:19] He is looking towards NATO members, potentially Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia,

[00:12:24] the Baltics, which historically had been within the Soviet Union quite recently.

[00:12:29] And that, you know, perhaps it is that 1939 moment

[00:12:32] that Donald Tusk was talking about. Do you think that is a possibility?

[00:12:35] Of course, it's a possibility.

[00:12:37] Do I think it's likely? No, I don't.

[00:12:39] I don't think it's likely because I think that actually Russia is very

[00:12:43] conscious or the Kremlin is very conscious of the punishment that it's received.

[00:12:49] A huge number of casualties have come out of come out of Ukraine.

[00:12:54] A huge amount of resources gone into to Ukraine.

[00:12:57] We've seen the rise of the first in a sense, popular revolt

[00:13:02] and during the Ukraine war.

[00:13:04] And what we imagine actually is that Ukraine is I mean,

[00:13:07] Ukraine seems to be what primarily the Russians are very interested in.

[00:13:12] And I would say if you've been looking at Ukraine for the last 20 years

[00:13:16] and I have been for a variety of different reasons in my own research,

[00:13:20] what I would say is that you see that Russia has always been very

[00:13:24] conscious and and agitated by any pro-western government that comes into Kiev.

[00:13:31] Now, early Russian Ukrainian presidents were really in a sense able to balance

[00:13:35] between Russia and the European Union or Europeanization

[00:13:40] much more so, but that really ended in 2004.

[00:13:44] And the feeling that actually that happened then was that

[00:13:48] Ukraine could be the underbelly of Russia itself

[00:13:52] and the undoing of the Putin administration.

[00:13:55] So that's why there is such this focus on Ukraine.

[00:13:58] What I would say is that going into a NATO member state, whether that's Estonia,

[00:14:03] you know, one of the smallest NATO member states or

[00:14:06] or as something much larger like Poland or Romania

[00:14:11] really is a totally different kind of scale of things.

[00:14:14] One, this is that both the EU in terms of their own treaty of the European Union,

[00:14:19] but also NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty,

[00:14:22] both require a military response should one of their members be invaded.

[00:14:27] That's a much more significant response

[00:14:31] than than anything that Ukraine has ever been promised.

[00:14:34] They're much more black and white, isn't it?

[00:14:36] But I mean, it's the difference is slightly nuanced, isn't it?

[00:14:39] In that OK, we don't have troops on the ground in Ukraine,

[00:14:42] but everyone is supplying weaponry armaments.

[00:14:45] I mean, they, you know, we have volunteers

[00:14:48] not sanctioned by states, but you know, there's people going in there as well.

[00:14:53] So I mean, he's he's he is fighting a war against the West.

[00:14:56] I think he doesn't see it as fighting a war against the West.

[00:15:00] I think that actually Vladimir Putin sees it very much.

[00:15:03] Now, there could be others in his his administration who see it differently.

[00:15:07] But I think Vladimir Putin really sees it as a war for Russia

[00:15:12] and and doesn't, you know, and the West is in there somewhere.

[00:15:16] But more than anything else about securing Russia.

[00:15:19] And he thinks rightly or wrongly that Ukraine,

[00:15:23] a friendly government in Ukraine is the best way to ensure a secure Russia.

[00:15:29] I don't think that I'm not trying to apologize or anything like that,

[00:15:32] because I think that there's a there's a problem in that in that thinking.

[00:15:35] But but what I would say is that, you know, if you look at the way that

[00:15:40] you know, in 2014, when the initial invasion happened in Ukraine,

[00:15:44] you saw a radically different type of Ukrainian army or military,

[00:15:49] which actually they've had to professionalize really quickly during that time.

[00:15:54] But by the time that 2022 came, you still had in a sense,

[00:15:57] not really a modern army or modern military in the way that we would understand it.

[00:16:03] Now, you look at Poland or you look at Bulgaria or Romania or Hungary or Germany,

[00:16:08] not to mention the UK and the United States and Canada and others.

[00:16:13] Then you're actually talking about a wholly different type of military

[00:16:17] that the Russians would have to be facing.

[00:16:19] But further to your point, which comes from the issue. Sorry.

[00:16:21] So I was just going to say, but further to your point, yes, I take on board

[00:16:24] that these are different sorts of forces and it's a very different thing

[00:16:27] to take on NATO, the potential for invoking the article of the NATO Treaty,

[00:16:32] what attack on one is attack on all and all that.

[00:16:34] But we're talking an era of asymmetric warfare.

[00:16:37] And you mentioned insurgency, of course, that was how it all began

[00:16:40] in the eastern parts of Ukraine.

[00:16:43] Would it not be possible to imagine that the threat would not be in terms

[00:16:48] of battalions and tanks, but in terms of cyber warfare,

[00:16:51] in terms of minor insurgency, staring up ethnic groups

[00:16:55] in a way that NATO probably couldn't have?

[00:16:57] But I mean, it's something that NATO has been very conscious of

[00:17:00] really for a long time.

[00:17:02] If you think of the Bronze Soldier incident in Estonia in 2008.

[00:17:06] Just remind us of that.

[00:17:07] You'll remember that the the Estonians

[00:17:11] sought to move a what was a bronze Soviet soldier

[00:17:17] from war memorials.

[00:17:20] Essentially, yeah, it wasn't memorial, but it was essentially sitting at a bus stop

[00:17:24] and they wanted to move it essentially to a park

[00:17:28] where many other statues are some of them Soviet, but some of them not Soviet.

[00:17:33] And the idea was is that that it would be, in a sense, more honored

[00:17:38] than just being in a sense on a bus stop.

[00:17:42] But there was a feeling that that actually that this was an insult

[00:17:46] to the Russian speakers or those who sacrifice themselves

[00:17:50] in the second great patriotic war, which we considered to be the second World War.

[00:17:55] And and what happened in Estonia was is that

[00:17:59] Russians basically did these DDoS attacks.

[00:18:03] So the Donald of service attacks against the banks and newspapers

[00:18:09] and and everything else.

[00:18:10] So so really, really shut down Estonia's

[00:18:15] its its internet.

[00:18:17] This meant that actually the result of that was a huge amount of focus.

[00:18:23] The NATO cyber command is located in Estonia, for instance,

[00:18:27] a huge amount of focus on securing our banks and our

[00:18:33] critically secure infrastructure against a potential Russian hack in the future.

[00:18:40] That is particularly difficult, especially, you know, it's a chicken and egg thing.

[00:18:43] So or a cat and mouse thing, rather, you know, is as much as the

[00:18:49] as much as the Russians try to do something, NATO tries to defend

[00:18:53] and the Russians try to advance and so does the West and so on.

[00:18:56] So there is a in a sense, a constant tit for tat.

[00:18:59] But the the feeling is that actually

[00:19:03] NATO and the EU, for that matter, and in addition,

[00:19:08] organizations like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe

[00:19:11] and even the Council of Europe.

[00:19:14] All of these organizations have been very conscious

[00:19:16] of the ethnic tensions that exist in these spaces

[00:19:19] and also the vulnerabilities that are being created through something like cyber.

[00:19:23] So the ethnic tensions are supposedly what started all of this, isn't it?

[00:19:26] That it was the Russian speaking people within Ukraine

[00:19:30] that he was saying, you know, when that when the boundaries were drawn up,

[00:19:35] they they work up one morning and all of a sudden they were no longer in Russia.

[00:19:38] And that's what he wants to take back.

[00:19:40] There must be other parts of the world, other boundaries

[00:19:44] that he could he could level that.

[00:19:45] Well, certainly in Estonia.

[00:19:46] There would be. Yeah.

[00:19:48] So so what what makes us think that, you know, he's not going to say,

[00:19:52] well, OK, for this for the same logic, he's going to go further.

[00:19:54] Well, just let me say that that, you know, if he said that he would be wrong

[00:19:58] because actually Ukraine was a Soviet Socialist Republic

[00:20:03] and not part of the Russian Soviet Federalist Republic.

[00:20:07] Prior to the Russian speakers, mind you, there is a long history, David,

[00:20:12] of Russia thinking of Ukraine as part of its heartband,

[00:20:16] though, despite the Soviet era divisions.

[00:20:18] No, I think so.

[00:20:20] I mean, it's more a historiography than a history because many have

[00:20:26] many of Russia has ignored Ukraine altogether and just understood it

[00:20:29] to be in a sense kind of like, you know, the rural heartland of a place

[00:20:33] but really not the center of Russian culture.

[00:20:36] Needless to say, I think there is a

[00:20:39] there are occasions where it does come back into

[00:20:42] into Russian national image, if you will.

[00:20:47] But let me in a sense say that actually what Russia did was a classic part of its playbook.

[00:20:53] What it sought to do in places like

[00:20:56] Georgia and Acacia and South Ossetia

[00:21:00] is it sought to challenge the German state, I mean, the Georgian state,

[00:21:03] rather, largely through this kind of on again, off again conflict

[00:21:08] in order to protect what it saw as Russian speakers in Acacia and South Ossetia.

[00:21:16] And traditionally, Acacia and South Ossetia had been at one point in time,

[00:21:20] part of the Russian part of Russia, but had been given to the Georgian

[00:21:25] Soviet Socialist Republic prior.

[00:21:28] And so the feeling was that it was using the language of Russian or

[00:21:33] Rusini, this this notion of Russians being this and somehow

[00:21:37] ethnic Russians being something that the Russians had to protect.

[00:21:41] Now, this is not, you know, particular to Russians.

[00:21:43] You know, Hungary has been talking about this and uses this on a regular basis of,

[00:21:48] you know, what greater hungry used to be and where Hungarians sit today, etc.

[00:21:53] But what we do see that in in trans-Denestria, Acacia, South Ossetia,

[00:22:00] that there was a feeling that actually Russia could continue to use this on again,

[00:22:04] off again. Now, the feeling was is that this is exactly what he was trying to do

[00:22:09] and Donetsk and Lugansk and the East.

[00:22:14] Crimea is a little bit of a separate thing, I would suggest to you.

[00:22:17] Crimea is in a sense understood to be Russian.

[00:22:20] You did have a lot of Russian sympathies.

[00:22:22] Traditionally, the Black Sea Fleet, Russian Black Sea Fleet

[00:22:26] was in Crimea all along since the end of the Cold, I mean,

[00:22:29] since the end of the Soviet Union.

[00:22:30] So nothing had changed there.

[00:22:33] I had been, for instance, at a NATO conference in Crimea in Yalta.

[00:22:39] Back in 2012, I believe it was and no hotel wanted to take a NATO

[00:22:44] conference even at that time.

[00:22:46] And it's not because there was a feeling of, you know,

[00:22:49] that something was about to happen.

[00:22:50] It was more the idea that there's just a lot of pro-Russian feeling

[00:22:54] in that space.

[00:22:55] I think Donetsk and Lugansk are, in a sense, a separate issue.

[00:22:59] I think that actually not a lot of Donetsk or Lugansk,

[00:23:03] not a lot of these kind of Donbas Ukrainians were really seeking to be Russian.

[00:23:10] They may speak Russian as their native language.

[00:23:12] They may maybe they don't speak Ukrainian at all,

[00:23:14] because why would you need to in the East?

[00:23:17] But the feeling is, is that if you think that actually you're a

[00:23:20] wealthy businessman in the East, wait until these Russian oligarchs

[00:23:24] get a hold of you.

[00:23:26] And there's a paper that myself and Tatyana Mallorenko wrote in the early

[00:23:30] 2000s really about this issue, is that the one thing that really is stopping

[00:23:35] in a sense, a real kind of push for the oligarchs in Eastern Ukraine,

[00:23:41] really to push for a kind of a Russian solution for the East would be

[00:23:46] this idea that actually the amount of wealth and control

[00:23:50] and the power dynamics in Russia are not something that actually anybody

[00:23:54] wants to invite into Ukraine.

[00:23:56] They might get out oligarchs, I suppose, would be a way of.

[00:23:59] Exactly.

[00:24:00] But that's actually the towel.

[00:24:02] Yeah, I was just going to say, so that's the situation as you say with

[00:24:05] regard to a number of debatable territories, you might say.

[00:24:08] But with regard to say Estonia, just this idea that if following

[00:24:11] some sort of Russian victory in Ukraine, they then had a face

[00:24:15] to face border with NATO in areas they hadn't before.

[00:24:18] And potentially there could be these tensions,

[00:24:23] certainly in Estonia, there are Russian speakers there.

[00:24:25] They could be stirred up and this could be a way of letting me put

[00:24:28] in keeping that whole border area very much in play with an eye

[00:24:33] potentially to future expansion.

[00:24:34] Well, personally, I'd like to say thank you for bringing up my PhD,

[00:24:38] which I wrote in 20 years ago because delighted.

[00:24:41] Delighted. We always like to promote things here.

[00:24:42] This is exactly what I wrote on at this point in time.

[00:24:47] Unfortunately, at that time, everybody thought that actually

[00:24:50] nobody cares about these Russian speakers any longer.

[00:24:53] But but it's really come back into the fore, I think, in terms of

[00:24:57] being an important issue.

[00:24:59] One thing has really happened in both Estonia and Latvia, which

[00:25:02] traditionally does have quite sizable Russian

[00:25:07] Russian citizens and parts of the country that are predominantly

[00:25:11] Russian speaking is that in the 1990s, there was a huge push

[00:25:15] towards really what you could call assimilation or integration

[00:25:19] or things like this where they changed they change names.

[00:25:24] So if your name was something like, you know,

[00:25:28] relic of or something like that in Latvia, you became a relic of

[00:25:33] and so you had an S if you were a man or an A if you were a woman

[00:25:36] put at the end of your name, even if that wasn't your traditional

[00:25:40] Russian name all in 1998, all Russian children

[00:25:44] and all children in Latvia and Estonia, they had to start

[00:25:48] learning Estonian or Latvian in those countries.

[00:25:54] Now, as someone who's tried to study both Estonian and Latvian,

[00:25:57] I can tell you that actually if a Russian speaker

[00:26:01] learning Latvian is a lot different than a Russian

[00:26:04] trying to learn Estonian, which is a totally different language

[00:26:07] and where at least Latvian is still an Indo-European

[00:26:11] language like Russian.

[00:26:12] And so there was a feeling that actually that if you think

[00:26:16] about 1998 where you had 40 you had 40 percent still being taught

[00:26:22] in their target language, I mean, in their original languages,

[00:26:24] so Russian or Ukrainian,

[00:26:27] and the Russian which you did have in those in those in those schools

[00:26:32] where there were those minorities.

[00:26:35] But what you did start to see is that really we're talking

[00:26:38] about almost almost 20, 24 years on.

[00:26:44] You can see that actually generations have grown up.

[00:26:47] Now, two generations have grown up, largely having an excellent

[00:26:52] command of those titular languages like Estonian and Latvian.

[00:26:57] And the few you say the tension is eased, then it's not as much

[00:27:01] of an issue as it was.

[00:27:02] Absolutely.

[00:27:03] And some of the work that we did in the myself

[00:27:06] and an academic Richard Rose did in the late 2000s

[00:27:10] was looking at these these identities

[00:27:14] and what we found was really interesting.

[00:27:15] If you asked them whether they found themselves to be if you

[00:27:19] if you interviewed, say, a Russian and Dalgov pills, for instance,

[00:27:22] a Russian speaker in Dalgov pills and you said which is in Latvia.

[00:27:26] If you ask them, do you feel Russian or Latvian?

[00:27:29] They would say I feel Russian.

[00:27:31] If you said, OK, take that into mind.

[00:27:35] You know, do you feel in a sense Baltic Russian or,

[00:27:38] you know, Russian Russian, they would say almost 100 percent

[00:27:42] of the time Baltic Russian.

[00:27:44] And then they would give you an example of why they are not like the Russians.

[00:27:48] They are different.

[00:27:49] They are civilized.

[00:27:51] They are Western.

[00:27:52] They are all these things.

[00:27:54] They are not these kind of crazy Russians as they saw it.

[00:27:56] And and and, of course, you know, there's a bit of imagery

[00:28:00] and so on being used there.

[00:28:02] Maybe that is in a sense part of the local or the national

[00:28:06] language about, you know, our our, you know, unstable neighbors.

[00:28:11] But there's a really feeling that there's not a space or an opportunity for Russia.

[00:28:15] But but what I would say is I don't think there was in Ukraine either,

[00:28:19] but the Russians did anyway.

[00:28:20] And then that's what they called it.

[00:28:21] So how is being Russian changed?

[00:28:24] Because it seems like he is carrying the people.

[00:28:27] I mean, we get that impression, although it's very difficult to tell,

[00:28:30] obviously, because, you know, the truth and war at very different things.

[00:28:34] But it seems like he is carrying the people of Russia behind Putin can

[00:28:38] really claim wrap himself in the flag and say that he is

[00:28:41] genuinely pushing forward in Russia.

[00:28:43] And I think an uping military spending.

[00:28:45] And of course, if it looks like they're going to have more countries

[00:28:48] that are going to be NATO countries on their border,

[00:28:50] then all the more reason for him to upspending even further.

[00:28:54] So it you know, it plays a big, yeah, absolutely a big support for him.

[00:28:59] I mean, this is strengthening his position, isn't it?

[00:29:02] It is. And I think it is strengthening his position.

[00:29:05] But I would say that it's probably strengthening,

[00:29:07] strengthening his position in the short medium term.

[00:29:10] I think what we see nearly in all of our experiences of going to war

[00:29:14] in the last 20 years or even 30 years, thinking of Bosnia or Kosovo

[00:29:19] is that it doesn't matter actually when your government decides to send

[00:29:24] your military off to war, there is a what's called a rally around the flag

[00:29:29] effect and and Putin still seems to be benefiting from this.

[00:29:34] I think a lot of people think, you know, you know, I thought

[00:29:38] that maybe Iraq doesn't make sense for the United States and the United Kingdom

[00:29:47] in 2003. But what I wanted to do is what I wanted is for our,

[00:29:52] you know, men and women of the armed forces who go to Iraq

[00:29:55] to make sure that they're safe and they do a good job and all these things.

[00:29:59] So, you know, you see these in a sense kind of contradictory feelings

[00:30:03] in many Russians, where they don't want to see the killing of Russian soldiers.

[00:30:08] They don't want to see Russian soldiers dying on television.

[00:30:11] They don't want to see about the hear about the losses or anything like that.

[00:30:13] They want their, you know, largely sons to come home

[00:30:18] safe and having done a good job.

[00:30:20] And if Putin tells us that, you know, that this, you know,

[00:30:24] the heart and the future of Russia is staked into the,

[00:30:28] you know, control of Ukraine, then by all means, you know,

[00:30:32] let's support that happening to happen.

[00:30:35] What we find is that's really the case for nearly every country

[00:30:38] who goes to war in the short term term.

[00:30:40] But what would these and is anti-western sentiment a residual effect out of all this?

[00:30:45] So, of course, you know, if you ask anybody now,

[00:30:47] it's for you to find very few supporters of the Iraq war, wouldn't you?

[00:30:50] But no, that's right.

[00:30:51] And you see the crack starting to happen in Russian society, too,

[00:30:56] where there is a growing feeling that actually

[00:30:59] and much in the way of the Soviet period where you talk about doublespeak.

[00:31:04] So, you know, if somebody asks you on the news, you know, as, you know,

[00:31:09] if national news comes and interviews you and say, when do you think about the war?

[00:31:13] You know, you say, oh, you know, it's great war, you know, my great leader,

[00:31:17] you know, Vladimir Putin and all these things.

[00:31:19] But, you know, what you do say at the around the dinner table

[00:31:23] or with friends is different.

[00:31:25] And you start to see this this type of doublespeak growing.

[00:31:30] We did see Russians very used to this, of course, historically.

[00:31:33] Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

[00:31:34] And so what we don't know is really what the

[00:31:39] what the underlying support for the war really is.

[00:31:44] But what I would suggest to you that actually the Putin

[00:31:46] and the security apparatus that is created around Russia

[00:31:50] means that it's actually it doesn't really matter.

[00:31:53] Nearly you can defend himself anyway.

[00:31:55] Yeah, the Russian population could be totally against the war in Ukraine

[00:32:01] and Russia. I mean, then Vladimir Putin could continue to to to prosecute it.

[00:32:07] And that's because it has complete control over Russia.

[00:32:10] I wonder whether Tusk's comment about 1939 part of that is that it is

[00:32:15] dividing the world and has the potential to divide the world even further.

[00:32:19] I mean, even to the point, you know, so you've got to pick a side,

[00:32:21] you know, there will be countries within Asia that are picking a side

[00:32:24] and even between Europe and the United States.

[00:32:26] So if Donald Trump says, well, we're not going to spend any more money on this,

[00:32:30] then your own Europe is going to say, well, we are.

[00:32:32] I mean, that puts a big question mark over the future of NATO

[00:32:35] and the future of the European Union, because it will come down to that

[00:32:38] as much as NATO went to. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:32:40] I mean, it's a really hard thing to imagine because we just got

[00:32:45] we don't have the ability to manufacture

[00:32:48] weapons at a rate that would mean that we would go to war with a major power like Russia.

[00:32:54] And that's something that actually you would need a huge amount of investment

[00:32:59] from governments, either collectively through something like the EU

[00:33:04] or or individually

[00:33:07] that we don't have at the moment and who is going to come into office

[00:33:10] and say what we should do is spend less on the NHS and schools

[00:33:15] so that we can increase the amount of defence and infrastructure and industry.

[00:33:20] You know, it's it's a it's hard to imagine where that's going to happen.

[00:33:24] And it's certainly hard to imagine with a potentially incoming labor

[00:33:27] administration, I think, too.

[00:33:28] But but as we draw this to a close, Debbie, just a sense, then,

[00:33:31] do you feel that we are at a moment of crisis in this war?

[00:33:36] Is is it likely to change radically?

[00:33:38] Do you think within this the next 12 months or are we going to be

[00:33:42] at this time next year still scratching our heads and saying,

[00:33:45] well, you know, there's a horrible stalemate, lots of people dying,

[00:33:49] but not much changing.

[00:33:50] I think that you can really see Donald Tusk comments in two ways.

[00:33:54] I think you can see it very much in his case of trying to,

[00:33:57] in a sense, use imagery that hopefully gets some kind of response.

[00:34:00] And so he's drawing something that he thinks that people will remember

[00:34:04] in some way or another.

[00:34:06] And so let's do something because we don't want to make the mistake

[00:34:09] of Nazi Germany once again, who tried to run over Europe in the same

[00:34:13] way that Napoleon did.

[00:34:14] You know, why?

[00:34:15] Let's stop this before it happens.

[00:34:17] On the other hand, the idea that 1939 really is likely to happen

[00:34:22] is probably unlikely.

[00:34:25] What we do, in a sense, could understand 1939 as a as a as a

[00:34:30] warning being is that actually what we do see in Russia and in China

[00:34:36] and in India and and in Brazil and others is this idea of trying to

[00:34:41] redraw the postwar consensus that we had after the end of the Second World War.

[00:34:47] And those really are the rules of the game of world politics.

[00:34:52] And and really, we can see that there's a concerted effort to try

[00:34:55] to undermine those rules.

[00:34:57] And and it's really hard to imagine how that's not going to happen,

[00:35:02] especially as we see continued strife coming between US presidents

[00:35:09] of a certain variety and and European politicians, certain varieties.

[00:35:16] And so there's going to be in a sense, a real is going to be really difficult

[00:35:19] for the West to get its head around the idea that the world is going

[00:35:24] to look different in the future in some way or another.

[00:35:28] And I would suggest that actually there is a growing change.

[00:35:32] Now, whether or not that's a crisis, I mean, a crisis is a politically

[00:35:35] manufactured thing. I don't know whether it's a crisis or not,

[00:35:38] but it's definitely something that's happening.

[00:35:40] But Russian troops in Kiev would be seen as a crisis, wouldn't it?

[00:35:44] Yeah, yes, definitely for the West.

[00:35:47] It would be seen as a crisis.

[00:35:49] And I don't think anybody wants to see that really.

[00:35:53] I, you know, the I don't think that actually a lot of Republicans

[00:35:56] in the United States want to see it either.

[00:35:59] I think that actually what Donald Trump wants is really hard to determine

[00:36:04] in many cases. So in most cases on anything really.

[00:36:09] David, we're going to have to pull it to a close there.

[00:36:11] But thank you so much for talking to us.

[00:36:13] Really appreciate it.

[00:36:14] And well, who knows?

[00:36:16] Maybe this time next year, we will be talking to each other again.

[00:36:18] And about the same thing.

[00:36:20] A similar thing that we will see or maybe we'll have moved into 1940 by then.

[00:36:24] I would be happy to come back.

[00:36:26] Thank you very much, David. Really good to talk to you.

[00:36:28] Thank you.

[00:36:29] OK, well, that's enough war for now.

[00:36:30] Yes.

[00:36:31] So next hopefully forever.

[00:36:32] So what else do we talk about?

[00:36:33] We talk about war.

[00:36:34] We talk about the economics.

[00:36:36] We talk about that.

[00:36:36] We do. We do.

[00:36:37] And growth and growth.

[00:36:39] Yeah, which is what they keep talking about.

[00:36:40] We need more growth in the UK economy, the global economy.

[00:36:43] Is that right? That's the question.

[00:36:44] I mean, actually, you know, if we got this issue that we've got,

[00:36:48] we were addressing climate change and we seem to there seems to be

[00:36:52] this belief in some quarters that we can address climate change

[00:36:55] while enjoying growth.

[00:36:56] Well, that is the great difficulty.

[00:36:58] Yeah. Can it be done?

[00:36:59] Can you actually increase the size of your economy

[00:37:02] without also putting the very future of our existence at even greater

[00:37:06] seems to go against the laws of physics a little bit?

[00:37:08] It does. But some leading thinker,

[00:37:10] said now says that say there are ways of doing it.

[00:37:12] There are ways of shaping our growth, getting growth,

[00:37:15] but also having it in a particular shape that means that we won't

[00:37:18] damage the environment or at least in the way not in the way as we think.

[00:37:21] So or do we, you know, it's a question of doing a growth at all.

[00:37:24] You know, it's a and how do we measure the success of a country?

[00:37:28] Because we've always relied on gross domestic product.

[00:37:31] GDP is a measure of how well a country is doing.

[00:37:34] I mean, there have been, you know, attempts in the past to say,

[00:37:36] well, that's the wrong measure.

[00:37:37] We should really be looking at how happy people are.

[00:37:39] I mean, if you've got a great deal of GDP growth,

[00:37:42] but all of them miserable people, really, what is the point?

[00:37:44] If you can't measure GDP, you've got a really big task

[00:37:47] if you try and measure happiness.

[00:37:49] Well, yeah, it's a little bit more subjective,

[00:37:51] but we will pursue this.

[00:37:52] We will talk about next week, hopefully.

[00:37:54] Yeah. Well, you can actually grow an economy,

[00:37:57] make people prosperous without also putting everything else in peril.

[00:38:01] Yeah. OK. That's next week on the Why Curve.

[00:38:04] Join us for that and we'll see you then.

[00:38:06] Thanks for listening. Bye.