1
00:00:02,370 --> 00:00:04,010
[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.]
Good evening, Vice Chancellor.

2
00:00:04,050 --> 00:00:13,740
Ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the 2023 Tanner Lecture on Human Values at the University of Oxford, hosted by Linacre College.

3
00:00:15,090 --> 00:00:21,329
The Tanner lectures are now in their 45th year and were established by the American scholar,

4
00:00:21,330 --> 00:00:29,460
industrialist and philanthropist Obert Clark Tanner in creating the lecture ships, professor Tanner said.

5
00:00:30,370 --> 00:00:34,840
I hope these lectures will contribute to the intellectual and moral life of mankind.

6
00:00:35,500 --> 00:00:40,900
I see them simply as a search for better understanding of behaviour and human values.

7
00:00:42,230 --> 00:00:50,840
Appointment as a Tanner lecturer is a recognition of exceptional, distinguished and important scholarship in the field of human values,

8
00:00:51,050 --> 00:00:57,530
and that description is fully justified in the case of tonight's lecturer, Sir Laurie Bristow.

9
00:00:58,830 --> 00:01:02,670
Celery is president of Hewes Hall, Cambridge.

10
00:01:03,060 --> 00:01:08,250
And as many of you will know, Hughes Hall is the sister college to Lineker at Cambridge University.

11
00:01:08,520 --> 00:01:18,240
Likely, the Hughes Hall is a post-graduate college, home to academics from all disciplines and one of Cambridge's first truly co-ed colleges.

12
00:01:18,930 --> 00:01:22,110
Laurie became the president in 2022.

13
00:01:23,220 --> 00:01:27,690
Prior to that, he had a long and distinguished career as a British diplomat.

14
00:01:28,290 --> 00:01:33,000
He joined the Foreign Office immediately after completing his PhD at Cambridge.

15
00:01:33,300 --> 00:01:43,290
I just learned on Ezra Pound announces and after postings to Romania, the EU, Turkey and a period at the NATO Defence College in Rome,

16
00:01:44,010 --> 00:01:56,490
Lauri became Ambassador to Azerbaijan in 2004, deputy head of mission in Moscow in 2007 and Director of Intelligence and National Security in 2012.

17
00:01:57,360 --> 00:02:01,980
He returned to Moscow in 2016 as British Ambassador.

18
00:02:03,910 --> 00:02:08,590
Most of us would assume that there could be no more challenging diplomatic role than that.

19
00:02:09,400 --> 00:02:15,130
But remember that Hercules was given 12 near impossible feats of bravery and guile.

20
00:02:15,490 --> 00:02:18,700
And in my story so far, celery has only had nine.

21
00:02:20,360 --> 00:02:28,790
In 2020, he was appointed Regional Ambassador for Cop26, with responsibility for China, Eastern Europe, Central Asia,

22
00:02:29,180 --> 00:02:39,470
Middle East and North Africa, and then in June 2020, Lauri took over as ambassador to Afghanistan, two months before couple fell to the Taliban.

23
00:02:40,790 --> 00:02:45,470
The Taliban took over control of the Afghan capital at stunning speed,

24
00:02:45,740 --> 00:02:52,790
leaving the embassy scrambling to pull dozens of its staff and thousands more Afghan allies out of the city.

25
00:02:54,050 --> 00:03:01,760
The Foreign Office reported that Ambassador Laurie Bristow stayed behind to help orchestrate and evacuate the remaining Britons,

26
00:03:01,760 --> 00:03:05,570
including personally processing visa applications at the airport.

27
00:03:06,700 --> 00:03:12,160
I can think of no one better to talk on the subject of human values and foreign policy.

28
00:03:12,310 --> 00:03:24,049
Please join me in welcoming Sir Laurie Bristow. Okay.

29
00:03:24,050 --> 00:03:30,020
Well, thanks very much, Nick, for that introduction. And thank you, everyone for the invitation this evening.

30
00:03:30,800 --> 00:03:36,700
I will talk for probably about an hour if I see eyes starting to glaze over.

31
00:03:36,710 --> 00:03:44,000
I know that I probably outstayed my welcome, but it's quite a complex subject that I want to to cover this evening.

32
00:03:44,450 --> 00:03:49,249
So the title of the lecture is Human Values and Foreign Policy, and I will talk mostly,

33
00:03:49,250 --> 00:03:56,600
I'm afraid, about the conflict taking place in Ukraine today with some excursions around that.

34
00:03:57,440 --> 00:04:01,040
This lecture is about the meeting place between power and values.

35
00:04:01,820 --> 00:04:04,670
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a war about both.

36
00:04:05,510 --> 00:04:12,890
Ukrainians are faced with a stark choice between the freedom to choose their own destiny, or to submit to the will of ageing KGB men.

37
00:04:13,610 --> 00:04:21,680
Russians at present, unfortunately, have no such choice. This is, I think, also a war about the future of Russia itself.

38
00:04:22,460 --> 00:04:26,900
Putin's world is one in which the strong do what they can. The weak suffer what they must.

39
00:04:27,620 --> 00:04:31,310
It's in a world. It's a world in which disputes are resolved by extreme violence.

40
00:04:32,030 --> 00:04:37,850
It's a world in which the crimes carried out by Russia's armed forces reflect the Russian way of war,

41
00:04:38,120 --> 00:04:44,120
but also the nature of the Russian state under a leader who is now indicted by the International Criminal Court.

42
00:04:45,820 --> 00:04:50,560
The purpose of today's lecture is not to catalogue those crimes or to moralise about them.

43
00:04:51,040 --> 00:04:57,370
It's to consider what role, if any, values and ethical considerations play in foreign policy in today's world.

44
00:04:59,160 --> 00:05:02,970
These are, of course, the reflections of a practitioner, not a theorist or an academic.

45
00:05:03,610 --> 00:05:06,690
And so I joined the Foreign Office, as Nick said in 1990.

46
00:05:07,110 --> 00:05:12,240
Diplomacy at its heart is a contact sport. It's about getting things done in the world as it is.

47
00:05:13,470 --> 00:05:18,660
Our lives. The lives of many generation of diplomats are shaped were shaped by greater forces.

48
00:05:19,620 --> 00:05:23,460
The first was the end of the Cold War and the events of 1980 1991.

49
00:05:24,510 --> 00:05:31,590
I left the Foreign Office in 2022, as the unfinished business of 18 1991 was returning with a vengeance.

50
00:05:33,210 --> 00:05:36,900
The second big thing was the space opened up by the end of the Cold War.

51
00:05:36,900 --> 00:05:45,750
For liberal interventionism, that is, promoting democracy and the rule of law and humanitarian intervention to prevent genocides and atrocities.

52
00:05:46,710 --> 00:05:52,080
In 1997, the UK elected a government committed to an ethical foreign policy.

53
00:05:52,980 --> 00:06:00,030
It created the Department for International Development, separate from the more transactional concerns of foreign policy and trade policy.

54
00:06:00,720 --> 00:06:06,660
That same government took the UK into the US led military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq.

55
00:06:08,380 --> 00:06:14,830
The third Shaping force was the UK's struggle to arrive at a stable sense of our identity in Europe.

56
00:06:15,580 --> 00:06:24,010
That isn't the focus of this lecture. Nevertheless, I think the freedom to choose one's own destiny is present in the Brexit slogan take back control.

57
00:06:26,100 --> 00:06:31,080
For much of the 1990s, freedom and democracy were over seemed to be on the march.

58
00:06:31,530 --> 00:06:37,140
Across large swathes of the world. Countries transitioned from authoritarianism to accountable governance.

59
00:06:38,400 --> 00:06:44,790
The European Union and NATO expanded. It seemed that a Europe Holland free might one day be within grasp.

60
00:06:45,480 --> 00:06:47,970
Ukraine, of course, became the hardest test of that.

61
00:06:48,450 --> 00:06:58,230
In 2005, after the Orange Revolution, Ukraine declared an ambition to join the European Union and in 2008 sought a membership action plan for NATO.

62
00:06:59,040 --> 00:07:04,379
The 2013 Euromaidan and the Revolution of Dignity were a response to President Yanukovych,

63
00:07:04,380 --> 00:07:08,400
his dithering over Ukraine's European Union Association agreement.

64
00:07:08,640 --> 00:07:18,270
Under intense pressure from Russia. Russia's response was to seize Crimea, intervene in the Donbas and in 2022 to launch a full out invasion.

65
00:07:20,040 --> 00:07:24,210
In 2003, I worked on the planning for post-conflict Iraq.

66
00:07:25,080 --> 00:07:28,830
I was the last British ambassador to leave Afghanistan in 2021.

67
00:07:29,430 --> 00:07:36,930
The evacuation from Kabul Airport in August 2021 closed a chapter on state building by military intervention.

68
00:07:37,800 --> 00:07:41,940
The cost in lives, in money and political capital was immense.

69
00:07:42,840 --> 00:07:52,440
We failed in Afghanistan. We failed because we lacked a coherent strategy to achieve multiple goals, which were not necessarily mutually reinforcing.

70
00:07:53,190 --> 00:07:57,149
Countering terrorism. Countering insurgency. Countering narcotics.

71
00:07:57,150 --> 00:08:00,630
Promoting human rights. Discouraging migration. Migration.

72
00:08:00,780 --> 00:08:05,940
State building. We also failed because we lacked the stamina to see things through.

73
00:08:06,690 --> 00:08:09,750
Afghans, especially Afghan women and girls, are paying the price.

74
00:08:12,440 --> 00:08:21,710
Russias war on Ukraine is a different sort of conflict. For the first time since 1945, a war of aggression is raging in the heart of Europe.

75
00:08:22,430 --> 00:08:28,790
We are seeing daily challenges to established laws and norms concerning the treatment of civilians and combatants.

76
00:08:29,600 --> 00:08:35,120
We've all but lost the complex network of arms control treaties, confidence building measures,

77
00:08:35,330 --> 00:08:40,470
channels of dialogue, and the mechanisms that help to reduce the risk of great power conflict.

78
00:08:40,490 --> 00:08:49,750
Since the height of the Cold War. Now is surely the time to test some assumptions about the relationship, if any, between geopolitics and values.

79
00:08:50,620 --> 00:08:54,490
We need to dig deeper into the relationship between values and statecraft.

80
00:08:54,700 --> 00:08:58,570
If we are to understand what is happening in Russia and what it means for us.

81
00:09:00,660 --> 00:09:02,610
This is, I think at heart, a Russia crisis.

82
00:09:02,610 --> 00:09:08,579
I think of it as the latest episode in Russia's wars of succession, which followed the demise of the Soviet Union,

83
00:09:08,580 --> 00:09:11,520
and in some respects, I think can be traced a lot further back than that.

84
00:09:12,240 --> 00:09:19,350
But it also has its roots in the Russian leadership's view of the West and of the post-Cold War order shaped in Russia's view,

85
00:09:19,350 --> 00:09:26,800
in the Kremlin's view, by the interests of the West. We need to understand what motivates Putin and the people around him.

86
00:09:27,040 --> 00:09:36,440
To understand, of course, is not to excuse. Putins invasion of Ukraine is based on, I think, a combination of realpolitik values and emotions.

87
00:09:36,800 --> 00:09:43,160
I think its a toxic brew of entitlement, resentment, fear, opportunity and legacy building.

88
00:09:45,030 --> 00:09:48,240
Putin has a certain idea of Russia and of its place in the world,

89
00:09:48,570 --> 00:09:54,120
and of his own role in fulfilling Russia's destiny as a unique civilisation and a top tier great power.

90
00:09:55,260 --> 00:10:03,320
He places himself in a lineage of strong leaders Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great to a still, I think, ambiguous degree.

91
00:10:03,330 --> 00:10:03,750
Stalin.

92
00:10:06,060 --> 00:10:14,910
Putin justified his invasion of Ukraine at first, and still in terms of de-nazification, drawing explicitly on the cult of the Great Patriotic War,

93
00:10:15,210 --> 00:10:22,920
the narrative that Russia inherited the Soviet Union's moral status and geopolitical rights as the country that defeated Nazism.

94
00:10:24,100 --> 00:10:33,070
This now extends to include countering Satanism. Russia as a bastion of socially conservative values, holding the line against Western decadence.

95
00:10:34,000 --> 00:10:40,060
These values are set out explicitly in Russia's most recent foreign policy concept, published in March this year.

96
00:10:41,760 --> 00:10:51,280
Meanwhile, of course, Putin's Russia suppresses civic initiatives relating to Russian citizens imprisoned and killed in the Soviet Gulag Memorial.

97
00:10:51,300 --> 00:10:57,270
The non-governmental organisation, set up during the glasnost era to bring light to the crimes of the Soviet Union

98
00:10:57,270 --> 00:11:02,070
against its own citizens and to document the human rights abuses of today's Russia,

99
00:11:02,460 --> 00:11:07,140
was closed down immediately after the 20 to 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

100
00:11:09,460 --> 00:11:16,330
Any moral equivalence between Hitlers and Stalin's murderous totalitarianism is undiscussed all in all with Russia.

101
00:11:17,410 --> 00:11:22,330
This reflects how the Kremlin uses highly selective historical narratives about

102
00:11:22,330 --> 00:11:27,310
the Great Patriotic War to build domestic legitimacy and shape geopolitics.

103
00:11:28,790 --> 00:11:34,520
First a one dimensional presentation of what led to Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

104
00:11:35,790 --> 00:11:41,790
Second, a sense of entitlement to a say in all matters of international security, of any consequence,

105
00:11:42,210 --> 00:11:46,560
and to a sphere of influence in Central and Eastern Europe after 1945,

106
00:11:47,130 --> 00:11:52,170
and by the suffering of the Soviet people, and the role of the Red Army in defeating Nazi Germany.

107
00:11:53,100 --> 00:11:57,690
And third, of course, present day Russia's claim to be the successor to those entitlements.

108
00:11:58,880 --> 00:12:04,730
These lies behind the resentments and grievances unleashed by the events of 1989 91 and since.

109
00:12:06,370 --> 00:12:09,580
This is also about great power competition with the United States.

110
00:12:10,540 --> 00:12:15,459
Putins attack on Ukraine has its roots in his determination to push back against

111
00:12:15,460 --> 00:12:21,010
what he sees as U.S. unilateralism and systematic disregard for Russia's interests.

112
00:12:21,520 --> 00:12:27,520
The defining expression of this, of course, remains his Munich Security Conference speech in February 2007.

113
00:12:28,300 --> 00:12:32,040
For those who don't know it, I think it's still the best guide to Russia's foreign policy.

114
00:12:32,050 --> 00:12:34,630
It's a long diatribe against U.S. unilateralism.

115
00:12:35,840 --> 00:12:44,240
So Putin's goals in the war to destroy Ukraine as a sovereign, democratic country, to redraw the security architecture of the Euro Atlantic region,

116
00:12:44,510 --> 00:12:49,370
and to rewrite the rules of great power competition primarily with the United States.

117
00:12:51,540 --> 00:12:58,800
Ukraine has been the site of successive strategic failures for Putin, going back to the Orange Revolution in 2004 to 5.

118
00:12:59,460 --> 00:13:01,380
Why does he keep coming back to this question?

119
00:13:02,350 --> 00:13:07,120
I think it's because what happens in Ukraine is fundamentally about what happens to his vision of Russia.

120
00:13:07,840 --> 00:13:13,180
Putin sees an independent, democratic, pluralist Ukraine as a threat to Russia's security.

121
00:13:13,540 --> 00:13:19,000
It is, but not in the way he thinks. It's not because a democratic Ukraine is a threat to Russia.

122
00:13:19,120 --> 00:13:22,750
It's not because a democratic Ukraine might attack Russia. It clearly won't.

123
00:13:23,170 --> 00:13:31,149
But because Putin's 22 years in power have been about establishing a secure authoritarian regime in Russia itself and

124
00:13:31,150 --> 00:13:37,960
preventing the emergence of systems of government that contradict this model in Russia's former imperial assumptions.

125
00:13:39,930 --> 00:13:45,419
So the Kremlin's rapidly escalating domestic repression and imperialism reflect Russia's

126
00:13:45,420 --> 00:13:50,250
failed transition from its Soviet past to a democratic and law governed future.

127
00:13:52,470 --> 00:13:59,250
In my view, Putinism offers no meaningful answers to the systemic challenges that Russia faces now or in the next decade.

128
00:13:59,760 --> 00:14:05,339
Building a solid 21st century economy, addressing terrible demographics made worse by war,

129
00:14:05,340 --> 00:14:08,730
Covid and the emigration of many of Russia's brightest and best.

130
00:14:09,540 --> 00:14:14,970
Managing differences and possibly building cooperative security arrangements with Russia's neighbours.

131
00:14:15,930 --> 00:14:21,180
Above all, I think now maintaining legitimacy and public consent when the time comes,

132
00:14:21,180 --> 00:14:24,990
as it surely will, for a generational transfer of power in Russia.

133
00:14:27,660 --> 00:14:31,260
Russia struggle to be a great power rests on a remembered world.

134
00:14:31,290 --> 00:14:35,550
When the Soviet Union could compete on equal terms, more or less, with the United States.

135
00:14:36,210 --> 00:14:41,040
Objectively, Russia can no longer do so with the US now or with China in the future.

136
00:14:41,670 --> 00:14:45,900
But Russia's decline does not make it less dangerous. In fact, it's the opposite.

137
00:14:48,300 --> 00:14:54,750
I think these insights should be obvious to any policy analyst and a competent policy analyst, of which Russia has no shortage.

138
00:14:55,500 --> 00:15:01,410
But Russia has rarely in its history been a country where contradicting the leader has been a good idea.

139
00:15:02,630 --> 00:15:08,960
Today's Russia is a country of doublethink, as in the Soviet period, in both domestic and external affairs.

140
00:15:09,200 --> 00:15:13,400
Evasion and lying have become highly developed instruments of statecraft.

141
00:15:14,990 --> 00:15:19,820
Putin's Russia lies on an industrial scale, drawing on Soviet habits and practices.

142
00:15:21,490 --> 00:15:26,230
Authoritarian states lie because they can where there is no accountability.

143
00:15:26,530 --> 00:15:29,680
Departures from the truth have no immediate consequences.

144
00:15:30,400 --> 00:15:38,830
As in the Soviet Union, the systemic dishonesty pervades both strategy and policy formulation and the general political culture.

145
00:15:40,310 --> 00:15:48,400
It contains the seeds of its own destruction. A key reason for the strategic failure of Putins invasion of Ukraine is that

146
00:15:48,400 --> 00:15:52,180
the system he built is chronically incapable of telling the truth to itself.

147
00:15:53,310 --> 00:16:00,150
Bad information, bad intelligence, bad analysis, and weak accountability lead to bad decisions.

148
00:16:02,600 --> 00:16:11,240
I described Putins war as a war of values. I'll turn now to what those values are, where they come from, how they're reflected in policy and strategy.

149
00:16:12,380 --> 00:16:16,640
I'll start with Dmitri Medvedev. I attended his inauguration when he became president.

150
00:16:17,880 --> 00:16:21,510
He was president from 2008 to 2012. In 2008.

151
00:16:21,720 --> 00:16:24,510
He said freedom is better than unfreedom.

152
00:16:25,740 --> 00:16:32,100
I agree, and I've been privileged to know people who have upheld that cost that idea at great cost to themselves, many of them Russian.

153
00:16:33,120 --> 00:16:40,199
That same Dmitry Medvedev has also said more recently that Russia could use nuclear weapons to keep control of the territory.

154
00:16:40,200 --> 00:16:49,770
It's taken from Ukraine. It's easy to moralise about foreign policy, as if the values of Western liberal democracies are somehow universal.

155
00:16:50,760 --> 00:16:54,420
What can we agree on as the values that are fundamental to being human?

156
00:16:55,500 --> 00:17:01,290
How do we codify the values that underpin the conduct of states within their borders and beyond them?

157
00:17:01,620 --> 00:17:07,430
Who, even for these purposes are we make great trouble with that pronoun when trying to write this this lecture?

158
00:17:07,650 --> 00:17:14,550
I'm afraid it goes all over the place. So start with the key document, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

159
00:17:15,120 --> 00:17:20,670
This sets out what its authors saw as the fundamental rights of all individuals everywhere in the world.

160
00:17:21,750 --> 00:17:26,340
It was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. Moscow and its satellites abstained.

161
00:17:27,480 --> 00:17:34,590
The Soviet Union did agree to the Helsinki, Finland in 1975, including its far reaching human rights provisions,

162
00:17:35,250 --> 00:17:42,000
as the price of agreement to the 1945 borders and to the principle of non-interference in each other's internal affairs.

163
00:17:42,900 --> 00:17:50,490
The Kremlin clearly had no intention and did not fulfil its commitments regarding the self-determination of all participating states,

164
00:17:50,880 --> 00:17:53,820
all respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.

165
00:17:54,860 --> 00:18:03,080
But the Helsinki Final Act did open up space for human rights activists in the Soviet Union and elsewhere to hold their own governments to account.

166
00:18:05,850 --> 00:18:08,159
For a brief period at the end of the Cold War,

167
00:18:08,160 --> 00:18:14,910
it was possible to see a convergence between the West and at least Mikhail Gorbachev's vision of the future of the Soviet Union.

168
00:18:15,720 --> 00:18:21,870
But the Malta Summit in December 1989, a few weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall after the fall of the Berlin Wall,

169
00:18:22,170 --> 00:18:30,150
Gorbachev challenged President George Bush on his repeated assertion that what was happening in Eastern Europe was a triumph of Western values.

170
00:18:30,960 --> 00:18:33,270
Bush responded, why does that bother you so much?

171
00:18:34,920 --> 00:18:43,530
I see glasnost as a Western value, openness as a Western value, representative government as a Western value, pluralism as a Western value.

172
00:18:44,190 --> 00:18:49,350
Gorbachev replied, we have those values too. Why don't you call them eastern values?

173
00:18:50,470 --> 00:18:55,060
James Baker, Bush's secretary of state, suggested. What about calling them democratic values?

174
00:18:55,840 --> 00:19:00,550
Gorbachev agreed. That's good democratic values. That's it. This is in stroked all that's telling.

175
00:19:00,700 --> 00:19:10,710
By the way. A few months before this exchange, in June 1989, the Chinese leadership violently suppressed Democratic dissent in Tiananmen Square.

176
00:19:11,460 --> 00:19:15,510
Gorbachev had visited Beijing a few weeks previously as the crisis was building.

177
00:19:16,350 --> 00:19:24,420
Gorbachev and the Chinese leadership drew completely different conclusions about how to deal with growing demands for political and economic freedom,

178
00:19:24,840 --> 00:19:27,900
and to the crisis of legitimacy that accompanied those demands.

179
00:19:28,080 --> 00:19:36,050
We are still living through the consequences of those choices. Under Putin, the Russian state has taken a dim view of Gorbachev's choice.

180
00:19:36,070 --> 00:19:42,700
Gorbachev's choices and their consequences, and assiduously shaped domestic opinion in Russia to do likewise,

181
00:19:43,240 --> 00:19:51,820
primarily to support the state narrative that Putin raised Russia from its knees after the chaos and the humiliations endured under his predecessors.

182
00:19:53,010 --> 00:19:58,950
By the time of his death in 2022, Gorbachev's reputation was far higher in the West than in Russia.

183
00:20:00,410 --> 00:20:02,600
Boris Yeltsin's legacy is also troublesome.

184
00:20:03,290 --> 00:20:09,950
The Yeltsin Centre, in your Catherine book captures the unresolved contradictions and the unfinished business of today's Russia.

185
00:20:11,150 --> 00:20:13,969
Visitors pass through seven rooms each,

186
00:20:13,970 --> 00:20:21,050
bringing to life a turning point in Yeltsin's period at the top of the Soviet and then the Russian system in the 1990s.

187
00:20:21,800 --> 00:20:28,010
Unit then into the Hall of Freedom. It's a large room bathed in light and dominated by Eric.

188
00:20:28,010 --> 00:20:35,310
Bülent offers paintings for border freedom. Visitors are invited to record or write down what that word means to them.

189
00:20:36,420 --> 00:20:40,290
The Yeltsin Centre is detested by Russian nationalists and communists.

190
00:20:42,520 --> 00:20:50,620
On New Year's Eve 1999, Yeltsin suddenly and unexpectedly stood down, handing power to a still obscure official called Vladimir Putin.

191
00:20:51,550 --> 00:20:59,050
In his first address as acting president, Putin declared that the state will stand firm to protect freedom of speech,

192
00:20:59,050 --> 00:21:09,540
freedom of conscience, freedom of media, of the mass media. In February 2022, Russia's few remaining free media outlets were immediately closed down.

193
00:21:09,960 --> 00:21:17,130
A final act in the ending of the freedoms that Russians and other Soviet citizens caught sight of in 1989 to 91.

194
00:21:19,310 --> 00:21:24,980
That word freedom keeps turning off. It's bound to do so when discussing the rights and dignity of human beings,

195
00:21:25,580 --> 00:21:31,850
and the values and power structures by which societies organise themselves and regulate relations between themselves.

196
00:21:33,040 --> 00:21:37,690
I'll turn now in a bit more detail to how states articulate their core interests and values.

197
00:21:38,500 --> 00:21:44,680
So governments regularly publish formal documents setting out the risks and the opportunities the nation faces.

198
00:21:45,010 --> 00:21:51,280
The values the government believes the nation espouses and what it intends to do to protect and advance them.

199
00:21:52,370 --> 00:21:59,150
The language used in these documents tells us a lot about the things that governments most value and the things they most fear.

200
00:22:00,170 --> 00:22:05,000
I want to draw attention to two examples close in time and context, but you'll see why I think.

201
00:22:05,360 --> 00:22:13,160
So first of all, President Biden's October 2022 national security strategy published eight months after Putins invasion of Ukraine.

202
00:22:14,230 --> 00:22:21,250
The strategic goal is set out very clearly. We want a free, open, prosperous and secure international order.

203
00:22:21,970 --> 00:22:27,580
We seek an order that is free in that it allows people to enjoy their basic universal rights and freedoms.

204
00:22:28,240 --> 00:22:37,120
It's open in that it provides all nations that sign up to these principles an opportunity to participate in and have a role in shaping the rules.

205
00:22:38,440 --> 00:22:45,309
It's prosperous in that it empowers all nations to continually raise the standard of living for their citizens and secure,

206
00:22:45,310 --> 00:22:48,580
and that it is free from aggression, coercion, and intimidation.

207
00:22:49,980 --> 00:22:54,660
The strategy articulates Biden's vision of defending democracy around the world.

208
00:22:55,050 --> 00:23:01,800
Even as we continue to do the work at home, better to live up to the idea of America enshrined in our founding documents.

209
00:23:03,340 --> 00:23:09,580
The preface sets out a global landscape of strategic competition to shape the future of the international order.

210
00:23:10,390 --> 00:23:15,940
The strategy asserts the right of the US and likeminded countries to shape those rules.

211
00:23:17,540 --> 00:23:21,619
Biden's National Security Strategy was published against the background of Russia's

212
00:23:21,620 --> 00:23:25,790
invasion of Ukraine and of intensifying great power competition with China.

213
00:23:27,230 --> 00:23:32,090
It seeks to move on from the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.

214
00:23:32,600 --> 00:23:39,800
It reflects domestic factors the insurrection of January 2021, a looming election in 2024,

215
00:23:40,220 --> 00:23:44,060
a fracturing of consensus about U.S. support for Ukraine and,

216
00:23:44,060 --> 00:23:49,550
of course, wider culture wars and the politics of identity with which all democracies a wrestling.

217
00:23:51,080 --> 00:23:55,340
And it sets out a broader view of national security going beyond great power

218
00:23:55,340 --> 00:24:00,710
competition to include the big emerging challenges of climate change and pandemics,

219
00:24:01,220 --> 00:24:04,820
and the risks and opportunities presented by emerging technologies.

220
00:24:07,050 --> 00:24:16,200
My second example is the joint statement of Putin and XI Jinping in February 2022, during Putin's visit to Beijing, shortly before he invaded Ukraine.

221
00:24:17,440 --> 00:24:21,520
It too describes an increasingly contested global environment.

222
00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:26,560
The conclusions drawn are, of course, very different, with one important exception.

223
00:24:27,550 --> 00:24:31,420
The statement leads off with the centrality of democracy in today's world.

224
00:24:32,290 --> 00:24:35,890
I picked out a few sentences, but it's worth reading the whole thing, I think,

225
00:24:36,070 --> 00:24:41,230
as an expression of the gathering confrontation between democracies and authoritarian states.

226
00:24:42,610 --> 00:24:49,660
So to quote from the joint statement, democracy is a universal human value rather than a privilege of a limited number of states.

227
00:24:50,230 --> 00:24:54,520
Democracy is a means of citizens participation in the government of their country.

228
00:24:55,540 --> 00:25:00,910
It is only up to the people of that code, the country, to decide whether their state is a democratic one.

229
00:25:02,030 --> 00:25:07,580
Democratic principles are implemented at the global level as well as in administration of state.

230
00:25:08,540 --> 00:25:13,400
Certain states attempts to impose their own democratic standards on other countries

231
00:25:14,120 --> 00:25:18,710
to monopolise the right to assess the level of compliance with democratic criteria.

232
00:25:19,310 --> 00:25:26,870
To draw dividing lines based on the grounds of ideology, including by establishing exclusive blocs and alliances of convenience,

233
00:25:27,440 --> 00:25:33,260
proved to be nothing but flouting of democracy and go against the spirit and true values of democracy.

234
00:25:35,160 --> 00:25:43,020
What both the Chinese party state and Putin's authoritarian nationalism mean by this is that the state exercises sovereignty as it sees fit,

235
00:25:43,380 --> 00:25:49,080
free of external influence. Democracy operates at an interstate level among sovereign equals.

236
00:25:49,590 --> 00:25:56,970
Criticism of an opponent's democratic credentials or human rights performance, is a political lever in a constant trial of strings.

237
00:25:57,980 --> 00:26:06,260
Rather than an attempt to ground the behaviour of states in the rights and preferences of the citizens in whose service the state ostensibly works.

238
00:26:08,680 --> 00:26:12,790
According to Russia's most recent foreign policy concept, published in March this year,

239
00:26:13,510 --> 00:26:17,020
Russia's foreign policy is based on the sovereign equality of states.

240
00:26:17,800 --> 00:26:26,470
But Putin's view of Russia rests on a further premise. There's only a small number of truly sovereign great powers the US, China and Russia itself.

241
00:26:26,770 --> 00:26:31,720
By the way, the UK is not one of those great powers, and I've been told that in terms repeatedly in Moscow,

242
00:26:33,160 --> 00:26:37,290
all other states have limited sovereignty, whether they like it or not.

243
00:26:37,300 --> 00:26:40,570
They must learn to live within the penumbra of the dominant great power.

244
00:26:42,170 --> 00:26:45,470
The democracy of sovereign nations is therefore decidedly limited.

245
00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:52,750
A well-known Russian political commentator, I won't name him, but the Russian ists in the room will know of him once said to me,

246
00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:58,730
you, we are talking as if great powers and small countries have equal rights, but we both know that is not true.

247
00:27:01,580 --> 00:27:05,240
How can we use the same words and mean such radically different things?

248
00:27:06,450 --> 00:27:12,360
Authoritarian systems, of course, organise and legitimise power in completely different ways from liberal democracies.

249
00:27:12,930 --> 00:27:20,610
Yet authoritarian leaders often expropriate the emotional resonance and the values embedded in words to legitimise their power.

250
00:27:21,300 --> 00:27:24,990
As George Orwell pointed out. Words mean what the state needs them to mean.

251
00:27:25,530 --> 00:27:33,150
Black is white because it's expedient for the party that black and white, or what the party decides they are, despite the evidence of our eyes.

252
00:27:34,590 --> 00:27:41,910
This is not just a matter of different definitions. The totalitarian state carries out acts of violence on language itself.

253
00:27:42,720 --> 00:27:46,410
Consider the reality that lay behind key words used by the Soviets,

254
00:27:46,410 --> 00:27:52,920
which have been imported into the political lexicon of Putin's Russia and other authoritarian totalitarian states.

255
00:27:53,340 --> 00:27:56,370
Democracy. Elections. Freedom.

256
00:27:56,760 --> 00:28:01,080
Law. Human rights. Terrorists. Imperialism.

257
00:28:01,380 --> 00:28:10,180
Aggression. Fascists. Peace. I'll turn now to how we manage relations between those sovereign nations.

258
00:28:11,080 --> 00:28:16,750
How are we attempt to maximise the benefits when interests align and manage conflicts when they do not?

259
00:28:18,400 --> 00:28:24,360
Western politicians and diplomats often refer to the rules based international system by which they.

260
00:28:24,400 --> 00:28:33,940
We generally mean the interlocking systems of norms, institutions and agreements that help us manage difference and cooperate to achieve common goals.

261
00:28:34,180 --> 00:28:37,900
There is, of course, a huge debate about where the boundaries of that system lie.

262
00:28:39,460 --> 00:28:45,460
I have been told by Sergei Lavrov, in terms that there is no such thing as the rules based international system.

263
00:28:45,610 --> 00:28:48,100
We made it up to serve our own interests.

264
00:28:49,460 --> 00:28:57,830
So Russia's March 2023 foreign policy concept calls the rules based international system the imposition of rules,

265
00:28:57,830 --> 00:29:03,650
standards and norms that have been developed without equitable participation of all interested states.

266
00:29:04,810 --> 00:29:10,480
Behind this line is an increasingly stark parting of the ways about rules, their origins and their purposes.

267
00:29:12,940 --> 00:29:18,400
Western governments and their allies tend to see the rules based international system as a way of getting things done.

268
00:29:18,970 --> 00:29:23,830
They uphold it, but also seek to adapt and develop it to address a rapidly changing world.

269
00:29:24,850 --> 00:29:27,190
That scene from Moscow is precisely the problem.

270
00:29:27,940 --> 00:29:35,890
Our interests are diverging, and the rules based international system is seen in Moscow as an instrument used by the West against Russia's interests,

271
00:29:36,460 --> 00:29:40,030
in particular to interfere in other states internal affairs,

272
00:29:40,630 --> 00:29:45,340
to replace uncongenial regimes through military intervention and so-called colour revolutions,

273
00:29:45,550 --> 00:29:53,050
and to conduct economic warfare through sanctions agreed outside the Security Council and therefore beyond the reach of the Russian and Chinese veto.

274
00:29:55,120 --> 00:30:00,430
One of the most significant developments in the post-Cold War world has been the doctrine of responsibility to protect.

275
00:30:01,120 --> 00:30:05,709
This grew out of the lack of adequate instruments to address genocide, war crimes,

276
00:30:05,710 --> 00:30:09,550
ethnic cleansing, and the crimes against humanity committed during the 1990s.

277
00:30:10,510 --> 00:30:17,620
The Doctrine of Responsibility to Protect was universally agreed by the United Nations General Assembly of the 2005 World Summit.

278
00:30:18,130 --> 00:30:23,410
In the summit photograph, Putin stands between Prime Minister Blair and President Bush in the front row.

279
00:30:25,140 --> 00:30:29,280
What responsibility to protect means in practice is fiercely contested.

280
00:30:29,610 --> 00:30:34,410
Even more fiercely contested is the principle of political leaders legal accountability.

281
00:30:35,400 --> 00:30:40,860
Russia, like the US and China, is not a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

282
00:30:42,520 --> 00:30:50,680
By definition, responsibility to protect can, in extreme circumstances, limit or override the exercise of sovereignty within a state's borders.

283
00:30:51,400 --> 00:30:58,600
This has become a point of rupture for Putin. Even before the formulation of Responsibility to Protect in 2005.

284
00:30:58,870 --> 00:31:06,580
The NATO bombing of Belgrade in 1999 was seen in Moscow as a violation of international law and the humiliation of Russia.

285
00:31:07,780 --> 00:31:11,620
Putin frequently returns to this and to NATO's interventions.

286
00:31:11,860 --> 00:31:15,520
Intervention in Iraq in 2004 and in Libya in 2011.

287
00:31:16,030 --> 00:31:20,489
He was outraged by the overthrow of the gadhafi regime. In Syria.

288
00:31:20,490 --> 00:31:28,260
In 2015, Russia took a far more assertive approach to keeping Bashar al-Assad in power to protect him from accountability for war crimes,

289
00:31:28,560 --> 00:31:36,720
to challenge directly US led interventionism, and to discredit the US as a security provider of last resort resort in the region.

290
00:31:38,410 --> 00:31:44,890
For Putin, though, the biggest humiliation of all has been Russia's serial failure to pull Ukraine back into its system of values.

291
00:31:45,580 --> 00:31:52,210
Putin is convinced that this is the result of external interference by the US and its allies, not the free choice of Ukrainians.

292
00:31:53,360 --> 00:31:59,660
The Russian leadership concluded that liberal interventionism constituted a threat to the Russian state's sovereign rights,

293
00:31:59,840 --> 00:32:03,650
both at home and in countries where it sees its interests as being engaged.

294
00:32:04,900 --> 00:32:08,260
For the West. Humanitarian intervention. Means preventing genocide.

295
00:32:08,560 --> 00:32:13,780
For Russia, it means regime change. We say Russia flouts the rules based international system.

296
00:32:14,440 --> 00:32:21,130
Russia says the West shaped bend has bent or broken the rules or the system at will, according to our own needs and desires.

297
00:32:22,710 --> 00:32:29,430
So what we then see is Russia mirroring our actions in asserting its interests and seeking to force the West to respect those interests.

298
00:32:30,120 --> 00:32:38,640
We change borders in Kosovo. Russia does so in Crimea. We overthrow regimes in Iraq, Libya, and, as Putin sees it, in the former Soviet Union.

299
00:32:39,180 --> 00:32:42,360
Russia supports its clients in Syria, Ukraine and elsewhere.

300
00:32:44,010 --> 00:32:49,530
Russia sees the purpose of the post 1945 system with a Security Council veto at its heart.

301
00:32:49,950 --> 00:32:56,310
I was preserving the ability of great powers to protect their interests by constraining competitors freedom of action.

302
00:32:57,330 --> 00:33:04,950
Seeing the US serially break out of those constraints, Russia has become increasingly impatient of constraints on its own sovereign freedom of action,

303
00:33:05,670 --> 00:33:10,800
to the point where Russia is prepared to risk bringing down important parts of the international system,

304
00:33:11,010 --> 00:33:14,700
even where Russia is a co architect of that system.

305
00:33:15,270 --> 00:33:19,140
A particular example that I had to deal with in Moscow was the Chemical Weapons Convention.

306
00:33:20,660 --> 00:33:29,000
Invasion of Ukraine is a systemic assault on the UN charter and on a full range of international and bilateral treaties to which Russia is a party,

307
00:33:29,450 --> 00:33:33,470
at least one of which Putin personally signed and whose purpose is to keep the peace.

308
00:33:35,420 --> 00:33:39,710
Yet Russia's inherent weakness vis a vis the United States now, and China in the future,

309
00:33:40,160 --> 00:33:45,590
suggests that breaking out of rules and constraints risks being self-defeating in the long run.

310
00:33:46,160 --> 00:33:51,530
It invites overreach with the consequences we are now seeing play out in Putins invasion of Ukraine.

311
00:33:53,270 --> 00:33:55,940
Given Russia's rapidly growing dependence on China,

312
00:33:56,270 --> 00:34:03,110
it's worth briefly summarising how Russia's approach to sovereignty and the rules based international system differs from that of China.

313
00:34:03,920 --> 00:34:08,629
Both China and Russia are seeking to bring about a shift in structural power away from

314
00:34:08,630 --> 00:34:12,440
the US and away from their understanding of the rules based international system,

315
00:34:12,740 --> 00:34:17,060
which they see is largely reflecting and serving United States power and influence.

316
00:34:18,210 --> 00:34:24,540
A key difference between Russia and China is that where Russia increasingly rejects the rules based international system,

317
00:34:24,900 --> 00:34:28,440
China wishes to adapt the multilateral system to its own interests.

318
00:34:29,190 --> 00:34:36,120
Where Russia is about breaking out of constraints, Chinese community of a shared Future for mankind is about adapting the framework of

319
00:34:36,120 --> 00:34:40,560
international relations to suit China's needs and emergence as a global leader.

320
00:34:42,520 --> 00:34:50,140
Faced with the consequences of a disastrous war, rupture with the West, and an inexorable path towards junior partner status with China,

321
00:34:50,680 --> 00:34:58,510
Putin's Russia is repudiating the last vestiges of Gorbachev's 1990 exchanges with George Bush about shared interests and values,

322
00:34:59,050 --> 00:35:03,220
and retreating into an obscurantist and proto fascist Eurasian ism.

323
00:35:06,540 --> 00:35:12,480
Framing geopolitical choices as democracy versus authoritarianism, as several Western governments have done,

324
00:35:12,690 --> 00:35:17,040
I think presents a misleadingly binary view of the values and interests in play.

325
00:35:17,430 --> 00:35:22,380
It disregards frictions and misalignments of interest and values within the West itself,

326
00:35:22,800 --> 00:35:29,850
such as, for example, Turkey's checkered history of democracy. It disregards misalignments of interest between the autocracies,

327
00:35:30,420 --> 00:35:38,610
and it downplays the scope for transactional cooperation between democracies and autocracies based on partial alignment of interests.

328
00:35:39,570 --> 00:35:43,469
Good examples include the World Trade Organisation, the Iran Nuclear Agreement,

329
00:35:43,470 --> 00:35:48,000
the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and arms control treaties between adversaries.

330
00:35:50,080 --> 00:35:55,990
Democracy versus authoritarianism also disregards how states understand their own hierarchy of interests.

331
00:35:56,800 --> 00:36:00,760
An example is India's decision to hedge over Russias war against Ukraine.

332
00:36:01,770 --> 00:36:10,920
Putin's 2023 foreign policy concept names India alongside China as a friendly, sovereign, global centres of power and development in Eurasia.

333
00:36:11,910 --> 00:36:14,940
I suspect that India doesn't quite see it that way, but for India,

334
00:36:14,940 --> 00:36:22,620
the strategic challenge from China comes further up its list of priorities than Russia's war on Ukraine, necessitating a careful balancing act.

335
00:36:24,840 --> 00:36:31,530
The number of countries voting with Ukraine in the United Nations General Assembly remained pretty much solid in the first year of the war,

336
00:36:31,800 --> 00:36:33,480
but around 140 votes.

337
00:36:34,900 --> 00:36:41,830
The Global South on the basis of those votes, largely seems to agree that Russia's actions are a gross violation of international law,

338
00:36:42,400 --> 00:36:45,280
but has shown little inclination to take practical measures.

339
00:36:46,150 --> 00:36:53,140
This reflects, in many cases a different hierarchy of interests, and in some cases, dependencies that cannot be hedged.

340
00:36:53,560 --> 00:37:00,400
In particular, food security. We need to recognise, we, um,

341
00:37:00,530 --> 00:37:05,389
that many countries see the United States and its allies as shaping the rules based international

342
00:37:05,390 --> 00:37:11,060
system to pursue their own interests without sufficient regard to the pressing concerns of others.

343
00:37:12,300 --> 00:37:13,860
Not all are autocracies.

344
00:37:14,700 --> 00:37:21,720
Subramanian Shankar, India's external affairs Minister, put the point very clearly whether or not Western politicians agree with it.

345
00:37:22,290 --> 00:37:29,220
Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe's problems are the world's problems, but the world's problems are not Europe's problems.

346
00:37:30,630 --> 00:37:37,050
The is caught in the middle between a rules based international system made in the West's image and interests,

347
00:37:37,200 --> 00:37:44,220
a revisionist China and a revanchist Russia. Keeping your head down and avoiding an unambiguous choice can be the least bad option.

348
00:37:46,820 --> 00:37:49,940
The propaganda of authoritarian states, of course,

349
00:37:49,940 --> 00:37:55,760
feeds on real and perceived injustices committed by its opponents and the grievances that these generate.

350
00:37:56,900 --> 00:38:04,010
Russia depends heavily on what about ism? I've had extensive reason to study this over the years, including when it's been applied to me.

351
00:38:04,520 --> 00:38:10,400
Um, that's the Soviet era propaganda method that applies implies that all states routinely misbehave,

352
00:38:10,820 --> 00:38:16,640
and therefore criticism of a particular state, particularly by its opponents, is groundless or hypocritical.

353
00:38:17,590 --> 00:38:20,950
The purpose, of course, is to obfuscate, not to support clear thinking.

354
00:38:21,250 --> 00:38:28,479
But it can be very, very effective with audiences who are not inclined to take at face value the claims of Western

355
00:38:28,480 --> 00:38:33,370
governments that they operate to higher ethical considerations than Putin's violent dictatorship.

356
00:38:35,470 --> 00:38:42,460
Meanwhile, Russian propaganda has had some success in tapping into narratives of Western neo colonialism.

357
00:38:43,060 --> 00:38:50,320
Again, the 2023 foreign policy concept repeatedly lays claim to Russian and Soviet contributions to decolonisation.

358
00:38:51,490 --> 00:39:00,250
Russia has not yet been seriously held to account for framing what I believe is a neo imperialist war as a defence against Western neo imperialism.

359
00:39:02,350 --> 00:39:07,450
A rules based international system is not, of course, the same thing as a values based international system.

360
00:39:07,690 --> 00:39:14,590
This is particularly important to bear in mind as global systemic risks escalate, in particular around climate and global health.

361
00:39:15,730 --> 00:39:18,370
Power is shifting in the world in complex ways.

362
00:39:18,730 --> 00:39:25,360
Climate change and the energy transition are central to this, particularly with regard to resources and environmental goods.

363
00:39:26,360 --> 00:39:31,550
I think also just coming over the horizon. Intergenerational justice is also entering into the mix,

364
00:39:31,880 --> 00:39:40,220
particularly around the question of who pays the cost of remediation for past emissions and mitigating the impacts of present and future emissions.

365
00:39:41,580 --> 00:39:47,580
We are leaving behind. I think we have actually already left behind a world in which the industrialised democracies

366
00:39:47,580 --> 00:39:53,010
can plausibly present themselves as the custodians of a rules based international system,

367
00:39:53,490 --> 00:39:58,709
which best serves the interests of all. The rules based international system of the future.

368
00:39:58,710 --> 00:40:00,270
If such a thing exists,

369
00:40:00,690 --> 00:40:08,610
we'll need to focus much more clearly on regulating mutual dependencies so that all can benefit from access to resources and to the global commons.

370
00:40:10,720 --> 00:40:15,700
I want now to turn to the west itself. If we learned nothing else from the last year,

371
00:40:16,120 --> 00:40:21,280
it's the strength that we gain from the willing pooling of sovereignty in support of our values and interests.

372
00:40:22,240 --> 00:40:27,190
The war in Ukraine is one in which alliances and staying power are critical to the outcome.

373
00:40:27,760 --> 00:40:33,160
It was not a given that the West would hold together despite the alignments of interests and values.

374
00:40:33,760 --> 00:40:41,230
The resentments of European and particularly German defence and industrial policy, on which Donald Trump fared, have not gone away.

375
00:40:42,350 --> 00:40:50,540
For Europe. In strategic economy, autonomy will remain little more than a slogan unless backed by the political will and the

376
00:40:50,540 --> 00:40:55,640
geopolitical capacity to cope with the dilemmas presented by great power competition,

377
00:40:55,970 --> 00:41:00,680
whether independently from the US or in a genuinely equal partnership with the US.

378
00:41:02,360 --> 00:41:10,680
This is particularly so for the UK. Taking back control implies that the UK can and should behave like a great power and rule maker,

379
00:41:11,250 --> 00:41:20,310
oblivious to the UK's relative weight and to the web of mutual dependencies between the UK and its closest neighbours, trading partners and allies.

380
00:41:21,500 --> 00:41:29,090
More than any comparable power. The UK has since 1945 built its security and prosperity on alliances and networks.

381
00:41:29,990 --> 00:41:34,069
The transatlantic relationship and the relationship with Europe are the two

382
00:41:34,070 --> 00:41:38,900
fundamental poles in the interplay between our values and our geopolitical interests.

383
00:41:39,200 --> 00:41:44,120
They are not alternatives. They cannot be disregarded and they cannot be played off against each other.

384
00:41:46,660 --> 00:41:56,380
In a time of conflict. Mobilising, mobilising and maintaining public support depends on a powerful and unifying understanding of what is at stake.

385
00:41:58,890 --> 00:42:03,180
That is at its starkest in war. What are we fighting to protect?

386
00:42:03,780 --> 00:42:09,570
For Ukrainians, the answer is clear. They're fighting for their lives, their dignity, and for a sense of nationhood.

387
00:42:09,900 --> 00:42:13,200
That Russia's invasion has done more than anything else to crystallise.

388
00:42:14,940 --> 00:42:22,320
In the final days of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, it was starkly clear that neither Afghan leaders nor Afghan,

389
00:42:22,590 --> 00:42:28,020
Afghanistan's international supporters could offer their publics any convincing answers to that question.

390
00:42:30,250 --> 00:42:34,030
This lecture has of necessity focussed on Russias war against Ukraine.

391
00:42:34,690 --> 00:42:39,940
I mentioned at the beginning Putin's goals in Ukraine. It's too early, I think, to predict how the war will end,

392
00:42:39,940 --> 00:42:45,310
but it's not too early to discuss what is at stake and what an acceptable outcome might involve.

393
00:42:46,030 --> 00:42:52,090
Election cycles are already starting to crystallise the choices that need to be made, particularly in the United States.

394
00:42:52,960 --> 00:42:55,810
I offer not much more than some starting points for discussion.

395
00:42:57,380 --> 00:43:01,700
Putin's declared war aims have evolved in response to the failures of Russian strategy.

396
00:43:02,060 --> 00:43:08,420
But his underlying aims will not change, and I think cannot change because they reflect his view of the world and Russia's place in it.

397
00:43:10,000 --> 00:43:14,470
The Western democracies interests are to a large extent the polar opposite of Putin's.

398
00:43:14,890 --> 00:43:20,770
We want Ukraine to survive and to become a democratic, law based society that is part of the European mainstream.

399
00:43:21,370 --> 00:43:22,840
We want aggression to fail.

400
00:43:23,380 --> 00:43:32,140
We want to keep open the prospect of a Russia at peace with itself and its neighbours, and able to see through the long process of Soviet transition.

401
00:43:33,010 --> 00:43:37,030
We want to avoid direct military confrontation with Russia while that happens.

402
00:43:38,910 --> 00:43:45,810
Until Russia itself fundamentally changes and the outcome of the war needs to underwrite a democratic Ukraine security needs.

403
00:43:46,290 --> 00:43:51,420
The West has an enduring interest because this is inescapably linked with Europe's security.

404
00:43:52,380 --> 00:43:57,030
An outcome where Putin's Russia is the dominant military power in Europe is clearly a direct

405
00:43:57,030 --> 00:44:01,890
challenge to the interests and values of all democratic countries in the transatlantic alliance.

406
00:44:03,270 --> 00:44:08,880
To achieve this, we need a stable security system in Europe, including effective guarantees for Ukraine.

407
00:44:09,300 --> 00:44:12,930
This will not depend on agreements with Putin. His word is worthless.

408
00:44:13,680 --> 00:44:16,950
It will involve sustained deterrence of Russian aggression.

409
00:44:17,640 --> 00:44:23,130
That in turn, can and entails a continued United States commitment to Europe's security,

410
00:44:23,700 --> 00:44:27,720
and that entails a serious European commitment to Europe's security.

411
00:44:28,230 --> 00:44:32,520
Since the main focus for any future US administration is likely to be China.

412
00:44:34,360 --> 00:44:39,490
We need to develop our thinking now on how we plan to deal with Russia after the war ends.

413
00:44:40,240 --> 00:44:48,160
Things have happened that cannot be forgiven or forgotten. Russia will be a dark and troubled society for a generation or more.

414
00:44:48,610 --> 00:44:55,660
We need to articulate a clear and positive alternative future for a changed Russia, especially for younger Russians.

415
00:44:56,560 --> 00:45:00,730
We need to involve Ukrainians in that discussion, however difficult that is.

416
00:45:01,510 --> 00:45:05,740
We need to keep channels of communication open, and we need to think in generational terms.

417
00:45:07,540 --> 00:45:11,860
War tests the nation's values to the limits just as it tests individuals.

418
00:45:12,310 --> 00:45:18,010
We no longer live in a world in which the West can take for granted that Russia's violence against Ukraine

419
00:45:18,010 --> 00:45:23,230
and against the United Nations Charter will translate into support for Western policy initiatives,

420
00:45:23,530 --> 00:45:27,070
or for a Western led concept of the rules based international system.

421
00:45:27,760 --> 00:45:34,690
We need to acknowledge and learn from the damage we did to ourselves and our standing in the world from the interventions in Iraq,

422
00:45:34,690 --> 00:45:43,179
Afghanistan, Libya and elsewhere and how they ended. If we believe that a world with rules, with rules founded in values,

423
00:45:43,180 --> 00:45:48,220
is better than a violent, free for all or system shaped by the Chinese Communist Party,

424
00:45:48,610 --> 00:45:53,830
we need to take seriously the interests and aspirations of those, particularly in the Global South,

425
00:45:54,220 --> 00:45:57,460
who do not believe that the current system is in their interests.

426
00:45:58,870 --> 00:46:02,140
Above all, if a rules based international system is to survive,

427
00:46:02,440 --> 00:46:08,470
it needs to address more clearly our generation's custodianship of global and public goods for future generations.

428
00:46:10,900 --> 00:46:19,030
As for the Western democracies, we need to say what we mean and mean what we say about our capacity and willingness to live up to our values,

429
00:46:19,030 --> 00:46:27,040
as well as to defend our interests. As George Kennan, the US ambassador in Moscow, pointed out in his 1946 Long telegram.

430
00:46:27,460 --> 00:46:34,420
Our ability to counter authoritarian and totalitarian ideas depends on the health and figure of our own society.

431
00:46:36,030 --> 00:46:39,780
We need to build a clear public consensus about what is at stake here.

432
00:46:40,140 --> 00:46:45,810
To set out clearly the values that are capable of guiding us through election cycles and generational transition.

433
00:46:47,490 --> 00:46:53,880
Human rights have a place in foreign policy because they are fundamentally about the relations between the individual and the state.

434
00:46:54,180 --> 00:46:59,070
What happens when the might of the state is in conflict with the freedom and dignity of the individual?

435
00:46:59,880 --> 00:47:02,940
The freedom to speak, to think, to love, to disagree.

436
00:47:04,350 --> 00:47:12,070
The freedom to live in truth. This is what authoritarian states find so challenging in Putin's Russia.

437
00:47:12,340 --> 00:47:20,970
It's so challenging. It's driven the country to war. I want to close with an observation on integrity in public life.

438
00:47:22,140 --> 00:47:26,880
I do not just mean whether politicians are authoritarian or corrupt or lying to us.

439
00:47:27,510 --> 00:47:33,120
I'm also concerned with intellectual honesty, clarity of thinking, and the courage to tell things as they are.

440
00:47:34,860 --> 00:47:41,939
We each take seriously the responsibilities and freedoms of institutions like the one we are in today to educate people,

441
00:47:41,940 --> 00:47:47,460
to think and act with clarity and courage, and to learn to value the freedoms that we enjoy.

442
00:47:48,810 --> 00:47:55,290
Recent events have offered us ample opportunities to reflect on the dangers of telling ourselves the things that we want to hear,

443
00:47:55,680 --> 00:48:01,970
while shutting out evidence that calls them into question. Honesty and integrity are existential issues.

444
00:48:03,730 --> 00:48:09,580
This concerns us all. If we value these things. We need to understand what is at stake and to act accordingly.

445
00:48:10,000 --> 00:48:14,020
Freedom needs to be nurtured and protected. Whether it's ours or someone else's.

446
00:48:14,860 --> 00:48:19,030
We need to exercise freedom with responsibility. Or we risk ending up with neither.

447
00:48:19,540 --> 00:48:39,119
Thank you. Naughty.

448
00:48:39,120 --> 00:48:46,680
Thank you. That was an extraordinary exposition. I particularly enjoyed the way that you developed the idea of, um,

449
00:48:47,100 --> 00:48:50,999
how the world's rules based system must take account of the interests and the

450
00:48:51,000 --> 00:48:56,250
imperatives of global South in order to have the authority to tackle the authoritarian.

451
00:48:57,440 --> 00:49:02,180
So thank you for what is really, really interesting series of ideas.

452
00:49:02,570 --> 00:49:07,160
Uh, colleagues. Uh, sorry. He's very kindly agreed that he will answer, uh, questions.

453
00:49:07,550 --> 00:49:11,420
Um, he did mention to me there may be some questions which he finds it difficult to answer.

454
00:49:12,080 --> 00:49:15,740
Is quite prepared to, uh, to listen to any questions in my life.

455
00:49:16,460 --> 00:49:23,160
So I think there are some things. That again.

456
00:49:26,310 --> 00:49:30,960
Um, do we have somebody from Lineker who could. Oh.

457
00:49:31,260 --> 00:49:34,680
My apologies. Wow.

458
00:49:37,790 --> 00:49:44,640
Might want to be on this side. So it's another speaker.

459
00:49:44,650 --> 00:49:49,940
Okay. That's a difference, right? Uh, please put your hands up if you would like to throw a question.

460
00:49:50,000 --> 00:49:58,979
Sorry about this. My name is Roy.

461
00:49:58,980 --> 00:50:04,530
Good. Thank you for a scintillating lecture because I want to on two things I'd like to ask.

462
00:50:05,820 --> 00:50:13,590
One is, could this not have been avoided if NATO had not been so utterly pusillanimous?

463
00:50:13,980 --> 00:50:25,020
I know Ukraine was not and is not yet a member of NATO, but NATO surely has an interest in preserving the integrity of European countries.

464
00:50:25,830 --> 00:50:31,370
Why did it not step in and say do not will will create a no fly zone?

465
00:50:31,380 --> 00:50:43,050
Don't invade Ukraine. They sat there with a view to avoiding worldwide problems and the result has been absolutely disastrous.

466
00:50:43,740 --> 00:50:47,280
The other thing I just wanted to mention was that I'm.

467
00:50:48,470 --> 00:50:52,010
You know, the wish does not come to this with clean hands.

468
00:50:52,280 --> 00:50:59,990
America has never hesitated to overthrow regimes and prisoners that it didn't like in the past.

469
00:51:00,980 --> 00:51:10,070
And the one thing about communism, I suppose, is that what it does do is to look after its people, provided that they follow the rules.

470
00:51:10,700 --> 00:51:18,860
They get they get food, they get housing, uh, they get, uh, you know, well-paid employment and so on.

471
00:51:19,520 --> 00:51:27,290
And then something perhaps, that we can learn to listen, but we don't always look after our people in the way that we should.

472
00:51:27,290 --> 00:51:32,420
So I very much welcome your comments. Well, how long have we got?

473
00:51:33,620 --> 00:51:38,659
Um, I'll take the last bit first, because I just want to state very,

474
00:51:38,660 --> 00:51:44,780
very clearly I disagree with the idea that, um, the least the Soviet communist people or the system or,

475
00:51:44,810 --> 00:51:52,790
you know, the, uh, some other communist systems that still exist in the world look after their people, maybe, maybe in a certain limited extent.

476
00:51:53,240 --> 00:51:57,590
Um, let me just illustrate the point. Um, I got to know before she died.

477
00:51:57,650 --> 00:52:01,310
Um, Alexia, the, um, the founder of the Moscow Helsinki Committee.

478
00:52:01,730 --> 00:52:09,320
Um, you know, people like Ludmilla, I mean, they they paid with their lives, essentially, um, to, um, to stand up to the Soviet system.

479
00:52:09,560 --> 00:52:14,780
We should never forget that. And I think we should ask ourselves, what would we do in that situation?

480
00:52:15,290 --> 00:52:18,650
I think there's a natural wish to believe that you would do the same.

481
00:52:19,190 --> 00:52:25,730
Um, but I really, seriously contest the idea that somehow Soviet communism was benign in most respects.

482
00:52:26,390 --> 00:52:31,490
You know that that's probably one that we should continue at great length so that the the point about later that I think is a very,

483
00:52:31,490 --> 00:52:35,000
very important, um, uh, one around operational policy.

484
00:52:35,330 --> 00:52:41,660
So my answer to the question comes in two parts. Um, one is, um, how to manage the current conflict.

485
00:52:42,080 --> 00:52:48,709
Um, the, one of the huge achievements and it is actually achievement, I think, of the last year,

486
00:52:48,710 --> 00:52:53,510
um, is that we have avoided direct military conflict between NATO and Russia.

487
00:52:53,870 --> 00:52:58,250
That did not happen by accident. It happened because it is clearly not in either side's interests.

488
00:52:58,730 --> 00:53:06,170
Um, and the reason for that is that once you get on an escalation ladder, uh, amongst nuclear powers, you are in very big trouble very quickly.

489
00:53:06,530 --> 00:53:15,079
I mean, seriously. Um, so, you know, if you can describe it as a proxy war, I don't think even that description really works for me.

490
00:53:15,080 --> 00:53:22,549
But, um, in terms of the, the core, um, security interest to avoid war between Russia and NATO,

491
00:53:22,550 --> 00:53:25,700
this is, I think, um, possibly the most important thing of all.

492
00:53:25,970 --> 00:53:28,760
Um, and deterrence is held in the last year in that respect.

493
00:53:29,450 --> 00:53:37,700
The argument I, the thing I find more troubling about this is this I was in Moscow in 2008, at the time of the Bucharest NATO summit.

494
00:53:38,180 --> 00:53:45,920
Um, and you'll remember that there was, um, a proposal on the table to give, uh, membership Action Plan status to Georgia and Ukraine.

495
00:53:46,490 --> 00:53:50,209
Um, I met I probably shouldn't name him.

496
00:53:50,210 --> 00:53:56,540
I met that evening, um, Russia's top political military analyst at a reception and asked him, what do you think?

497
00:53:56,570 --> 00:53:59,780
You know what? What's what's your take on this? He said, you do know this means more, don't you?

498
00:54:00,650 --> 00:54:04,040
I said, come on, come on. What are you talking about? Now this means war.

499
00:54:04,370 --> 00:54:10,190
And then he explained why. Um, and, you know, he was talking about, um, Georgia, but also Ukraine.

500
00:54:10,760 --> 00:54:17,690
My take on the the progress summit declaration, it was the worst possible outcome to a very difficult question,

501
00:54:17,690 --> 00:54:25,310
because it did neither one thing nor the other. Um, it, it, it poked Russia in the eye in something that we knew was deeply sensitive to them.

502
00:54:25,730 --> 00:54:30,050
But by not proceeding, it said to Russia that we didn't really mean it.

503
00:54:30,680 --> 00:54:34,940
I mean, I'm paraphrasing sort of layman's terms that struck me as a very,

504
00:54:34,940 --> 00:54:40,730
very bad answer to a question that we probably would have done better not to have asked in the first place.

505
00:54:41,450 --> 00:54:45,169
Um, in this line of business, you either do things or you don't.

506
00:54:45,170 --> 00:54:55,490
You don't mess around at the edges. Hi.

507
00:54:55,840 --> 00:55:01,040
Uh, my name is Ulrich. I'm a researcher at the computer science department here.

508
00:55:01,760 --> 00:55:09,229
Um, you spoke a lot about kind of the clash between the values that are embedded in the sort of the big political system,

509
00:55:09,230 --> 00:55:14,210
especially like China, and, you know, the West and, uh, and Russia.

510
00:55:14,840 --> 00:55:23,570
Um, I was wondering if you could say a bit about how you think these conflicts are being affected by, uh, technology,

511
00:55:23,870 --> 00:55:32,179
not in terms of kind of AI going forward and so on, but just in terms of the way a particular system is built in America,

512
00:55:32,180 --> 00:55:37,549
uh, for example, then becomes adopted, uh, in the rest of the world, and then even, you know,

513
00:55:37,550 --> 00:55:42,050
if you try to ban, then people can still access it through particular VPN services and so on.

514
00:55:42,320 --> 00:55:47,390
And how that sort of affects kind of this sort of global battle between values.

515
00:55:47,990 --> 00:55:55,069
It's it's a really great question. Um, and in terms of the technology, I very, very rapidly get out of my chair.

516
00:55:55,070 --> 00:56:00,120
So I should probably invite you up to, to try to answer the question. So, um, so a couple of things to think about there.

517
00:56:00,170 --> 00:56:07,930
Um, first of all, the, uh, the questions that are coming up on us very, very fast now around autonomous weapon systems, um,

518
00:56:07,940 --> 00:56:17,030
where there is limited or no human agency in the um, and, um, decision times, um, decision times can be very, very short and unintuitive.

519
00:56:17,030 --> 00:56:19,280
I've ever worked in policy in a government.

520
00:56:19,640 --> 00:56:25,280
Um, the one thing that you always do is play for time, to give yourself time to think through consequences,

521
00:56:25,280 --> 00:56:32,720
you know, to to generate options that may not otherwise be there. I'm just a an anecdote that belongs in the late Cold War but is now back with us.

522
00:56:33,320 --> 00:56:39,380
So it was the debate around your missiles. So the deployments of SS 20s, um, Pershing and Cruz.

523
00:56:39,770 --> 00:56:47,450
Um, this was a very, very big crisis indeed. Um, because the decision making times, once you have missiles in flight is down to minutes or seconds.

524
00:56:48,020 --> 00:56:51,110
Um, you know, trying to think of, you know, the biggest decision you will ever make.

525
00:56:51,500 --> 00:56:58,520
And you might have 60s to make it in. I mean, that's the size of the problem and the loss of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty,

526
00:56:58,520 --> 00:57:03,890
I think is, um, I was trying to explain to my younger colleagues in Moscow at the time why this mattered.

527
00:57:04,310 --> 00:57:07,610
Um, you know, it's it's, um, it sounds technical. It isn't.

528
00:57:08,150 --> 00:57:16,640
Um, I think the other point I want to make here, it's something I was, um, touching on and hinting at through the, um, uh, the whole of the lecture.

529
00:57:16,820 --> 00:57:19,910
It's what even is the field, um, that we're talking about?

530
00:57:19,910 --> 00:57:25,490
Um, we're talking about rules to manage conflicts of interest, um, and to enable cooperation.

531
00:57:26,120 --> 00:57:34,170
Um. You know, people like me, you tend to think in very militarised paradigms of great power competition and how you deal with that.

532
00:57:34,590 --> 00:57:40,739
One of the things that we discovered in the last decade, including, you know, through the rise of,

533
00:57:40,740 --> 00:57:44,280
you know, the big at the internet giants, you know, the metres, Facebook's and so on.

534
00:57:44,550 --> 00:57:52,530
Um, is um, the, uh, the weight, the agency of private sector actors here who regulates those people who decided that

535
00:57:52,530 --> 00:57:57,080
Elon Musk would buy the world's most important information and communication tool?

536
00:57:57,090 --> 00:58:00,270
No one, I wasn't consulted. Um, you know, none of you were.

537
00:58:01,050 --> 00:58:04,920
There is no regulatory framework around, um, the emerging problems.

538
00:58:05,610 --> 00:58:13,380
The other point, um, again, I think it's important to come back to because it is so fundamental to the, I think, the shape of the rules based system.

539
00:58:13,410 --> 00:58:18,810
Um, for the next few decades is specifically around climate change and mitigation.

540
00:58:19,020 --> 00:58:23,820
What are we going to do against time scales in the next 5 to 10 years?

541
00:58:24,240 --> 00:58:28,950
Um, to head off disaster? Um, you know, we have had a succession of comms, you know,

542
00:58:28,950 --> 00:58:35,790
the companies of state parties where we've successively described the problem in even more scary ways, but we still haven't got the answers to it.

543
00:58:36,300 --> 00:58:40,650
And so I think that there's a whole series of questions in there about intra and inter-state,

544
00:58:40,950 --> 00:58:48,540
private sector, private choices, technological solutions where we honestly don't really have the tools yet.

545
00:59:02,210 --> 00:59:06,080
Thank you very much. Very interesting talk. My name is Egor from the New College.

546
00:59:06,080 --> 00:59:12,680
And a matter of science. So my question is, I think you mentioned one keywords in the lecture, which is a value.

547
00:59:13,190 --> 00:59:16,549
And I think the definition of value is quite a complex.

548
00:59:16,550 --> 00:59:19,670
It's a combination of many things, including culture.

549
00:59:20,210 --> 00:59:27,890
And culture actually can be impacted by the geography difference since in this planet geography lingua so different.

550
00:59:27,890 --> 00:59:34,010
Do you think in one day we might have a shared a value which hopefully one day will reduce a lot of conflict?

551
00:59:34,250 --> 00:59:39,920
Or do you think we are never going to have a shared a video or there one might be something acceptable?

552
00:59:40,730 --> 00:59:44,240
Araba in terms of value that we can share. Thank you.

553
00:59:45,710 --> 00:59:52,670
So this is the point I was trying to get out with, with reference to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

554
00:59:53,440 --> 01:00:00,650
It is a, you know, a fundamental document in the entire UN system, which is global, universal, and we all own it.

555
01:00:01,170 --> 01:00:09,350
Um, it's equally clear that you would get utterly different, um, explanations of what that document actually means.

556
01:00:09,530 --> 01:00:12,889
Now, um, you know, it was it was written, published in 1948.

557
01:00:12,890 --> 01:00:15,920
You were in 2023. Um, I'm.

558
01:00:17,360 --> 01:00:21,200
I am not an optimist or I am not an idealist, put it that way. I think.

559
01:00:22,340 --> 01:00:26,750
My provisional answer to your question is that in the real world, for the foreseeable future,

560
01:00:26,780 --> 01:00:30,560
quite a lot of what we're trying to do is to find workable ways forward.

561
01:00:31,070 --> 01:00:35,750
Um, you know, take, for example, you know, the, uh, of course, the thing that, um,

562
01:00:35,780 --> 01:00:41,480
certainly I focus on most, which is the, uh, the emergence of China, the decline of Russia.

563
01:00:41,510 --> 01:00:44,389
You know, this is still unfinished business of the failure of the Soviet Union.

564
01:00:44,390 --> 01:00:47,780
And however you wish to describe what's going on in the United States and Europe.

565
01:00:48,440 --> 01:00:56,180
Um, that is going to generate an enormous amount of friction for the foreseeable future, both between and within those countries.

566
01:00:56,630 --> 01:01:02,860
There is, I think, no universal description or model that will lead us to say, right, this is right.

567
01:01:02,870 --> 01:01:05,060
This is, you know, it's we're not going to agree on that.

568
01:01:05,270 --> 01:01:11,510
I think we do need to do is find ways to manage risk, to manage conflict better than what we've got at the moment.

569
01:01:11,690 --> 01:01:17,870
But also as as I was implying, to widen the field, actually to what we even think, um, you know, is in discussion here.

570
01:01:19,660 --> 01:01:35,020
Thank you very much. Hello.

571
01:01:35,030 --> 01:01:40,040
Thank you. My name is pressed. I'm from Afghanistan and currently I'm an academic Western summer World College.

572
01:01:40,520 --> 01:01:44,989
I'm very interested to know your views on what needs to be done in Afghanistan,

573
01:01:44,990 --> 01:01:54,740
considering the situation and deadlock that we are in and what particularly the international community can do in a way that is not just.

574
01:01:56,030 --> 01:02:01,669
Considering its own self-interest, the self-interest of Afghan government and women that you earlier mentioned,

575
01:02:01,670 --> 01:02:04,810
and to address the gender apartheid and human crisis at this moment.

576
01:02:04,820 --> 01:02:11,540
Thank you. Thank you for that question and for having the courage to stand up and ask it.

577
01:02:12,050 --> 01:02:21,290
Um, I'll start by saying that, um, I am still profoundly shocked by how the, um, the operations in Afghanistan ended.

578
01:02:21,950 --> 01:02:25,640
Um, you know, it's, uh, it didn't need to be that way.

579
01:02:26,540 --> 01:02:33,110
Um, there were, I think, times over the last 20 years where we could and should have exited militarily from Afghanistan.

580
01:02:33,290 --> 01:02:37,780
My own view is that we had long since passed the point where, um,

581
01:02:37,820 --> 01:02:42,260
the application of military force was in any way an answer to the any of the questions there.

582
01:02:42,890 --> 01:02:52,410
The way it was done, I think was, um, beyond negligent, um, in terms of the way that the Doha deal was structured, the way that the, um, uh,

583
01:02:52,430 --> 01:02:56,480
the with the military withdrawal was handled and frankly, the lack of planning for what,

584
01:02:56,930 --> 01:03:01,340
you know, it shouldn't have been too difficult to work out what happened when that took place.

585
01:03:02,090 --> 01:03:07,459
Um, what would I propose instead? Wind the clock back if you're going to do a deal.

586
01:03:07,460 --> 01:03:09,920
If you think that the answer is the exit.

587
01:03:09,920 --> 01:03:16,579
The military exit from Afghanistan depends on a political deal, as I do, the time to do that was much earlier.

588
01:03:16,580 --> 01:03:26,150
Much earlier than Doha. Um, you know, the problem we all have is that the Taliban, um, to some extent represent part of Afghan society.

589
01:03:26,510 --> 01:03:33,050
We also need to be very clear that, you know, it was a part of Afghans, of a movement, um, heavily supported from abroad.

590
01:03:33,170 --> 01:03:40,400
Let's put it no more specifically than that. But saying to an organisation like the Taliban, essentially we're leaving.

591
01:03:41,000 --> 01:03:45,110
Um, we would like you to negotiate with the government that, you know, we consider legitimate.

592
01:03:45,380 --> 01:03:51,770
And if upheld, we're not going to force you to do it. Um, we're going to let a whole load of prisoners out of jail and guess where they're going.

593
01:03:52,340 --> 01:03:56,550
Um, and we're not even going to involve the government of Afghanistan in this discussion.

594
01:03:56,570 --> 01:04:00,230
What do we think is going to happen? So for the future, um.

595
01:04:01,490 --> 01:04:07,670
Uh, I think the immediate priority is to find ways of addressing both the humanitarian catastrophe.

596
01:04:07,910 --> 01:04:14,360
I mean, this is a country now where I forget the figure, but almost the entire population is under food stress.

597
01:04:14,840 --> 01:04:17,150
That's on us because of the way that we exited.

598
01:04:17,870 --> 01:04:24,290
Um, we need to find ways of avoiding losing an entire generation of Afghan girls and actually boys, too.

599
01:04:24,770 --> 01:04:31,010
Um, so that I'm aware of, um, involved in a number of, um, things that might help with that.

600
01:04:31,340 --> 01:04:38,840
Um, but we're not going to get there. Um, you know, until there's something happening that changes the fundamentals in Afghanistan.

601
01:04:39,350 --> 01:04:46,250
Um, and again, I don't see that happening anytime soon because of the nature that the means by which the way in which the Taliban came to power.

602
01:04:46,790 --> 01:04:50,270
So I guess my final point is do not let this fall from the headlines.

603
01:04:50,840 --> 01:04:55,459
Um, I was really struck, um, on the first anniversary, um, last year, you know,

604
01:04:55,460 --> 01:04:59,660
the 15th of August, the anniversary of the, um, the collapse of the government.

605
01:05:00,170 --> 01:05:04,400
Um, just how quickly it spiked in the news and then disappeared.

606
01:05:04,700 --> 01:05:09,920
As if this isn't our problem anymore. It is our problem. We own it, and we need to address it as far as we can.

607
01:05:17,220 --> 01:05:22,740
Thank you so much. My, my name is Doctor Nadia Vania, and I'm fellow clinical fellow.

608
01:05:22,740 --> 01:05:29,370
And, um, I'm also a quarter research fellow at the Department of Education, and I'm Ukrainian.

609
01:05:29,370 --> 01:05:32,370
I fled the what was my child last year?

610
01:05:32,760 --> 01:05:38,700
Uh, first of all, thank you very much for speaking about, uh, this very important talk, uh, topic.

611
01:05:38,700 --> 01:05:48,660
And thank you for speaking about Ukraine. Thank you for bringing this, uh, topic for the, uh, uh, West commute to the West community.

612
01:05:49,290 --> 01:05:52,170
My question is, because I'm a educator myself.

613
01:05:52,230 --> 01:06:02,490
Um, you touched upon a very important topic today, uh, um, just briefly about, uh, educating young people to be critical thinkers.

614
01:06:03,210 --> 01:06:09,960
And, um, my question is, uh, do you see any new approaches, any innovative, um,

615
01:06:09,960 --> 01:06:16,260
techniques, I don't know, innovations, how to educate young people to be really critical,

616
01:06:16,260 --> 01:06:22,710
uh, critical thinking, uh, young people, to be mature citizens of this, of this global world,

617
01:06:23,010 --> 01:06:27,870
not to have this, these awful wars and conflicts anymore, if it's possible.

618
01:06:27,930 --> 01:06:31,370
Thank you, thank you. Thank you. Um.

619
01:06:32,710 --> 01:06:37,900
A couple of things there to think about. Or maybe two poles, or maybe three poles, actually.

620
01:06:38,330 --> 01:06:47,560
Um, one is the experience of living and working in Russia, um, under Vladimir Putin, over, you know, large parts of the last, however many years.

621
01:06:48,100 --> 01:06:53,660
Um. It's very, very easy to react and say, you know, you're wrong.

622
01:06:53,670 --> 01:06:57,570
You've been lied to by your government. You're the victim of disinformation by your government.

623
01:06:58,150 --> 01:07:05,430
I think for us, if if you want to be serious about this, you need to get inside the the traumas,

624
01:07:05,430 --> 01:07:10,020
the resentments, the anger, the emotional factors that have driven a country to that position.

625
01:07:10,660 --> 01:07:15,090
Um, I have a very strong view, by the way, that, um, foreign policy practitioners,

626
01:07:15,090 --> 01:07:19,709
political pressures do not talk and think enough about the role of emotion in policymaking.

627
01:07:19,710 --> 01:07:25,920
It's a very, very powerful driver. Quite often the most powerful driver, far more important than reason or knowledge, I think.

628
01:07:26,490 --> 01:07:32,300
Um. The other point is a rather more self-reflective one.

629
01:07:32,320 --> 01:07:35,770
It's about looking very seriously at what goes on in our own societies.

630
01:07:36,190 --> 01:07:41,420
And I'm I was trying to hint at this without saying it openly.

631
01:07:41,440 --> 01:07:46,839
I think one of the things that we in the universities need to get really,

632
01:07:46,840 --> 01:07:57,010
really serious about now is about how we educate people not only to do critical thinking, however we understand that, but also to have disagreements.

633
01:07:57,820 --> 01:08:02,200
Um, you know, there's I think there's a huge risk in an environment,

634
01:08:02,200 --> 01:08:06,640
particularly an educational environment where all you get reflected back at you is what you already think.

635
01:08:07,060 --> 01:08:10,390
It's a bit like the algorithms of how some social media work.

636
01:08:10,750 --> 01:08:13,000
You know, it pushes you further and further down a rabbit hole.

637
01:08:13,730 --> 01:08:20,110
Um, I don't really want to get into the details of, you know, some of the subject matter, but we all know we all know what it is.

638
01:08:20,500 --> 01:08:27,790
If these institutions are not about, um, critical examination of what is true and what is false, I really don't know what they're about.

639
01:08:28,330 --> 01:08:33,240
Um, for specific example, a country that I think does this well or is certainly hold up that held up well.

640
01:08:33,280 --> 01:08:40,390
This is Finland. Um, so a country where the national security concept has embedded in it, um, information integrity.

641
01:08:40,600 --> 01:08:44,410
Um, and essentially I can't remember the wording, but essentially intellectual integrity.

642
01:08:44,800 --> 01:08:48,160
Um, and of course, the Finns have had to learn this the hard way over many years.

643
01:08:50,710 --> 01:08:55,210
One final point, if I may. Um, I forgot I mentioned this in the speech.

644
01:08:55,240 --> 01:09:05,470
I'll come back to it. Um, it's thinking about, um, probably the most difficult thing of all about post-conflict work is truth and reconciliation.

645
01:09:06,260 --> 01:09:10,270
Um, you know, because of the things that have been done, um, in Ukraine by Russians.

646
01:09:10,750 --> 01:09:16,480
Um, you know, that is going to be appallingly difficult. Um, but again, I think in an environment like this,

647
01:09:16,750 --> 01:09:24,340
we can and should be thinking now about what it would take to get Ukrainians and Russians past that.

648
01:09:24,550 --> 01:09:32,750
That discussion. Thank you.

649
01:09:33,380 --> 01:09:38,850
My name is. I'm, uh. I'm Polish. Um, I do see things from a Polish perspective.

650
01:09:38,870 --> 01:09:40,370
I have to admit,

651
01:09:40,820 --> 01:09:50,420
you gave a wonderful analysis of how people in different countries and and different historical backgrounds and cultures can use the same words,

652
01:09:50,420 --> 01:09:53,660
the same language, and mean something completely different.

653
01:09:54,350 --> 01:10:01,930
Um, again, from my perspective as a as a poll, putinism is only the latest unfolding of something.

654
01:10:01,940 --> 01:10:06,590
You mentioned that the earlier in your in your talk that you can go back quite a long way.

655
01:10:07,010 --> 01:10:12,380
Um, Solzhenitsyn, by the way, so Ukraine should do should not be an independent country doing it.

656
01:10:12,500 --> 01:10:23,000
You know, we admire him greatly. I have been increasingly pessimistic about the situation in Central and Eastern Europe, but also concerning China.

657
01:10:24,020 --> 01:10:32,390
We talk about education and giving, um, educating people to express their views and learn how to disagree and so on.

658
01:10:33,470 --> 01:10:41,420
But as I said, I've become increasingly pessimistic. I wonder if you can give some crumbs of comfort to someone like.

659
01:10:41,510 --> 01:10:45,379
Like me. Uh, because, um, I've lost.

660
01:10:45,380 --> 01:10:50,330
I thought you I mean, your talk was absolutely wonderful, but it confirmed to me and my pessimism.

661
01:10:53,050 --> 01:10:58,870
Thank you. I think this is one pessimist to another. I'm going on here. Um, well, what can I usefully say?

662
01:10:58,910 --> 01:11:03,190
Um, I think it's just to think in the right timescales, amongst other things.

663
01:11:03,420 --> 01:11:11,530
Um, uh, you know, in the career that, you know, that Nick kindly outlined at the beginning, the time that I spent working in government,

664
01:11:11,890 --> 01:11:18,600
um, you know, things came and went in waves, things that sort of looked really, really important at one point may maybe less important.

665
01:11:18,700 --> 01:11:23,769
That's in the nature of how government and politics and, you know, life works.

666
01:11:23,770 --> 01:11:29,410
Really. Um, I think start with the, the stuff that really, really matters.

667
01:11:29,910 --> 01:11:37,690
Um, it's a serious discussion about the damage that intellectual dishonesty does, um, to individual societies and to politics.

668
01:11:38,020 --> 01:11:43,540
That's what these institutions are about. Um, a bit of um, also I think, um.

669
01:11:44,710 --> 01:11:54,250
Uh, resilience. You know, it's going to take a very, very long time to get back to or to get to something that, um.

670
01:11:54,410 --> 01:11:58,010
I hesitate to say we can live with, but something, you know, something we can live with in Russia.

671
01:11:58,040 --> 01:12:05,150
I mean, it's about as far as it's possible to imagine it going. I mean, the the, um, the comparisons aren't exact.

672
01:12:05,180 --> 01:12:10,220
Um, and in some ways, they're unhelpful. But we have been here before with Germany in 1945.

673
01:12:10,910 --> 01:12:16,969
Um, and with other examples. So, you know, I'm not saying under any circumstances, um, that, you know,

674
01:12:16,970 --> 01:12:21,800
we will we the West will be invading Russia or occupying it or doing anything.

675
01:12:21,920 --> 01:12:27,260
It will be Russians themselves making that transition when the time comes, if they ever get there, actually.

676
01:12:27,890 --> 01:12:33,640
Um, so I think my, my point there is, you know, trying to keep a crumb of optimism but also realistic optimism.

677
01:12:33,670 --> 01:12:39,920
It can be done. It has been done. But think about, you know, the fundamentals that need to be in place for that to happen.

678
01:12:40,220 --> 01:12:48,620
Also a bit about institutions. So um, I've worked a lot over the years with institutions like the British Council, the BBC World Service.

679
01:12:49,040 --> 01:12:54,350
Um, there's a lot to say, I'm sure. Um, quite a lot of the recipients of their attention would say an awful lot about them.

680
01:12:54,740 --> 01:12:57,710
Um, that I wouldn't agree with, but just consider this.

681
01:12:58,040 --> 01:13:03,889
Um, so when I was in Moscow as deputy ambassador, then as ambassador, the FSB closed the British Council.

682
01:13:03,890 --> 01:13:07,280
They had to go at it. And in the end, they got it. Why did they do that?

683
01:13:08,010 --> 01:13:12,830
It wasn't because they considered the British Council to be a nest of spies, which is what we said was the reason.

684
01:13:13,190 --> 01:13:14,990
It's because they're afraid of what it stands for.

685
01:13:15,500 --> 01:13:21,559
Um, so I think, again, coming back to what we know works, which is patient dialogue, you know, patient, um,

686
01:13:21,560 --> 01:13:29,450
application of principles, drawing people in listening to the other side in these arguments and thinking into generationally.

687
01:13:29,930 --> 01:13:36,169
And one of the things that really worries me is that we have got a generation now of Russian voters coming,

688
01:13:36,170 --> 01:13:40,100
you know, to actually now entering into adulthood, who were born under Vladimir Putin.

689
01:13:40,890 --> 01:13:43,960
You know, I'm not quite sure what we do with that, but that's the reality.

690
01:13:43,970 --> 01:13:48,100
That's the reality we're going into. They've never known anything else.

691
01:13:48,790 --> 01:13:52,570
And their their understanding of what happened before is filtered through putinism.

692
01:13:56,350 --> 01:14:03,490
Maybe. This is the last question, right?

693
01:14:03,700 --> 01:14:08,950
Um, which, um, I'm sure is going to be an easy one to, to snatch back over the next.

694
01:14:08,950 --> 01:14:13,870
But, uh, and it reflects to some degree self-interest, if you might.

695
01:14:13,990 --> 01:14:22,350
Very simply. The different parts of the Ukraine and Finland, from what must superficially appears,

696
01:14:22,360 --> 01:14:32,580
be relatively similar starting point to point in 2022, where Putin said in a big match the right to whether it wants to join NATO.

697
01:14:33,880 --> 01:14:38,920
Yeah, right. Well, that's a short one to end on. I think everything is about context.

698
01:14:39,190 --> 01:14:47,230
Um, so there are countless historians in the room who can tell everyone a whole lot more than I can about what led to the Winter War.

699
01:14:47,530 --> 01:14:52,930
Um, you know, why are the Soviets behaving the way they did, why they got such a bloody nose from this thing and all the rest of it?

700
01:14:53,410 --> 01:14:56,450
Um, but there's there's a pragmatic as well.

701
01:14:56,450 --> 01:15:04,540
There's a practical answer to these questions. So for, um, almost what, the entirety of the Cold War, um, you know, Finland was,

702
01:15:04,990 --> 01:15:08,500
um, essentially part of the West in all respects apart from military.

703
01:15:09,040 --> 01:15:15,070
Um, that, in my view, as a as a diplomat, as someone having to deal with this, the reality of the situation, that's a good outcome.

704
01:15:15,640 --> 01:15:19,690
And if you're not going to war on the whole, that's better than going to war because of the,

705
01:15:19,690 --> 01:15:28,239
you know, the costs and damage and the unpredictability of that. Um, the situation with Ukraine is now completely incomparable, by the way.

706
01:15:28,240 --> 01:15:33,610
Um, you know, if you look at the reactions from the Kremlin to Finland and Sweden turning around

707
01:15:33,700 --> 01:15:38,349
generations of foreign policy in a matter of weeks and getting to the point where they said,

708
01:15:38,350 --> 01:15:46,030
actually, now is the time to join NATO. The reaction from Moscow was essentially nothing because there's nothing they can do about it.

709
01:15:46,690 --> 01:15:51,879
Um, and you know, the point here is that, um, it's a major strategic loss for Russia,

710
01:15:51,880 --> 01:15:55,290
because essentially, if you look at the military dispositions around the Baltic now,

711
01:15:55,360 --> 01:16:01,030
I mean, how could it not be, um, it's a gain for those countries and a gain for the underlying principles.

712
01:16:01,540 --> 01:16:05,620
Um, I can't see any of that that's comparable with the situation in Ukraine.

713
01:16:06,100 --> 01:16:11,410
Um, you know, there's a lot of debate has been for the last year about whether we should now bring Ukraine into NATO.

714
01:16:11,420 --> 01:16:19,360
I think this is beside the point. I think the task for the foreseeable future, um, is to make it impossible for Russia to win militarily in Ukraine.

715
01:16:19,600 --> 01:16:26,620
And when the war comes to an end, whatever that is, to make it unthinkable for Russia to attack again until Russia changes.

716
01:16:27,130 --> 01:16:28,810
I mean, that is kind of the thing.

717
01:16:29,050 --> 01:16:37,150
But there's another point to this as well, which I'm, I, um, uh, looking at our Ukrainian colleague, it's what Ukraine does with the opportunity.

718
01:16:38,250 --> 01:16:43,049
It's an opportunity that is being bought, that's being bought at enormous cost, enormous cost.

719
01:16:43,050 --> 01:16:51,390
And it's not over yet. Um, so, um, uh, when I was director for the region in London over a decade ago,

720
01:16:51,630 --> 01:16:55,950
the sorts of conversations we were having with our Ukrainian colleagues, I'm not giving away any secrets here.

721
01:16:56,340 --> 01:16:59,580
What kind of, you know, you you're really hard to help.

722
01:17:00,180 --> 01:17:03,629
Your hard to help because you're not great in governance reforms.

723
01:17:03,630 --> 01:17:09,900
You're not gripping corruption. Um, you know, you're putting people in jail who may well belong there, but where's the due process?

724
01:17:10,470 --> 01:17:20,010
Um, you know, Ukraine will get one opportunity and one only to take the dividend of what it's achieved at enormous cost over the last year.

725
01:17:20,370 --> 01:17:26,310
Uh, which is saying, actually, we disagree. Um, you know, we wish to choose our own destiny, and our destiny is that way, not that way.

726
01:17:31,220 --> 01:17:36,200
You have a natural great erudition and scholarship.

727
01:17:36,500 --> 01:17:41,540
I think you will join me in the morning. A wonderful time of writing.

728
01:18:02,550 --> 01:18:09,090
But for those of you who, like me, want to go back and listen to that at a little slower pace so you can absorb more.

729
01:18:09,090 --> 01:18:17,130
Um, it should be available online fairly shortly through the Investees podcast page, uh, and also through the Tanner lectures web page.

730
01:18:17,550 --> 01:18:22,290
Um, for those of you who will now be coming back to Linacre College to join us for dinner.

731
01:18:22,800 --> 01:18:30,990
Uh, dinner starts at 8:00. Um, I might point out to you that there is a demonstration on South Fox Road this evening outside the,

732
01:18:30,990 --> 01:18:35,160
uh, Sciences department, and you may wish to go down,

733
01:18:35,490 --> 01:18:45,990
um, uh, via via mansfield road rather than up, um, uh, Fox Road and alongside Fox Road in order to avoid getting tangled up in the crowd.

734
01:18:46,330 --> 01:18:50,640
Uh, but for those of you who are joining us for dinner, I look forward to seeing you back in Ithaca College very shortly.

735
01:18:50,970 --> 01:18:51,330
Thank you.