Russia's aggression in Ukraine has turned millions of lives upside down
and caused a convulsion in the world order.
No longer unipolar, the United States and China are now
both stepping into the traditional roles of two global superpowers.
What will this mean for security in the West?
Here in Washington, Ukraine is the immediate focus of attention,
but the long lens is on the superpowers.
Is the US now reasserting itself on the global stage
more by necessity than desire?
Global implies a sense that we all want the same thing, we are moving
toward the same direction. Come out clearly, Russia and China have
different things they want.
And what of China?
Staying neutral for now in the Ukraine conflict,
but Xi Jinping could perhaps pull his "best friend" back in line.
What will China do next?
Why should China submit its relationships with Russia on one
hand and Ukraine on the other it doesn't make sense as far as China
is concerned, and to threaten to sanction China is going to be
suicidal.
We'll be joined by the former head of the CIA, and from Beijing
by a leading academic, close to the government
of Xi Jinping.
Also tonight, I'll be joined by the chair
of House Foreign Afffairs Committee, Congressman Gregory Meeks, and
former Nato ambassador Kurt Volker.
Good evening from Washington, where the White House is expanding
the US military and security response to the war in Ukraine,
to the tune of at least $800 million,
including, for the first time, the delivery of armed drones.
They are also searching for greater anti-aircraft capability
amongst their allies.
America providing Ukraine with military support may be
suggestive of the pre-eminent global dominance it has appeared to enjoy
since the break-up of the Soviet Union,
but is that really the case
with China now very firmly on the world stage?
Beijing's response to the current crisis is crucial.
Yet to condemn Vladimir Putin for the invasion, Xi Jinping
could still be the man to put the brakes on the Russian president.
Tonight we'll be exploring the re-emergence of bipolar power
in the world and how America is likely to respond.
David Grossman has spent the week in Washington,
assessing whether the government here
believes it could be headed for a new cold war.
At the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC,
they remember the world as it was - split into two tribes.
A series of offensive missile sites
is now in preparation on that imprisoned island...
The United States and the Soviet Union locked in deadly rivalry.
No deceit, no subterfuge was seemingly off limits.
A man stabbed him in the thigh with an umbrella and ran away...
The only rule - don't get caught.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, many in Washington convinced
themselves that that world of great-power competition
had gone with it.
Not any more.
In fact, many now question whether anything has actually changed.
In the West, we thought that the great-power competition
had come to an end.
It's kind of hard to believe now,
but the 2010 National Security Strategy of the United States,
published in the Obama administration,
mentions Russia and China only as partners for cooperation.
It doesn't mention them as possible threats.
Back in 2012, Matthew Cronin was foreign policy adviser
to the then Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
Senator Romney's concentration on the threat from Russia
was, at the time, ridiculed.
When you were asked, what's the biggest geopolitical
threat facing America, you said Russia.
Not Al-Qaeda, you said Russia.
And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,
because, you know, the Cold War has been over for 20 years.
I think we now know that that Russia and China at that time period
were thinking in terms of rivalry,
were thinking about growing their power
and eventually challenging the United States and its allies.
But I think in the West, we kind of took this holiday,
in our minds anyway, from from strategic competition.
President Trump repositioned the United States
back towards the idea of great-power competition.
His 2017 National Security Strategy
said it was by far the biggest threat that the US faced.
With the strategy I am announcing today, we are declaring that
America is in the game and America is going to win.
But since he became president, Joe Biden,
Barack Obama's vice-president for eight years,
has re-emphasised re-engagement with Russia.
We should decide where it's in our mutual interest,
and the interests of the world, to cooperate.
TRANSLATION: Both sides expressed their intention
to understand each other and to seek common ground.
The Biden administration approach has tended to focus on global.
Our approach was to focus on power.
Nadia Schadlow was the principal author
of President Trump's 2017 National Security Strategy.
She says the current administration has no choice
but to pivot away from this global view of foreign relations.
What does "global" mean and why do I think it's a flawed concept?
Because power resides in states.
States have resources, military and economic -
not international institutions.
"Global" implies a sense that we all want the same thing,
that we're moving toward the same direction.
Clearly, Russia and China want different things.
They have different political and economic systems.
It's clear the consensus inside Congress has shifted profoundly.
I've spoken to about half a dozen Democratic Party senators
on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
and they sound far closer to that Trump 2017 strategy
than Obama 2010.
I asked the chair of the committee, Senator Bob Menendez,
how he thought the global power dynamic had been affected
by the Ukraine invasion.
Above all, it has changed the dynamics of thinking
about peace at the beginning of the 21st century.
I don't think any one of us would have been thinking about
a war in the European continent led by a major power like Russia.
The world now sees that we do have a big battle
between authoritarian regimes, like that of Mr Putin,
with his invasion of Ukraine, and democracies.
Do you think the West took its eye off the ball perhaps,
for a decade or two? I think indeed we have until now.
Although this level of consensus is impressive,
some wonder whether the divided politics of the West
will ultimately be able to support the level of military spending
and economic sacrifice that this new world may require.
I think the political response, the overall support,
has been actually really encouraging, right, and inspiring.
But the key will be sustainability - whether or not the Nato nations
can sustain the political support to grow a strong military
and to keep that strong.
Senator Ted Cruz told me it was ultimately economic power
that won the last cold war and is the key to this conflict.
Russia tried to keep up, the Soviet Union tried to keep up.
And we bankrupted their economy,
because the economic engine of free enterprise was mightier
than the failed collectivist system of communism.
We need to use that same economic engine to defeat Russia,
but more fundamentally to defeat China.
China is a far greater adversary than Russia.
Russia's malevolent, Russia's dangerous.
But China, I believe, poses the single greatest geopolitical threat
to the United States and to the United Kingdom.
Another sticking point that could test Western resolve is energy.
Joe Biden had promised to make climate change his priority.
Senator Chris Coons, in the front on the left
with the president here this week, is a long-term ally of Joe Biden's.
I asked him if it was time to expand US fossil-fuel production
to help Europe wean itself off Russian gas.
The United States can produce natural gas more cleanly
and more abundantly than Russia, and we should be doing so,
and we should be back-filling the urgent energy needs
of Eastern Europe in the face of Russian aggression.
We also should be exporting clean energy technology
and partnering with Europe,
which has shown more climate ambition than the United States.
Germany is caught in a very difficult moment.
They're shutting down their nuclear power plants
and transitioning to a lower carbon economy
at exactly the moment
where Russian gas was going to be the bridge fuel.
We need to help fill that gap.
The monuments around Washington attest to the fact that
planting a flag in the ground requires courage and sacrifice.
If we are heading towards a new era of global conflict and division,
the question is, does the West have the will to prevail?
I'm joined now by Democratic Congressman Gregory Meeks,
chair of America's House of Representatives Foreign Affairs
Committee, and by Kurt Volker, until 2019 the United States
special representative for Ukraine negotiations and
a previous US Ambassador to Nato.
Good evening to both of you. First of all, Kurt Volker, do you think
the US has been blind? I think it is a little bit of an exaggeration, but
I think we have had several administrations in a row that I
wanted to pull the US from the world and focus on issues domestically. We
saw that after the Bush administration, where we were very
extended in Afghanistan and Iraq. President Obama was elected
promising to pull us back, President Trump said America first, President
Biden wanted to end the war in Afghanistan, so we have been on a
pattern like this for some time, and it has emboldened people like Putin.
You have also said the problem was that there was no joined up thinking
in the US administration, that in July last year, Putin announced a
6000 word manifesto about how Ukraine is one country, very clearly
his intention to make it so, and three days later John Kerry is in
Moscow as the climate envoy, and you are saying that does not work, you
need to send a clear signal. Isn't that just realpolitik? Turn it
around, what we see with Vladimir Putin, and we knew it before that
visit, before he wrote the manifesto, he was escalating, and he
knew that we would be seeking off ramps and are seeking to
de-escalate, and it was his tactic to continue to put pressure up. I'm
not linking issues where we have an issue versus where they have an
interest in saying, we are not doing this now, we need you to behave
better, they take advantage of that. Gregory Meeks, what do you say to
that, that there has been a failure of strategy? Well, look, I think if
we look at the Trump administration and what took place there, the
closeness that he had with Mr Putin, looking at the fact that he would
not even go by Western intelligence, and he thought that Putin could do
no wrong. I am more focused on where we are now. I think it is important,
what Joe Biden is doing, uniting the West. It is not America alone, it is
America and all of our allies, and that is the needle that had to be
thread. So it is America and the UK and Nato and the G7 and other Asian
allies, and allies like Canada in North America, you know, and you
look at the 141 countries at the UN voted against Putin's aggression.
Those are the things that will make Putin and eventually crush Russia
with their aggression. So it is bringing us together, not a part, no
matter where I travel in the world, individual countryside, thank God
America is back at the table and working with us. But just going back
to the national security strategy of Obama in 2010, we want stable and
substantive multi dimensional relationships based on mutual
interest - to think that a more hawkish approach of saying, this is
our intent, might have held back Putin over these years, in Georgia,
Crimea and so forth? Well, I think we have to state united, and I think
that we are talking about America and what we would do as opposed to
working with all of our allies in that regards. And we always stood
true, and it is the same thing we have here right now, that with our
Nato allies, if anybody came over and touched any Nato territory,
article five would be implemented, so I disagree the position we have
taken before, because the world is becoming much smaller and more
interrelated and interconnected than ever before, and so I think it calls
for us to work and strategise together, that is what you do when
you are leading, as opposed to just doing something on our own.
Big picture here, but let's look at one strategy for Ukraine. You have
called for a no-fly zone. Tony Blair has said the West as being too
explicit saying what it will not do. Is the West to predictable? Is that
of the problem 's the biggest problem as we spoke about before as
we seek to de-escalate, and put in there is that so he does not feel
pressure. He earned the response to force or power. And so he keeps
going. When it comes to a strategy for Ukraine that is exactly what we
need. We need to be setting terms, not setting what we will not do but
saying what our goals are and I'm particularly worried about nuclear,
chemical and biological weapons right now. We have to be issuing a
warning that any use of those is unacceptable and will be met with a
very serious response. Actually, can we risk, people have been talking
about World War III, can we risk it for a country that is not in Nato
when they're explicitly that is what Nato is poor to go to the club's
aid. Ukraine is not a Nato member of course. And what we're doing for
Ukraine is because of our concern for the humanitarian situation, the
strategy of protecting states and independence in Europe. We heard
there, from Nadia Shadelov, and the US has to talk in terms of power, to
be explicit and upfront, it is a super power, and it needs to be both
treated like that and to take that place in the world. I think that's
exactly what we are doing. We are leading. Bringing our allies
together and moving forward in that regard. That is why in the United
States Congress last week we voted for $14 billion, for defensive
weapons and material that is needed that Ukraine is asked for. That is
why you will see that working with our allies to get the equipment like
right now, you heard President Zelenskyy say that he wants a no-fly
zone but the best way to do that, I think that does not risk a World War
III is to get the S300s Inn which will help him control the sky, which
is what he has been asking for, along with several of the drones,
the lethal weapons which are driving Russia crazy, so we are making sure
that we are giving the people in Ukraine all that they need so that
they can defend themselves. That is what they are asking. But as the
next Democrat candidate, we showed a clip of the conversation between
Mitt Romney and Barack Obama where Mitt Romney was saying, you are too
much on the back foot and plot showing what America can do in the
world, does the next Democrat candidate have to be much more
explicit about the way that America and the West want to again go back
to not being the world's policeman, but actually setting out its
position vis-a-vis authoritarian regimes and that those regimes will
not be tolerated if they step out of line. It is clear that what is at
stake is democracies as opposed to autocracies. The way that we stand
against those autocratic governments that are trying to come in is to
show that democracy works and we do that collectively. And you talk
about the economy. I heard part of the segment before, the
interconnectedness of economies etc, to show that we, in the West, have
the rules to play and if you don't play by those rules and work with us
collectively then you will not be part of it. And we will not let
people like Russia or China take advantage of a system that does not
play by the rules that we should be setting as Western governments. That
affects all of the other economies. That will affect China. It is
affecting Russia right now with the kind of crashing sanctions we are
placing on it so that is the way that we demonstrate leadership
moving forward -- crushing sanctions. Do you think the American
people are ready for the economic sacrifice they would need to make
for the levels of military spending, with energy and so forth, to ensure
that America is always on the front foot? Unfortunately we have kept
military spending at a higher level than many of our allies so we have a
good capability but people look around the world and see China in
particular as a long-term threat and building the economy is important
for that to counter China but also building the military capability.
Tomorrow Joe Biden will hold his
first call with Xi Jinping
since the invasion began.
He will actually be asking the Chinese president what his view of
Vladimir Putin is.
China's president has avoided public criticism of Vladimir Putin so far,
and China has said it is seeking a diplomatic route to
ending the fighting.
A statement from the White House today said the two leaders
will discuss managing the competition between
the two countries as well as the Ukraine war.
There lies perhaps the biggest issue for us all.
President Xi could pressure Putin into some kind of peace in Ukraine.
Conversely, there are reports that Moscow has asked
Beijing for military aid.
If Xi agrees, then Ukraine will become the theatre for a proxy war.
Then the two superpowers would be toe to toe,
with the threat of open conflict or a new cold war,
with China siding with Russia.
Our international editor, Gabriel Gatehouse, looks
at the choice for China as Putin contemplates a pivot east.
Vladimir Putin once described the collapse of the Soviet Union
as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.
Note the word "geopolitical".
This is key.
I don't think it's the Soviet Union per se he was missing.
He was missing the imperial grandeur of it.
Putin was shaped by the Cold War.
He was ten years old during the Cuban missile crisis,
when Khrushchev and Kennedy walked the world
to the brink of nuclear war and then stepped back.
And I think what happened today in Russia...
Khrushchev's great granddaughter says it's not the ideology
that Putin wants to recreate - it's the power.
The empire was then recognised, feared, was taken into account -
even if it had to fight with guns and weapons
to be taken into account.
And I think it always goes for all Russian and Soviet leaders,
is that they just wanted to be treated decently by the West.
So as I kind of like to joke, although it's no laughing matter any
more, is that they don't want to be seated
at the children's table next to the toilet.
When the Soviet Union collapsed,
that is pretty much where Russia found itself.
With a president who went from hero to zero in the turbulent '90s -
dictated to by the United States, the only remaining superpower.
Vladimir Putin has been through four US presidents
in his 22 years in power, from George W Bush,
who looked into his soul and decided he trusted him,
through the difficult Obama years, the fraught Trump presidency,
and now Joe Biden, who once claimed he told Putin to his face
he didn't think he had a soul.
No matter who is in the White House, President Putin's aim
was always the same -
to push back against the unipolar American world order.
That's what his war in Syria was about.
That's what Crimea and Donbas were about.
He believed that Ukraine's pro-Western leaders
were American puppets.
But then came the invasion.
Perhaps Putin miscalculated the strength of Ukrainian resistance.
Perhaps he underestimated the Western response.
But if he was looking for a seat at the top table, he blew it.
Basically, with that war, whatever those hopes you had
to be treated as...not equal, but at least there's somebody
who you can be conversed with, that's gone,
there's no more conversation.
There's a word in Russian - non-handshakable.
You can't shake his hand.
Yeah, right, exactly, so Russia now is non-handshakable.
So yes, and it's also kind of also a very Russian thing is that
you try to make it work and then it's like, damn with it,
let's just go and not only shoot my myself in the foot,
or shoot, or Putin shot the country in the foot,
just let's take a cannon and chop off the whole leg,
almost to the waist.
Russia is now almost completely cut off from the West.
Not just economically and in terms of trade -
car manufacturers can't get the parts they need,
aeroplanes will soon stop flying.
But culturally and morally as well.
Oh, I think he is a war criminal.
So where can Moscow turn?
There is one obvious answer.
Beijing.
China's economic dominance has been long foretold,
but it's now coming of age as a global political force.
In early February, Putin flew to Beijing
for a meeting with Xi Jinping.
The two leaders announced a strategic partnership
which would have no limits.
Two weeks later, Putin invaded Ukraine, and Beijing has made it
clear it will continue to support Russia, no matter what sanctions
are threatened by the West.
Why should China sabotage its relations with Russia on the one
hand and its relations with Ukraine on the other hand?
It doesn't make sense as far as China is concerned,
and to threaten to sanction China is going to be suicidal.
Right, so those relations between China and Russia
will continue regardless of this war?
Absolutely.
Now, whether the relations can even gain further strength,
that's another thing, and that's really between China
and Russia to decide.
At the end of the 1980s, the Soviet world was beginning to crumble.
In Moscow, they had glasnost and perestroika.
In Beijing, Tiananmen Square.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, China took note.
As Victor Gao remembers - he was Deng Xiaoping's interpreter.
China learned a big lesson.
That is, China need to stand firm on its matters of principle,
China need to maintain domestic stability at any cost,
and China wants to do whatever it can to stay away from wars
or military conflicts of any kind.
I think this is the lesson for China when we look back at the collapse
of the former Soviet Union.
No country, big or small, should overreach.
Russia has overreached in Ukraine.
Beijing's support will come at a price.
This will not be a relationship of equals.
And Putin may have lost his chance to cement Russia's status
as a global force - just as China is helping to break
America's dominance.
Earlier I spoke to David Petraeus - a former director of America's
Central Intelligence Agency and a US Army General
who commanded US forces in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
General Petraeus, what do you think we should be most concerned about,
about the Russia-China dynamic?
Well, actually, first of all I think is very important to recognise that
President Xi doesn't welcome this war.
Ukraine's largest trading partner prior to the war, was China.
A lot of Belt And Road Initiative projects in China and yes,
they had the famous meeting on the eve of the opening
ceremony of the Olympics.
But, now you have put President Xi in a very difficult position.
When he is on the final months of his re-election
campaign, if you will.
He is presumably going to be re-elected when the party
gathers in the Fall, but this creates some
sand in the gears, here.
It could actually cause people in Beijing to think once or twice.
Is China not a lot more dangerous than Russia?
Well, China has vastly greater capability than Russia,
certainly, but again, we don't see China invading Ukraine.
This is Russia invading Ukraine, and we don't see China responding.
In fact it is very interesting...
Not responding, then.
In fact, that's the way out of this.
If we are looking at the superpowers facing each other off
now in this bipolar world, what does
a China-America flare-up look like?
Well, I think it looks like something you avoid.
In all honesty.
If there is anything out of this, it should just remind everyone
involved, how significant it is when you roll the iron dice,
as Bismarck termed the decision to go to war, and how you don't know
what's going to happen.
When you think of all the people that predicted that Russia would be
in Ukraine and toppled the government in the first 4-5
days, only to see that not only are they not on the verge
of victory, they could actually be defeated in Ukraine.
It is a stalemate right now.
People are saying that no matter in a sense, what China does,
and therefore they can't afford, they are so intertwined,
trade wise, and also, they would be much more inured
to sanctions than Russia.
So say, for example, Xi Jinping in 2019 said,
about Taiwan, I do not want this to go to the next
generation to be resolved.
I want this to be resolved.
If there is an aggression towards Taiwan, what does
the US Administration do?
President Biden has said that he would come
to Taiwan's defence.
What would that mean?
Well, I think it means what he has said but let me say,
especially as a former official, this is a very sensitive topic and,
what I would say is that, if anything, again, what this has
shown is that it really is very, very tricky to make
that kind of decision.
And sanctions, yes, it would be very different with the second largest
economy in the world, the largest trading partner
for many of the countries, not just of the region but of the entire
world, again, including Ukraine, but there still could be
the prospect of sanctions.
There is very much the prospect of a very determined defence.
And, again, what America is trying to do is obviously to avoid any
kind of confrontation.
It should be in both countries' interests to do that,
and you do that by ensuring that the deterrence is enforced,
and the deterrence is a function of two elements.
These are the potential adversary's assessment of your capabilities,
which we are working very hard
to shore up throughout the Indo-Pacific with our allies
and partners as well, and make no mistake about it,
what we, uniquely, have in the United States,
we have to keep a lot of plates spinning around the world,
but we have allies and partners to help us do that.
What keeps you awake at night?
Well, there's a lot of things that keep me awake at night right now.
Among them are the possibility of escalation of the war in Ukraine.
Crossing the threshold for the use of chemical,
biological or nuclear weapons.
Bringing Nato into the fray, in a direct
Nato-Russia confrontation.
Obviously that has to keep you awake at night.
But there is plenty of others out there as well.
And again, you could give a list of all of these,
and it would include Iran, it would include North Korea,
obviously it includes the relationship with China,
because I think that's what really matters.
And I hope, again, that what will come out of this
is that people will step back and say you know what,
can't we all just get along?
You know, in the meantime, we will also make sure,
in the United States, that our deterrent capabilities are
as absolutely solid as is possible.
General Petraeus, thank you very much indeed.
Pleasure, Kirsty.
In a moment we will be joined by Anne Applebaum of the Atlantic, and
Jude Blanchette, but first I am joined by Professor Wan Weng, the
author of Great Powers Long March, good evening to you, Wan Weng. First
of all, we just heard General Petraeus said that Putin's invasion
of Ukraine has put Xi Jinping in a very difficult position. So,
strategically, is there a role for China in Ukraine? What are the
considerations? I think all Chinese believe that this is a tragedy, and
the Chinese never thought this would happen, and the Chinese people hope
to end the crisis as soon as possible. Secondly, most Chinese
believe that the crisis is very complex and cannot be described as a
simple invasion, so we sympathise with Ukraine,
with Ukraine, and Ukraine now has become the war agent of the US to
suppress Russia, and Ukraine is the biggest loser of this, so that is
why we are very concerned about Ukraine's people, Ukrainian people,
and China has provided humanitarian assistance. In China's views,
Ukraine's best strategical position is to become a bridge for the
exchange of civilisations between the East and the West. Let's be
clear, you believe that the US and Nato are agents of the war in
Ukraine? Xi Jinping, so far, has remained neutral. But is he in the
business of propping up Vladimir Putin, when presumably Xi Jinping
thinks the way that the invasion of Ukraine has been handled, whether he
agrees with it or not, has been catastrophic? I think nowadays we
should focus on the US. So actually we now have do know that the US is
acting hypocritical. So if Ukraine is a beauty, the US is is urging
this beautiful girl to break out from Russia, but as a result,
Ukraine was beaten, and many Ukrainian people died. So I often
say that the peace should first keep the US away, and the US is the
biggest troublemaker of wars.
biggest troublemaker of wars. So if that is your view of what is
happening in Ukraine, then let's talk a little bit about Taiwan,
because as we said early in the programme tonight, in 2019, Xi
Jinping made a speech when he said that the future of Taiwan and the
resolution of Taiwan is not something that will be left to the
next generation. Should China claim Taiwan, if necessary, and he did not
rule this out, by force? I think you cannot compare the Ukraine issues
with Taiwan issues, because Taiwan is part of China, you cannot very
simply compare. Firstly, Taiwan, for historical reasons, we did not
unify, but most all the people in China
China believe that uniting is necessary, it is inevitable. So two
things, two different things.
things, two different things. But, Wan Weng, if I can just ask you
about that, you know, 23 million people in Taiwan do not necessarily
want anything other than the situation they have now. Now,
President Biden has said that if Taiwan was co-opted against its
will, that actually he would counter that, he would come to Taiwan's aid.
Do you think that is a legitimate position for Joe Biden to take,
given that Taiwan wants to remain an independent, independent from China?
But I think one variable in these conditions, over the past half
century, the US has openly provoked was between neighbouring countries
ought neighbouring regions in other regions. Such as Iran and Iraq,
India and Pakistan, now Ukraine and Russia. So that the US can maintain
its own journey. So the
its own journey. So the next time the US will provoke other wars. As I
say, right now, just make America away with any differences, but
Taiwan issues belong to China our self, so this time we can very
clearly see that, through the hypocrisy of American credibility,
so just don't make the compare, yeah? Thank you very much, thank you
for joining us, Wan Weng. Anne Applebaum and Jude Blanchette, do
you think the US is clear about its role? We just heard China saying
that the US and the West have been the big aggressors in Ukraine, so if
that is the case, what do you think China makes of it? I think we just
got a very nice explication of Beijing's position, which refuses to
see this as anything other than through the lens of US - China
relations and sees Ukraine as a pawn, and I think that is the crux
of the problem for Beijing's own position here, in denying
sovereignty to the Ukrainian people, and at the same time trying to
support Russia without publicly stating so, it is in his very
awkward position tacitly supporting Russia but not having the guts to
come out and officially say so. So as a superpower, and we are now
talking about a bipolar world, why do you think, more broadly, China's
threat is of a different order than the Russian threat, although Russia
is perhaps more likely to fire a nuclear weapon? I should say that
that framing is undergoing a pretty profound change right now. For the
past ten or so years, China has been seen as the dominant threat owing to
its extraordinarily comprehensive power. I don't think we expected
Russia to act with such disregard for the international order, so
right now there is a discussion about moving forward, the United
States confronting a dual rivalry of China and Russia. But, Anne
Applebaum, when you look at the signals that are sent to Xi Jinping,
you know, 1997, sorry, 1997, the Hong Kong handover, that famous
fanfare, and what we have now is a crackdown in Hong Kong, we saw the
riots - the West does nothing, it is acting with impunity, and what
signal does that send? So, you know, what we are talking about is not
just China or just Russia. We are talking about a group of autocratic
states around the world who now act in concert and to watch out for one
another's interests.
another's interests. They have different ideologies, you know, they
might be communists, nationalists, theocratic, but they all have a
single enemy, and the enemy is democratic activism and the language
of liberal democracy. And we in the democratic world have not yet really
acknowledged that is what we are facing, and we haven't found ways of
answering either the crackdown in Hong Kong or the Russian invasion.
So how and who are the people to adopt these strategies? To deal with
them? All of us, it should be the United States, it should be Europe,
Japan, South Korea, you know, anybody in the democratic world who
cares about the persistence of liberal democracy, whether that kind
of civilisation will survive, it needs to begin to recognise that
what we are dealing with is not just China or even China and Russia, what
we are dealing with is a system of autocracies who work together, state
company is cooperating with one another, existing in the same
kleptocratic networks. Isn't the problem, dealing primarily with
China here, that the West and particularly the US are very firmly
entwined with China, and actually, you know, talking about this
earlier, sanctions against China would not have the same effect as
against Russia, and probably the US would not work in that way, so in a
way, China could be toying with the West, because there are certain
things that China might do that liberal democracies wouldn't do in
response. I guess I would make the point, I don't think Beijing has the
same level of confidence about its ability to toy with the West as a
data just a month ago. Why is that? It has seen an extraordinary
demonstration of unity among democracies, and I think it is quite
clear that Beijing's playbook is undergoing a profound revision, and
one final point. A month ago, you could read people saying the West
had lost to Putin and Xi Jinping, and now here we are, this is a
remarkable moment, and I think that framing is, well, the US has not
done enough. I think if you just look at the movement across what
Anne mentioned, it is unthinkable what we have seen over the last
month. The unintended consequence of the invasion has been a
strengthening of the European Union, a new confidence in Nato, and you
might also say bringing the UK back into the fold. Yes, no, everyone is
happy that the Ukraine wants to cooperate with Europe again, that is
extremely important. -- the UK wants to cooperate with Europe again. But
now we need to think about the strategy to win in Ukraine, not just
to push back, to sanction oligarchs, how do we actually win this, and
therefore rivers, you know, this rise of autocracy that we have all
felt over the last decade? The thing is, there is a squeamishness about
that, because there is only so far they will go. President Zelensky
repeatedly asks for the no-fly zone, that doesn't fly, because he is not
in Nato, and how do you stop Putin coming ahead, however
catastrophically? The objection to the no-fly zone is not that it is
not a night out, it is the fear of direct confrontation with Russian
forces, but there may be other things we could do. Why do we have
big military exercises in the Baltic? Why don't we do a Berlin
airlift to Mariupol or Kyiv? There could be more creativity.
Survivors emerged today from the bombing of the theatre
in the already devasted and besieged city of Mariupol.
The Russian word for "children" had been painted
at each end of the building, but those measures
still didn't prevent the theatre from becoming a target.
Today, while the onslaught on Mariupol continued,
a column of civilian vehicles was able to escape the city -
a risky exodus that was made despite previous convoys
having been shelled.
Some 30,000 people are reported to have fled Mariupol,
with about 300,000 residents still sheltering in a city
where officials say 90% of the buildings
have now been damaged or destroyed by Russian attacks.
Conditions for those who do remain have been described as "medieval" -
hundreds of thousands surviving without water, heating and
electricity for two weeks running.
The Ukrainian MP Oleksandra Ustinova was in America when
the invasion began and has remained here to give birth.
She has criticised Joe Biden's State of the Union address for its failure
as she saw it to protect the Ukrainain people adequately
by instituting a no-fly zone.
Thank you for joining us night. You have made no secret of your
disappointment with President Biden. But actually he has announced $800
million of security assistance, and the West stand is willing to put
more money into this, more weapons into this. Isn't that what you would
have expected? To be honest, when we gave up our nuclear weapons 25 years
ago we had some promises from the Western community, especially the
United States, the UK and Russia that if anything happens to
Ukrainian sovereignty and independence these countries would
step in so when we hear now the numbers of 14 billion to Ukraine and
the other to replenish stocks here it is not about the money. We keep
asking for the number one thing to protect our children, are women that
are hiding there in the bomb shelters, that are being bombed
every day by Russian jets with air missiles, we need a no-fly zone, if
you cannot do that, OK, give us the air defence systems and give us the
jets, we can do the no-fly zone for ourselves, but we need this support,
not just money allocation. The plight of Ukraine is beyond awful,
but if a no-fly zone is instigated the plight of Ukraine might not get
any better because there will be greater hostilities. My question for
you would have to be what was has to happen for this to be implemented?
We have thousands of people already dying every day, thousands, innocent
women and children, some of them dying injured on the streets when
they cannot get any medical help. So, at some point there has to be a
red line for the Western countries to say, this is enough. When we talk
about the no-fly zone, there are different ways we can do the
humanitarian airlift, we can be provided weapons and jets so that we
can defend our children and our cities but unfortunately when it
comes to the jets... You might have heard one of my guests talking about
Ukraine being a pawn in a much bigger stand-off between the West
and both Russia and China. What do you think about that? To be honest,
Putin has been testing the world, has been testing Nato since 2008, it
was Georgia then, then Transnistria, Ukraine 2014, so he's going as far
as he can because he goes the line. You think the West was very slow to
the party here, do you think the West was Lee not hearing what he was
saying? Of course, an example, in 2014, we had Crimea and Donbas
occupied, we had the same sanctions we had now, what happened now,
Ukraine might not have had that. Secondly, let's be honest, even
after the European Union declared that they will not be selling any
weapons to Russia in 2015, they were still selling them, 250 million
euros from France and Germany selling weapons to Russia after the
invasion. You are here to drum up support but also to have your baby,
do you think you will be able to get back to Ukraine before the baby is
born? I have my tickets back and I hope that my baby, she is a
Ukrainian, and I really hope that she will see the country, the
hostilities against this invasion and this will be the centre of the
Democratic and free world, that she is going to come back to.
So let's take a look at some of the front pages.
Zelenskyy's forces counterattack, in the times. Estimated losses of 7000
troops from Russia and 230 thanks. The Russians target Priti Patel and
Ben Wallace with fake video calls, says the Telegraph. And finally onto
the Guardian, Putin accused of war crimes as schools and theatres are
set. Also, Joe Biden actually called him a war criminal. On the
right-hand side a lovely of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and her family
outside in the sunshine.
That's all from us tonight, but do join us tomorrow night
for our final special programme of the week.
We're going to be in London.
After a week in which we charted the effects of the invasion
of Ukraine from Warsaw to Helsinki, Berlin to Washington, DC,
where better than this city to see how it will affect the global
economy and the way we all live?
That's tomorrow's show with Mark.
From Washington, till then, good night.