Steve Jermy: End of U.S. Military Primacy - New Strategic Thinking Requried

0:00Welcome back, we are joined today by Royal Navy Commodore Steve Jeremy, former strategy director in the British Embassy in Afghanistan and we also commanded warships in the fifth destroyer squadron and Britain's fleet air arm. Also he writes articles in some stack which with excellent analysis although they do not always conform to the state approved narratives but I I have left the link in the description and yeah thank you for coming on the program and also for producing your great articles so they're always uh yeah fascinating to read. Yeah it's a pleasure to be back on Glenn as we've just been discussing I'm hoping to be across in Norway in in November to see back on front so perhaps we can get the chances a little meet up again but yeah now I think the um the article which prompt me to get in touch with us to talk was um about the balance of power and I think it's

1:04quite an interesting one because as you immediately ping back um we're starting to get on to the land of McInder you know for some of your listeners and viewers will be about the real origins of geopolitics and the world and things like that and that will be fun to discuss. Yeah well uh we we can jump straight on to that though uh um well I do want to ask about uh you know how you conceptualize a balance of power and um and the the main factors of variables which should be considered assessing it and yeah I would mind coming back to McInder afterwards because I think this like they has kind of shaped the moderate geopolitical thinking. Yeah I was I'd been thinking about this for many years Glenn and I wrote about it in the strategy for action um and in in the book I sort of talked about the difference between the balance of power and the balance of passion and I'll come back to the balance of passion but I realized that more work was needed in

2:08terms of understanding the balance of power and the the starting point for me was um John Mishima's work of course uh and John actually says that potential power is a function of both wealth and the subpopulation size so the bigger the population the stronger you're likely to be uh and the wealth that you are than the stronger likely to be um I'd sort of narrowed it down a bit though to two principal factors when I wrote about this originally about 15 months ago but the more I'd been thinking about it the more I realized I needed to update that at our school and I think there were three foundational factors the first is uh what first is industrial production the second is energy and the third is the capacity to strengthen think and act strategically so taking those through I think what um people often talk about is they assume that a country because it has a big GDP is powerful and uh I think that's self evidently wrong because the problem with GDP is it is a sort of um all-encompassing figure that includes the service sector

3:14houses, finance and so on and when you look at uh for example the Russian economy I think about 30% of the Russian economy's GDP comes from industrial production whereas that factor in say the British and the French economy is much much smaller and of course it will industrial production matters because um you know you can you can build as many loans as you like and throw them against the enemy or as many insurance policies and throw them against the enemy it's not going to make much difference whereas when it comes to 155 millimeter shells then it is going to make difference and what we know is that Russia is out producing the whole of the west in terms of 155 millimeter shells and of course what we're looking at here is um economies and the ways that are essentially financialized economies and this is the distinction that Michael Hudson makes between an industrial capitalism and financial capitalism so um you know we're in the situation at the moment where actually we can't produce enough equipment to actually um support the

4:19Ukrainians in the Russia Ukraine war and the Americans are also having significant problems in the Iranian war that that's the first of the foundational foundational factors and I do think it's self-evident but it doesn't seem to be self-evident to our leaders the second is energy and again this ought to be self-evident um but the fact is that actually if you haven't got reliable sources of energy then you're going to struggle with your industrial production as the Germans are finding as they're de-industrializing by shutting themselves off from a cheap Russian natural gas but also you can't run operations without significant amounts of energy um uh warned operations are draw very heavily on energy I'm cited in the article that when I was in Afghanistan um I was even as a sort of an experienced um operational person I was shocked to find that to get one gallon or one liter of diesel to the front line in some of the provinces

5:21that uh British and NATO troops were in it took 400 so 400 and it gives you a sense of just how costly energy is in war I mean I can remember during the Forkens war we would we would replenish the ships about every three uh three days um I later went on to drive a 23-figure, 2021 frigate and we're a couple long side and get fuel every every three days roughly in operations and that would be 200 tons of fuel 200 tons of diesel I don't know what that equates to in terms of liters but it's a lot so war and operations are extremely energy intense so as indeed is the industrial capacity to support them um there's a lovely quote um from Admiral Yamamoto who before the Second World War said that anybody who's seen the oil fields of Texas and the um automobile factories of Ohio knows that the Japanese can never win a long war with the United

6:24States so it proved what what I'd miss though in those foundational factors was something which I walked to have thought about which is the ability to think and act strategically because you can be the most powerful country in the world but actually if you have people who are incompetent around the country then you're in trouble and to me I think we we lack now evidentially competence in the capacity to think and act strategically and I come to my um track record of um defeats if you like by the for the Western NATO and Afghanistan Iraq Libya Syria and pending defeats in Ukraine and pending defeats in Iran and I think that's that's unequivocal evidence that we lack people who have got the ability to actually think and act strategically I happen to think that if we thought all of those wars through properly um with deep thinking using a structured approach um that we certainly use in other places in the military that we probably

7:28would never have engaged in any of them because we probably would have recognized the problems so that's the foundational factors um what what it also struck me and I think it's profound as well is that um military power is geopolitically um conditioned so um in very simple terms if you've got a navy it's not much use in land operations and vice versa um but it's become much more important because what we're now seeing in both Ukraine and in uh Russia on the Russia of Crime War is that the West is unable to defend itself against sustained strategic bombardment by combination of drones missiles uh be their hypersonic or a conventional ballistic missiles um and this is beyond doubt I think we've seen in the work of people like Ted Postal that there are technological reasons why we're unable to defend ourselves I think there also uh other reasons

8:30I've written about this in the principles of air defense and the problem is that our systems and our four structures are not structured to allow us to actually operate in that way um that in term means that if you can't achieve air superiority that's the ability to use the air and to deny it's used to uh your adversaries that you also probably can't achieve sea control and that's the same thing except for the seas and that's your ability to use the sea and deny it's used to others and we just have to look at um the situation in Iran and in Iran we've seen that the United States has been pushed further and further west and even now I think the bases and Jordan I've heard damaged is it to uh I can't remember how many F-16s have been uh been damaged uh and I can't remember I think there's a uh an A-10 in true to damaged so those um aircraft are not safe in those locations so therefore American air power can't be used but so two of the carriers being pushed further back and so two of the American ships are being pushed further back

9:31now what what that then means is that you can't actually deploy land forces abroad because you can't deploy them to the mobilization places that are that are safe and similarly you can't deploy amphibious forces abroad because you can't get them to into the landings there and safely without sustaining major major levels of of um damaged your forces and the last bit of this is logistics because again there we're now struggling with logistics or the Americans are struggling with logistics as indeed is NATO um if you can't um achieve air superiority and sea what that means is that the whole of the American power projection uh model which is based on a strong air and sea force is now under question uh because it's not clear to me that it is indeed it is indeed any longer longer deployable so not mistaken the fact that it's still an extremely powerful um nation we're now in the situation that that that actually I don't think the Americans can

10:36deploy power in a way they used to and that in turn means that um you know the end the end of hegemony is indeed here because of course it relies on the ability to deploy power at a time in a place where you're choosing and the last bit of the geopolitical utility Glenn as well which again is a um it's what I call the balance of passion and I'm distinguishing here between on the one hand national power which is military power and the other hand political passion uh and what I'm really talking about is is looking at the reasons why Vietnam was lost and why Afghanistan was lost and in both cases it was about the um cause and the willingness of a nation to actually support a particular cause for which it's being invited to fight and in Afghanistan and in Vietnam I would say that the week of week of technologically forces of the Vietnam and the Taliban defeated um stronger military enemies and the reason is that the Taliban and the Afghans

11:38and the Vietcong and the Vietnamese were prepared uh believe much more in their cause and they were prepared to pay a much higher blood price than were the western forces that were arranged against them and so if the balance of power is against you then that in turn means that um the utility of your forces is reduced again we can see this I think in the uh US-Ram War where actually a relatively small level of casualties I mean I think we're in hundreds in terms of injured and just above a dozen or so in terms of killed in action is still a very significant political issue in the United States so much so that I think there's very little support for the US-Ram War in the United States so as a result of all those facts as Glenn I think we are seeing a profound shift in the balance of power worldwide and a shift from the ability of the United States and maritime nations to deploy power towards those of countries which are supported in this

12:39way so they have four structures such as the Russian four structure which is an integrated army with integrated air defense and the significant rocket forces and when I say rocket forces I'm talking about those sorts of rockets that we all often see in military parades in Moscow and in Beijing a large um transporter or transporter rockets because unlike the West are the Russians and the Chinese and the Vietnamese as not the Vietnamese the North Koreans and the Iranians have had these forces for years so they're at least five years ahead of us now would say probably more like ten so you know that the shift is here and I'm not understanding what some people might think um the fact that the the idea of having the United States on your side means in turn that you'll go to win is now a very unsafe assumption it's an unsafe assumption for Ukraine and NATO and it's an unsafe assumption for Israel in the in the Middle East well some of this seem to be have

13:48partially recognized though you know after the NATO backed the toppling of the Andecovich and you know triggering all of this conflicts in Ukraine we heard from Obama that you know reports that he was cautious or you know about escalating because he recognized that you know this was right on the board of Russia which gave Russia the advantage of logistics as you said getting material from the US to to to Ukraine that this is you know the Russians would always have that advantage if you're all the way in Eastern Ukraine you have any of your Achilleries being exhausted you have to ship it all the way to Poland to fix I mean it's you wouldn't have these problems um so you know he recognized that Obama did recognize the Russians would have this advantage but also what you refer to as this uh um uh the the passion that is for the Russians this is an existential threat so they would fight this to the bitter end uh while the West would be you know would be very popular to have any significant casualties which is why we also have to fight with Ukrainians uh what he did

14:53leave out of us the industrial might that because he kept I think he subscribed to the same McCain slogan that Russia's just uh you know gas station masquerading as a country this was I think as Obama's assumption why the rubble could be turned into rubble after 2014 but um and as you suggest this can be extended to Iran I mean if you look at the military mites we you know Trump keeps focusing where's their navy where's their air force but but but that's their advantage though they can make cheap missiles and drones they don't need the air force or a navy for that matter I mean they have but this is not uh the you know the the source of why they're able to uh essentially defeat the US and again like the Russians they see if we could reason this being and being an existential threat so uh the willingness to sustain casualties absorb the pain and keep on going this is understood not just by the state but by the public uh much like in Russia they capitulation might mean the destruction of the country so there's no other option but to

15:57fight on um I did wonder though in the the the industrial might because that kind of slipped out of our hands I mean the political west we we used to have this it just seems like in the 1990s when globalization kicked in we went for this new international distribution of labor that is all our trade agreements entailed you know we'll we'll need more IP protection while while our industries can be outsourced so again the US wanted to focus on take finance services that's where all the money was created and they could outsource their industrial production you know car manufacturing but also military for that matter and that this kind of industrial might disappear the idea was always you know we will make the iPhone the Chinese can produce it this is what the international distribution of labor would meant but but now of course uh you know we when as you say when it comes to producing basic things like artillery shells the Russians can out produce the entire political west combined so uh obviously we have to reassess

17:00that I focus on GDP alone but what do you think though the the US NATO or Europe or however you want to define the political west what what should the western leaders do differently um I think the first thing they should do is try to work out why it all went wrong and I think within the structure of the analysis there is the answer um I think you're right I think what happened in the west uh was that the slap we slept walked into this situation but we wasn't entirely sleepwalking because we were we slept walk but being guided by um two sets of people the first were the um first were the the Chicago School of Economists and I often look back to the foreklens war where um um thatcher won a major victory and as a result within Britain we suddenly saw a major breakout of privatization and the general idea was that um was the support of the Chicago School of Economists who were saying leave everything to the market and so you know the states stood back

18:04and uh we we left everything to the market and and I think that um the other people of course who were very happy to pick up that um baton were they um were the financial sector and in particular the Wall Street and the city of London and others um who were very happy I think there's also probably there was an element I think within the United States which saw uh that at least within China that this sort of um outsourcing to China made good sense for Wall Street but will say would help in terms of a democratization and drawing China into the um Western world but of course what we were doing was we were also um allowing Wall Street and the Chicago School of Economists to outsource our military production and on reflection probably not a good idea and I think that we were being seduced by the overall um the way that economists use GDP and people thought about GDP as a measure of power because it's a monetary term it isn't a measure of power as we're seeing

19:07you know we we can see a number of wars looking back I have all the ones that I've just ticked off from the twenty twenty-first century um what in terms of what we should do um I think it's time to take a really good long hard look through um this and other analytical lenses of what our monetary power really is because in the um in the in Europe um I think we're a little uh other than weak we're weak in terms of industrial production uh where weak in terms of energy production apart from your country and to a lesser extent mine we have no hydrocovines produced and anybody who thinks you can run a war on renewables then you know um you know welcome to fantasy land it's just a ridiculous idea and I speak to somebody who's worked in that sector so I think and the the the the last bit of it I think this is as important is to work out why we have made so many mistakes with our strategic thinking and I'm afraid a lot of it is to do with leadership then

20:11and we have leaders in both the political and the military sector and indeed amongst our defence officials and foreign officials who are not competent um I use the um analysis the way that I assess competence in terms of strategy is that are you effective in terms of achieving an operation are you efficient so did you achieve the operation with the level of resources that you allocated to the operation and where the results enduring and if you look at for example the Afghan um debacle and it was a debacle looking back you know we were there um the the west was there for over 20 years and native for nearly 20 years and we failed on all of those all of those metrics and as we left you know the Taliban were we're closing in on Carval and soon it was all over so the question is how did we get to that situation and part of this is is the simple thing of the

21:16inability to think and act strategically I'm I'm very fond of quoting um General Andre Bofra who's the French General who said in war the loser deserve to lose because his defeat must be consequences of of poor strategic thinking either before or during the campaign so it's the issue is one of competence and I think it's um important for western leaders and this isn't just about political leaders but western leaders to look across their establishments and work out why things went wrong and then work out whether they need to actually change systems so that they can actually get people into support them who are actually competent and one of the first things I would do would be to look back through all of the advice that I'd had from particularly the military and the military is supposed to be the leaders in strategy but in my my experience um they're no better than anybody else unfortunately they've some assume that they're better than

22:16anybody else and so they tend to be listened to I mean how often do we see people like Jack Keane on American TV explaining why it should be so easy to defeat Iran no it's obviously not but I think we've we've got a class of um militant to less through extent political leaders who are not competent and we need to actually go deep into that and and work out um how we can change that class that's not going to be easy and it's going to take time as well we've also got four structures which are probably now not fit for purpose we've got to we've got to also I think really look hard at these two wars um the the US-Ran War and the NATO-Russia War because neither we can win neither because we're weak across all of the um factors that I took into account and we are going to lose and we'd be much better I think to actually extract as quickly and

23:20humane as possible from both then on the other side of this we need deep inquiries to work out why it's happened but unfortunately we're going to be probably because we events in both wars in the middle of an energy shock or what I foresee to be an increasing in an image of shock in that in term will lead to a um significant economic shock so we're going to be doing it at a time which is not good but um that doesn't change the fact that actually if we're unable to do this competently then something needs to be done and that something needs to start at the top I think we're just starting to see a bit of that in Britain interestingly we're seeing what and detecting is a prime minister who doesn't support the um US-Ran War doesn't support Israel he's actually come out against them and I've got this intuitive feeling although um it's not yet backed up by anything said publicly there doesn't really believe in the NATO Ukraine war as well and the reason I say that is that he recently spoke in Parliament saying

24:24that we had to be really really careful about making sure that the domestic agenda was not um uh was not subservient to the military agenda and operations abroad now that may or may not be a some sort of implicit um um questioning of the NATO Ukraine war but it would not surprise me we're also just starting to see elsewhere in the mainstream media at last um people who are um wondering about about these wars the spectator which is a very well-read political um political magazine in Britain comes out weekly has said that that um Ukraine is losing the war and we're seeing elsewhere in the United States press as well uh these sorts of things coming through so the sooner we can extract our souls from these wars and then start to work out what went wrong the better Glenn oh now I think there's a good point that is when you lose a war at least

25:26you can reflect upon what was done wrong learned and readjust it just seems that after each war that instead the topics just changed so for example after the Afghan and the war in Afghanistan the the concerns seem to be that all this could break NATO because it's such a humilating defeat so we we just ignored it and then and move on to the next thing and I think once we're defeated in Iran or against war against Russia we're gonna end up maybe in a similar situation uh I mean it would be to our own interests I think to have a profound discussion not just about the current ones but also of Afghanistan what went wrong and also what was you know true enough Afghanistan as it was in these wars now is all the lying they they are very Afghanistan paper show the new things weren't going well and they cover it up so this need to defend or shield the narrative from reality why is this required and and you know it's just again something that can help us to

26:28reorient the strategic thinking because uh well as a title of a article you recently wrote which is the you know the whole myth of a US dominance is being a military dominance being shattered you know this is for me this is quite significant because after the Cold War as we know the US established a security strategy in thus also world order essentially based on global dominance or unipolarity in which no state or group of states should even have the realistic ambitions to rival the military might of the US I mean this this was our strategy this was the hegemonic peace but towards this end the perception of the US being all powerful was also important as you know other states had to make sure they didn't get in the way of the US or at least challenge it in a significant way but I think this need to project the image of being all powerful also means that any weakness can't be you know it has to be covered up almost because then the the image of this or

27:29all this you know massive power which is without flaws which no one can stand up against it it becomes so powerful itself that we can't actually discuss our own weaknesses and if you don't discuss the weaknesses the problems they just begin to fester and fester and I just think that you know as the US fails its proxy war against the Russia or the direct war against Iran and now we see that this perception of dominance has really collapsed and the you know the people in Washington were sparse to restore global primacy for you know for very good reasons are now very concerned but it's a you know if you don't address this you just you know you're just building up this huge dam but at some point the whole thing is going to fall apart but how do you think though they should well what kind of reforms or maybe that's a too simplistic question so it's required here because how do you shift the problem in strategic thinking yeah it's a good question I wrote it's a

28:38personal question for me because I wrote it's strategy for action and I the sub-tire was using force wisely in the 21st century my goodness me we've used force on wisely in the 21st century my goodness me but I wrote it because as I started to look at the problems in Iraq and Afghanistan at the time that I was right here so initially I was working in the chief defense task office but then I was actually in Afghanistan and the the striking thing for me in Afghanistan after about a month was that I had been to and despite what I was being advised to do by the British which was to go to Helmand and see what was going on there and my to which my response is we've got four and a half thousand troops there so I should think we probably know what's going on there I went around the rest of the of the campaign and the striking thing was that in both background which is where 80 second airborne were division were there at the time and there was a Spanish Italian headquarters

29:46it was brigade headquarters in Harats on the the west of the country and I talked to what are known in the Minotras the J5 the planners so the G5 J5 that's just one of the numbers in a sort of NATO headquarters division of the headquarters and in that I said to ask them the same thing I said what strategy are you using and these are all really bright young majors and they're chosen in the for the planners because they need the brightest and the best in those roles and they all look down at their feet you know sort of a one-star officer and all look down at their feet and say come on let do tell me and same thing from both sides same thing with the risen one we're just making it as we go on we don't know what the strategy is so we're just doing the best with what we got and I know this is was still the case in 2012 I think it was because Danny Davis and I have talked about this and he said it was exactly the same when he was there in 2012 so that we ought

30:51to have been looking at that I mean I spoke to British at the House of Commons and select committees and Britain about this and this inability to think strategically I think the problem I had them was there were just two there were two wars going on and so the database is a bit small now the database is overwhelming but it needs a general recognition and I just hope that the way that general recognition will probably play out it's a pity it couldn't come out more quickly but I think it will probably come out as the the totality of the defeat becomes clear I think it's the totality of the defeat in the in Iran becomes clear to Americans I think it's already clear to a lot of Americans but it's it we very very difficult to cover that up I mean it's amusing isn't it ironic I should say that the president is saying that they've destroyed the the Iranian air force and navy and yet so what because if your Air Force and Navy is being pushed out of the Gulf as

31:56the American Air Force has taking significant casualties on the ground and your Navy is under attack and is being pushed out of the Gulf of Iran then so what doesn't matter if you have if the United States can't maintain its superiority or seek control I think in Europe I would like to think that it will cause us these defeats to question two things I would hope that as the totality of the casualties become clear in the Russia Ukraine war particularly on the Ukrainian sides which we are almost certain are heavily under reported in the West but as those casualties become clearer and the people in the West who were responsible for the cheerleaders for keeping the war going at a time when those of us in the independent media said you should be thinking about differently about this I do hope people have the courage to self reflect and ask themselves the question whether they

32:59got that wrong because it's that sort of questioning that we will need to have but but actually if we can extract ourselves from both these wars then what we really use a really really big getting back to basics getting back to basics about what Armed Forces are for because the danger is that actually people actually see Armed Forces or we saw Armed Forces as things that we could use abroad to intervene how often have we heard that you know humanitarian intervention how many times have we heard that as the sort of of doing something abroad which rarely have ever worked but actually therefore defence and not for offence I think in as Europeans as well I think the one of the things we should be doing is questioning two fundamental pillars of European security the first fundamental pillar is the United States and the and what we have seen in Europe as the criticality of having the United States engaged in Europe I don't know why we're still

34:02having that as a pillar because the Americans have got us five in the national security terms in five on the priority list compared to the mainland USA as one then it's the the the Western hemisphere so that's the America's generally is number two China's number three the Gulf is number four and there's Europe at the bottom and they want Europe to organize its own defence anyway and I think we should and I can't think why we can't be able to do this and the second thing the second great pillar of NATO of security is NATO though and I'm afraid that the the joke that we used to use in describing NATO when I was in the standing NATO force Mediterranean which was NATO as to for no ability to organize has absolutely true yeah we've seen NATO intervened although really it was an American intervention in Kosovo which I was part I didn't see the what was going on at

35:03the time I'm ashamed to say but that intervention was done with very questionable legitimacy and in fact there's no legality because it wasn't had no security council resolution to support it but the legitimacy was very questionable then of course there was the Afghan war and NATO failed in that I also think this is such an obvious thing to say but it needs to be said is that NATO's role was to prevent war in Europe and we've had a war in Europe so NATO has failed so and last but by name is least NATO is now unable to win the European Europe the wind when support the Ukrainians to win the war in Europe as I've said before NATO exists to confront a threat created by its existence but doesn't have the capacity to confront the threat that its existence has created and I think it's time to really get back to basics about European security and a good place to start

36:07will be listening to Russia yeah Russia is talking and has taught unambiguously and for years about a common European home a data need for an integration of approaches security they've always seen the war as alternate ultimate end to the war will require a mechanisms in Europe which preventive future wars like this and the reason that I titled all to the article some time ago not the myth of the shadow myth of US primacy which has really caused me to focus on the balance but the article on the spirit of West failure was again it seemed to me that Europeans have done this before and could do it in the future yeah West failure brought to an end the 30 years and the 80 years war and you'll know much more about it than me Glenn as a as a as a as a proper scholar and academic but you know the Europeans did it then in very difficult circumstances and I think we could do it again I just hope that and I think that what will start causes to look at this

37:12will be the unfolding energy crisis leading to the unfolding economic crisis which will really expose in acute contrast the lack of money in Europe to be able to keep the Ukraine war going and I think when that happens I think there will start to be a lot of self-reflection I mean how will Europeans feel about cutting back on budgets for health on budgets for social security on budgets for the arts on budgets for education on budgets for for investment in the energy infrastructure which is critical to any modern industrial society so let's hope that this is how that it plays out and indeed that's my forecast is how the Russia Ukraine war is likely to play out which is that it will be the Europe the shock to the European economy which will finally force Europeans to the table but

38:12I hope that at the same time is being forced to the table that actually they're actually starting to think about all of the things that went wrong in these in these failures of the of the 21st century well what you suggested you know listen to the Russians you know this strange that is become a revolutionary idea or something controversial because you know as we say for more than 30 years they've been saying the exact same thing that is we need a pan-European security architecture you you can't just expand the blocks from NATO block you military block from the Cold War and they revived this Cold War logic and you know of course this is going to be a concern for us and somehow we I think it for for NATO in the threat of this even recognizing this argument is that it accepts that our opponents have legitimate security concerns so I just saw in the German Chancellor Merch's make this speech in which he said oh of course it's not NATO they're not worried about NATO

39:16they were worried about democracy I mean after 35 years of this and really this is still what they're saying but I do understand it because the hegemonic project must be framed as good as a benign hegemon of course for good as NATO would say so it's based on values so if you don't like our military infrastructure moving towards your border you are interventionism well then you don't like our values this essentially thing but it also extend or to be run because I remember when the Americans started going in in February I was making the point you know probably publicly that I don't think it's going to work because if you look at the intentions of the Iran this next essential threat they will fight to the bitter end and the capabilities they have the abilities to strike all the bases to shut the straitermost but we don't discuss this instead if you argue then that well then you're an a total apologist you don't care about freedom and what about little girls you know this kind of stuff and you know so if you can't see the world from their perspective you can't recognize such a security interest you can't recognize their strength

40:21because everyone has to be weak and hopeless I mean there's no reason why recognizing that the opponent is winning should be considered pro- Iran but this is what it's defined as and thus you can't actually say anything and it's same with the Russians I noticed you know if you said that actually the Russians are winning you know it's that's that's considered a pro-cremlin argument but why why why can't you recognize that the opponent as an objective reality is winning or the casualty numbers why do we all have to lie about it if you argue that the Russians are taking far fewer casualties that's also considered pro-Russian so you can't say it if you say well actually the Russians were provoked they they see this threat to the security that's a pro-Russian thing because you're seen as legitimizing what they're doing so I'm just thinking if you have to pretend as if they're losing if the only acceptable thing is that they you know they don't have any genuine or legitimate motivations everything is about you know military opportunism how can you analyze anything I mean strategic thinking does go down the toilet but I I didn't want to jump

41:28towards the Mackender point because that's one of yours Alfred Mackender I mean yeah more or less invented a modern geopolitical thinking I would say and of course Marcheva's thinking or organized around C power and in your article you do point out that the US has lost some of its I guess geographical advantages that is C power itself doesn't mean what it used to which kind of goes at the heart of the Mackender argument I was wondering if you could I guess unpack the Mackender idea but also how it applies to what you're arguing is currently changing well I think what what it makes interesting is the the tripolar world and I've often said before that the that we are now in a tripolar world by which I mean there are three great powers as the United States and notwithstanding what I've said about the balance of power that doesn't mean say that the United States isn't still an extremely strong military power it isn't extremely strong military power

42:30then of course you've got China and Russia and the people who sort of look down on Russia just don't understand or seem to be incapable of doing military analysis you know the Russian army is you know sort of gusting 1.5 million and probably the most battle hard on the army in the world they look at progress and they make a deduction that because actually the Russian army isn't moving at the speed which they and their armchairs would would have moved that it must be incompetent and again you get into the contradiction to Western Western debate here which of it is incompetent why we worry about it but anyway the the the issue I think is that and I haven't really sort of got to the bottom of this and it's the sort of these conversations which help that the issue is I think the Canada's the kinder said that I get this quite wrong so correct me for it but he said that who rules the who rules Eastern Europe rules Eurasia who rules or rules the the world island I think

43:32and who rules the world island rules the world so I think what he was sort of saying was that in that the two countries at the moment or what I would imply for that the two critical countries at the moment in in the world island which is Udorup Asia and Africa is how we sort of conceived it two critical countries are China and Russia and both in different ways and people often see Russia as a as the junior part in that party in that relationship I don't the reason I don't is that China's a significant importer of of hydrocarbons and needs Russian hydrocarbons and furthermore Russia is it might not be as big in terms of population but it has a fought a war against NATO a proxy war of course and and and and as one so it's it's there two very very powerful nations

44:32but I think the the sort of the issue here is that if you're the if you're still trying to retain in Germany in America then you're in big trouble because I can't see it how it can be done I can't see that that Europe could be defended by the United States I've said this before years ago and it's sort of talking about the weakness of NATO and our inability to actually protect our seas to allow us to to even to get American forces to Europe if the Americans had the political will to do which they don't but so to do locations such as Taiwan so do do locations such as South Korea and so do locations such as Japan so in all of these nations which have been part of the political west but which are now on the the periphery and I don't mean the periphery in a in a political way but a periphery in a geographical way of the

45:34world island will need to think very deeply about their situations um your your country my country Norway and Britain were both you know on that periphery and it's how we how we think about our future security I think good way of doing that is actually to go back to the OSE but but I think there's a lot of um there's a lot of thinking to be done going back into McInder's work oh and I got his book I've got to hear it's a tiny little book and I'm rereading it just to look at the implications of what I'd said for for the way in which McInder thought and wrote he I think he wrote for his primarily just about the time of the century it's on the last century um I think he died just after sometime after the First World War but there's a lot of really interesting stuff in it I mean some of it of course is dated but um the other person of course who's interesting here is

46:38Julian Corbett who was the maritime strategy is the better of the two maritime strategist I think he wrote some principles of maritime strategy but what Julian Corbett said and I quote this in the the the shatter myth of American military primacy article um he said that um the the key to your navy is not what the navy allows you to do but what allows your army to do because people don't live at sea and they don't live in the air um there's an open question though about trade of course and we're critically reliant at the moment still on on the sea for so much wild trade 95% of most heavy things are moved by sea that's just a question of physics um but that could be different you know with the railway systems that are that are being developed and the way that the Chinese are doing this um and indeed the Chinese who are becoming a major maritime pair you know this shift I think is profound um of course with China now as the as the factory of the world um and that the a good example here is um shipbuilding I think I'm right in saying I can't remember a 70%

47:43but actually China builds between 70 and 80% of the world shipping you know that's a factor which you know is staggering and the idea that we in the west are going to um recover that situation anytime soon is fantasy so I think the other part of this is working out how those nations that are on in the political west but living on the geographical periphery of the world island actually engage with the two dominant powers in the world island and I think this is a time for engagement which is less values based and more trade based and more practicality based and you know we may not like some of the things that are going on in um China we may not like some of the things that are going on in in in Russia that's that'll depend on your value sets now you look at it but actually if you I can look think about other nations that we've treated until now as allies many in the Gulf for example who are much more autocratic um than we see in these two powers and

48:47have do things within their legal systems which um which if it were an adversary we will be complaining about but because it's a Gulf state um who we um see as part of our allies were prepared to be quiet about it you know we see this in Ukraine as well some other things that are happening in Ukraine are both a corruption but also the way in which the as of um brigade and people have been doing things again very very kept very quiet so too is the press gaining of of Ukrainian people kept quiet and I think in part um so I've I've wondered a little bit of McKinner but I'll come back to in part they'll love this to do with cultural the way in which the Western politics so much matters about the narrative and amount has been but no I think there are profound changes going on here and I think that the um that the consequence in terms of the international relations between the political west our nations on the periphery of the world island and the and the dominant powers of the

49:50world island is a is the thing which we should be thinking long and hard about and thinking about it from a point of view of national security and economic security as well as just um militarily as the way we've been doing in the past um fundamentally um we're we're we're we're now in a situation where we're much weaker and we need to actually understand that and I think that um recognizing that that would perhaps start changing the um political discussion in the peripheral west and to discussion which is much more realistic and practical um rather than sort of values laden I think I think as well perhaps the last bit of this would be some self-reflection across the political west because my guess is and you may know this better than me Glenn is that the rest of the world get this they may not be shouting about it but the rest of the world get this the rest of the world will be watching what's been happening in Russia Ukraine they'll be watching

50:50what happened in US Iran and and they generally will understand what's going on in a way that we can't and we the reason that we can't is that we're in combat by a political narrative which is all about our values and if you're not standing up for us then then obviously you're you're part of the um the part of the barbarians on the gates of the political west um but no there's a lot of micken the thinking to be done here um um Glenn you probably do it even better than me I'm sure say but I'm not stopping on thinking I just think that article is just started me on the road working at what's going on in terms of international relations because we're entering a new era well if you want to as as you say the purpose of your article was to revive some of the strategic thinking and all the first step would be to recognize I guess how strong the ideas of Mackender has been in terms of influencing policies I mean I think it's in the US national security strategy of 1988 it refers to you know as you said the Eurasian heartland which was the concept

51:54of Mackender uh where where where the security strategy recognizes this was part of the reason why the US fought the Cold War this is why they joined World War II so to to suggest it's something only for the academics I think that's a big mistake but uh but uh but uh but it was a unique position though that the US and the British had before them that is that the the British was considered for the throughout the 19th century as being the guardians of the balance of power uh as a maritime states of the cost of the continental Europe and then the Americans took it over but the again the whole idea that um well the guardians of the balance are because the whole point was we can't let any hegemon or alliance appear in europe or eurasia that would disrupt the balance of power which would then allow them to threaten Britain but later the US uh again uh I always suspect that much of this thinking by a Mackender might have emerged already from Napoleon's continental system when all the Europeans came together um and then the idea was to

52:58shut out the British and this would essentially weaken Britain so uh so this was the land powers and uniting against maritime power and and also I think during uh yeah the war against uh well the Napoleonic Wars we also saw for a brief moment the Russians shifted side a bit and they started sending this Kossak army towards towards the British India and this was seen then as the land power expanding out of the periphery and challenging the benefits of the of the maritime dominance so so I think for this reason always this overarching strategy is of keeping the Germans and the Russians at odds with each other or splitting up the Soviets from the Chinese as Kissinger wanted all of this kind of fits within this thinking but uh but this is also a head of the Americans and the British were offshore balancers that is if you have big wars you stay out from the wars uh you know build your strength uh join in on the wars towards the end when everyone's exhausted

54:01and the purpose should be to restore a balance of power so there won't be one dominant state and uh again I think uh you know I think in the 90s we have to recognize what we actually did because this broke completely with it because the Bams made a was a bid for hegemony and you know it could have made sense in the 90s but when that hegemony is gone well what are we doing then the US is at inside Europe with with the Europeans with this very big ambitions which can't be met well you know they will exhaust themselves that was one of the benefit of offshore balancing you can be away and build your strength and also all the other rivals a powers in your ratio instead of balancing each other we'll start to balance the country with the hegemony gaspiration so for me it does make any sense at all I mean this reminds me of when I saw Hillary Clinton in 2012 arguing oh we have to undermine the Eurasian economic union that the Russian leads in Central Asia but but why would

55:03you do that this would create a balance of power in Eurasia now they're drifting more towards China is that good I mean if you're splitting the Europeans from the Russians the Russians are developing a lot more dependence on China if you ask the Indians to cut their ties with Iran now Iran is gravitating closer to China I mean none of this makes any sense I think by doing the less a natural equilibrium with the cert itself and you could have some you know the major powers would one prevent any other hegemony from emerging with China being the main one with the potential capacity to do so but instead this hegemony approach by NATO and the US it just seems to feed the last thing one once which is for a Chinese hegemony emerge if for me it's astonishing but there's no there's no real discussion so I guess as I hear just the last brief question well what would you do differently because it is I mean for me maybe I'm wrong in everything but the fact that one can't even discuss

56:07any of these things without being seen as undermining you know the benign hegemony of the West it's it's yeah it's very what's the one I'm looking for it's very limiting yeah it's terrible yeah it's terrible because we're actually we're not acting in our own self-interest you know I'd like to think that Europeans could do something here because the first thing to do is recognize the baller's power has shifted it's not shifting it has shifted so it's no longer the case that America the dominant military force and you know we're we're clear on that it's also the case that the the thing that we're people were trying to prevent has has happened yeah it's happened because on the one hand we were so so thoughtless in our strategic thinking and our sort of the way in which we thought strategically but also we were so thoughtless in our economic thinking so for two of those

57:08reasons we're in our situation where we have a very strong and unified hegemony between the Russians and the and the Chinese on the world island and so you know that that's an existential fact which is unlikely to change for at least a decade I would have thought not least for because as the Americans try to regate their military power the Chinese are just cutting off rare earth minerals and things like that which are critical to the maintenance of that power so you know this is changed and I think the question now is to as amongst all our reflections is to have to have to establish solid working relationships between Europeans on the one hand and Russians and Chinese on the other hand I'm sure when that's not we don't want to to stop our relationship with the United States you know those are familial and go back in centuries but equally the balance of power shifted so the first thing to do I think is to recognize that that's what I think the article

58:13shows is to recognize that and then then ask ourselves the question what does this mean and what it means there's some of the fundamental ways in which we thought about security in the in the post Cold War era are no longer safe you know what the two pillars of European security were NATO and the United States and I think both of those pillars are pillars in which I would not base a future European security security I base it on the overorganization of security and cooperation in Europe for my security and then start to think about my trading relationships and improving those with these two these two great powers because we in Europe without without working out what that relationship might like I think that we're going to make things worse and expend more and more capital human and economic capital on a failed endeavour which will end up with us even weaker than we already are what was it who said you said you said you know the

59:18the the weak the strong do what they will the weak suffer what they must we don't necessarily need to suffer but I think we do need to accept that Europe in in particular and the United States as well are no longer the the the the the string the strong areas of the world and then actually we're into a much more multiple worlds the wrong were but a world in which there is going to be a new dynamics as a consequence is the shift and the balance of power well it's always a great privilege thank you for taking the time yeah then just one more time I I did leave a link to your article in the description so I'll make sure to read yeah no terrific Glenn yeah look forward for the bit of luck we might build to see each other in person again in November but but hopefully we'll talk before then thanks Glenn you