Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "War Correspondent" Misha Zelinsky

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"War Correspondent" Misha Zelinsky · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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you just yet. Today on the show, not Vladimir Zelensky, Misha Zelensky, about the same subject
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that preoccupies the minds of both gentlemen, probably Misha a bit less than Vladimir. I would
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imagine Ukraine. Now, Misha is interesting is the war correspondent for the Australian financial
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review. He spent the first two months of the war in Ukraine. He's just about to head back to
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Ukraine now. So has some interesting insights about how that whole thing has changed over the
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course of the war to date. He was a union boss in Australia, perhaps not a boss, an almost boss
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of Australia's oldest union, the Australian workers union, the oldest blue collar trade union. He
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was the national assistant secretary. He wanted to run for federal parliament at this year's
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election, federal election. And he was running for the seat where Wollongong is based,
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which is a city in New South Wales. He's a very smart guy. He was a full bright scholar,
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his national security expert, needless to say, he's also a journalist. His political career was
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derailed in what may or may not be a cancel culture crisis. Very difficult to tell. 10 years ago,
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he wrote an e-book called, He's an asshole anyway, with a bunch of mates, which he describes as
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dating advice by a bunch of booth heads. And it was accused of being sexist and misogynistic,
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and it was a bunch of nude, blue jokes about blokes and chicks and sheelers and whatnot.
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And in a letter to the general secretary of New South Wales Labor earlier this year before the
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election, the young labor association of the region where he was running for pre-selection for
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the seat strongly condemned him saying that he portrayed a sickening and misogynistic view of
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women and that it's not an excuse to call it simply a joke. We don't spend a lot of time on that.
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I just want to give that as background. We do talk a little bit about the culture wars and about
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the state of the left, but he very wisely doesn't really take the bait on that. He's most interesting
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in his understanding of autocracy in the 21st century that Taiwan and Ukraine and the mind of
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Putin enjoyed this conversation with Misha Zelensky. Pardon the interjection, but a note on
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some context. This interview was recorded just before Vladimir Putin called up hundreds of thousands
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of Russian reservists to go to the front lines in Ukraine. You may remember that news. It was
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pretty big news last week. We talk a little bit in this episode about the possibility of Putin
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conscripting people right across Russia. And Misha says he thinks that's very unlikely.
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What Putin ended up doing right after we've recorded is sort of a halfway measure, not quite
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no conscription, but also not quite conscripting civilians yet. So if we sound clueless about that,
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it's because, well, it hadn't happened yet, such are the perils of the timing of a time-lead show.
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Enjoy!
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I think that quite a bit beginning to take off which was sort of the wildest bit of the hairy
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spit of the war those first two weeks in particular were very fluid and a very dynamic situation
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on the ground where the front lines hadn't really been set and there were multiple front lines
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and multiple attacks. So yeah, I'm just heading back there as we record this.
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And when you say you were there, you were in Ukraine for the first couple of months of the war.
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What does that mean? Where were you able to go? What were you able to do?
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Right. So I was in Kiev for four days before the war broke out. So I was there when the first
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missile struck, etc. And so then I was in Kiev for a rough of the first week of the war.
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And the majority of people, certainly media, sort of reconvene for lack of a better word
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in Levyv. And we could talk about how I got there which was a bit of a hairy process. And then
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from Levyv, which is a far western city of Ukraine, it's about 75 kilometers from the border
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of Ukraine to Poland. So majority of people if they didn't leave went to Levyv because the view
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was extremely difficult for the Russians at the time to get to Levyv. As we then subsequently
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found out, it was extremely difficult for them to do much at all. But Levyv was seen as a
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relative safe haven. There were missile strikes against the city while Star Wars there. There
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was no tanks on the ground, troops on the ground. And so from Levyv, I was able to push out around
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various cities, Ivano-Frankivs, Vinitsia. Both of those cities had missile strikes against their
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airports principally. And then I also went down to a place called Krivitig, which is President
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Zelensky's hometown. And so I did a deep sort of profile on the city. And the look of it was,
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a lot of people were saying, Zelensky is a Jewish comic, come Churchill in war later, and that he's
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sort of a man playing a role. And I went ahead and look at this town because it's like this Soviet
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tough steel town. It reminded me a bit of Wollongong. So the thesis was maybe he's not playing a role,
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maybe he's returning to his roots, maybe he's a tough man from a tough town. So I went down there,
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and that was right just above Crimea. So the Russians were actually very close when I went down
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there, they're about 10 kilometers away. So generally sort of able to travel around Wostals there,
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but what you tended to do was sort of anchor yourself somewhere. So that way you had, you know,
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I guess a point of exit. And what did people think at the time? Like when you were going there,
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what were locals feeling about their fate? In Ukraine? Yeah.
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Mate, it was like stepping into the twilight zone really. So yeah, as I was leaving
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boarding the flight, now I've got one of the last flights I suspect from Sydney to Kiev.
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You know, I landed there and you're reading about Russian troops on the north, south, and eastern
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borders of Ukraine, 200,000 troops, you know, war was imminent, and you're sort of walking around,
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you know, Ukrainian streets, Kiev streets, and it couldn't be more normal, you know, if anyone
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was listening, you know, any street, it's a cosmopolitan European capital Kiev, and so it felt like,
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you know, like it was Sydney or New York or any other place, you know, bars or full restaurants or
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full people having coffees, and you know, I was talking to my Ukrainian friends, and you know,
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they all thought, I was kind of a little bit crazy asking them, I do, I think there's going to be a war
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here, and you know, they would sort of dismiss it, and I think there was two elements to that,
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on the one hand, I think there was an element of wolf blindness or, you know, hoping for the best,
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and you can understand that, given what's happened, it's been absolutely horrific, so you can understand
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the want to keep it, you know, it's sort of back of mind and hope that it's not actually not going
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to happen, and then, you know, Putin effectively invaded Ukraine in 2014, so there's the annexation
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of Crimea, he started a, you know, a civil war or, you know, a separatist war, so-called Warby
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started that with Russian military equipment and Russian speaking troops, so-called little green
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menacee called them in the Donbass region, and so as a result, there was a sense of perpetual
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conflict with Putin, so everyone thought, well, he's already doing it anyway, so I think there was
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a kind of frog in the pod element to it as well. What did you know of Ukraine? What was your
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connection to Ukraine before the war? Well, like anyone, you know, I was, who foreign policy people,
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I was following closely in terms of what Putin was up to, and I was very concerned about, you know,
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the annexation is in 2014 with deeply concerning, the saber rattling more generally was deeply
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concerning, on a personal level, and my family's like Russian Ukrainian background, so we come from
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that part of the world more generally, and my family fled from Soviet Union after World War II,
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and so yeah, as you can appreciate, family trees out of that part of the world can be a little
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difficult to trace, but certainly there's family connections into their, my family's Russian
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speaking, you know, which a lot of Ukrainians are. So, you know, I felt that I understood the area,
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oh yeah, I know of the expat communities of Ukrainian and Russian descent, but more generally,
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my interest was in that kind of geopolitical foreign policy context. I've been following very
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closely this rise of autocrats, and we'll sing in real time, which is why I decided to go there.
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Hmm, and I think, I mean, maybe one of the reasons why Ukraine has been a weird thing in the public
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imagination in places like Australia is we don't know much about it, and you know, there are often
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wars in funny places like Yemen and African countries, and we don't know much about them as well,
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and I say funny, obviously sort of satirically, and there are parts of the former Soviet Empire
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that are frankly backward, and when you think about, no, you hear Ukraine, you think Kazakhstan,
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you think Siberia, you think whatever, can you give us a picture of what Kiev was actually
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like before the war? Well, yeah, I think that's right. I mean, people certainly, my Twitter
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mentions there were no one's talking about other conflicts, and that's right, and we frankly
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should talk about these other conflicts, but why did Ukraine capture the imagination? I think,
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you know, for cultural reasons, it was a land war in Europe, and it was, you know, contextual
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frame that people understood and people had connection to it, and a lot of people either directly
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or had family that had been involved in that in some way, and that big event, I think, is so
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culturally rooted. Certainly in the Australian mindset, but I think in the global mindset, but in
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terms of what Kiev was like, as I said, you know, it looks and feels, particularly Kiev,
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looks and feels quite Ruzo, you know, Kiev, ancient Kiev, where the first king of
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what sort of became the modern Russian identity, and effectively been co-opted by Russians,
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Ukrainians are very proud of that identity as being their starting point, but the Viking
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South down the river and started a society there in Kiev in the sort of early 13th century,
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and so I chose earlier than that, but the city itself, you know, has those large dome structures,
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you know, the things that you would expect to see, perhaps in the Red Square, and the things that
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in your mind are kind of very Soviet looking, but it's a very modern sophisticated city, and what I
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mean by that is huge tech sector there before the war. People who might use the startup called
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Grammily, I don't know if you see that ad for it, I think it's been all the time, these are
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probably means they tell me I can't spell, but it was founded in Ukraine, it's a huge business,
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multi-multi-multi-billion dollar business, and Ukrainian tech and Ukrainian sort of business
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aptitude was actually on the rise there, and unfortunately corruption was a problem that was actually
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what brought Zelensky to power, and corruption, frankly, in many post-Soviet states is a problem,
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some of those states you mentioned are still adjusting to life after the Soviet Union even still,
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and corruption was a factor in Ukrainian public life, and you know, as I said that was why Zelensky
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rose to prominence, because people would sort of got sick of that oligarch or other model of
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governance and that kind of cryptocratic approach to the economy, but overall, what really struck
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me there, as I said, people drinking coffee, bars being full, cosmopolitan restaurants,
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any type of cuisine that you wanted, like you would expect in any other European capital,
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but also this real entrepreneurial zest from young people there, every young person I spoke to
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was looking to start a business, or was like, you know, building a presence online,
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or had it was working about how to, you know, reach out into the West, into Europe,
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and to deepen their own skill so that they could start a business, etc. So it was really quite
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up and coming, it's real tragedy about what's happened there, because these scars that have been
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inflicted on the Ukrainian public and on its cities and on its psyche are going to take a long time
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to heal irrespective of what happens in the war. And what is happening in the war? Well,
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as we sit here right now, now you wouldn't want to overreach and say Ukraine's winning,
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but the war's turned. We certainly know that. I think over the last fortnight, particularly
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you've really seen the most monumental part of the war since the Battle for Kiev was won by Ukraine
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and lost by a vitamin Putin. So when he had to fall back out of Kiev, at that point it was clear
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that Putin wasn't going to be able to conquer Ukraine completely, right? So he was unable to achieve
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that territorial conquest aim of his. Still had other aims, which he was trying to achieve in terms
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of landlocking Ukraine, gobbling up a much as if it's economic resources as he could. But
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right now, the Ukrainians have been very successful in pushing the Russians out of the northeastern
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part of Ukraine. So they've taken back huge landmasses around Khadiv, which is in northeast. They've
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basically pushed Russians back to the border in some parts of the northeast. And in the south,
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there's a city called Horson, it's on the black sea, it's a critical black sea port. There's a
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huge battle on the way there and that's kind of pivotal. So everyone expected there was going to be
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this southern attack. What then happened was they kind of almost hit a rope at the top on the
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Russians. They kept talking about a southern offensive around Horson because they wanted it back
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as a desperate to reopen their southern seaports. But whilst the Russians reinforced the south,
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they were very cheekily, very cleverly planning an offensive in the northeast around Khadiv. And so
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they launched these two front counteroffensives and it had a huge breakthroughs in the northeast.
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The Russians effectively had a collapse in morale, had their lines penetrated incredibly,
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weren't ready for the style. The Ukrainians were fighting, which is very fast moving,
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very decentralized command structure. And so as a result, the Ukrainians captured territory,
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they captured more territory in a couple of days and Putin captured for the last five months
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of the war. Like all Putin's gains largely came in that first month. And after that, it's been
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very slow going and very heavy rates of attrition for Putin and the Ukrainians,
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attrition are euphemism for loss of life and injury. But the ability for Putin to go forward
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over the last five months has been very slow. That's why he's been using this bombardment approach.
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And so to see these lightning strike incredibly deep offensives by the Ukrainians and all the land
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that they've captured and still are capturing as we sit here, it's extraordinary. And as an analyst
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another who was sitting there watching it, it was moving so quickly that it was hard to keep up
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with almost. And you'd say, well, they're sure they couldn't be at this city. And yet,
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then a video would come up. And I encourage people to look at these videos because they're so
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emotional, you know, of the flag going up, you know, captured, occupied, Ukrainian, township,
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and those citizens hugging people, extraordinary, the vision coming out of there. But the ability
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for a relatively small country like Ukraine to push back a supposed military superpower
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like Russia was like something that we've never seen. I think we'll study it for a long time
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become. And I'm sort of a bit bemused and baffled by all of this in the sense that I can understand
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why there might be battlefield victories from by the Ukrainians. They've got a lot of military
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support. They've got a lot of financial support. They've got a lot of moral support. They've got
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a lot of economic support in terms of sanctions on Russia and so on. I mean, you know, the West,
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especially Europe and the United States are doing whatever they can. On the other hand,
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you're talking about the former Soviet Union, which has a lot of military equipment,
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a lot of fighter jets. It's got a lot of nukes. It's got a lot of, I would have thought
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Joker's left in the pack of in the deck of cards to play. Is there anything that Putin could be
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playing if he wanted to go nuclear metaphorically or literally that he's not and if not why not?
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Well, I think to start, why have the Ukrainians been able to succeed and why is Russia Fates
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failed so badly? I think in many ways, the lesson here is corrupt states in the end.
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If you have an autocratic state, they tend to be quite corrupted and they have bad information.
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So, I think Putin had been talking about modernization of his military and how they'd
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spend all this money upgrading, all their equipment, etc. Turns out a lot of it was stolen.
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All this training that had been promised wasn't really happening. People were
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faking the training, sending through images. He doesn't get me good advice. He doesn't get anyone
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challenging him. If you or I had a job for 20 years, no one ever challenges, we'd probably get
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bad at that job eventually. If you're running a country near a dictator, no one ever says,
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not sure about that. We're thinking about invading Ukraine and we're saying great
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idea boss. Otherwise, as we've seen, you literally fall out of a window. If you tell the boss
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that things aren't going well, people are getting murdered in Ukraine. I'm sorry, in Russia right now
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for speaking out on Ukraine. Now, in terms of the recent fighting, Napoleon has said basically
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that morale counts for every other factor combined and more when you're looking at war. So, in terms
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of military strength, capability, training, equipment, etc., morale is the key thing.
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And so, the Ukrainians are fighting for their freedom. They're fighting for their lives. They're
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also got an element of righteousness. Their cause will all be war crimes or shocking war crimes
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we've seen committed by Russian troops in Ukraine. And so, they feel like they've got a cause to
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fight for. Whereas, the Russians, they're either poorly equipped conscripts. They're increasingly
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recruiting criminals, literally, or they've been forced to fight basically out of occupied Ukraine
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parts in Donbass region. Those guys have been drawn in and said you must fight for us. And so,
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when you have an army built on those kind of emotional factors, when you see the oncoming
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troops that really want to win and you're thinking to yourself, I'm not too sure, you can understand
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why those guys, then morale would break more quickly. There's been reports out of
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out of Ukraine of Russians having no equipment, no food, having shocking leadership in terms of,
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now none of these have been particularly confirmed, but reports of soldiers refusing to fight
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or criticizing their commanders and essentially attempting, you know, many, many coups of their
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regiments. So, that's sort of the kind of on the ground conditions in terms of options available
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to Putin. Well, none of them are particularly good, right? So, the big one is the mass mobilization.
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And mass mobilization means an institution of a draft. Now, in Russia, life hasn't really changed
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the great deal. So, yes, there's the sanctions. Russians increasingly can't leave Russia and there's
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now visa bans in parts of the European Union. So, it's going to be very hard for Russia to leave. Yes,
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there's increasingly fewer Western products available to Russian middle class, but overall,
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Putin has used this wealth that he's got from oil and gas to insulate ordinary Russians. And
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his big thing is, you know, we can win this war very easily, we're a great superpower. Don't
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worry about it, we're going to win. Now, if you suddenly then need to institute a draft,
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that messaging becomes increasingly difficult. He hasn't even called an invasion, right? It's still a
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vertical, special operation. And so, you know, his ability to institute a draft politically,
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and I always say just because there's no elections, well, the revelations, but not proper ones,
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doesn't mean there's no politics. And he's very concerned about his support in Moscow,
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in St. Petersburg, where ethnic Russians, they don't mind the idea of the country being a war,
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but they don't want their kids going to fight. So, the Russians prefer at this point to have
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chechens and other minority groups doing the fighting for them. And so, Putin's ability to draw on
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those, you know, hundreds of, they got a hundred and forty odd million people in the country.
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There's a lot of people there, theoretically, you could draw in. He doesn't want to do it,
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because it's very challenging for him politically. It also takes a long time to train all those
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troops, equip all those troops, you know, it doesn't just happen overnight. And Russian supply chains
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are very stretched because of those sanctions that we talked about. They're unable to
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re-supply their missiles, re-supply their tanks, et cetera. So, that's that kind of question about
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what could he do. Now, of course, they can continue to bombard Ukrainian cities, you know,
22:17
more ruthlessly. We've seen that. Some of these, you know, Zelensky called them dead cities.
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I guess that's what I mean. I mean, you know, less about conscripting everyone in Russia to go and
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fight in bloody combat. And more about, I just assumed that the Soviet Union would have long-range
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missiles that maybe had been built for nukes, but you could have bunker-busting bombs put on them.
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And if you didn't care at all about civilians, which we're told Putin doesn't, you could just smash
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everything inside. You could get all every meagre in the country and fly it over until the skies are
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black. And it doesn't even matter if they're anti-aircraft artillery can take out 10% of them.
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You've got the wherewithal to be able to totally crush and demoralize and traumatize the population.
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I'm just not enough of a military expert to understand whether or not that's just, you know,
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me assuming that that Russia's military capabilities are more than they are, or whether that's just
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not feasible for some reason, because they've got anti-aircraft, missiles that are better than I
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understand them to be. But it doesn't, it doesn't feel to me like the second most powerful military
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or third most powerful military in the world has flicked the switch to go full on all out. Am I wrong?
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Well, okay, so like there's a yes and no, right? So, I mean, I think at the beginning,
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we did see it all in approach from the Russians. And what we saw is that they're not as good as they
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thought and they're not as good as we thought. Their inability to use integrated fighting,
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so what you described there in terms of integration between your ASC and on land fighting
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diabolically bad. So, you know, what you would expect is, you know, where you have air support for
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tanks and troops and naval sort of control of the of the seas, et cetera. They've just not
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done what you would understand in modern sophisticated army to do in the situation. But in terms of
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their capacity to launch type of strikes you're talking about, I mean, come to nuclear because I
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think that is separate. We should talk about that separately. They're running out of stuff. They're
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running out of stuff. Like, you know, they've fired a lot of missiles. And you know, they don't,
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like, we all kind of think, oh, we just build more. Well, those things take time, right? I mean,
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even even the West, as it's been sending weaponry through to Ukraine, no one expected a war
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of this magnitude. And so no one has the factory capacity really to be developing these things at
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rapid scale, at this rapid rate of use. And so, but in terms of air, air superiority,
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the Russians don't have it. So basically, now if they send in migs or helicopters, et cetera,
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there's a good chance they're going to lose a number of those. And again, they're very expensive.
24:53
Yeah, particularly the planes themselves, but the pilots extraordinarily expensive in terms of
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training. And so they're kind of on the horns of a dilemma because yeah, they could use those
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things, but they're likely to get shot down by Ukrainian anti-aircraft capacity. So,
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right. And then I suppose I'll do that. I'll do that next door. I'll challenge down. I'll
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certainly know it. And then I suppose there's propaganda videos from the Ukrainians showing the
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dead body of the fighter pilot on social media everywhere. And it's bad. It looks bad for Russia.
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Maybe you don't want to leave yourself completely undefended against the United States. So,
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you don't want to use up all of your military capacity. Yeah. I guess there's
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yeah. Well, there is certainly that element. I mean, yeah, if you're completely overreaching,
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you have, you know, very little military, you also got to have the capacity to defend the countries
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you said. And they even have drawn on divisions that have expressed defense mission. So,
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yeah, certain tank divisions, et cetera, that meant to defend Moscow have been deployed. So,
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the Russians are very stretched. I think Putin is shocked. He thought this would all be over
25:56
in 24 to 72 hours. We're going into the seventh month of the war now, the eighth month of the war,
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not too far away. And you know, Putin's feeling very, very stretched. And I think the Ukrainians
26:06
have been very clever in essentially using a rope-to-dope strategy, absorbing so much of the strength
26:11
of that bigger opponent, forcing them to use more might than they want. And then at the same time,
26:16
being nimble and clever in their tactics and really wearing down and corroding the Russian
26:22
capability. And you start to see the impact of that now. And so, one thing we should be watching
26:26
for is how much can the Ukrainians gain before winter sets in? Right. What about tactical nuclear
26:33
weapons? Well, that's a concern, right? People who don't know what tactical and strategic
26:41
nuclear weapons are, can you just explain the difference? Well, I mean, tactical nuclear weapons are a
26:47
term that somehow has been developed to say a small nuclear bomb. So, big nuclear bombs and
26:55
small nuclear bombs and the nuclear bombs that we would imagine in our nightmares of countries
27:01
firing them via intercollect, you know, intercontinental ballistic missiles ICBMs with huge nuclear
27:08
clouds over cities. That's the kind of traditional one. There are these smaller so-called tactical
27:14
nuclear weapons, which are still nukes, as we understand them, but have a smaller payload,
27:19
with a more localized explosion. But nevertheless, there would be a nuclear weapon to play for the
27:26
first time anywhere since World War II. So, at this point, Putin hasn't used it. I would,
27:37
I can't imagine a situation where he would do that because I think that that would likely draw
27:41
in a NATO response and, you know, get us into really kind of dark and scary areas. And so we've
27:47
got to hope that that doesn't happen. But I think one of the things that's on that question of
27:52
nuclear weapons, one of the things that's been most concerning in the way Putin has approached this
27:58
is that we've never seen before where there's been the threat of use of nuclear weapons whilst
28:07
arming a proxy in a fight. And so what do I mean by that is when the Americans were in Vietnam,
28:13
the Soviets were helping the Vietnamese, but the Americans at no point said, well, if you keep
28:19
supplying Vietnamese, we're going to nuke you, Soviet Union. And same as in Afghanistan,
28:26
when the Russians or Soviets were in there rather, and the Americans were helping, and no point
28:32
did the Soviets say, you keep doing this, we're going to nuke you. Putin has been saying,
28:38
helping Ukraine in a proxy war, so with weapons and money, et cetera, and training,
28:45
could draw a nuclear response from Russia. And that is kind of resetting the terms of what we
28:51
understand how you would use nuclear threats. And that's very concerning because he's trying to
28:56
redraw what's understood. And as a result, trying to, I guess, weaken Western resolve,
29:01
and you know, all the things you just said, Josh, to say, okay, we better not do this because
29:08
Putin might nuke Ukraine or nuke us. So therefore, we can't stop him doing anything. And so,
29:14
you've got to sort of price to some degree that threat versus, well, how concerned will we be
29:21
about allowing Putin to invade Ukraine or other neighboring states, or frankly, the Chinese Communist
29:27
Party in Xi Jinping would be a cave they started to invade because once you set the parameters of
29:33
we're going to do this, and if you stop us, we're going to nuke you. You're in a very, very bad
29:38
place. So using that, I think, it's been one of the less talked about features of this war.
29:44
And it's good, I think, that the West has not really buckled to that threat because it would
29:48
really reset the way we understand geopolitics and to be problematic going forward to say the least,
29:55
if water crowds can use that threat to do whatever they want. But, you know, we should
29:59
continue to be concerned about it. One thing I would say to this, if you are worried about nukes,
30:05
I see it as a projection of weakness personally. If the war is going well, the war is going well,
30:14
you wouldn't be talking about nukes, right? Sure. The Americans at no point, even when things
30:20
weren't going well in Iraq or Afghanistan and no points said, well, you know, Jesus, we might
30:25
have to get the big stick out. Thank God, right? They haven't done that and no other country has
30:31
done that. So also, you know, whilst Putin is a dictator, there are people around him. One would
30:38
hope that, you know, if he decided, look, you know, what, let's deploy nukes, that they may stop him.
30:45
Having said that, maybe that didn't stop him from invading in the first place.
30:48
Well, right, right. So I mean, you know, that's certainly a problem.
30:54
Because I'm interested that you, that your flags Taiwan and Xi Jinping and earlier in the,
30:58
in the chat machine, you said that you're interested in the rise of autocrats around the world.
31:02
And I noticed that Joe Biden just said for the fourth time this year that America would come to
31:09
Taiwan's defense if China were to invade and then hastily after he says that every time the
31:15
White House releases a statement saying that U.S. policy on Taiwan hasn't changed. The first
31:19
time he did it, I thought he might be a bit of a dottering, you know, having a senior moment
31:23
and just sort of missarticulating himself. But the fact that he's done it four times this year,
31:28
makes me feel that there actually is a clear shift or at least a shift in emphasis if nothing else
31:34
in America's position on Taiwan, which is that the strategic ambiguity is a bit less ambiguous
31:40
than it had been previously and is now a firm commitment to the status quo.
31:44
What do you make of that and of what Ukraine tells us if anything about Taiwan?
31:50
Yeah, it is an interesting question about what happens in Taiwan. So strategic ambiguity is
31:55
this U.S. policy of, well, we might protect Taiwan if there's an invasion. So it's this
32:02
hypothetical, you know, it's a proposition based upon a supposition. If you want to put it like
32:06
that, so, you know, deliberately the U.S. gives itself a bit of wiggle room. Now, of course,
32:11
there is a defensive Taiwan act which authorizes the United States to arm Taiwan and the U.S. has
32:18
been arming Taiwan really for multiple decades now to make sure that it's able to resist Chinese
32:25
Communist Party threats. Now, increasingly, Xi is saying we're taking Taiwan one way or another.
32:32
Now, they, of course, say we'd like to do the nice way, but, you know, we're going to take it and
32:37
they've undertaken pretty much the largest build-up in military ever. Certainly since World War II,
32:43
but almost in history, the build-up has been extraordinary and one of its principle aims is that
32:48
reuniting, so-called reuniting of Taiwan with the mainland, of course, Chinese Communist Party
32:53
has never actually controlled Taiwan. It's always been an independent governed island of democracy
32:59
really since the 80s and since the Civil War, the CCP has never been there. But, in terms of
33:05
Joe Biden, it is an interesting point. A lot of people focus on what Biden's saying. He's saying
33:10
if Xi Jinping and the CCP invade Taiwan, yes, the United States would come to Taiwan's aid.
33:16
And people are saying this is a change in US policy because he's not being ambiguous. He's being
33:21
clear. I think really the person that's changed the calculus in Taiwan is Xi Jinping.
33:30
Up until now, the question of Taiwan has sort of been unresolved and it's been done in this sort of,
33:36
yes, there's one China, but we don't want to see a war there. We would like to see a democracy
33:42
stay in Taiwan. That's a position of Australia, one China, but respecting Taiwan's right to exist.
33:50
And everyone sort of talks around the problem. Now Xi Jinping comes at power in 2013 and since then
33:56
has really been upping the rhetoric and the saber-addling against Taiwan to the point now, where
34:02
pretty much every day they're conducting military drills or flying aircraft into Taiwan's airspace
34:10
and essentially continue and also fueling political warfare, misinformation campaigns and just
34:17
constantly putting the Taiwanese people under a stress. And so, in my view, a lot of people
34:24
focusing on what's Biden saying about the US position, but frankly, if you want to know who killed
34:29
strategic ambiguity Xi Jinping by constantly talking about invading Taiwan and he does,
34:35
you know, the rest of the world has to start to price it into its own thinking about, well, what would
34:40
we do? And to give an example, a very real example, on the mainland China, the CCP have built a
34:49
dummy of Taipei to continually practice invasions of it so that the capital of Taiwan, they run
34:56
invasion drills on it, so if you're the Taiwanese and the Taiwanese have been running around,
35:02
rightly so, around the world saying, hey, help us out guys, we've got this very marauding threat
35:09
right on our coastline. And, you know, way, I look at it as an Aussie is, you know, that's an
35:16
island democracy of nearly just under 25 million people being managed by the CCP. We're in a pretty
35:23
similar position as Australians and, you know, Ukraine feels a long way away. Taiwan, where is that?
35:30
But if we, the role we, you know, the free liberal societies, West, whatever you want to call it,
35:37
start to allow democracies, thriving democracies, be gobbled up by autocrats because they don't
35:43
like them, that's problematic for a small country like Australia in a middle power, where we need
35:49
the world to be safe and stable to survive, right? And if it becomes a mighty right environment,
35:55
down the bottom of the world, Australia, with a very, you know, an imperialistic
36:01
autocratic, increasingly totalitarian CCP with global ambitions is not in our interest. And so,
36:06
we need to make sure that autocrats like Putin and Xi don't think that it's in their interest
36:11
to invade countries or neighbours or areas that they believe falsely belong to them.
36:16
It's these narratives of, well, these things always belong to us, we should be able to take
36:20
them back, Putin with Ukraine, Xi with Taiwan. And it's important to bust those narratives
36:27
as much as anything else. You tried to become a federal member of parliament this year, you
36:32
wanted to run for pre-selection for the Labor Party, is the Labor Party and the Left Broadly
36:36
in places like Australia and the Democrats in America on board with this vision that you're
36:42
talking about. I mean, you can speak freely because you're not an MP, but, you know, there is a
36:46
concern in Australia that the Left tries to have it both ways and doesn't want to be seen as being
36:51
racist towards China, doesn't want to be seen as tub thumping and chest pumping and chest pounding,
36:56
you know, and bullying. So, wants to kind of placate the Chinese. Can we have it both ways?
37:04
Well, I'd say it depends on, you know, not to get into an esoteric talk about my side of
37:09
politics, but which part of the left are you talking about? I mean, we just talked about Joe Biden,
37:12
who's a Democratic president, arguably changed US policy about the defense of Taiwan. So,
37:18
Joe Biden's got no illusions about the threat of the Chinese Communist Party or Putin and all the
37:24
weaponry that they've been sending to Ukraine, and that's been bipartisan and supported. And,
37:28
frankly, in Australia as well, we've made the biggest contribution outside of NATO allies to Ukraine,
37:33
and so we've been sending a lot there because it is for all the reasons that I've just said in
37:38
our interests collectively. And I think certainly, as a Labor Party member, I've been very pleased to
37:44
see the things that Australia has been doing to support Ukraine, but also the continuity of policy
37:49
in terms of acquisition of subs, orcas, et cetera, and understanding that threat in our region.
37:55
But unfortunately, you know, there are parts of, you know, called inverted commas of the left,
38:00
or people in progressive side of politics that see or war is unnecessary. And look,
38:07
mate, I wish none of this was true when I talk about these threats from the autocrats. I
38:11
wish it wasn't a true as well, but, you know, pretending it doesn't exist, doesn't make it any less
38:15
true, Josh. And that's the problem, right? So, as we've seen this bad behavior on the increase,
38:22
and whether or not I don't believe this is one side of politics, I think all sides of politics,
38:26
there's been engaging a policy of wishful thinking that hopefully this will somehow resolve
38:31
itself, and the bad behavior has just increased and increased, and unfortunately, the lesson for
38:36
us all with the Ukraine invasion is bad behavior, if tolerated, only triggers worse behavior.
38:43
And so, I think world's woken up to it. Thank God. And so, you know, if you want to bring it to
38:51
an Australian context, you haven't seen any real big changes from the Labour Party in terms of
38:56
its approach to supporting Ukraine, even though we're not an Ato ally, or, you know, uping our
39:03
acquisition of nuclear subs, et cetera, principally. I mean, they weren't going to back out of the
39:09
biggest flagship, you know, foreign policy event that had happened in a generation by backing out
39:16
of the nuclear submarine deal with the US and the UK after it had been so controversial. I mean,
39:20
I guess the question is more a rhetorical one, and the emphasis that you put in a concern that
39:25
maybe the current foreign minister of the Central Left Party is more conciliatory towards Beijing
39:31
than the Central Right Party had been. Yeah, look, I think the government has done all the right
39:37
things. Anthony Albanese went to Kiev, which was great to see, and I think it was really
39:43
appreciated by the Ukrainians. You've seen Penny Wong going around the Pacific, which I think
39:50
is really important. If you look at where we, the Royal Weas Australian Government has dropped the
39:54
ball, it's in our engagement in the Pacific. And I think during the election to see the fact that the
40:00
Chinese Communist Party are looking to build, let's call it what it is, a base in the Solomon Islands,
40:05
which is 2000 kilometers off our shore, which is basically effectively in our backyard. That is
40:11
extraordinarily troubling. And how we've allowed that to happen is a collective failure. And so,
40:18
but I think to broaden it out, not to keep it into party politics, there is a challenge on the
40:26
left in terms of people see that, you know, Western imperialism, if you want to call it, that is at
40:33
fault for everything and that other countries have no agency. And so they will say, oh, well,
40:40
you know, the US did this and therefore all other countries have done that. And they almost take
40:45
it as an approach of my enemy's enemy is my friend. And that's very foolish. And unfortunately,
40:50
that, you know, you've got to look at what, you know, the bad guys are saying, I say, look, you
40:54
don't have to believe me, but at least believe Xi Jinping, they're saying it more openly. They're
40:59
talking about a long, long struggle against the West, and they're talking about in ideological terms.
41:06
And so I think what happened after the end of the Cold War, unfortunately, was we thought it was
41:11
all over and everyone has forgotten how to think about things outside of economics. So outside of
41:17
what does this mean for trade, people can't think in terms of ideology anymore. And what you're
41:22
dealing with in the CCP, particularly, but Putin as well, is that you're dealing with highly
41:26
ideological regimes that see the world very, very differently to us. We've got to be real about
41:31
that rather than pretending that it doesn't exist. And you know, that if we somehow don't acknowledge
41:38
the fact that China is trying to militarize us to South China, see or build a basin in the Solman
41:44
Islands or conduct foreign interference operations into our politics, that if we ignore these things,
41:50
somehow that China will be grateful for that and that it will leave us alone is just the
41:56
triumph of wishful thinking. And unfortunately, this horrific war in Ukraine is exactly where that
42:02
kind of thinking gets you. What do you make of the faction of the left that engages in that
42:07
willful thinking? Is there a moment I speak off from on this show about the, I guess, the struggle
42:12
for the heart and soul of the heartland that the left is sort of undergoing, that they're,
42:18
and this is less relevant at the top levels of the parties, you know, at the level of Anthony
42:23
Albanese or Joe Biden and more at a grassroots level, where you've got a lot of passion for
42:28
traditionally marginalized communities who have identities that people can easily think of as
42:35
being traditionally oppressed. And you have much less energy around traditional left-wing notions
42:40
of fairness and equality in an economic sense, less notions of tackling inequality of social
42:47
justice and so on and more of an obsession about racial and gender justice. That's one of the
42:54
things that did in your pre-selection. Can you tell us about that, that snafu and what it taught
43:00
you? So, well, that was a bit of a long line up there in terms of the national security questions
43:07
et cetera, but maybe we can take them in order, but just quickly, I mean, I think
43:12
no left to send a party can ever hope to win an election if it doesn't have good answers on
43:17
national security and people are right to want their government to have good answers about keeping
43:23
them safe and they want their communities to be safe and their country to be safe and I think,
43:28
you know, you've got to really be able to answer those two headline questions of
43:31
kitchen table economics, keep an economy going and keep it going in the interests of people
43:36
and then being able to defend the country if it's required. Now, hopefully it never comes to that,
43:42
but certainly that is, you know, something that you, it's kind of the ticket to play, you know,
43:50
it's not going to guarantee that you win an election, but it's the necessary but not sufficient
43:55
condition if you can call that. So, if you're not able to answer those two tenants of sort of
44:03
people's concerns at a national level, then you're really never going to win an election. In terms of
44:08
this rise of identity politics, if you want to call it that, what I'd say about that is,
44:17
I think like anything, there's a lot of merit to the critique that people bring forward. Now,
44:23
what I mean by that is, has there been issues of racism in many countries, particularly the
44:28
United States with this history of slavery, etc. Has there been problems around that? Look,
44:36
yes, absolutely. But then when it's taken to its logical conclusion of treating everybody as
44:41
separate, it actually can be very disruptive for politics. What I also would say more generally
44:47
to people who might be progressive that are listening is that culture wars are designed to be a
44:52
distraction. They're triggering by their very nature. They lead to a lot of shouting from people,
44:58
you know. Veggie might's been banned. Well, what? And then they get on the phone and start screaming
45:04
at somebody and then they scream back at you and it's very counterproductive and very disenfranchising,
45:10
I think, for the people that we need to reach. But what it also masks and you sort of touched on
45:16
that. But fundamentally, you know, I'm a trade unionist, but I'm someone that believes in
45:22
making sure people are able to have a good life. And what it masks is, I think, what the true
45:29
fault lines in society are, which is who has money and who doesn't and tends to be, you know, a lot of,
45:33
there's a lot of focus in that critique in people that if you want to call it identity politics say,
45:39
well, who has power, who doesn't? Well, who has money has power? And frankly, when we get
45:45
trapped into these fights, which are a distraction, these culture war fights, and we all know what they
45:51
are because if you go on Twitter, you can see them on Facebook, you can see them. When you talk
45:55
about the reasons for that, they can be distraction and they're kind of confetti in the air from the
46:01
main game. There was a stat that came out just recently, which is unbelievable. It was a study done by
46:06
the Financial Times, British paper, saying that many people in advanced democracies now,
46:12
fortunately, Australia is not yet there yet, but we are heading that way, have lower qualities of
46:17
life than many quite poor countries. And the example they use in, you know, italking them is
46:22
the bottom 20% of that country now have worse lives than people living in Slovenia, which is
46:29
quite a poor country in Eastern Europe. And so that, to me, is the main game. Now, it's not to say that
46:34
there's not worthy things that need to happen. And I think someone like Bob Hawke got it right.
46:40
I want to look at Bob Hawke. How was he able to do things like helping Indigenous people do
46:45
huge environmental things, you know, lock up the Antarctic as a national park? All these things
46:50
that buy today's standards would be invertecomers' work politics. Was that they got the kitchen
46:54
table stuff right? They had honest conversations with people. And, you know, there was no sneering,
47:02
you know, because I do think the left to centre parties can be capable of sneering at people
47:05
and saying, if you don't agree with this view, if you have a small social conservative view,
47:10
you're a bigot. And that's never a great message. It's just a shocking way to approach any
47:14
conversation. But there also is no pandering. And I think a lot of people, when they look at the
47:20
identity politics stuff, say, well, hang on a second, we need to pander to people with bad
47:25
views. Well, you don't need to pander to them, but you can have an honest conversation with people
47:29
and challenge them on views without saying, you are a bad person for having this view. And I think
47:35
getting that mixed right is a critical piece. And, you know, being able to find a way to have,
47:42
you know, conversations amongst ourselves where we're not treating other people like an enemy.
47:46
And I think that really is one of the biggest problems is we take everyone on
47:52
worst faith. So anything that anyone says that's absolute worst faith assumption.
47:56
And therefore, not only do I disagree with you, you are now my enemy. And so,
48:02
Barack Obama talked about saying he says, you know, we need to learn how to disagree without
48:06
being disagreeable. And, you know, I call it being civil. In a civil society, we need to be
48:11
civil to one another. And we've really unfortunately lost that ability. And it's been very, very
48:16
corrosive to our societies. You know, we've talked about, you know, left wing politics in that context,
48:22
but you look at what's happening to right wing politics in the United States and around the world.
48:26
And it's become so crazy in toxic. And it's very difficult to see how these two extreme parts of
48:33
our politics are shaping so much of what the majority people want, which is to have a decent life.
48:38
And I think the sooner that people that have ordinary kind of approaches to life get more involved
48:46
in either side of politics, the better. Did you feel that the people who who disagreed with your
48:51
pre-selection on the basis of that e-book that you wrote in 2012 were wrong? Or did you regret the book?
48:57
Oh, look, I mean, I, you know, this is a podcast and no one can see me cringing, but, you know,
49:02
I, I, you know, in my youth did a silly thing where I, you know, wrote a daily advice book with a
49:09
couple of knuckleheaded mates and there's a very bullfaded effort. I've obviously apologized for
49:14
that on a number of occasions. And look, you know, I think going back to what I was saying, I think,
49:19
I don't believe that there was any sort of cancel culture thing at play here was more that you
49:24
you've made these jokes. They were off-color and they were bad and you should apologize for which I
49:28
of course did. You know, I think there's an element of intent versus execution. We hoped that it
49:33
would be a lighthearted approach to dating. We weren't trying to offend people. We obviously did
49:38
and I've certainly apologized for it. I'm happy to do that again now, Josh.
49:42
I mean, I was not a cancel culture thing. I mean, I don't know because I haven't read the book,
49:46
so I don't know whether or a misogynist, but the pointer isn't the, you know, and who knows
49:54
where the cancel culture is a useful term at this point or not, but the point about cancel culture
49:58
from those who are concerned about it or who believe in it is that instead of addressing the
50:03
specific concern, you're saying that the person who's responsible for producing the item of
50:10
concern has to be excommunicated from all kinds of completely unrelated professional duties,
50:16
like fired from their job or prevented from pre-selection. Isn't that the definition of cancel
50:21
culture? Yeah, and as I said, I don't think that that's what happened to me in this occasion.
50:26
I think, you know, I mean, you were pushed out of pre-selection because of something that you'd
50:30
written that was off-color. Well, that, well, that was one of the reasons I suppose if you want to
50:34
call it that, there were other things that play as well, but ultimately I was unsuccessful the
50:40
locals, which is their absolute right, and you know, my hometown won't go on to show somebody else
50:46
and she's going to go on to do a great job, and that's just how politics works. But so this is
50:49
what happened to me. Look, people again have weaponized things in politics, right? And unfortunately,
50:56
that did happen to me where people, I think, took things at their absolute worst face value and
51:01
used them, you know, against me in a political sense. And, you know, I did that to myself. I
51:05
have to own that and we all have to own our own stories. And I pulled my hand up and said,
51:09
I did the wrong thing. And most people I speak to, you know, accept that, right? And I think,
51:13
again, coming back to my point about, if you want to use the cancel culture context for culture wars,
51:19
I think the majority of people get quite exhausted by this sense of everyone has a ton of
51:24
bricks coming down on them. But if they did something wrong, I think, you know, if you apologize
51:30
and you try to atone for something, then I think, you know, we teach everybody that, you say,
51:34
listen, you know, your life's not over if you did something wrong. Your life is how you respond
51:39
to the wrong thing that you did. And so, look, put my hand up, said it was the wrong thing to do,
51:45
extremely embarrassing. And I've had to endure rightly a lot of public criticism. It's very
51:50
embarrassing to go through that. And it caused me to grow a lot as well, Josh, you know, I kind of
51:56
reflected quite a bit. Now, this is a very, very long time ago. It actually has come out in the
52:00
past. Incidentally, only tends to come up when I put my hand up for pre-selection. But people
52:05
can make of that what they will. But it caused me to grow as a person, you know, I reflected on
52:10
what sort of man do I want to be. Is this how I want people to see me? And, you know, I don't
52:15
have those views. And, you know, I don't look at it as, certainly wasn't a PhD on gender studies.
52:20
It was a lighthearted dating advice book that was poorly executed by some bullfeds myself included
52:26
and you got to own that in terms of how people treat you. Well, all I'd say is we need to think very
52:32
carefully in society about do we want people to correct course or do we want to excommunicate?
52:38
And I think that's a general conversation for society to have. And I think most people,
52:43
this is a thing, you know, the conversation on either side of politics is very dominated by
52:50
kind of a symbiotic relationship between two very loud people that need one another.
52:55
The shock jox on either side of life need one another. They're in a tailspin and
53:01
the rest of us that don't like life to be like that, they would rather say, well, look,
53:05
let's take people as they are. Let's look at the gray, you know, let's understand what the issues
53:11
are playing. Let's treat each other with little humanity. And, you know, if you do make a mistake
53:16
in life and you are able to own up to it and are able to correct for it. And I've done things in my
53:21
career which people can look at where I've tried to atone for that, you know, in supporting young
53:27
women and leaders, etc. And, you know, at no point if I try to defend it, I've always apologized
53:32
and I hope people can take my apology at face value and understand that, you know, we're all
53:37
capable of doing things that we're ill thought out. But if we do apologize for them that perhaps
53:44
that can help us grow and help us change it, if that's what we're trying to affect change,
53:49
then that's the more important thing versus punishment. I think there's too much focus in life
53:54
generally about punishing rather than seeking to shape and change behavior. I want to let you go,
54:00
I don't want to keep you all afternoon, but looping back to national security, I'm interested in
54:05
you're in whether you're an optimist or a pessimist or neither in the medium to longer term, like if
54:10
you fast forward to the middle of this century in the 2050s, through the lens of Putin and
54:17
the Xi Jinping, what does the world look like? Well, it is the question, isn't it? I mean, as a
54:24
progressive, I have to maintain positivity. Otherwise, it's almost impossible to get out of bed, mate.
54:32
It's very easy, you know, if anyone is listening, you can get very easy to get very, very dark
54:38
about the world. You sit and go, geez, we are just stuffed. If you look at climate, if you look at
54:46
what's happening in Europe right now, if you look at the way that economies are spinning out of
54:51
control in terms of inflation and inequality and then you look at things like what's happening
54:56
to the Republican Party in the United States and its threat to democracy more generally and
55:02
it can get very easy, mate, to go, geez, we're never, ever, ever going to win this struggle.
55:07
But overall, I think, you know, for all the reasons we talked about in terms of Ukraine, I think
55:13
it's been a wake-up call for all of us to say, you know, we don't want to have a world that's
55:19
dominated by all the crates. We don't want to have a world where the strongest, biggest
55:26
gorilla in the room gets to set the rules for everybody else. We want to have an open and free
55:31
exchange of ideas and values where people can express themselves in societies, can flourish
55:36
and express themselves. And I think that's why Ukraine is so important because what happens there
55:42
matters everywhere, you know, our fates are intertwined. So overall though, when I look at it
55:48
and when I do get dark about the world, Josh and it can't happen, believe it or not, mate,
55:52
and even some of my sunny optimism can get dark about the world, you look at history, right? And
56:00
people say, oh man, we're going back into the 1930s, the gathering storms, and you know, we had
56:07
economic dislocation just like in 1929, the Great Depression, which then led to the rise of fascism
56:13
in Europe, which then gave us World War II and the horrors of World War II. It's very
56:18
easy to draw that parallel, if you look around the world right now, you can see those parallels,
56:23
right? But another, I think, more helpful parallel is a more recent past, which is the 60s.
56:31
And so if you look at the 1960s, the West in many ways really on its arse.
56:39
So in the United States, if we use that as our example, they had multiple assassinations
56:48
of leaders. So everyone talks about the United States has never been more divided. Well,
56:51
unfortunately, it has had a civil war, obviously, but they've had political violence as part of
56:58
mainstream political culture there in the not-so-recent past. So, you know, the,
57:05
sorry, not-so-distant past, rather, JFK gets killed, Martin Luther King gets killed, Robert Kennedy
57:11
gets killed. During that period in the 60s, the Soviet Union, when you look at all its headline
57:18
human indices, was surging ahead in terms of education, economic growth, industrial policy,
57:25
of course, they beat the Americans into space. And so the war was sitting there going,
57:28
man, like we are just in absolute diastrates. And in many ways, over the last 10 years,
57:35
autocrats have been selling to the world saying, hey guys, forget about this democracy stuff,
57:39
look how messy it is. It can't deliver for you. Look at the Chinese Communist Party.
57:44
You no longer need to have economic growth and personal liberty together. They can be severed.
57:51
Those links can be severed. You can have wealth. And we'll look after you and don't worry about
57:56
all this crazy silly democracy stuff because all that really does is divide us and create chaos.
58:02
But, you know, again, to draw this analogy, the low point, really, for the West, was
58:10
when they pulled out of Saigon, Saigon Falls, oh my god, we've had a, you know, the domino theory is
58:16
real. The communists are taking over countries or over the world. We've lost. Now, that was in the
58:21
70s. But of course, the US beat the Russians to the moon and it's beat the Soviets to the moon.
58:26
And by the 80s, only about 10 to 15 years after, it appeared that the Soviets couldn't be stopped.
58:34
Soviet Union was gone. And so these big regimes can seem so powerful and how could you ever get
58:44
rid of them? And my god, they're going to come and get us all. But the thing about closed systems,
58:53
the thing about autocratic regimes is they tend to be extractive. And what I mean by that is
58:57
those at the top tend to enrich themselves at the expense of those at the bottom.
59:02
That corruption becomes very pervasive throughout society. And it creates structural weaknesses.
59:09
They don't get the feedback loop that we get. Now, democracies for all their
59:14
dysfunction and, you know, Churchill said it's the worst system apart from any other system.
59:18
And I think it's beautifully put as he often does. It actually has feedback loops that strengthen us.
59:23
And that sort of chaos of democracies and that sense of, oh my god, everything is so impossible
59:30
to get your head around it. God, we're never going to prevail if we can't agree on anything.
59:34
Those constant feedback loops actually strengthen the system overall. And that innovation approach,
59:41
actually, in the end, makes society stronger because you actually get challenges to ideas and
59:46
challenges to thinking. It makes people reach further in terms of their enterprise and makes people
59:51
reach further in terms of their thinking. And before you make a silly decision like invading
59:57
your neighbor, people will pull you up and challenge you on it. It doesn't always happen,
1:00:01
of course, Iraq war is a great example where democracy can get it very wrong. But overall,
1:00:07
that feedback loop in society does strengthen us. And I think those big shiny
1:00:14
autocratic regimes that like to project strength are much, much weaker on the inside than they
1:00:19
like to pretend or project. We've seen that with the Russians. They are very much a rotten
1:00:24
burrow top to bottom corrupt. And the people, frankly, I think you've seen that with the soldiers
1:00:29
in the field don't believe in the mission that Putin has sent them on. And all of them realize that
1:00:35
there's not great deal of value in dying for fat cats and liars on yachts who stolen all the
1:00:40
wealth of your country. And you look at China, they've got big problems. Yes, we've got huge
1:00:46
challenges in the West, but they've got demographic challenges where already they're old before
1:00:50
they reach huge debt problems. They've got all sorts of challenges of corruption throughout their
1:00:55
system. And I think overall, if we get our system right, democracy's won the Cold War,
1:01:02
not because we had the better ideas, but we had the better outcomes. And what I mean by that,
1:01:07
people didn't read Eastern Europe, they didn't read Marx and they didn't read Jefferson. And then
1:01:13
they say, you know what Marx has got the better ideas. We're sorry, Jefferson's got the better
1:01:17
ideas. We'd like to get on board with that. Western Berlin was a better place to live than
1:01:24
Eastern Berlin, which was a shitty place to live. And so humanity voted with its feet. And so if
1:01:29
we can get our places right, our societies right, and live up to our own values, and that's a
1:01:35
critical bit living up to our values, then I think we actually will prevail in the end. But we are
1:01:40
going through a very choppy period right now, Josh. Nothing's guaranteed. And we have to stand
1:01:45
up for our values as well. Living up to them is important. We are at times doing that, but not
1:01:50
always. And we've got to get things right like rampant inequality, social dislocation,
1:01:54
all the challenges around people wanting representation of themselves in the body,
1:01:59
politics, et cetera, and the opportunity to advance themselves. But also standing up for values
1:02:05
for all the reasons we talked about. We're now seeing that's us doing that in Ukraine. It's going
1:02:10
to be critical that we do that between now. I think you said 2050, but the big challenges I think
1:02:14
are going to come over the next decade, mate. Yeah. You're analysis of the end of the Soviet
1:02:19
Union being about material questions, rather than ideological ones, reminds me of P.J. O'Rourke's
1:02:24
line that the end of the Soviet Union was amazing because it was this huge empire of tanks and guns
1:02:30
brought to its knees because nobody wants to wear Bulgarian shoes, which I love. Michelle, on your
1:02:37
optimistic note, I'll end it. Thank you so much for your insights. It's great to talk to you.
1:02:41
A great pleasure, mate. Thank you so much for having me on and I love you, Michelle.