Latest / The Fourcast / Project Freedom FAILS: what it reveals about US power in the Gulf

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Project Freedom FAILS: what it reveals about US power in the Gulf · The Fourcast

0:00
Project Freedom, this idea, they were going to put a red, white
0:03
and blue Dome over the Strait of Hormuz.
0:05
Saudi Arabia suddenly said to the Americans, we don't approve
0:09
of this. You can't use our bases.
0:11
It looks like a big failure of alliance management.
0:15
It's going to be very hard for any representative of any other
0:19
state that has incredibly vested interests at this point in
0:22
what's happening in the Strait of Hormuz to be really able to
0:25
corral Trump, because this is all really about how Trump
0:28
perceives he is being viewed on the world stage.
0:32
Does he get it that that without the cooperation of allies he
0:36
can't actually operate militarily?
0:38
He doesn't get it. He didn't get it in the first
0:40
Trump administration, either. Hello and welcome to the
0:47
forecast indicators with me, Matt Frey.
0:49
And me, Mark Urban. And on the forecast indicators,
0:53
we look at the signs that analysts watch out for most
0:56
closely separating the wheat from the chaff, the hints that
0:59
suggest an imminent change in a conflict may be about to happen.
1:04
This week we'll again be focusing on Iran and the Strait
1:08
of Hormuz. What else?
1:09
And the beginning and end of Project Freedom and what it says
1:13
about America's relationship with its allies both in the Gulf
1:16
and in Europe. And later, we'll be joined by
1:19
Fiona Hill, former senior director of the US National
1:22
Security Council during Donald Trump's first administration.
1:26
But before we go into that, let's flag up our own indicators
1:31
of the week, Matt. A lot of diplomacy going on.
1:34
China in very much in the centre of the picture as far as you're
1:38
concerned. Yes, absolutely.
1:40
We all know who MBS is, Mohammed bin Salman.
1:42
But there's another chap called MBZ Mohammed bin Zayed.
1:46
He is the the ruler of the of the Emirates of the UAE and he
1:50
was in Beijing this week, a day before the Iranian foreign
1:55
minister was there as well, Mr. Arachi.
1:57
Now why do they go to Beijing? They go to Beijing because
2:00
they're a bit desperate. I mean, the the Emiratis are
2:03
desperate because they're great friends in America essentially
2:06
threw them under the bus on February the 28th without
2:10
consulting them about this war in which they have been big time
2:14
collateral damage. So they go to the Chinese
2:17
because they see the the Chinese as the designated drivers of
2:20
this new and rather chaotic world.
2:23
And China is playing a very interesting hand here.
2:26
It is the hand of caution, of stepping back and watching very
2:30
closely, partly because it knows that to get involved in the
2:33
hornet's nest that is the Middle East at the moment is a really
2:36
bad idea because you get stung. But also because they're trying
2:39
to learn and and deduct certain lessons from what's going on,
2:42
perhaps about their own projects regarding Taiwan at some stage
2:46
in the future. And you've got Donald Trump.
2:50
He's heading for Beijing. He's heading for Beijing.
2:53
Gives them some real relevance, doesn't he?
2:54
Gives them real relevance. And remember the Beijing summit
2:57
between XI and Trump, which was, you know, Trump himself
3:00
indicated at one stage was going to be the most important meeting
3:04
of his second administration. That was delayed.
3:07
It was supposed to take place in April.
3:08
It was delayed soon after Operation Epic Fury before that
3:13
became Operation Blind Fury, and it's been delayed and is now
3:17
taking place next week. Now for Trump to delay it again
3:21
would be really, really embarrassing.
3:23
But what Trump does want is some kind of resolution to the
3:26
straight being opened by them, which I think is why he's been
3:29
talking up, you know, peace in a rather chaotic way at this 14
3:33
point plan, which apparently the Iranians are very, very close to
3:36
signing off on. Let's find out if they actually
3:38
are. But of course, Beijing also has
3:40
an interest in the straight being open for trade reasons.
3:43
It gets a lot of it's oil and gas through the Strait of Hormuz
3:47
so that they've been much more strategic about the reserves and
3:50
all the rest of it. It's really interesting that the
3:52
overall picture that emerges here, Mark, I wonder if you
3:54
agree with me, is that as America is, it has become as
3:58
volatile as the price of oil, which is determined on whether
4:02
the the straits are open or not, whether there's a second
4:04
blockade to complement the first blockade.
4:07
China has been steady as she goes, playing a long term
4:11
strategic game for very selfish Chinese reasons.
4:15
But you know, it's kind of logical and makes sense.
4:18
Yeah. I mean as you very aptly put it,
4:21
the designated driver, they they want to be seen as as the last
4:25
bastion of the so-called rules based order, the people that are
4:29
preventing. Although their rules are rather
4:30
different to our rules. Well, they, they, yeah, law of
4:32
the sea or whatever, they don't accept certain judgements that
4:36
that impinge on what they regard as their rights in the South
4:38
China Sea. But, you know, as Xi Jinping
4:40
said, we don't want the law of the jungle.
4:43
So I guess he sees himself as the person who is standing
4:46
against this. I think the really difficult
4:48
thing now for China is they want people to feel that they are the
4:53
adults and that they're neutral. Yes, of course they have a close
4:57
relationship with the Iranians, but they also have a a business
5:00
relationship with the Gulf states.
5:01
They want to boost that fill America's boots to some extent.
5:05
But I think their problem is the Gulf states really do hold them
5:09
responsible, for example, for supplying a lot of drone
5:12
components to the Iranians intelligence, various other
5:16
things that have led directly to the damage of their national
5:19
infrastructure. So I think they've got a bit of
5:21
work to do, which, you know, when Mohammed bin Zayed was in
5:23
Beijing, it must have been an interesting conversation.
5:26
Yeah, there would have been some tense moments there.
5:27
But so, So if you're a Gulf Arab Prince, you're you're caught
5:31
between a rock and a hard place. You don't fully trust the
5:33
Chinese because, as you say, they've been supplying Iran with
5:36
the kind of weaponry without which Iran would not have been
5:39
able to fire all these drones and missiles at the Gulf and
5:42
Israel and American bases. And we're talking about
5:45
electronic components here, which by the way, also gives the
5:48
Chinese some leverage over the Iranians.
5:50
They've got quite a lot of leverage, which I'm assuming
5:52
they will now exercise to some extent.
5:54
So if the Iranians sign this deal on the dotted line,
6:00
assuming that the the people in charge in Tehran listen to their
6:03
foreign minister who's been talking to the people in
6:05
Beijing, then you know, you can see why the that might work
6:09
because Beijing has a vested interest in this conflict coming
6:12
to a close to just a little add on there.
6:17
Because the the Strait of Hormuz has been closed, virtually
6:20
closed. And because the the see through
6:22
the Red Sea has become volatile over recent years because of the
6:27
Houthis, the more and more shipping companies are using the
6:32
traditional route that was used in the 19th century from Europe
6:35
to Asia via the Cape of Good Hope.
6:38
That's an extra Cape Horn. Sorry, that's an extra 2 weeks
6:42
adding to the journey of a tanker or a container ship
6:45
between Asia and Europe. That costs a lot of money.
6:48
That impacts the Chinese. Yeah, it's all inflationary.
6:51
Yeah. From the from the Chinese
6:52
perspective, Well, I'm going to flag up as as my key.
6:57
I think what I've really been looking at this week is the kind
7:00
of brief life and rather rapid demise of this project freedom.
7:06
This idea that in the words of Pete Hagseth, they were going to
7:09
put a red, white and blue Dome over the Strait of Hormuz and
7:13
create a sort of protective bubble for the merchant ships
7:16
that wanted to leave. So that if the Iranians fired
7:19
drones or speed boats came out to get them, those would be
7:22
dealt with by the American military.
7:24
Now, there was an initial clash on the first day of it.
7:28
It seems to me that the Americans got their two US
7:32
flagships out actually just before the new arrangement came
7:36
into being. And I think probably by some
7:38
arrangement with the Iranians, there was some kind of
7:41
understanding. And then when other ships, a UAE
7:44
ship, a South Korean ship, and then latterly a French one tried
7:48
to go through, they got hit. And then 36 hours after it had
7:53
started, President Trump suddenly says, Oh, no, because
7:56
Pakistan has asked me to pause this.
7:59
Now what we now know. And who and who asked the
8:02
Pakistanis, do you think? Well, it could have been, it
8:04
could well have been China. But what we now know NBC News
8:08
had a report overnight which, you know, looking at the the
8:12
debate today in the Gulf is clearly accurate saying that
8:16
Saudi Arabia suddenly said to the Americans, we don't approve
8:20
of this. You can't use our bases to
8:23
enforce it. And a number of the other Gulf
8:25
states said the same thing. Now, most pivotally, we don't
8:29
know whether Oman, which shares the Strait of Houma's coastline,
8:33
said the same thing. They may well have done.
8:34
They're quite. Close as well.
8:35
Weren't they by the Iranians? They were so, so, so these
8:39
countries suddenly said, no, we're not up for this.
8:43
Now there's a bit of debate about was this because Trump and
8:48
exes and and Rubio didn't roll the the pitch enough beforehand.
8:52
In other words, consult with them enough.
8:55
Because there's another view that actually they did sort of
8:58
tell them they were going to do it.
9:00
But then when Iran hit back, particularly at the UAE and
9:03
America did nothing and the Americans said, no, this is a
9:07
sub ceasefire violation event. The Gulf states were horrified
9:12
and said, well, if you're not going to respond to attacks on
9:14
us, then we're not going to give the use of our bases.
9:16
So so the the the IT it looks like a big failure of alliance
9:21
management on on EU s s part. Yeah, I mean, as ever, doing
9:25
anything regarding policy in the era of Trump where most things
9:30
are decided by peak rather than policy, you know, it's going to
9:33
be tricky, isn't it? So I wouldn't be surprised if he
9:34
suddenly fires off something in the middle of the night on
9:37
social media, having not consulted anyone that actually
9:41
has to kind of put ducks in a row.
9:43
And then. But what it does do is unleash
9:45
all these reactions. And that's been the story of the
9:47
second Trump administration. End of this war.
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Indeed. Well, let's talk to someone
9:52
who's actually worked with Donald Trump, who's tried to get
9:54
some kind of national security sense out of him between the
9:57
peak and the policy, and that is Fiona Hill, as advertised.
10:00
Fiona, welcome to the program. Welcome.
10:03
Thanks so much. Great to see you.
10:05
So normally when we talk to you and we've talked to you quite a
10:07
lot over recent years, it's about Russia and Ukraine, and
10:10
we'll get on to that later. But I want to start, first of
10:13
all, with your assessment of the seemingly rather chaotic fog of
10:17
ceasefire that we're dealing with right now with being a
10:21
project freedom, as Mark has just told us, you know, lasted,
10:24
what, 36 hours in total? I mean, not not very much time
10:27
at all. We've got the big summit in
10:29
Beijing coming up next week between Trump and XI.
10:32
How do you assess the current state of Trump's war of choice
10:37
on Iran? I know that I'm always talking
10:39
about Ukraine and Russia, but it's not really that dissimilar
10:41
in terms of what you've just said in terms of fog of
10:44
ceasefire. I mean, how many times have we
10:45
heard the same thing, including just very recently Putin
10:48
declaring A ceasefire that then, you know, never seemed to appear
10:53
either. And I think this is really
10:55
rather the problem. We're engaged in what appears to
10:58
be magical and wishful thinking at all times in the the realm of
11:03
of interactions between Trump and his counterparts.
11:06
This is a personalized stand off yet again in the case of Iran
11:10
between Trump and his counterparts, whoever they may
11:13
be now in the Iranian regime and each of them trying to
11:17
constantly get the upper hand about who is winning and who has
11:21
the edge on the other. And I think that, you know, the
11:24
rest of us are watching this spectacle, obviously with some
11:27
considerable arm, as we should be, because it's going to be
11:30
very hard for any representative of any other state that has
11:36
incredibly vested interests at this point in what's happening
11:38
in the Strait of Hormuz and in the direction in which this war
11:41
is headed. And that includes Israel as
11:43
well, which of course is very much a player in all of this to
11:46
be really able to corral Trump and and to get any kind of
11:51
negotiation on, on a track with any kind of outcome that anybody
11:56
else might want to see. Because this is all really about
11:59
how Trump perceives he is being viewed on the world stage.
12:05
And just just on that briefly, I mean, do you think that for him,
12:08
the most important motivating factor and trying to bring this
12:11
whole thing to an end is the price of petrol in American
12:14
pumps ahead of the midterm elections?
12:16
Is it how he is viewed by his sometimes friend Xi Jinping in
12:21
Beijing before the summit next week?
12:23
What's the big motivator here for Trump?
12:25
All of these are related in an interrelated for him, it's all
12:28
about him being able to impose his will on the world stage, not
12:32
just at home and for him to look strong and in control and in
12:36
charge. And all prices are obviously an
12:38
indicator of this, a very relevant indicator because he
12:41
has said many times in his presidential campaign, at many
12:45
points in the past, that he is somebody who can bring down the
12:50
the cost of living, the cost of petrol, that this is an
12:52
indicator just like the stock market has been for his success.
12:55
He's obviously built up a sense of grievance, Fiona, with with
12:59
European allies over the failure to support him as he perceives
13:03
it in this Iran war. Do you think this will be
13:06
another chapter of of something we already saw spelt out from JD
13:10
Vance and Munich and Pete exit in Brussels at the beginning of
13:13
last year at the outset of the administration?
13:16
Or is it qualitatively different?
13:17
Is it new, looking at that German troop withdrawal and the
13:21
threat to push Spain out of NATO, those kind of things?
13:24
All of the same, but obviously now accelerated and aggrandised
13:31
almost on steroids. 1 you know. Couldn't say here he's talked
13:34
about removing troops from Europe continuously, not just
13:38
when he was in office. Again, he sees Europeans in two
13:42
different ways. First of all, as sycophantic
13:46
parasitic dependence described this yes, and I'm afraid it's
13:52
not very nice, but and he's not the only one, frankly,
13:54
obviously, we've we've heard everybody's innermost thoughts.
13:57
So when it comes to signal gate or look frankly, the Biden
14:00
administration were also guilty of talking down Europe at all
14:04
points. And you remember that it was
14:05
Barack Obama who wanted, you know, come to lead the United
14:08
States, to lead from behind and the Europeans to take more
14:10
charge of the of their security. And, you know, many Europeans
14:15
would say, yes, we've heard this from Americans before, but just
14:17
not in such a crude and brutal fashion as we've heard from
14:20
Trump. So this is a long trend of the
14:23
United States wanting Europe to do more for its own security and
14:26
to stop being so dependent in various ways on the United
14:29
States. But then on the other flip side
14:31
is that Trump and others have tended to think of NATO and
14:35
European allies just as an extension of itself, as minions,
14:38
you know, in the military sense, and that if you you call, they
14:41
have to jump. And of course, we do know that
14:43
European allies, NATO allies, did jump, but of their own
14:47
volition after the horrific terrorist attacks of 911 on the
14:51
United States. And of course, many European
14:53
allies, even under great stress and with a lot of reluctance and
14:58
opposition on the parts of the populations, assisted the United
15:02
States and intervention in Afghanistan, which I mean, for
15:04
everybody, that seemed to kind of make more sense.
15:06
But Iraq certainly did not. And so I think, you know, here,
15:09
you know, Trump's got himself in some sort of a schizophrenic
15:12
position. He wants Europe to take charge
15:13
of European security, but he wants European allies to do
15:16
whatever it is he tells them, you know, in other venues.
15:19
And it is true, of course, that many Europeans and the rest of
15:22
the world have a vested interest in what happens in the Gulf.
15:24
But it's that working that out and how that is going to take
15:28
shape and having consultation that is completely missing.
15:30
And, you know, you were talking earlier about that lack of
15:32
consultation with the Gulf states.
15:34
And, you know, Trump doesn't even think about consulting with
15:38
allies 'cause he doesn't think about them as allies.
15:39
They're supplicants. I'm, I'm glad you heard that
15:42
bit, Fiona, 'cause it seems to me that he doesn't seem to
15:47
understand the role, for example, that Germany's played
15:50
with its bases and its medical facilities and stuff in actually
15:54
enabling the Iran campaign. And, and then we now see that
15:58
the Saudis were pivotal. They took umbrage at the way the
16:03
Project Freedom operation started.
16:06
So they've now pulled the plug, shutting him down.
16:08
I mean, does he get it that that without the cooperation of
16:10
allies he can't actually operate militarily or, or do you think
16:15
that that's a a level of detail he's just not absorbed?
16:20
He doesn't get it. He didn't get it in the first
16:22
Trump administration either. General Mattis, in fact, tried
16:26
to give him a briefing on, you know, allies 101, what they do
16:29
for us, not just what we do for them.
16:31
And, you know, Vladimir Putin is always in interactions with
16:34
Trump going back to the first, you know, proper encounter at
16:38
the Hamburg G20 summit, tried to say, look, allies are just a
16:42
burden, which is what Trump thinks anyway.
16:44
You've now got allies over our allies, which is not entirely
16:47
the case, is it really? I mean, Poland and Czech
16:49
Republic and all of others, not really allies of of of the
16:53
Soviet Union. They were, you know, very much
16:55
forced into their camp. But he was basically saying
16:57
they're just drained as of everything from literal energy
17:00
to weapons and for security. And now they're doing the same
17:03
for you just, you know, basically reinforcing that idea
17:06
that Trump already has that it's a burden, an alliance is a
17:10
burden, and it's not about burden sharing.
17:12
So that is really part of the problem.
17:14
The other thing, of course, is that he thinks that he offers
17:17
protection for everybody and that all that happens is, again,
17:21
that Germany and other countries, they benefit
17:24
immensely from having the bases economically that this is for
17:27
their protection. He does not understand that
17:29
importance of force projection. Really for him, these are
17:32
subcontractors. So if you think about him doing
17:34
a large building project, these are the kinds of subcontractors
17:38
they never really wanted to pay as we all hear about the way
17:40
that he operated. He doesn't see them as being
17:43
part of the larger enterprise. He's the brains of the
17:45
operation. He is the big super contractor
17:49
and all of these others are just playing a role and they're not
17:52
playing it as far as he's concerned.
17:54
They're not doing the plumbing or the, you know, the, the
17:56
woodwork or whatever it is that he wants them to do.
17:58
Fiona, I've been speaking to people in Berlin this week and
18:01
of course they were upset by the reduction of 5000 American
18:04
troops. I know it's only about 13 or
18:06
14%, whatever it is, of the total number of U.S. troops
18:09
based in Germany, but that was, you know, that was a kind of
18:12
strong symbolic gesture of American decoupling.
18:15
But what really worried them was the scrapping of this long range
18:19
missile program that Biden had put in place as a stop gap
18:23
between what was there before and what the Europeans are
18:26
expected to develop themselves. And, you know, this, this is a
18:29
really important signal. They thought of Vladimir Putin
18:32
making the Europeans much more vulnerable.
18:35
How do you see the scrapping of this programme?
18:37
That again, is the reaction of Trump, you know, being piqued by
18:40
what Friedrich Merz said about the war in Iran to some school
18:45
children. One should never talk to school
18:46
children. Very bad idea if you're a world
18:48
leader, unless you're making it absolutely clear it's off the
18:51
record. So tell me about this missile
18:53
programme and and what could replace it.
18:55
I think this is absolutely right, Matt.
18:57
This worry that this undercuts deterrence against Russia,
19:00
because of course it does, particularly in the short to
19:02
medium term. And there's been quite a lot of
19:05
reporting on the difficulties that European countries will
19:08
have individually obviously, but also collectively to produce a
19:12
similar weapon system. The Financial Times just
19:15
recently had a very in depth discussion of all of this.
19:19
So that time frame of the short to medium term and keeping
19:22
Russia deterred is pretty critical.
19:24
There's another dimension though that I just want to flag here
19:27
because it's also a deeply destabilising potentially for
19:31
European security and global security overall.
19:34
Because the United States in providing all of these weapon
19:37
systems guaranteeing on the conventional side, but it also
19:40
guarantees on the nuclear side with the nuclear umbrella really
19:44
prevented a race, an arms race for other countries and other
19:47
regional groupings to secure and develop these weapons for
19:51
themselves. And the more that other
19:53
countries feel that they have to develop these systems, the more
19:56
that everybody is in a is in a similar race and the less there
19:59
is a kind of framework for managing all of this.
20:02
So I think that it's on the one hand.
20:05
Undercutting deterrence, but over the longer term also making
20:07
the Russians and others more insecure in terms of their
20:10
perceptions that more countries will actually have this
20:12
capability. Just quickly on this, but is
20:15
that also not an argument for European nations to get together
20:19
to develop things together with their very fragmented arms
20:22
industry, or does it just create more competition between them?
20:26
Absolutely is a case for doing things together rather than
20:30
increasing that competition. We've already got that problem
20:32
and I think that is at the base of so much of the incapacity of
20:36
Europe is because there are so many different systems being
20:39
produced by so many different countries and the arms
20:42
industries. So this is an imperative right
20:45
now, finding the formula and the formations and the platforms,
20:49
the shared platforms for development.
20:51
And then the UK can play a leading role in this.
20:53
But it has to, you know, go beyond just, you know, small
20:56
groups of countries. You've got to think about this
20:58
on a larger bit, a larger base. Fiona, we'd be crazy having you
21:02
on as a as a biographer of Vladimir Putin, not to ask you
21:08
about some very curious reporting we've seen in the last
21:11
week or two that he's spending less and less time in Moscow,
21:15
more and more time in secure military facilities.
21:18
He's frightened about foreigners hijacking the traffic camera
21:22
system, that the economic indicators are looking very bad
21:26
for him. That polling was published which
21:28
showed him dropping that, you know, a year or two ago wouldn't
21:31
have been now. What do you make of all this?
21:34
Is this yet another sort of storm, you know, Putin's in
21:37
trouble, Is he really, or do you think there's something more
21:40
substantial going on that his position really is slipping
21:44
there? Do you think his position is
21:46
slipping there? But the question is whether this
21:49
is a proverbial tipping point or not.
21:52
And I think, you know, we should be careful about passing
21:55
judgement on that because Putin has always proved himself to be
21:58
pretty resilient as a political figure in the Russian context.
22:03
So he's taking all the precautions that one would
22:07
advise him to frankly, if you were in his position as well.
22:09
If you look at, you know, what's happened to world leaders from
22:13
the ayatollahs, the leaders from Hassan Hezbollah, which and
22:16
obviously not world leaders, but you know, Trump also having
22:20
assassination in attacks against him.
22:22
You know, the fact that you've flagged everything from traffic
22:26
cameras to the Internet. I mean, this is the lingering
22:29
tale from what Mossad pulled off in their assaults on the the
22:36
Hamas and Hezbollah leadership using pages and they also being
22:39
able to monitor people at all times.
22:41
Putin is well aware of all this. He's been acutely concerned
22:45
about his own security for a very long period of time.
22:48
So this is nothing new. And to be frank, he's often not
22:51
been in Moscow and we've seen a lot of footage.
22:53
There's been, you know, cottage industry about is the Putin
22:56
double s, for example, the Japanese think there's at least
22:59
one, maybe 2, you know, not in death of Stalin scale of, you
23:03
know, hundreds of them running around all over the place.
23:05
But there's been mock ups of his or let's just see, clones of his
23:09
office that he has in the Kremlin in many different
23:11
places. And people have, you know, being
23:13
able to distinguish whether he's been in Sochi or whether he's
23:15
been in some of his other dachas or whether he's been in the
23:17
Kremlin, you know, for some time.
23:19
But look, it would be incumbent upon him given the way that the
23:22
war in Ukraine has gone now and the attacks on other world
23:25
leaders and, you know, people like terrorist leaders that
23:29
people have been trying to take out to take his security very
23:32
seriously. And people are unhappy.
23:34
Fifth year of war was supposed to be a special military
23:37
operation. It's had really negative impacts
23:39
now on the Russian population and on the economy.
23:42
I wonder if the Putin clones ever get together for a kind of
23:44
reunion, and I wonder how many there really are.
23:47
It's probably a rather well paid job that you may not really want
23:51
just on on the war though, and the war in Iran.
23:55
I mean, we've always been saying that this is rather good news
23:58
for Vladimir Putin because of the price of oil, the lifting of
24:01
sanctions against the shadow fleet, etcetera, etcetera.
24:05
You know, he's watching the Americans mess up.
24:07
He's watching the Americans fighting the Europeans and vice
24:10
versa. You know, on balance, is Putin
24:14
having a good time at the moment or a bad time?
24:17
I. Think it's a completely mixed
24:19
bag for him and the of course the oil prices make a big
24:24
difference to Russian government revenues, their coffers.
24:28
But the question is what can they spend it on at this point?
24:30
Because the Russian war machine has become quite dependent on
24:34
components from the outside. And obviously their arms sales
24:39
abroad, their exports have been reduced drastically because of
24:43
their own burn rates on the battlefield in Ukraine.
24:46
And you know, they're haemorrhaging people.
24:49
You know, you can't just fight a war completely in the autonomous
24:53
zone. Although there's some battlers
24:54
in Ukraine have been conducted through robotics and of course
24:59
all of the use of drones, etcetera.
25:00
But Russia has been losing hundreds of people a day,
25:03
casualties and killed 35,000, you know, men in the past month.
25:09
I mean, this is unsustainable. It does eventually have a
25:11
backlash. Plus, I mean, countries in Asia,
25:14
China included, are being hurt by what's happened in the Gulf
25:17
and in the Strait of Hormuz. Their economies are being
25:20
impacted. They may be, you know, less
25:22
willing to ship to Russia component parts that Russia
25:25
needs for its own war effort. And the Gulf is a safe haven for
25:30
Russian money. So Russia's place in the Gulf
25:33
was it was already damaged in the Middle East by Syria and by
25:37
all the other kinds of things that had happened there.
25:39
They're losing some of its basing by major changes.
25:43
And Putin, of course, was pretty close to the previous Iran
25:47
regime. So this is, I think again, as
25:50
I'm saying here, it's uncertain about how much this benefits
25:53
Russia beyond the obvious of giving them more revenue for
25:56
their all per volume. And just very quickly, I was
25:59
amused to read the other day, I think also in the Financial
26:02
Times, that Ukraine is now doing lots of defence deals in the
26:05
Gulf, including providing intercept and interceptor
26:08
experts to the United Arab Emirates.
26:11
You know, this country that had no cards to play according to
26:14
Donald Trump back in February of last year, has got quite a few
26:17
cards to play. And it's become a sort of
26:19
regional superpower in its own right regarding especially this
26:22
kind of cheap but very effective technology.
26:25
And that's totally obvious. I mean, we've always said that
26:28
Ukraine was a system changing war and it's been a war that's
26:31
changed the nature of warfare itself.
26:34
And the Ukrainians are the, the most battle hardened army in
26:39
Europe been putting, you know, the Russians to one side and
26:41
they've kept a superpower embroiled and what, you know,
26:45
different times being a stalemate or a deadlock, you
26:47
know, depending on how you look at it.
26:49
And they have a lot of capacity and a lot of lessons to impart,
26:52
as well as equipment to others. Fiona last thought from from me.
26:59
When you look at that the situation you've described as
27:01
radical transformation of war, what's your feeling?
27:05
As one of the co-authors of the UK Strategic Defence Review,
27:09
we've heard George Robertson more or less have a a public
27:12
forehead clutch about the government's failure to fund it.
27:16
Do you share that frustration that the UK is not adapting to
27:21
this new reality with the speed it should be doing?
27:24
It's mindset issue as well. I don't think that the problems
27:26
are within the Ministry of Defence itself.
27:29
And John Healey, you know, the Secretary of State was very
27:33
excised with all of this, you know, very much focused.
27:35
I've talked to many of the people in the Ministry of
27:37
Defence and just in even in the last week that they, you know,
27:40
they get the problem. It's the mindset in the UK as a
27:43
whole, not seeing the the threat for what it is because all of
27:47
the things that we've been talking about, this change in
27:49
the nature of warfare, the risk of drone attacks, the risk to
27:53
critical national infrastructure, loss of safe
27:55
havens, the impact of what has happened in the Gulf with the
27:58
closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the difficulties in the
28:01
relationship with the United States.
28:03
It's turned everything on its head.
28:05
And the sense of urgency which was there a year ago is even is
28:09
even greater now. I mean, we've lost so much time
28:12
by dithering. Yes, it should be.
28:14
And I think that the question is not just what we can't do, but
28:17
what can we do with the resources that we have.
28:19
And that is really the challenge.
28:21
And it's not just for the Ministry of Defence, it's for
28:22
the whole of the UK government. And the more that, you know, we
28:25
get bogged down in the politics of who's doing what and, and
28:29
where. And, you know, obviously we've
28:30
got the by elections, which are, you know, pretty critical.
28:33
But I think, you know, for the country as a whole, and this is
28:35
what George was talking about, George Robertson, you need a
28:38
national conversation about where we are, what the threat
28:40
level is and what we can do about it.
28:42
And there are things that we can do about it.
28:43
And Fiona, do you think Trump with his mercurial nature on
28:47
again, off again, we're best friends or worst enemies, has
28:50
helped the debate actually both here in the UK and in the rest
28:54
of Europe? Has helped it and harmed it
28:56
because a lot of the problem is Trump management mitigating, you
28:59
know, the fits of pique that we just started talking about at
29:02
the very beginning. You know, the decisions then to
29:04
suddenly pull the rug and out of Tomahawks or, you know, pull
29:08
troops out of the, you know, one could have prefigured that for
29:10
some time. You know, you, you do risk
29:13
having an awful lot of damage. I mean, it's basically, I've
29:15
said this before, between a rock and a hard place.
29:17
The rock is Russia because it's pretty permanent as a problem
29:19
for now, although that could also change.
29:21
And the hard place is the United States because with Trump, it
29:24
changes, you know, by depending on his moods.
29:27
And So what we've got to do is, you know, find a way of keeping
29:30
moving forward, putting some people on management.
29:32
The king did a great job, you know, but that's not going to be
29:34
sufficient for the next, you know, kind of few weeks or more.
29:39
You know, it's going to change again.
29:40
But you've got to be constantly thinking about how do you
29:42
mitigate this? But how do you manage to move
29:45
ahead and stop being going completely buffeted by, you
29:48
know, what's coming out of Washington, DC or the Kremlin or
29:51
anything else on a daily basis? What's your one line of advice
29:54
to anyone working with Trump and the White House as someone who's
29:57
done that themselves? How to deal with Trump
30:01
management? One line of advice how to manage
30:04
Donald J Trump on really, really important issues like national
30:08
security and the future of war. It's like dealing with a
30:11
hazardous situation, you know, So we used to, this is not all
30:16
one line at all. We used to basically talk about
30:18
it internally as you know, dealing with a major chemical
30:22
spillage and the kinds of interventions that you would
30:26
then be need. Yes, you do.
30:27
You would have to be, you know, really focused on cleaning this
30:30
up and on damage limitation. And that's what it is.
30:33
It's damage limitation because this is about Trump himself and
30:37
the way that he behaves. It's not about the United States
30:39
writ large, which I do think that over time it will become
30:42
apparent. There's still a lot that the UK
30:44
and other countries can be doing and should be doing with the US.
30:47
But this is management of a very difficult person.
30:50
So actually if I did be much more careful about advice, I
30:54
think the people who've succeeded the best with him,
30:57
I've dealt with him as dealing with a high net worth, high risk
31:01
individual as if he was their top client, you know, for a
31:04
Goldman Sachs or that's why there's probably so many people
31:07
from Goldman Sachs there. Like a bad tempered billionaire.
31:09
Well, well, that's exactly what he is and that's how he should
31:11
be dealt with. Fair enough.
31:13
Thank you so much, very much. Thanks for for your insights.
31:16
That was great. Thank you very much, Fiona.
31:18
Thanks a lot. Thank you to both of you as
31:19
well. Thanks.
31:20
Well, Fiona always has fantastic insights, doesn't she?
31:25
Essential listening. She, by the way, she once told
31:28
me I want to interview her for a documentary, that when she was
31:31
working for Trump, she was told to wear primary colours and
31:35
change her hair. So she went to the hairdresser
31:38
and had big Trump Fox News anchor hair, you know, suddenly,
31:42
but she was not, you know, she never had before.
31:44
And she was wearing bright red and bright blue and she felt
31:49
completely weird and out of place and ditched the dress code
31:52
after a few weeks. And of course, Trump and Fiona
31:54
famously fell out, but maybe not because of the dress code.
31:57
Let's go back to a couple of indicators before we wrap up a
32:01
couple of really significant things that we can see going on
32:03
right now. And let's pick up with one of
32:05
the ones that came up in that conversation.
32:07
So the Americans were supposed to send this multi domain
32:13
battalion or something like that was called, equipped with these
32:15
Typhoon missiles and these are cruise missiles.
32:17
And tomahawk. Missiles the same thing.
32:19
It's the new version, right? OK, so it's supposed to go
32:22
something like I think 1500 miles.
32:25
So they're now not going to, right?
32:28
What's the key take away from your?
32:30
Perspective. So the key to, so the reason why
32:31
these are important is that you can basically sit somewhere in
32:34
eastern Germany or in Poland and you can fire targets deep inside
32:38
Russia, strategic targets, whether it's, you know, a
32:40
missile, you know, production facility, you know, or an
32:44
airport or whatever. And, and, and the fact that this
32:48
capability was there and was going to be there was seen by
32:53
many as a kind of reason why Vladimir Putin didn't escalate
32:56
the war when he could have done dramatically in 2022 after
33:00
things started going wrong for him.
33:02
He thought, no, I'm not going to do that because there'll be
33:04
some, there'll be a, a conventional capability that
33:09
could hit me where it really hurts inside Russia.
33:12
And we don't have that now in Europe.
33:15
If the Americans are not going to send that, the Europeans have
33:17
to replace it. And actually, there's no obvious
33:19
replacement. There's an intermediate stage
33:23
which was supposed to be, and this was supposedly agreed under
33:28
Biden, the American selling this Typhoon, this developed version
33:32
of the Tomahawk to the Germans for them to operate a bit
33:36
further down the line in a few years time.
33:38
And that apparently is going nowhere.
33:40
Well, it's been scrapped, I think by the Pentagon because
33:42
they say, you know, I think the official reason is we need the
33:44
stuff ourselves. We know we might.
33:49
They've used a lot of them. So the stocks are running low,
33:51
as we know. But also, again, the reason why
33:54
Trump announced the scrapping of this program that was seen as
33:57
Fiona described as such an important stopgap was because of
34:00
the comments made by the German Chancellor in front of sixth
34:03
form school kids saying that the Iran war was being lost by the
34:06
Americans and was and misguided. Yeah, exactly.
34:10
So this is peak rather than policy, which as we know with
34:12
Trump is is often the case. So, but just my little indicator
34:16
here is that Rhine metal, which means Rhine metal as named after
34:21
the river, which is the biggest arms company in Europe, weapons
34:25
production company in Europe. Traditionally they've been
34:28
producing tanks and ammunition and artillery.
34:31
They have now pivoted with a Dutch company called Destinus,
34:35
which is, you know, which is founded in 2021 to create a
34:38
start up that will produce a rocket called the Router Block
34:42
2A, memorable name. This thing has a range, I'm told
34:45
of more than 700 kilometres. So it's not quite as it's half
34:49
the range of the Tomahawk missiles or the Typhoon
34:52
missiles. But it's and and this was kind
34:55
of in the pipeline for some time.
34:57
And the Germans have now announced that they will bring
34:59
forward the production of this missile to later this year.
35:03
So I don't know whether they'll get them done in time, you know,
35:06
how long it will take with a couple of years.
35:08
But clearly the German government and this company,
35:12
Ryan Metal, together with their Dutch partners, a feeling, you
35:16
know, that the heat is on them and they've got to produce
35:18
something, you know, a gap in the market that has been created
35:21
by the Americans. And that is quite, that's quite
35:24
an important development. Yeah.
35:25
I've got to say, doesn't that mean Trump's pressures worked?
35:28
It does, but that's what I'm saying to Fiona earlier.
35:30
Has he worked or has he? So he's worked in the sense that
35:33
he's concentrated. He's forced the Europeans to do
35:36
this for themselves. Exactly, just as he caused
35:37
Europeans to spend more money on defence.
35:39
I mean, Putin with his invasion helped as well.
35:41
But so Trump does this all the time.
35:43
But at the same time, Europe is in a kind of transition
35:46
position. It's like it's in the Betty Ford
35:48
clinic of, you know, of geopolitics trying to weed
35:51
itself off its American booze, you know, American reliance on
35:55
American booze, American weapons, but not quite
35:58
independent yet. It's still in that clinic.
36:00
And the other thing one would say if someone says, well, it
36:03
just shows Trump's tactic worked is of course, once the Germans
36:07
have developed that missile, they may find that the UAE or
36:11
Saudi or whatever would rather buy that in preference to an
36:13
American one where they could have all the capriciousness of
36:17
dealing with someone like Trump and the American intellectual
36:20
property restrictions and all the rest.
36:22
Of it indeed. And getting back to where we
36:23
started, which is with China, I think what you're seeing across
36:26
the globe, whether it's between America and Europe, between
36:30
Europe and and China, between China and the Gulf states, even
36:33
Israel, you know, America's closest ally in all this, is a
36:37
rearrangement of the furniture around the American world.
36:41
That world has died, I think, with Donald Trump.
36:44
And everyone is making their own arrangements, for better or for
36:48
worse. Let's end with a final
36:50
indicator. From Yeah, well, a time and
36:52
again in this since the 28th of February, we've been trying to
36:57
see when would the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz really
37:03
begin to bite in terms of oil supply, jet fuel, all these
37:09
other things. And, and fascinatingly, we, we,
37:11
we've had the UK airline industry umbrella group say just
37:16
yesterday, I think it was that there will be no disruption to
37:20
flights in the UK this summer holiday.
37:23
Do we believe that stuff like that?
37:25
I don't know. I've got my.
37:25
Flights still booked. They want people to keep booking
37:28
so so I dug into the best sort of stats I could find globally
37:32
for inventory. Now the fascinating thing about
37:34
this is how different it is in different parts of the world.
37:37
So the month on month figures for essentially how much oil is
37:41
in the storage tanks are down on the month 46.48% in the Asia
37:47
Pacific region, but they're only down 1.85% in Europe.
37:54
So the positions are very different and and the way the
37:57
market is adjusting, I guess obviously price goes up.
38:01
Some European countries can afford to pay more.
38:05
There is some effort being made to reduce consumption.
38:09
Some flights, they say about 1% of flights globally have been
38:13
cancelled. That's probably the economics of
38:16
the price going up and the airlines wanting to cut those
38:19
loss making flights. Lufthansa have cancelled 20,000.
38:22
20,000 between now and October. Exactly.
38:24
So all those routes that are making them a lot of money,
38:26
they've just gone basically. Exactly.
38:28
But I think I guess unless you live in, we've mentioned Sri
38:33
Lanka before and forecast Philippines, Vietnam, a couple
38:37
of these other countries where the situation does seem to be
38:40
dropping very rapidly. It's not as big a problem
38:45
potentially the supply issue for Europe, clearly not for America,
38:49
which has gone up 13% on the month in terms of stored oil
38:53
price of course is a different question and inflation and and
38:56
the knock on economic effect. But, but I think it's
38:59
fascinating and I think perhaps, dare one say it, there's been a
39:03
bit of scaremongering over the last couple of months on that.
39:05
May, may well have been. I mean, if you look at the trade
39:08
flows, there's an awful lot of trade now between Europe and
39:11
America across the Atlantic regarding fuel.
39:14
So that the stuff that they can't buy in the Gulf or that
39:17
doesn't get through the Gulf, Europeans have been purchasing
39:20
from the United States. If you're an oil billionaire in
39:24
Texas, you're having a really, really good spring and early
39:28
summer. And of course, a lot of these
39:30
people are very close to Trump. Before the election, he promised
39:33
them all sorts of drill, baby, drill deregulations.
39:36
They promised him a tonne of money for the campaign.
39:41
And all that seemed to work quite nicely.
39:42
Thank you very much. The problem for Trump as ever
39:45
will be because it's still a democracy in America, will be
39:48
domestically the price at the pump, $6.50 in California.
39:54
I know he doesn't really care about California, but that is a
39:56
massive increase for a gallon of a gas versus the, you know, the
40:02
amount of money being made by his friends in Houston, TX.
40:06
And meanwhile, the ballroom being built, the 90,000 square
40:09
foot ballroom being built next to the White House.
40:11
I mean that combination of exuberant wealth, you know,
40:15
gilded generation kind of wealth.
40:18
And real struggle for ordinary Americans who still have votes.
40:22
They made terms. Yeah.
40:24
That is that is AI think that is a problem playing on his mind.
40:26
And those are tearing the MAGA camp apart at the moment.
40:29
The fear of being struck off Ed Miliband's Christmas card list,
40:32
though, that the drill, baby bit drill, I mean, in pure American
40:37
strategic terms was a great call, wasn't it?
40:39
I mean, his position would be much worse in, in, in energy
40:43
terms, in terms of how to compensate for this shock.
40:46
I appreciate. But but.
40:48
He stumbled into this war with all.
40:50
Sorts of Republicans, I mean, you know, Biden never said
40:54
drill, baby drill, but he he didn't exactly stop, you know,
40:57
shale gas exploitation, so on. I mean, fracking and what
41:01
America has been done doing domestically really dates back
41:03
to, you know, the realisation that there had to be more energy
41:07
independent after the first Gulf War.
41:09
And they've been doing it. And now they are.
41:10
They're the biggest oil exporter in the world.
41:12
That's probably all we've got time.
41:15
For that is all we have time for.
41:16
I wish we had more time, but we don't mark.
41:18
As ever, it's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure, TuneIn.
41:20
Next week. TuneIn next week.
41:22
That's it from us on the forecast indicators.
41:24
See you next time.