Trump, Putin, and Genghis Khan: A Conversation With Fiona Hill

23:52Fiona Hill:That was the crux of this conflict, certainly, you know, kind of initially. And he still hasn't secured all of it, which, you know, He said was his main goal. And if Putin were to end the war without getting that territory, either through military progress or through a negotiation or a gift from Trump, would he be at risk of losing power at home? Would that be such a blow to his image domestically that it truly would be a threat to him? It ups the ante. It could well be. Again, those dynamics inside of Russia. If people are complaining, They're not making it so evident inside. But you see how we have to respond to the woman blogger from Monaco, for example, who got millions of views and hits on her rather anodyne complaint, but still voicing the dissatisfaction of people around Putin who thought this war was going to end.

24:53Fiona Hill:And these rumors, you know, that are percolating around in Europe and, you know, various journalistic and business circles that many of the top business people are greatly dissatisfied, again, because of their lack of a safe place in the Gulf and starting to think, well, maybe things need to change in Russia. and you know the sanctions um a sort of having an impact now because you know they didn't have an impact while russia could redirect trade flows and um take advantage of everything happening elsewhere but you know this ironically you know perhaps transaction in the in the gulf against iran could be the biggest blow because it it is a system changing event it could end up with neither it's a bit like world war one world war two right you know the so some of the so-called victors were not the victors at all the united kingdom was completely ground down by a succession of world war one and world war two and at the end of world war one all the great empires had gone you know it could well be that you know the united states and russia are grievously wounded by this series of events and i mean and i'm not you know completely optimistic on china's behalf either that they get to take advantage of all this because the biggest impact negative impact and what's happening here in Asia.

26:08Fiona Hill:And, you know, the insecurity and instability of the countries immediately around China, even if China manages to weather the storm somewhat, what about all of its neighbours and the impact that that might have on China's own economy, which is interdependent with all of these? I mean, unless the Chinese internal market is sufficient to compensate for this, there's going to be a lot of very negative knock-on effects. A colleague at Brookings, Avall Prasad, has written this book called The Doom Loop, which has just come out. We ran an essay from him. Yes, I had a feeling that you had. And of course, that shows that China cannot pick up the global economic slack.

26:46Fiona Hill:And although, you know, there's some hints of optimism there of, you know, people rethinking and refocusing and restructuring, which I think is inevitable. You know, he also does believe that we've moved into a completely different world for the global economy. And you cannot think that we're just galloping from one hegemon to the next. And I sort of think that, look, we're going to have, you know, maybe ultimately somewhere down the line, it could be decades that people might think, well, this was a cathartic experience, sort of a world cataclysmic, you know, a set of events that just had to happen to like a massive brush fire or conflagration that kind of clears the way for something new.

27:24Fiona Hill:But it's, you know, really hard to say at this particular stage what that new thing will be or that new set of things. But it's definitely we're in for a refresh here in the United States. I mean, you see the actual individual states reassessing the situation as well as the federal government gets dismantled and wondering, you know, kind of what they will have to substitute or, you know, how groups of states might work together. When I was recently in London and before that, you know, there were various visits by delegations of business people and the American and British Chambers of Commerce were talking about how US individual states are trying to set up their own memos of understanding with European British counterparts because they feel that this tension at the top that Trump's speaking for the United States is actually doing a lot of damage to their own interests which don't change.

28:15Fiona Hill:This isn't politics for them it's kind of real life real people's jobs you know the future of big states like Ohio and Pennsylvania not to just mention Texas and and California and you know in a way I think the United States themselves, the individual states, feel as much colonies, particularly if they're not red states, as European allies and other countries that have previously been allies of the United States feel at this moment in this Trumpian world, that all of them are dispensable and that they're going to have to start thinking themselves about how they position themselves. And Iran, you know, kind of dragging the United States down, and the more it's doing that, will, I think, accelerate a lot of these already trends that we see.

28:57Do you have any speculation about what might come after that rupture, to use a word that's been used often in recent months?

29:03Fiona Hill:Yes, thank you, Mark Carney. And look, I mean, I think Mark Carney is already showing the way to that. You know, people are very skeptical about what Canada can really pull off. But setting up these various banks, you know, essentially bumbling together funds to try to diversify Canadian economy away from the United States. Probably a very smart move. but also funds for building up Canada's own defence, long overdue, frankly. And those are the kinds of things I think we're going to start seeing in other places as well. I mean, I hate to say, but the UK doesn't seem capable at this particular point because of all the political churn that's going on of moving forward in a way.

29:45Fiona Hill:I mean, the churn previously in Canada with weak governments was an obstacle. Mark Carney's got a mandate now from the electorate to move forward. So many other countries uh chancellor metz as well i mean this is probably another spur you know particularly discussions about pulling troops out of germany which frankly trump intended to do all the way along i mean this is hardly a surprise it's a question about where else you know who will take troops out of it does hurt u.s interests because you know kind of one way to think about uh europe and the uk is like a giant aircraft carrier which positions the united states much closer to places it might be concerned about.

30:21Fiona Hill:But, you know, that's a decision that Trump has made, and it will have consequences. But the consequences will be, again, more regional groupings of other countries. You've already got the Joint Expeditionary Force, the JEF, which is a grouping of the UK, the Nordic, Baltic, and other countries that Canada is talking about joining, that would position them to really kind of think about security in the high north, the North Atlantic, the North Sea, you know, for example. And that could also be used as a platform for more, you know, joint defence funding and procurement and development. You've got other regional groupings that are taking shape.

30:58Fiona Hill:I think if Trump goes ahead with what he's threatening for the G20, you know, coming up this year to totally disinvite South Africa, you know, you'll get other countries starting to think, well, what's the point of having a G20? Why not, you know, kind of reformulate that? The G7 already looks somewhat dead in the water and obsolete. How do we create other regional groupings? It wouldn't necessarily just be the BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. But how do we get together for economic and trade purposes? Everybody wants alternatives. And I think we'll just start to see that happening, including in the United States.

31:30Fiona Hill:States will have to group together. You're seeing it on vaccine mandates. You're seeing that on higher education. You're seeing it on all kinds of different fronts right now, where the departure of the federal government from traditional areas of funding will mean that you're having to have new coalitions, maybe public-private philanthropy involved in this, private sector companies that have strong stakes in their own states, be it Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, California, who start to work more closely with governors and mayors, etc. I just think all of these things are possible. So we'll see a pretty fluid space, I think, in the economic security and other dimensions for some period of time before something else coalesces.

32:18Fiona Hill:You start seeing the building blocks of something taking shape here. We'll return to my conversation with Fiona Hill after a short break.

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34:01How do you rate European action on Ukraine as the US has reduced its support?

34:07Fiona Hill:Well, look, countries like the UK have been committed right from the beginning, and it's never really got much attention here. And, you know, for all of the problems that the UK is facing politically and domestically, it's done a crack, cracking job. I mean, the UK would say a bang up job in support for Ukraine, and it's learned an enormous amount. I mean, if the UK military was given a bit more kind of free reign and some more resources, I mean, that's been a big thing. I took part in the Strategic Defense Review with the UK last year. And there's just a lot of capacity there for innovation. And the UK military has absorbed all of those lessons from Ukraine in ways that, frankly, the US military has not, despite talking about it and saying that it has, because Trump's creating a bottleneck for us.

34:49Fiona Hill:And we've got nothing to learn from the Ukraine. We're absolutely amazing ourselves. Wrong. Ukraine is at the cutting edge of future war fighting. Until the next war, of course. But I mean, that's kind of basically what everyone is looking at right now. And the Europeans are leaning into that. They're learning those lessons and they're thinking about how they engage with Ukraine. And so Ukraine is going to be the most competent military in Europe. It's going to be up there with Turkey and Finland, neither of which have been tested in the way that Ukrainians have. And the Ukrainians are going to have an awful lot to offer.

35:23Fiona Hill:you know for europe and elsewhere so um you know ukraine is going to be an asset over the longer time which was they were hoping to be for ukraine for european security and i do think that that's now what promotes in people's minds and the more that trump in a distance united states from this the more that that will become become apparent i think we're already in that kind of post-american world uh and sort of in terms of a mindset now it is of course the case that there is still a great deal of dependency on the United States. And some people will argue, well, you know, it's high time, you know, that Europe starts to set up, there's limits to what they can do.

36:00Fiona Hill:But I think you've got a mindset now, stop telling us what we can't do. And let's look at what we can do. That is really starting to shift. And that's been, you know, shifting more in the last several months, especially since February, you know, given, you know, this kind of massive attack on Iran and the consequences. So again, we always say in the United States, no, you can't do this you can't do that people start saying okay fine but what can we do you know so let's kind of take a look and let's be more creative and that's where the ukrainians are now yes they're um you know they're all beaten up but they're not beaten you know they're battered but they're not battered completely down and you know they've actually proven that they can keep on going you know despite all of the odds and there's something in that despite all the exhaustion and the desire to have this war over with and i again i think they are they are having an impact on um europeans And even if, you know, Trump is really angry with people like Santos in Spain and, you know, and others, if you listen to what they have to say about the way that they're thinking of Europe, they're thinking of a very different place from where it was before.

37:02You suggested earlier that Trump had prolonged the war in Ukraine rather than ending in 24 hours, as he said he would. In what ways has that been true? Is that about the cutoff in intel support and air defenses at various points, even as Putin has reason to think that he can keep going? Are there other dynamics here? And if I can ask you to imagine yourself back in your old job on the National Security Council in this term, what would you be advising Trump about how to actually end the war?

37:31Fiona Hill:yeah i mean i would have advised trump to do none of the things that he's done honestly apart from you know maintain that uh maintain that support and i do think there were people around him including general kellogg and others who were trying to you know keep him on that you know path for a period i mean he should have had complete unity with his allies and they should have been you know kind of figuring out how to you know bring this to a conclusion by making it apparent to putin that you know he couldn't secure the territory that he wanted to without um you know these um incredible losses now um putin's still been having these losses but he always thinks that he can shift things on the political playing field and that trump is going to basically browbeat the ukrainians into handing you know a victory over to him and that's definitely kept things going um certainly um they took the edge off um ukrainian offensive it could be more decisive maybe they even drove you know kind of the um you know ukrainians into doing things that run wise i I think it was very unwise Ukraine to go into Korsk.

38:29Fiona Hill:Of course, that was on Biden's watch. But that was during a period where Trump was actually pushing, you know, from Mar-a-Lago to have, you know, kind of a total cutoff of, you know, assistance to Ukraine as well. So even when he wasn't in power, he was kind of, you know, talking down, giving or continuing to give Ukraine aid. He was not wrong, of course, that Europe should have been doing more. And, you know, that kind of push to get Europe to do more should always have been imperative. always pushing Europeans to do more to take you know charge of this but not undermining their ability to negotiate because you know what's happened is the negotiations have been all about Trump this is all just about Trump negotiating with himself even also even with Putin it's all been about Trump and Putin and the Trump and Putin relationship or the relationship between their entourages and the business people around them who can enrich themselves on their various deals it's had little to do with Ukraine and very little to do even with Russia and the United States.

39:22Fiona Hill:And so that's kind of really what's been the problem. He's made it all about him at all times. And the humiliation of Zelensky, I mean, completely, not really uncalled for. Is your expectation that the war will continue until there's some exogenous shock that fundamentally changes dynamics? Yeah. And look, maybe this is one of those shocks. I mean, initially it looked like it was a shock in favor of Russia, but it might not be. A very wise analyst in the UK described it to me last week as deadlock rather than stalemate. And that got me thinking for a while because I kept thinking, what's the difference between stalemate and a deadlock?

40:00Fiona Hill:One, of course, comes from a little more chess and the other is the case of stalemate. And obviously, neither side can move. But I think with deadlock, as he was describing it, one side could decide to break out of that and to make a sudden move. It would have to be a concession from one to the other. You know, but it's that kind of refusal to move rather than the fact that they can't move that is kind of part of the problem there. And so, you know, it could be that Russia or Putin gets forced to make a move, you know, to say, okay, that's it. But again, the consequences could be pretty dire, as we've just discussed.

40:39And given your understanding of Putin and how he operates, what might it be that would prod him to make that move?

40:44Fiona Hill:I think a concerted pressure from not the United States, but China and maybe the Gulf states, just saying, look, enough. But I mean, it's again, it's I can't quite think about what the pathway would be to this at the moment. Again, you know, the Ukrainians are pretty convinced that, you know, China holds the key, but it may be that more parties hold the key here. And also, it could be internally, as Putin kind of feels that he's got limited room for maneuver and he's starting to get pressure. I mean, particularly if he starts to feel fearful for his own safety and security. But then again, it makes it really difficult to imagine peace.

41:25Fiona Hill:Same for the Iranians, the regime. In peace, what do you have? You know, it's a sort of a, we see now with Trump that he's moved from the domestic to the foreign policy front and he has to be constantly in the center of action and doing things all the time. And for Putin, he has become a wartime president. He passed being the peacetime president a long time ago. I don't think there's very little that he can go back to at this point. He can't offer something different. He can't offer a future. And so the question is, will somebody else offer one? The other dimension of the U.S.-Russia relationship that seems particularly worrying, though it doesn't dominate headlines in the same way, is on the nuclear front.

42:06And a couple months ago, the last remaining arms control agreement vanished, new start. We see various attempts to modernize or innovate on nuclear arsenals on both sides. How worried are you about that piece of this?

42:20Fiona Hill:I'm more worried about the proliferation issues at this particular point, which I think gets us into a pretty dangerous territory overall, because all of the lessons from both the war in Ukraine and war against Iran are nuclear lessons. which is, you know, one country is getting attacked for being close to getting a nuclear weapon, probably wouldn't have been attacked if it had one. And another country is, or was attacked because it had given up having, you know, some fashion of a nuclear arsenal, a legacy arsenal that it got from the collapse of the Soviet Union. And, you know, if you're then sitting in Pyongyang and, you know, everywhere else, you know, that might be worried about your neighbours, you start to think, well, yep, let's kind of accelerate you know where we are now and others in the gulf are thinking why the heck don't we have a nuclear weapon you know why were we you know just kind of sitting back and others who were under the united states nuclear umbrella what's that worth because you know here you've got trump threatening nato members with all kinds of things talking about nato as a paper tiger his own uh lead alliance that had the nuclear umbrella as the as the paramount security is basically saying all of this is for naught and it's creating all kinds of debates in Europe about you know what about the future of the UK Trident submarine deterrent can that be still relied on if it's intertwined with US technical expertise and if it's a sort of almost and aware joint enterprise.

43:58Fiona Hill:What about the French? And their decision, of course, was after Suez and elsewhere to kind of go ahead with their own deterrent because they never really did trust the United States. They seem to have been borne out in terms of that decision. So should other European countries be talking about their own nuclear weapon or creating a European nuclear weapon on the basis of either the French force force or some combination of France and the UK. And then, of course, your Turkey, you know, why does Pakistan have a nuclear weapon? Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, you know, standoff is always, you know, kind of incredibly dangerous.

44:36Fiona Hill:So I worry about all of this. I worry about that we've now, the United States has unleashed proliferation because of these injudicious, unwise steps that Trump has made. And there's a tragedy in that because Trump actually did want to have strategic stability talks, have a new arms control deals. He personally did, even if people around him might not necessarily have been quite as keen with Russia, particularly after the end of the ABM and the INF and other treaties, new start. He wanted to have his own super Trump arms regulation treaty. You and I have talked about that before. And with China, with North Korea, with Iran.

45:17Fiona Hill:I mean, all of this has been about, for him, the nuclear weapons programs. That's about really regime change and everything. But, you know, it's not panned out. There's the tragedy and all of that, because he didn't really understand all the dynamics. As you look at the transatlantic relationship, do you see a real risk that NATO could come apart in the next few years? I see a different configuration of NATO, because I think that all of the other countries really benefit from it. And, you know, we've got Sweden and Finland in there now. Canada is stepping up. And I think you could see a kind of still a North Atlantic treaty organisation with Canada is in the North Atlantic, obviously.

45:57Fiona Hill:And there's an Arctic power as well, you know, with a lot more dedication and commitment from the Europeans as there should have been all the way along. i mean the point about all of this is there should have been a renegotiation and a more of a europeanization of nato a long time ago and that discrepancy between eu security and nato should have been worked out um probably 15 you know plus years ago if we go back to 2009 the lisbon treaty when the uk was still part of um the eu and there was that sort of discussion about the eu becoming more of a geopolitical actor and having more of a security and defense um perspective then that would have been a really good time to open up that kind of debate about how europe uh should have done more for its own security what would the future be then of nato if the with the eu having a somewhat different configuration but supposed to be taking on more security how would european union members be contributing more would there be more money coming from the eu kind of paying into nato as well um and that's that's you know was long overdue but of course we had the financial crisis immediately afterwards 2009 2010 you know was not a good time to talk about that but i think obama did try that again but of course the eu wasn't present at the wales summit for nato in 2014 that was when there was the agreement of two percent of gdp but i could also have opened up a set of discussions with europe and the european union is what i'm meaning there when i say europe's the european union about how they would contribute more to the security and of course there was Crimea and you know the beginning of all of that upheaval but the Germans were reluctant to do this um frankly there was a lot of blocks on the European side so that is on them you know so um we are long overdue but I think that now you know Germany has fully appreciated all of this I was asked a question I was at a parliamentary hearing in the UK last week about whether, you know, the kind of US support for NATO had really infantilised Europe.

48:01Fiona Hill:And I think that's a fair question. I think in some respects, yes. In the case of creating more of a sense of dependency, and people not being able to think beyond that dependency, which is where we still are now in many respects. But it also means that the US can't think beyond that dependency either. I mean, frankly, the way that people in the US on both sides of the aisle, Democrat and Republican have talked about Europe as if it's an unwashed mass of idiots. I mean, I heard that in the Biden administration just as much as in the Trump administration. It is a problem in itself, because the United States has infantilized Europe and seeing these kind of dependencies and not seeing what they're even talking about when they talk about Europe.

48:41Fiona Hill:You know, I think they think about Eurocrats or, you know, Nigel Farage cartoon character depictions of Europeans. They're not thinking about the Finns or the Norwegians or the Swedes or, you know, others, you know, kind of certainly not like the Ukrainians, haven't fully understood who the Ukrainians are and what they're about either. And I think that that is problematic. So it's a kind of a two-way street here. It's a two-way problem in the way that people conceptualize Europe and Europeans. Because, I mean, again, there's going to be a lot of sorting out to do in that European frame. But, you know, people are starting to talk about that.

49:15Fiona Hill:Now, there needs to be national conversations. one of the reasons i was over in the uk was because the strategic defense review had prefigured a national conversation about defense looking first of all at the threat environment which of course got worse in the past year and then what society as a whole would have to do about it not just the ministry of defense and that um you know really needs to take place but we need one in the united states too i think at the end of all of this is going to have to be a reckoning here in the us about the state of play, the fetishisation of the presidency. I mean, that was not prefigured 250 years ago.

49:53Fiona Hill:In fact, it was forewarned and foretold as a real risk and everything was done to try to head that off. And here we are. And also about how the states and broader society have a say through Congress on all of these particular issues. I think we're going to have to have the same debate about what the United States wants to be now that it is grown up 250 years on. And Europe needs to think about a world that is not dominated as it has been for the last 30 years by the United States. I mean, I keep thinking how ironic it is about Mark Rutter, totally cringeworthy, talking about Trump as daddy. The NATO Secretary General.

50:33Exactly, Mark Rutter, yeah.

50:34Fiona Hill:I mean, that was just, I don't know about you, but I hung my head in embarrassment about that. But he had a point because Europe has thought about the United States as daddy. But when, you know, your parents get to be 80, you know, sometimes you have to make decisions on their behalf or decisions beyond them, right? So 80 years is more than enough time to be moving away from this relationship. And, you know, Europe has been on notice for a long time that, you know, that this moment was going to come. It has now come. Can you imagine that Europeanized NATO functioning without the United States if the United States withdrew?

51:08Fiona Hill:I wonder whether the United States would want it to function without them. Because, I mean, again, it's going to be a big blow to United States leadership. You know, this moniker of, you know, the leader of the free world. Forget that. In fact, most people, nobody's using that now, honestly, because they see Trump as, you know, something completely different. Certainly not the leader of any free world. And of course, as he said, nothing is free anywhere. It's all taxes and tariffs and kind of sanctions and all kinds of things anyway. it. But, you know, putting that joking aside, you know, the more that Europeans invest in their own, you know, defense structures, you know, the less that they will be looking to the United States.

51:45Fiona Hill:And frankly, the United States is all saying, look, we don't have the capacity. And, you know, it is risky for U.S. trade. You see that U.S. businesses, and again, U.S. states, want to keep those very important relationships that they have with their trading partners and with their customers. And so, I mean, I think that there will be a push from within the United States. And the United States also does rely, whether Trump realizes or not, on a lot of, you know, data and equipment. And, you know, a lot of that will be lost, you know, in Europe. When the interviews were going on for the Strategic Defense Review, you know, we had many sessions here in the US, because, of course, the UK did not want to have a rupture with the US at that particular point it still saw you know the united states as its number one defense partner even if the writing was already on the wall that the united states was going to do less and less over time irrespective of who became president in you know 2024 but one very senior uh u.s pentagon official described the uk as an aircraft carrier for the united states you know a bit like the correlate of Hawaii, which of course, you know, nobody really thinks of Hawaii and the United Kingdom is very similar, you know, but in terms of strategic location, configuration, you know, as a set of islands, and you know, this kind of ability for the United States to launch itself off, which is why, of course, Trump has been so angry initially with the United Kingdom for not immediately allowing the bases, because I mean, the United Kingdom has laws against preemptive war, it has to basically facilitate something on the basis of the defensive operations, which, of course, eventually Prime Minister Keir Starmer came to when the United States has been using the base.

53:30Fiona Hill:In fact, the United States has been using many of its bases across Europe. And I mean, that, again, is a lesson, that the United States won't necessarily have access to this if it kind of goes down this particular path. So, look, many people in Congress know this. Many leading U.S. military strategists do. So it's just kind of a question about how much damage will have been done to these relationships. So again, I think it's not just a question of can Europe do without the United States? I think this is a two-way street here. For the US, there'll be certain things that the US will regret deeply if it really is fully ruptured.

54:09Fiona Hill:And I don't think that's in anyone's interest. And even as I'm advising the UK and other Europeans to do their best they can to diversify away from the United States, It's more about getting rid of those things that are real vulnerabilities, getting back some sovereign capacity, which frankly they should never have given up. Not destroying or moving away from the things that are mutually beneficial and make sense. What seems especially challenging for European governments at this point is that you have the U.S. on one side questioning support, throwing up economic challenges. But then the other great superpower is China, which economically at least is similarly threatening or more threatening.

54:48How do you understand the range of European views and approaches on China right now? And do you see a real change there?

54:54Fiona Hill:Well, I think in terms of the way that we see some courting of China and, you know, the way that they did, you know, years ago, but going back to, it's mainly just trying to kind of figure out the limits of possibility, what is possible with China without getting the blowback and, you know, the vulnerabilities. There's no desire to go from one hegemon to another. So even though Trump is denouncing some of these moves, it's just, you know, the Europeans trying to find some kind of rebalancing. Because, I mean, the Germans, the Brits and others have been on Canada prior to this were burnt by overexposure in China as well.

55:31Fiona Hill:Because we know that China has been reverse engineering everything, you know, from the US and from all of its European counterparts to do everything itself. That was a Chinese goal. And it's pretty much achieved this. and people see you know the entry of china into the wto have been just as damaging you know for industry and for workers in europe as it was for um the united states and germany's you know export orientation towards china um has kind of proven to be you know not total dead end now but certainly not what they're interested but it wasn't going to something that was going on forever but you know they have to deal with china while china is still the leader in green technology i that's something that the United States has completely given up on, or not completely, but certainly under Trump has stepped back on, which is pretty foolish, honestly, because everything that's happening in the Persian Gulf suggests that all the countries are going to actually have to double down, whether they like it or not, on moving away from hydrocarbon dependency, even if it's not easy and it's going to be extraordinarily expensive.

56:36Fiona Hill:I mean, the UK has been so expensive, quite damaging to the economy, but there's a sort of a feeling now that they can't really turn back. Maybe they need to have more emphasis on nuclear, but then again, you've got all the problems of where you're getting the uranium for enrichment, et cetera, and then all of the disposal. But again, companies like Rolls-Royce are heavily invested in creating these small modular reactors, and that's a UK company, even though it's obviously doing that in conjunction with the United States, for example. There's a kind of an understanding that you're going to have to look at local grids and kind of think kind of outside the box, but you can't go on as you are.

57:13Fiona Hill:And although, you know, American LNG and everything else is an important factor in this kind of interim, particularly given what's happening in the Gulf, there's just a real reluctance now to have any more dependencies and vulnerabilities. And, you know, China, the same, you know, you don't want to be, you know, reliant on everything made in China and having China dominate critical minerals. There's a lot of discussion now about recycling, you know, trying to get, you know, reclaim any of those components. Can you look for other sources of uh you know lithium and you know salts and other you know um uh catalysts you know for um electrical currents that could be you know organic and not you know kind of based on critical most of all kinds of research going on and in the uk and you know elsewhere it's just a question of kind of getting it to scale because people are worried about exactly that same you know problem down the line so it's not a question of running from the u.s to china nobody wants to be in a a block world now stuck between China and the United States.

58:14Fiona Hill:That idea of a, you know, tripartite world carved up among China, the United States, and maybe Russia, that's just not what anybody is envisaging. Do you think Trump finds appeal on that idea? I think he might have at one point, but I think he's gone beyond that now. He's just thought thinking himself as world-dominating, the world's historic individual. There was a piece in the Atlantic, you know, the YOLO presidency. But I'd already listened to a podcast about this. We've had things about this in the pages of Foreign Affairs. And, you know, for my 60th birthday, I walked along Hadrian's Wall and falling into that, you know, kind of cliche of the person who thinks about the Roman Empire all the time.

58:52Fiona Hill:I am that person. It's not all just men who do. I think about it, you know, once or twice a day. I do. You know, because I grew up right next to a Roman fort when I was a kid, so it was inevitable. You know, I was thinking about the bloody Romans. You know, they were there. They were omnipresent. And every school trip was to some Roman fall to the wall. But I kept thinking about that, that, you know, Putin may think that he's a world historic individual. She definitely thinks of this. But boy, is Trump trumping all of them because he really has gone into that phase. The rebuilding of America. It's just like the building of the wall.

59:24Fiona Hill:You know, I mean, Hadrian didn't build the wall until he was part into his reign. And it was a long time after the Romans had made it to Britain because he was trying to demarcate out his empire. All of these emperors go in these building phases to say they are someone. And they want it all done in their lifetime so they can take advantage of it. Hadrian went around the entire Roman Empire after getting a bit depressed about the loss of his lover. And it was just to kind of make himself feel that he was real again. And I think, you know, Trump is being relevant to himself. He just can't imagine a world without him.

59:57Fiona Hill:And he wants to, you know, just indulge himself in this building frenzy. What about Xi Jinping? is he navigating this geopolitical moment well? Well, we'll see, won't we? We'll see whether he decides to do something or not do something on Taiwan. If I were him, I'd wait and see how this all plays out. But I don't know whether he feels that time is on his side or not. And Putin, you know, and Xi are the same age. I mean, they're in their 70s. They'll hit, you know, 74, well, roughly, you know, this year. I mean, they're a bit younger than Trump, who hits 80, for God's sake, in June. But they've got to be, you know, wondering as well.

1:00:33Fiona Hill:And both Xi and Putin have been engaging in purges of personnel, consolidation, creating verticals of power. They obviously don't feel secure. We've got that hot mic incident with them both. I'm talking about organ replacements and can they live forever? Putin obviously uses a lot of Botox. I mean, I just, you know, it's like these guys were trying to turn the clock back. I mean, you've got to make fun of it because otherwise, you know, what do you do with this dark moment in history? But yeah, we are indeed cursed by this too interesting time with three major world figures and the poor Pope trying to make sense of it all in the middle of it.

1:01:14one more leader i i want to get your thoughts on is victor orban who was of course seen as the you know kind of at least symbolizing is not as world historically important as the other three but symbolized this kind of illiberal tide do you see his defeat in a recent election as a major turning point and if so what are the what are the lessons in that well it's a cautionary

1:01:35Fiona Hill:tale i mean we could also pick out erdogan and in turkey and others it's a cautionary tale for hubris and, you know, for robbing the country. I mean, ultimately, it wasn't necessarily because of his rollback of democracy. I think that's kind of, you know, part of the issue. It's really running the economy into the ground and taking too much of the pie. And so there is a cautionary tale there. And the other point is that it really took all of the opposition to swallow their pride and to get behind, I mean, the wonderfully named Peter Magyar, because of course Magyar means Hungarian, so it was a Hungarian for Hungary, and others, you know, deciding, well, he was the most likely person to be able to defeat Orbán because he knew him best.

1:02:19Fiona Hill:And, you know, he was still a conservative candidate who stood for some of the same things that Orbán did, which is obviously more resonant with the broader population of Hungary. But everybody else in the opposition got behind him because the main thing was trying to, you know, restore some semblance of democratic choice. And it's the anti-corruption and the, you know, the running the economy into the ground. Look, that's exactly what we have in the United States. The corruption is off the charts. I mean, it's just shocking. On the outside, when you go, you know, to Europe and the UK, people are stunned by what's happening here.

1:02:53Fiona Hill:I find it, you know, hard to imagine that Americans really can stomach this kind of thing, because Trump is so evidently all about just enriching himself and those around him. He is not for the average American. And I mean, it took a lot of time in Hungary, but people are really hurting here. And the inequality is off the charts in a way that it wasn't in Hungary. I mean, Hungary isn't home to trillionaires and billionaires on the scale. I mean, Russia has that kind of level of inequality. But Russia has always had that kind of apex predator culture with the vertical of power. And the United States was supposed to be more of a, I mean, maybe a sort of fully egalitarian society, but one in which, you know, anybody could have a chance.

1:03:36Fiona Hill:Well, almost nobody has a chance now unless you know Trump and you're related to him. Do you see that corruption having a distorting effect when it comes to American foreign policy and power? It's an incredibly corrosive effect. I mean, all the foreign policy is just about pandering to Trump and to the people who make money around it. I mean, a lot of the foreign policy moves that we see are being driven by people's profit motive. I'm sorry, that's just exactly how it is. And it's seen exactly like that. You know, bringing the man gold bars and, you know, kind of getting his family members, you know, sinecues.

1:04:10Fiona Hill:And this makes anything that happened under the Biden administration and all the discussions about under Biden pale into, you know, insignificance in comparison. And all of those things are bad. All of the kind of corruption that we've had over multiple presidencies, you know, that has been revealed by people taking advantage of their positions close to power. You know, usually we try to actually stop that. But here we're just feeding it over and over again. And also, I mean, the media distortion. I mean, people are enthralled to Trump. They can't stop talking about him and thinking about him.

1:04:45Fiona Hill:And, you know, we need to stop this. I was listening to the Tucker Carlson interview in the New York Times and just the way that he was describing this. And he's as guilty as everybody else is, in fact, more guilty than most about feeding this beast. There's going to have to be a lot of people sitting, you know, with themselves in a darkened room and thinking about their responsibility for this. Let me just return to close to this idea of Trump as a world historical figure. And he imagines himself that way. You seem to think that that's true as well. If you and I are still around in a few decades from now, we could write a nice history book about it.

1:05:20Great. Well, what do you think that inflection point is likely to be, if that is in fact the case?

1:05:26Fiona Hill:Well, I think it's already happened. I mean, just the way that he came back and the decisions that he's made, particularly the decision to go to war against Iran. I mean, it's like Napoleon going to Moscow in the middle of winter. it's uh judas caesar crossing the rubicon it's um but a napoleon remember ends up in elba maybe dying of arsenic maybe dying of stomach cancer you know will we ever really know um alexander the great you know getting all the way to indian having one banquet banquet too many uh you know none of these people ended particularly well again apart from as i said before genghis khan who seemed to kind of you know go on for a very long time and have lots of sons who you know the squandered the empire there's a maybe that's the trumpian result you know eventually the the sons of genghis khan you know kind of all went off and did their own thing and eventually it kind of broke down into multiple little you know hordes uh and not less golden each one less golden than the and then than the last um but you know if we think about ivan the terrible and um you know the impact that he had you know elizabeth the first another you know world's historic figure also far too much makeup eventually gets arsenic poisoning and all the teeth fall out you know there's just there's all kinds of ways in which you know one can make a horrible history out of this there was a great ppc series of horrible histories usually featuring these kind of world historic figures and they there's usually something horrible that kind of comes with all of the massive change even if again as i said decades from now we might find some of it was cathartic and important in terms of clearing, you know, the way for something else.

1:07:04Fiona Hill:There's also been a lot of damage and destruction. That's a rich set of analogies to close on. So, Fiona, thank you so much once again for doing this. Happy belated 60th birthday. Well, thanks for being a while, by the way. It's last year. Okay, okay. I thought it was last week when you were walking. It was my 61st year. No, but it was a great thing to do. I highly recommend to everybody, Go and walk Hadrian's Wall or do a kind of a nice long walk for your birthday. Clears the mind. And I suspect that one headline coming out of this will be about how often you think about the Roman Empire. So yeah, I know.

1:07:34Fiona Hill:I am that sad person who thinks about it frequently. Well, thanks so much, Fiona. And we'll look forward to doing this again before too long. Thanks, Dan. Thanks for having me.

1:07:49Thank you for listening. you can find the articles that we discussed on today's show at foreignaffairs.com. This episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Elise Burr and Connish Therruer. Our audio engineer is Christopher Cook. Original music is by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Irina Hogan. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you like what you heard, please take a minute to rate and review it. We release a new show every Thursday. Thanks again for tuning in.

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