161. Putin, Trump, and 500 Years of Resisting Russia (Radek Sikorski)

29:52They got 38 % of the vote, which in a proportional representation system doesn't normally give you an overall majority. Our left-wing party missed the 8 % threshold for coalitions by 30 ,000 votes. And if they'd got the extra 30 ,000 votes, which was actually literally one television debate, everything would have been different. But yes, Poland has the same issues of populism as Britain, as France, as Germany, as the United States. And populists are skilled at proposing simple solutions to difficult problems. also electorates everywhere have told us fix migration or else or or we will choose people who will and and some cultural issues i think also also play a role i mean this is a a big debate which we are not going to resolve here now you said there that you you're out rebutting and you're out fighting against the lies and so forth but in a sense the presidential election which, you know, your party narrowly lost to a populist, which was being seen as a bit of a defeat for Donald Tusk and the government.

31:08Does that show that maybe you didn't successfully rebut the sort of things that you have to do if you're going to fight this stuff? Poland is split down the middle into the nationalist part and the pro-European part. And who wins depends sometimes on technical issues and sometimes on mobilization. Do you feel overall you're winning the big arguments right now? well you know you asked me what it was like to be in britain to arrive in britain in the 1980s i'll tell you what if at that time someone would told me that there will come a moment when poland will be in the eu and britain will not be and that in britain they would be having a serious political debate about poland possibly overtaking britain economically i would have said That's pure fantasy.

31:59And yet here we are. Okay, Deputy Prime Minister Alistair, let's have a quick break and then back for more. School of Rock is so much more than a music school. It's a place to shine. In an independent study commissioned by School of Rock, 96.2 % of parents noticed a boost in their child's self-confidence since joining our programs. Our students gain far more than music skills. By playing in a band, they grow into leaders and develop self-confidence that extends beyond the lesson room. Learn more at schoolofrock.com slash sign up. You know the words that dominate our news cycle. Private equity keeps inventing...

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34:06Feature availability varies by plan. Offer available for new business customers in the UK, US, Australia and Ireland. Fees and terms and conditions apply. I was going to actually ask you if we could move on to two of the really big issues that have kind of been dominating global debate and politics in recent months. We'll come on to Ukraine. I think I really want to get your views on how that all resolves itself. But you're very, very strongly pro-Israel. No, no, no. Wait a second. Poland is in favor of a two-state solution. Poland has recognized Palestine for decades. There was a fully accredited Palestinian ambassador in Warsaw.

34:53And we have repeatedly criticized the overuse of force by Israel, the breaking of international humanitarian law, and the illegal settlements in the West Bank. So yes, because of history, here you are in Łódź, which once had the largest ghetto, second largest, I think, of the Warsaw. And so there is a lot of history. But we see the tragedy of both peoples. How have you found that from being somebody who I think instinctively, and I'm not saying this remotely in a critical way, who instinctively feels support for the state of Israel? How have you found that? For the existence of Israel in security within internationally recognized borders.

35:40Okay, but how have you felt over the last couple of years in seeing the sense of that Israel and how it projects itself to the outside world by its conduct inside Gaza? Obviously, there's a wave of criticism. What I don't get is how people can criticize Israel without mentioning what caused this current wave of violence. And it was a heinous terrorist attack by Hamas, which, by the way, destroyed the peace party in Israel and harmed the Palestinian cause. You've been at this game for a very long time now. One of the things that I think is very difficult to get across to people is what it's like being a minister.

36:23How do you explain to people what the difference is between being a minister or being a business person or being a journalist or running an NGO? What is the essence? What is the strangeness of being a minister that people don't understand? I'm sometimes asked what's the difference between a foreign minister and a defense minister. But yes, I don't know exactly how it works in Britain, but in the Polish constitutional system, the ministry is just an addition to the person of the minister. You are responsible for foreign policy. And it carries a lot of responsibility. I was for four years a deputy, which helps to prepare you.

37:05How does the relationship between a government of one party with a president of another who has some influence and involvement in foreign policy, how does that actually work in practice? Lucky you to have a limited constitutional monarchy. Well, tell me. Tell me how it works. It's a challenge. I try to explain to myself that it's like the Roman Republic with two consuls simultaneously. Where does actual real power lie? So our constitution makes the prime minister the head of the executive branch. And the president is basically head of state and a representative of the country abroad with a veto power.

37:47So our Charles is Charles III plus the veto. So how did you feel, all that being said, how did you feel when the President of the United States, I think on two occasions during the campaign, invited your opponent, who now is the President, to the Oval Office and gave him his political blessing? Well, we used to have this rule among democracies that we don't interfere in each other's party political processes. Most of us still do. But we did interfere in the politics of dictatorships on behalf of democracy. And now it's the other way around. Hold on. So you kind of are moving towards my view that the United States under Trump is becoming an autocracy.

38:31No. Nice try. But no, I didn't say that. But you know, it's actually, it is astonishing. I mean, for me as somebody who used to be a diplomat and then became a politician and now no longer a politician, This change is very dramatic because even in Kenya, the American government was very scrupulous not to choose sides in an election. And now suddenly we have it being made clear that they want the AFD to win in Germany. You know, there was a moment where there was very fierce criticism against Keir Starmer, essentially supporting Farage and now supporting a guy called Tommy Robinson, who's beyond Farage.

39:04It's a very strange moment. I mean, I wonder whether you can help us understand how this is happening, why this is happening. Well, I'll refuse this invitation to interfere in the politics of our great ally. But as you know, there is a Chinese curse. May your dreams come true. Let me push one more time. Tell us a little bit. We've interviewed your wife, Anne Applebaum, about populism. I have to say here that she's a separate subject of the international law. Okay. Okay. She's a separate side. We're not going to get you to talk about her. But the subject that she discussed with us, of course, was populism.

39:42And I wonder whether you could explain what it felt like in Poland. As you pointed out, there are versions in Britain, there are versions in Italy, there are versions in Germany. But in the Polish context, what did it mean in practice? How threatening was it? How dangerous was it to democracy? I can quote you words and populist actions from literally the last 48 hours. So our opposition party has just had a huge convention at which the leader, the former prime minister, Kaczynski, said that Poland's independence is threatened by this German and French attempt to take away our statehood. This is at a time when there are Russian drones and missiles 250 kilometers from here killing people.

40:31So, you know, in the Polish context, we feel that the enemy is in the East. We don't feel culturally or civilizationally threatened by the West. This is us, the pro-European part of the political spectrum. You know, my parents' generation and myself, we dreamt of Poland being normal when we were under communism. And normal, we defined as just a regular Western European country. And we've achieved that. And we were, at that time, assaulted by communist propaganda talking about the rotten West. And now we have our competitors talking about rotten West. And it's just extraordinary because of cultural issues to do with sexual minorities and the pace of social change.

41:20And some people are being hoodwinked by that kind of simplistic propaganda. What do they mean by France and Germany trying to take away his state? Just being members of the European Union? Yeah, that's right. That's it. Which is absurd because France and Germany on their own don't even have a blocking minority, let alone a majority. One more just on this, the judiciary. Explain what had happened with the judiciary in Poland and how worried should we have been? I mean, some people said, OK, these guys were in for 10 years roughly in Poland, but they're not such a big deal. I don't know why people call them populists.

41:54I don't know why people call them authoritarians. It's not the end of the world. It's the European Union. Everything's fine. Try to explain what it was actually like. Why was it dangerous? Why was it something to be concerned about? You see, the conclusion of this already 10 years of experiments in various countries with populism should be, in my view, that institutions are much more fragile than we think. that constitutions are only as good as the sense of probity and the willingness to stand up by the people who man them who have the duties to uphold constitutions i remember even in britain do you remember the headline with the portraits of judges enemies of the people we just talked to the former Supreme Court judge?

42:44Right. So in Poland, until 10 years ago, we had a system basically of judges electing themselves with a minority being elected by parliament. And our nationalist competitors broke, in my view, broke the constitution by electing a much larger number of them by politicians. And so we now have judges elected by a previous system and judges elected under this politicized system. And what I will put to you is that it's all very complicated, but the function of the judiciary is not only to pass judgment, but also to maintain the appearance of impartiality. And whatever you think about the rights and wrong, that has certainly been lost.

43:38So before these populist reforms, I never asked myself when going to court, is this judge from left wing or right wing or, you know, who is he sympathetic to? And I'm afraid these days, most people ask themselves, you know, where does what kind of judge he is politically? And and that's a loss. And is it fixable? Is it reversible? It is very difficult to fix it. Once institutions lose their... It takes decades to build up authority and only a few months to lose it. And what about you as foreign minister, responsible for example of the appointment of ambassadors? What happens when a political party appoints ambassadors on a political party basis?

44:21Have you had to withdraw lots of them? So yes, I inherited more than 50 % of ambassadors who were not diplomats, who are party political ambassadors, plus some vacancies. So I'm trying to now make the foreign service professional again. And unfixing media reform as well? Same thing, yeah. I mean, the media, imagine the BBC taken over by Breitbart, literally. To give an example, because people sometimes don't quite believe it. So during the COVID pandemic, Donald Tusk, well, he was at that time president of the of EPP, addressed the congresses of various EPP parties. This is the European Conservative Group.

45:04That's right. Yeah. And among others, CDU. And being a good politician, he would always include a few sentences in the native language of that party. And so he said remotely, because this was during COVID, good luck in your deliberations, but think not only what's good for Germany, für Deutschland, but primarily what's good for Europe. And so what they did, they took these two words, für Deutschland, and they repeated it on main television news hundreds of times. Now, if you have this kind of bias, you cannot tolerate that. So we had to bring back professionalism to state media. What was going on with ownership of media and how about relationship with universities?

45:52I mean, how did that work during this populist period? Well, first of all, again, value what you have. The BBC, where facts are checked. You know, you might complain about slight bias this way or that way, but people don't outright invent stuff and they don't attack politicians in that kind of way, right? So yes, universities are also usually the first victim of populists because universities are autonomous and universities should and do. care about truth, about establishing facts, about free inquiry. And populists, by definition, don't like that. So can you give us an example, try to illustrate what was happening in the university so we can understand this?

46:33Well, we had an assault on freedom of debate under the heading that universities supposedly became, you know, the spiel, You know, uh, Hotbeds of left-wing activism. Yeah. And my view is, you know, lefties are also allowed to, should be allowed to function at universities, you know. You've got to go, we're at this, this, this conference where the star attractions are you, obviously, me, obviously, and later George Clooney, and you have to go and do a panel in a few minutes. But I just wanted to maybe close by bringing us back to, to Ukraine. You mentioned the drones recently, the drone attacks.

47:19And I quote you, another quote from a speech of yours, Poland has learned over 500 years that when the Russians threaten, you take it seriously. How alarmed, how scared are Poles about what's happening over in Ukraine? We think that if Putin succeeded in conquering Ukraine, we would be next. And it's happened before, which is why we've been spending a solid 2 % of GDP on defense for 20 years. and we are now spending 4.7 % of GDP. And the public are fine with that. They understand that and they get that. It's amusing when my colleague, the finance minister attends his meetings, his equivalents, asking, how do you manage to have such a huge...

48:00And he says, well, I'd be eviscerated if I didn't. You know, we will eat grass rather than become a Russian colony again. Final one for me, Europe. How can we imagine a more ambitious European security infrastructure, sovereignty, the UK re-engaging Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, the Western Balkans? How do we think about Europe taking the lead? Because clearly, there are some challenges from the US, there are challenges from China, but Europe doesn't seem to be stepping up. How do we get Europe to step up? It's a fundamental constitutional issue. Europe is a confederation. In other words, an organization in which ultimate sovereignty lies with the member states.

48:42And all historic confederations either became federations or cease to exist. And when you look at our competition, they all have unity of command. We don't. We have a synchronization problem, which is particularly acute, obviously, in the area of defense, because it's the core of sovereignty. This is a crisis in which I believe we should stick together because otherwise we'll be hanged separately, not only in the defence area, but particularly in the trade area. Do you think we should be moving towards, you know, when we say common defence and security policy, that is absolutely what we mean, common?

49:21We have it in theory under the Lisbon Treaty. But what I believe we need is not only a common policy to reinvigorate Europe's defence industries. I'm in favor of the European Union starting to have some defense capability of our own so that we don't have to call on the United States in every emergency. We should be capable of sorting out some warlord in Libya or the Balkans next time around. My final question, quite a big one. I want to ask you whether in our lifetime, you're a few years younger than I am, but we're both in our 60s. if in our lifetime Ukraine will be a member of NATO and the European Union?

50:07And how does that journey happen? And whether the UK will ever be back in the European Union? That I don't know, but I think Ukraine will become a member of the EU at the beginning of next decade. Okay, how? Well, it's already a candidate. We are already negotiating. But enlargement is really hard for those who are already candidates. It is, but Europe approved Ukraine's status as a candidate, and Europe unanimously agreed to start negotiations. And, you know, Hungary is blocking progress, but it'll happen eventually. And let me say one thing, that if Britain chooses to reapply to the European Union, I can trust you, I can promise you that whoever is in charge in Poland, we will vote in favor.

50:57Excellent. Good news. Just on that point a bit, so for Ukraine to get to that, though, Russia cannot be allowed to win. So how does that happen? Are you confident that the Americans and the other European countries are as committed to Ukraine as you are? Well, Ukraine is planning for a three-year war. And these colonial wars usually take about a decade. And I don't think Putin can sustain it for another three years. And we are about to supply Ukraine the means to resist for another three years out of the frozen Russian assets. Ukraine now makes almost half of its drones and cruise missiles in Ukraine.

51:37Putin has underperformed. We thought he had the world's second army and he thought there would be a coup, it would be a cakewalk, three-day operation. And more than 10 years, he's still fighting in Donbass. I would not call that a victory. Well, thank you. Thank you for your time. My pleasure. You've got about three minutes to get to the stage and talk to the Polish people. And George Clooney. And I don't think he's coming. I think he's only coming for his own event, I've been told. Anyway, thank you. It's been great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Bye-bye.

52:11So, Rory, your fellow Bullingdon Club member, he was even dressed like he was off to a bully club. He had his weekend Tory jacket on. But I'll tell you what, he's a very, very, very impressive guy, I think. I got the impression you were really sort of warming to him and won over by him. What was your sense of him? No, well, I've met him quite a few times before. I must admit, the first time I met him, I found him quite overbearing. And he wasn't in politics at the time, but he was so kind of putting the world to rights and he had the answers to everything. But what I thought about him there was just that he's clearly incredibly experienced now, very thoughtful and very clear.

52:49And I actually did find his backstory and his account of his own life. I got the sense of somebody quite special in terms of how his life had progressed and developed. And look, I always like these interviews when people are, you know, they don't come in and say, what are you going to ask? And there was none of that. It was like, you know, sit down, ask a question, and he gives you a straight answer. And I just found some of his historical perspective really, really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. The only thing I was surprised by, but I shouldn't have been surprised by, is that he wasn't more outspoken.

53:23I felt it took a little bit to draw him out, for example, on populism and nationalism in Poland. I think we asked a few questions on that, judiciary, universities, parties to get there. And I wonder, well, I suppose one thing, of course, that I'm reminded of is that he's a serving politician. And therefore, he is a little bit more cautious than a retired politician. But you see, I think all of these politicians at the moment, the panel I did this afternoon, I can talk about this stuff much more freely than a serving politician can because everybody knows that when you're talking about this, you're basically talking about Trump to some extent.

54:01You're talking about Trump's style of politics. What I felt when you were asking about universities and the media, I kind of felt a quite visceral contempt in him for the populist politicians in Poland. I felt that quite strongly. So it's interesting, you picked up the sense that he was actually quite mild. I felt, it's interesting that maybe that's just by being in the room. I could sort of see the cheek muscles going and I could see him getting quite wound up. Well, I suppose encourage listeners to listen to our leading interview with his wife, Anne Applebaum, because she is so ferocious. Oh yeah.

54:36And she will provide, off the top of her head, 20 outrageous examples of disgusting, corrupt, horrendous behaviour by that Polish government. And obviously, they lived together, they went through this together. So I was expecting that it would be that amped up. And of course, it's much less than Anne produces now. The other one, I would have liked if we'd had more time to bring Poland alive more in the 1980s. I wanted a sense of how that government worked. There's something quite interesting, I guess, about the fact that quite a lot of the people supporting the populist nationalist parties in Poland were often people who regret the collapse of the old system and maybe are nostalgic for what existed before in the 1980s and how those governments worked.

55:26I think he's written a book about all that as well. I mean, maybe he just, I've got a feeling that was one of the books he wrote was kind of addressing exactly that we should check it out and put in the put it in the notes or send it to you to read but I'll tell you the other thing it was interesting when you asked him at the end sort of what's it like being a minister just to give you a sense of what what his day's been like today so they've been at this like huge reset they've actually renamed their party today to take account of some of the the changes that have happened they've had a big kind of policy debate there and meanwhile as he alluded to the the opposition have had this big conference as well so he sort of arrives here from that he kind of disappeared into the gents for about two minutes to you know do whatever you do in the gents when you've just been stuck in a conference forever he then came in here for a meeting with the local mayor um and had that then sat down with us for an hour and has literally kind of walked out of this room down the corridor and into a a full you know he's going to be grilled on stage by God knows who in front of a big live audience.

56:27And then we'll be, I presume, sort of heading off north to home. So, you know, you always do get so much more if you sort of see, if you're talking to them in the flesh, because just the way he kind of operated, watching him just for a bit of today, I think he's a much more impressive politician than I thought he would have been when I knew him when he wasn't a politician. I felt back then that he was one of those very, very clever commentators who like to sort of throw stones from the outside but my sense is actually and interestingly talking to people around here today and this conference is quite kind of liberal so the journalist who i just did an interview with said you know do you spend all your life in liberal bubbles like this and and and actually he's so he's not kind of you know not on my side of the political fence as it were but i've got the sense that he's actually quite popular and respected as a political figure.

57:20And so whether he eventually wants to go for the top job or have another go at being president, I don't know. But no, I found it. I was impressed. I was impressed. Good. Well, thank you, Alistair, very much. See you soon. Thank you. Bye-bye.

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