351. Question Time: Geopolitics in Crisis

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0:50Welcome to the Restus Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. Now, Rory, we got loans and loans and loans of questions about, not a small forage and refueling, and Kirst Humber this week. But I think even though we were pretty foreign policy related in the main podcast, there's so much other big foreign news that we didn't even have time to do in the main podcast. So let me choose what we kick off with. I'm going to show you this one. Jacob Mardel, what do you think Vladimir Putin's reaction would be to a pro -EU revolution in Georgia? Jess Weller, what do you think the fallout of the pro -EU protest in Georgia will be?

1:32Adapt to accommodate disruptive leaders or is there a institutional integrity too great? Well, this is in some ways, if it weren't for Syria, it would have been the very, very biggest news this week. So Georgia is an EU candidate state in the Caucasus, and it's completely vital for geo -strategic reasons. It's, depending on whether it's pro -Putin or pro -Western, it's a vital route for central Asia, for minerals, for oil coming in from Azerbaijan, for the security of that whole region. And the hope after this color revolution, 20 years ago, is that as part of the breakup of the Soviet Union, it was on its route to becoming more of a liberal democracy, and it became a NATO candidate, EU candidate.

2:23An election has happened very, very dubious selection, and straight after this election, which saw a victory from a pro -Putin party, Georgian dream, financed by a man who made his money as an oligarch in Russia, took the election by some pretty peculiar figures coming out of minority areas of Georgia. They betrayed their voters by suddenly announcing that they're not going to push ahead with their EU membership. And this was the breaking point. A lot of the opposition were already very suspicious because this is a very authoritarian regime. It's very pro -Putin, and it's locking up opposition people, and it's threatening, and it's issuing lists of more civil society people that's going to lock up.

3:17But this was the thing that triggered them into the streets. I'd love to talk a little bit more about this, but just give us a sense of what you've thought about the pro -EU demonstrations and what you've seen on the streets and your sense of Georgia. Well, I think what you're seeing is a country that's facing a fundamental choice about which direction it takes, does it sort of lean into Europe or does it lean backwards towards Russia? And what you're seeing in the streets is incredible courage and bravery, because as you say, these people are just getting banged up. And some of the scenes have been horrific of these balaclava -wearing security forces.

3:51Some of them not even wearing uniform, but just sort of basically lifting people up, taking them out, and we assume sort of banging them up. And these are Russians backed, sometimes Russian sponsored. And we talked in the main podcast about Notre Dame. One of the other reasons I was mesmerised by all the people watching going on was somebody who was present in a very prominent position sitting just behind Donald Trump. Was the lady we mentioned last week, the French -born Georgian president, Salon Zourabic -Philly. And if you look at her social media feed, she just went around the place. She had a word with Trump.

4:30She then did a post saying, good to talk to Donald Trump. He's a great friend of Georgia. He understands her awful, what's happening is going on. She was photographed obviously with Macron. She was photographed with president of Poland. She just went, did the rounds, doing speed dating diplomacy. And what she's doing is incredibly brave, because she's basically saying, I'm not going to quit as president, even if you hold elections, saying with your electoral council that I've lost, because I do not accept the illegitimate election on which the parliament was chosen. I'm glad we're recording today, because this is an absolutely critical week for her in Georgia, because it's next week that they will push in a new president and she'll become a lame duck.

5:13And this is the moment, this is the three -four day period, where the opportunity is for European leaders, for the UK, to step up and get to Georgia. What needs to happen is we need three foreign ministers. And it'd be lovely if the UK was one of them turning up, meeting the demonstrators, saying, you're right, you should have a European future, and there should be free and fair elections. Because the only person who's visited, only person is Victor Orban, who's immediately come out for the proputes in authoritarians. Absolutely. And Rory, you were unfairly castigating me for not getting Nigel Frage on the podcast.

5:50Whilst this was happening in Notre Dame, yes, because Eddie Rama, Prime Minister Albania, was sitting just behind president Zula Beach really, I sent him a message saying, I don't know a number for Salom Zula Beach really, but if you're having a word with her, can you tell her that we'd love to get her on leading, and given it so fast moving, we would do it live. And the response came back that she'd love to, but she finds us a bit scary. Now, given what she's facing to Blesi, I think that is a, and I did get in touch with her press secretary, who understandably said that she's very, very busy, but the invitation is there, and it's open.

6:29We would love to talk to the president of Georgia. I've also had her number sent to me by various Georgian friends. My friend Geralt Knouse, who I talk about a great deal, who works the European stability initiative, he thinks this is such a litmus test for the West, particularly at a time when Trump is retreating. He feels it's like Mussolini marching on Rome, and everybody's saying, well, let's hope it works out. And there's a real dance going on between European leaders. You basically get the sense that you've got Nordic leaders saying, well, you know, I'll go to Georgia, provide it to someone else who will come with me.

7:03And of course, it's terrible that just at the moment when we should be saying free and fair elections, providing support for the opposition, France is so weak, Germany is so distracted, but gosh, it would be good. And do you think there's any chance that the UK could lift its head? Do you think this could be an opportunity for the UK to show that it can take some initiative, get on the plane with the Swedish Foreign Minister? You only could do. And I think at the moment, Keir's time is getting unfair, I think, criticism for spending too much time abroad and too much time in foreign policy. As you said on the main podcast, foreign policy right now is as important as it's ever been.

7:39So I don't see why not, but David Lamy's got a lot on his plate, but I think you're right. This is more important than a lot of the other issues that are grabbing a lot of attention. Similar theme, Rory, Toma, Eto, what are the implications of the Romanian constitutional court and nulling the results of the presidential election? Will we see similar actions in other countries taking against social media -based interference? Elsa Patrick, can you explain what's happening in Romania? Is democracy hanging by a thread? And this was the election where essentially the candidate came out of nowhere, Kalin Georgeescu, and he went from 5 % to winning the first round of the presidential election.

8:20They've since released a lot of the intelligence stuff, showing that the Russians had been absolutely bombarding people using TikTok and this guy claimed that he had no financial support, but actually he was getting massive support, even if he didn't ask for it from Russia. So they've annulled the entire election. It's now the lady who was in the second, who was going off into the runoff with Georgeescu. She, of course, is saying this is terrible because the chances are she would have won. But others are saying, when you've seen this level of interference, it is right that it stopped. Would you make a bit?

8:57Well, it's amazing. So the stakes are very, very high. So Romania is one of the European success stories. I mean, it's still challenged. It's still one of the poorer countries in Europe, but it's gone from being a very, very poor authoritarian state in 1989. Join the European Union, and actually its economy has grown very remarkably, and its democracy was settling down. As you've pointed out, this thing is unbelievable. This guy who's like kind of martial arts, horseback riding, pro -Putin, pretty obscure figure, rides to victory on the back of tiptock. There's been stuff analyzing suggesting up to 70 ,000 Russian accounts were involved in promoting his campaign, and they've decided to suspend the election.

9:49Now, the stakes are very high because if you're on his side, you say, or somebody you didn't like won the election, and you've just annulled the election, this is proper dictatorship. On the other hand, if you're on the Democratic side, you say, look, if we can find real evidence that Russians interfering, thank goodness were standing over the credibility of our elections. This is the lippest test that's going to be more and more relevant going forward in many, many elections around the world. Does democracy have the nerve to defend itself, and when it finds evidence that social media and Russian interference is seeing elections, it calls stop and recounts, what do you make of how this is going to work out, presumably it depends how much evidence they find, right?

10:31Listen, the election hasn't been stopped, and the first round annulled, so it will go to another election in the spring. I guess the hope of the government and of the authorities there is that the public will be at least conscious of the fact that this sudden bombardment on social media is coming from somewhere, but whether it will change the vote, we'll get to see. This guy won 23%, the lady who came second, the Lainela Sconey, she got 19%, and she obviously is assuming if it had gone to a runoff that she would have won. I still feel, I mean, there's an idol for our settlement question, get over it, the war is over, you're the worst loser in history, we still haven't got to the bottom of the extent to which Russia sought to interfere in the Brexit referendum, the Americans still haven't got to the bottom.

11:19We're going to be talking to Bill Clinton soon, and he in his book, his new book is absolutely clear, that Putin played a role in Trump's victory in 2016. So I think we have been very, very, very cavalier. On the one hand, we're very keen to say Putin's a you remember that pathetic press conference that Johnson did with Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, where Lavrov said no, no, no, we didn't get involved in the Brexit referendum at all. And Johnson basically just sort of like a nodding dog and say, look, you know, see, see what they're saying, the same as Trump, I mean, he preferred to believe Putin's version of events to those of his own intelligence agencies.

12:04So I think this is a country that is standing up against something that is about time. Let me come in on this because we have interviewed people who have said that we've looked closely into the evidence of Russian interference in the Brexit vote, and the conclusion is that what Russia tried to do, I think Ben Wallace said this in the interview with him, that Russia tried, but it wasn't very effective. And almost certainly Boris Johnson made more difference to Brexit vote than the Russians did. That doesn't mean that Russia hasn't been getting a lot better at it over the last eight years, and that they're now able to operate bot factories at a scale you can't imagine.

12:38And of course, what Russia is doing all the time now is they're playing both sides. So one thing we can see with Gaza is Russia is both reinforcing messages from pro Netanyahu Zionists, settlers, and also reinforcing messages from anti -Israeli and even anti -Semitic accounts at the same time because what they really want to do is whip up as much stuff in the streets of Europe as they possibly can on both sides. Quick one for you, we'll foster how has Mahama managed his comeback election victory in Ghana after falling short in 2016 and 2020? And just before we come to that, just to explain, this is a weird African parallel to the United States.

13:23Yeah, exactly. Where somebody who served one term, the Trump has come back again in another election later. Yes, this guy, John Dramani Mahama, he was president till 2016. He got booted out by the biggest margin of defeat in modern history of Ghana, massive corruption scandals, energy crisis, and he's made a comeback, and I know Donald Trump likes to talk about his amazing landslide which wasn't and his incredibly huge win which wasn't. This guy was, he got 56 .55 percent. The largest margin of victory in a Ghana election since 1996, turn out again along with a lot of elections this year, pretty disappointing 60 percent.

14:11So he's back. Ghana's fascinating. I mean, Ghana has been through a pretty tricky time partly because of debt crisis. Actually, some serious problems on its borders with potential jihad militants, but it was seen as the great success story of Africa. And when I was the different minister, we were on the verge of stopping British development funding because it looked like it was going to become a middle -income country, and there wasn't any need to focus on Ghana anymore, etc. It's pro -Western. I remember Nana when I was a junior minister, rather unusually, I was invited to Downing Street to sit with Theresa May and the Ghanaian president, the man that's just stepped down.

14:55And it was a real privilege because often as a junior minister, you're not brought into these three ways with heads of state. And it was the funniest thing you've ever seen. Just as three of us and Nana sits down with Theresa May, and he says, now, Prime Minister May, I wonder whether I could give you some unsolicited advice on the basis of my experience, who's older than her. I think it's time for you to consider holding a second referendum and rejoining the European Union. Good man. And I thought what was so funny about it is that obviously I'm going around the world lecturing African heads of state all the time in the same way, and now he's the boots on the other foot.

15:33Yeah, this is, by the way, it's the fifth African country this year to see the opposition winning. This is the great year of elections, but the stats are that basically incumbents are shedding votes every time, and they're losing, I think, 85 times out of 100 at the moment. And that's partly what's going on in the US. That's something that will keep Kirsta more up at night. That's something that's going to be worrying Macron. It's definitely a problem for shorts, and it's a probability of politics everywhere. I mean, we basically, and I think it's a sense for more generic crisis, isn't it? There doesn't matter whether you're Ghana or Britain or the US.

16:12Our systems are not delivering for people in the way they like social media is whipping up so much anger and opposition, and the general response is just boot the government hat. Well, talking of an incumbent who's been in a bit of difficulty, we've got a lot of questions about South Korea. Will Goulbourne, was the president's declaration of martial law an attempted coup? Kirst, please could you provide a concise explanation for what happened in South Korea this week? Well, we could be here all day with that one. I'm usually the pompous person doing explainers. Do you want to do a little explainer on South Korea and just remind people what happened?

16:45Well, what happened was that the president declared martial law totally out of the blue. Nobody could quite understand where this was coming from. And immediately there was, in a way, it showed sort of politics and political reaction working well. In that, people took to the streets. There was a lot of protest. Parliamentarians, the troops tried to bar them from entering parliament, but they managed to get in and they had a vote. And it quickly became clear that the mood of the country and the mood of the parliament was against what he's done. There wasn't then a move to impeach him. It just needed eight of his own MPs to turn, but they didn't.

17:22So the impeachment failed, but the protest is still going on, essentially, trying to get rid of President Yun. It was an amazing 24 hours though. Wherever you look in the world of the movie, you just think, is there nothing but turmoil, but this will kind of came out of nowhere. Yeah. And again, we don't talk enough about South Korea. We've done a little bit on it. Well, we talked about the election at the time, didn't we? Yeah. And Asian culture. And I've been watching a bit of K -Drama. There's some amazing historical dramas that I've been really enjoying produced from Korea that we could talk about at some point.

17:50But the reason it matters is this is one of the wealthiest countries in the world in terms of its GDP and GDP per capita, a real economic miracle because it was one of the poorest countries in the world. So we've just been talking about Ghana. South Korea was significantly poorer than Ghana in 1945. And GDP per capita now in South Korea is running a nominal terms that probably $55 ,000 a year when GDP and Ghana will probably be down at most a couple of thousand on a PPP basis, which means that it's gone from being poorer than Ghana to being, you know, multiples richer in simply, sorry, I think probably 25 times richer, simply over the period of the last 50, 60 years.

18:37And it became a democracy in 1987. So a lot of that growth and this another weird thing that confused as economist was under a time of quite a lot of protectionism and tariffs and military rules. So it was a bit of an outlier and I general idea of free markets and liberal democracy. It became a democracy in 1987 is one of the great democratic success stories is one of the US's central allies. The US has 25 ,000 troops in South Korea. So that's 10 times the number it had in Afghanistan. And of course, it's one of the great flash points of the world because North Korea arming itself with missiles, allying with Russia, sending troops into Ukraine.

19:13So that's why it's not just a sort of cheerful kind of detail that the president has triggered martial law or tried to trigger martial law. For South Korea, that's oh my goodness, are we retreating to 1980s and for global security, what on earth is one of the wealthiest most democratic countries on earth doing, doing it to these kind of problems. But I think one of the reasons why the response was so immediate and so strong amongst the public was because they do have memories of martial law and they have memories of those pre -democracy days. So it was quite moving actually the response. And the thing you said about their kind of growing wealth, this relates to the point about encompassing is the extent to which people will take that for granted and then be wanting more, particularly if they have a sense of the containing massive inequality.

20:03And one of the reasons why there was this kind of real opposition to him actually is because of his wife and this has been a big scandal in South Korea for some time about this sort of her lifestyle. And we're seeing this, I'm not comparing you into Assad and not comparing her to Asmi Assad. But you know, one of the things that's emerging now out of Syria is just the sheer wealth that they had. This is amazing video. I don't know if you saw it Roy, of inside Assad's garage, of his own personal collection, of virtually every luxury car brand in the world. And likewise his wife, sort of you know, vast personal wealth.

20:44Now that is not the same in South Korea, but in terms of the profile of Yun's wife, it has been a lot of it focused on this sense of her being living a life that people don't expect from the wife of a president who's not on the sort of money that Oligarks are. Final fact on South Korea, which I think links to a lot of the stuff we talk about, is its fertility on average couples are having .8 children. That means that the population is on track to half. So we're talking in Britain where our population is growing. South Korean population more than anywhere on earth. I mean, by the end of the century, we'll be half the size it is now unless they sort of have fertility rate.

21:24And of course that also means it's going to get much, much older. The young people will collapse as the old people expand. You end up with a crazy inverted pyramid. And that's going to trigger a massive economic crisis in one of the major world economies, which is the biggest Western ally in the region along with Japan. You had your image of Joe Biden, there's not just the lame guy with that legs. This guy remains president. He's not allowed to travel anywhere. He's kind of in the worst key people. They've done the classic thing as well of the defense minister has sort of said it was all my fault, but no, it's a mess.

21:57And of course, I think the reason why the world is, well, two reasons. We don't focus much on our part of the world. It doesn't focus enough on that part of the world other than China and the focus on Taiwan in particular. But I think because the sense we have is of North Korea, basket case, total poverty, authoritarianism, et cetera, South Korea, very, very stable democracy. But actually it's got a very checkered history in terms of assassinations, in terms of attempted coups, in terms of toppling of regimes. But this seems to be a sort of a self -imposed toppling that is still under way. Okay, Alistair, quick break, and then more questions.

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23:50This episode is sponsored by Google, and we're talking about Google's work and doing advertisements for Google. And one of the things that we're going to be discussing as part of that is some of the incredible work that Google's been doing with AI. All year, we've been talking on and off about AI. If I think if we go back a year or you identified it as one of the big themes for 2024, it's going to get even bigger as we go forward. And I think what's really interesting is the NHS, take the UK National Health Service. AI is going to be either transformative in a way that saves the health service or just becomes another really difficult challenge.

24:31Yeah, that's right. We've talked about this a lot. And I've seen this from Friends and Silicon Valley. You can already get a large language models, which is this form of AI providing answers in closed systems, which are beginning to look as though they're more reliable than human doctors. Now, there are huge regulatory issues why people are very reluctant to issue these models, not least because you'd be worried that they could make a mistake or hallucinate. But some of these AI models now out there are unbelievably powerful. They can think incredibly logically. They can marshal information very well.

25:09One of the things they're discovering when they're studying how these models work and actually a Reid Hoffman who we interviewed on leading. Gave a talk about this at the Hampstead Synagogue on Sunday night, which I was at. And Rishi Sunak was at too, actually. And Robert Pesson from the rest of his money, it was quite a kind of gathering of goal hanger and politics. But one of the things he's pointing out about the way in which it operates to health is that it could, in the first instance, provide the most incredible kind of digital assistance. So probably it would begin with a doctor using this stuff, but the doctor's still sitting alongside to provide a second check.

25:46So his question is how you marry artificial intelligence with those who are working in the health service. When you look at some of the stuff, let's just take breast cancer, for example. So one in seven women in Britain on current trends will be diagnosed at some point during their life with breast cancer. And what Google is doing, they've got the developed this AI mammography screening system. They're working with Imperial College London and with the NHS. And the algorithm can read the scans to detect the signs of breast cancer. And the research suggests that the AI algorithm is able to identify cancers from the images with a similar degree of accuracy to an expert radiologist, but of course can do it quicker.