382. Revenge on the West: Putin and Xi’s Plan For Trump

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1:33Welcome to the rest of the politics of me, Alice Campbell and with me, Rory Stewart. And Rory, I think partly because most of our media hasn't bothered with it, we should talk about the China, the National Congress that they just had and China more generally because I think it's been some fascinating stuff coming out of China. We want to talk about Russia, and I think you've got some things to say about the kind of Russia, Ukraine situation, but in the context of the sort of broader politics there, I think we should talk about Syria and the violence that's erupted in the coastal areas of Syria.

2:01And we have to talk just for a little bit of light relief about what the hell is going on inside, reform, societal forage, root but low. I don't suppose root but low is a household name in most of the countries where we have listeners, but we'll try to educate them as to what's going on. So let's start with China. The reason I want to talk about China is we're in this world where we all sort of tell each other the whole time. They're really only two superpowers in the world, the United States and China. And the United States we cover and we discuss, as included, every aspect of everything that's happening inside Donald Trump's White House.

2:36So when we talk to Michael Wolff on leaving this week, we're even talking about the the name of the woman who sort of walks alongside him carrying his bags and, you know, knocking the dandruff off his suit and all that sort of stuff. And yet China has just had this, what they call the two sessions, which is the National Congress and also the big advisory body outside. And it's as if it didn't happen. I've actually been the last few days, asking people if they are aware of anything that's big that's been going on in China in the last few days and nobody knows. And then the other game I play is I won't do it on Euro because it's too cruel.

3:07I say name the seven members of the Chinese Communist Party, Politburo Standing Committee, who are probably the seven most powerful people in China. Okay, there's Xi Jinping, we all know him. But the rest of it, I guess most of our listeners won't know. So is that a consequence of, is it a language thing? Is it the fact that Trump just literally does flood the zone with shit and we kind of, as Peter Hyman says, we go around poking in the turns and deciding which are much to talk about this one before we drop the next one? Or is it that we maybe haven't fully caught up with just how important China is now in terms of our lives as much as their own?

3:49It's a lot of this thing, isn't it? And you're completely right. I mean, let's start with how right you are. Yes, why not? That's always a good place to start. Given that China is definitely the second largest economy in the world and in some calculations, already the largest economy in the world. And it's the only country in the world that remotely has the opportunity to balance the US. It's astonishing that we have said a little reporting on it. One issue, of course, is that it's a much more centralized authoritarian system, much more controlled Xi Jinping led system. And it's opaque even for very, very good foreign journalists.

4:23It's quite difficult getting into the depths of what's happening. It's much more like the sort of criminology of the 1980s where you're endlessly finding some small clue for something that said in the people's daily. But that's why there's two sessions event is so important because the media are allowed to tend it. You're also absolutely right that often what's said in these big congresses and Xi Jinping's main speeches turn out to be much closer to what's going to happen than than you can believe. I mean, let's take one example of that to confirm your point. China laid out an industrial strategy 10 years ago.

4:57And what it said is our industrial strategy is we're going to try to dominate effectively the world of renewable energy, batteries, electric vehicles. We're going to shift towards more tech. We're going to focus on chips. We're going to do AI and we're going to do quantum computing. And 10 years later, broadly speaking, they've done that. There are still some challenges we can get into on chips and AI. There is a sense that it's a government that indicates where it's going and what it wants to do. Again, the Belt and Road Initiative wasn't a secret plan, very, very formal plan that they laid out.

5:33So what did you take away, though, from your observations to the Congress or what you could pick up from it? The first thing is how hard it is, if you look there, actually to find out what's going on. And I don't think that's just because of the China command and control, complete control of the media etc. I think it is because a lot of Western media just doesn't find it interesting enough, even bother to try to find out what's going on. The point you just made, I think is the right one. What is so interesting about it, if you do read their speeches and I'll come on to Wang Yi, the foreign minister, who did this amazing press conference with lots of different sort of things that he said that really were genuinely quite interesting.

6:11But there's one thing I read in one of the, I think it might have been a chatroom house analysis of something, but this was from an earlier Congress. And it talks about this, just as to this, for Xi, the achievement of the China Dream would be a two -step process. From 2021 to 2035, China would seek to transform itself into a great modern socialist country through economic development. Then, from 2035 to 2049, China would continue a path of national rejuvenation to become what Xi describes as a global leader in terms of comprehensive national strength and international influence. So here we are following the Trump presidency.

6:54The kind of time Spanish from tweet to tweet, or from tantrum to tantrum. And here you have the Chinese Communist Party literally setting out a strategy that takes you to 2040 iron. And as you say, although they've got economic problems and Lee Yang, the prime minister, when he set out the economic report, because they also do an economic report, you know, it's not like our budget, but it is an economic report where they set out military spending, future welfare spending and so forth. Is that the way to understand how they work is to try to get inside this longer term mindset. And that's why I think we're missing a trick in both in terms of understanding how they operate, instead of which, what you have is essentially the Americans just seeing them as this enemy and everything being that context as opposed to, well, what are they actually trying to do?

7:48And how do we fit into that? One of the themes we'll get to with Russia, but it's true of China too, is this thing that Owen Matthews, his Russian analyst, calls the kind of Schrodinger cat problem, which is these places are described both at one hand as these sort of extraordinary powerful giants and simultaneous these sort of very weak minors and the narrative sort of shifts between the two. But in China, of course, the narrative for the last couple years, particularly since COVID, has been that China's peaked and that particularly the collapse of the property sector, which was nearly a quarter of the Chinese economy.

8:23And you may have seen these incredible images of cities with footprints larger than London, completely empty property companies going bankrupt. A lot of people's assets tied up in mortgages that have gone underwater. So property tech again, Xi Jinping moved against people like Jack Ma and these amazing Chinese tech companies, Alibar, Tencent, etc. And that dampened the tech sector and then he began locking up quite a lot of people in the finance sector. And it remains a more oppressive regime even than Russia in terms of state control. So the story was if you combine that with a population of China dropping and for the first time, the population of China dropped by 10 million last year, people begin to say, well, maybe China's bubbles burst.

9:08And this has been a story that we've heard really for 25 years. That was a very famous book written in 2001, which said China was over, it's a book by Gordon Chang, where he said, you know, it can't really work, also are a Terran state, state owned enterprises. So here are a couple of things to put in the other direction. So on the one hand, yes, there's big economic problems. There's a lot of use unemployment, a lot of people at home, a lot of restaurants have if you get Shanghai or Beijing. On the other hand, as you've just pointed out in this people's Congress, China is projecting growth rates of four and a half, five percent and double the amount that would be pretty good in the United States.

9:46It's it's it's real growth rate and it's and it's nominal growth rate is likely to be significantly higher than the US, maybe a third high, maybe twice as high and defense spending seven percent rise and defense spending seven percent rise. So what's the other side of the story? And I guess the other side of the story are a couple of things. One is that some of the movements that China made against these tech giants maybe don't look so foolish. Now you see the domination of people like Musk and Bezos in the United States. Why did they do it? Well, basically because these companies were becoming semi monopolies and not necessarily for good liberal reasons, but because the Chinese Communist Party didn't want to lose power, they did not want Jack Ma taking over all of e -commerce and the entire banking system and basically bullying the Chinese government.

10:28So having sat on them, shut them down, move them out of politics, there's now a little bit of move from the Chinese government to re -embrace tech and there have been some pretty considerable successes. So deep seek, this amazing AI model which is challenging chat GBT, generating stuff cheaper, quicker, even if some of it is nicked, which is the allegation. It's an example of that. It's also possible that their industrial strategy, although very wasteful, so they obviously is very opaque. We don't know how much money they spent on it, how they subsidized it, but it's a pretty amazing economic model.

11:00So look at the electric vehicles. What they did is they began by spraying subsidies at nearly 2000 companies. But there's an odd combination of kind of subsidies and then the law of the jungle takes over and then these 2000 companies fought it out and two or three of them have emerged as incredible global electric vehicle leaders producing vehicles that are third cheaper than American or European equivalents and just as good. Just a while briefly on the cars, I'm sure we all share the grief and the pain of Elon Musk, as he watched his share price of Tesla plummet and discovers that maybe projecting yourself as a kind of hard right, Uber, Phantom, Donald Trump isn't good for business, but was to see.

11:40You said there about, I've had the law of the jungle, that was a phrase that actually appeared in this press conference Wang Yi. And the only reason I know this by the way, and here's another thing, National Public Radio, that's where I found this account, okay? That's the one that Trump and Musk want to shut down because it does really boring things like think there might be more than one side to a story. So anyway, just to go through some of the headlines, the headlines they put on it was that he talked about Trump's two -tier hypocritical approach to China. On the one hand, tariffs, on the other hand, we want to have closer relations and that was the sort of headline.

12:12But just to go through some of the things he said, he talked about American relations with America, which he said were bad and getting worse. Tariffs, really, really bad idea, but if they happen, we will fight back very, very hard. Fentanyl, why are we getting the blame for your problem? I sent you this quote already because I just thought, who's? And I said to you, who do you think said this, that you would give me all sorts of different names? But the answer was Wang Yi, who said this, imagine if every country prioritized itself above all else and placed blind faith in power and status, this world would regress to the law of the jungle where smaller and weaker nations would bear the brunt of instability and the international order and rules -based system would face severe disruption.

12:57I mean, you could have actually ragged say that. You could imagine most current European leaders saying that about Trump. And so what this is about is they're sort of watching the instability and they're watching the sense of chaos. And as ever with the Chinese, they're thinking, how do we exploit this? And how do we turn this to our advantage? And then he went on, he started, he talked about China is being an anchor of stability in an uncertain world. And this is almost like they're saying, you can't trust America for stability at the moment. So you've got to look to us. And I thought it was a really interesting Congress.

13:34The theme of the thing was confidence. And they do do economic presentations where they sugarcoat it to some extent. But they talked about some of the economic problems, the youth unemployment and the problem of that. They actually told me these huge job fairs where young people are trying to get work. I just feel that sometimes we underestimate the reason why I find them so interesting is because and I know it's a dictatorship. So it's easier for them. But they really do have a sense of long term strategy. And I think that's, well, that's absolutely what I was missing from America right now. Listen, let me just sort of quickly jump to the defense of some good journalist, some China.

14:11So Tom Olick, who's the Bloomberg Chief Economist. Yeah, I listen, there are. I'm not criticizing journalists who are there. I think it's more the fact that the people in where their headquarters are, they don't find it interesting enough. Another shout out to friend of mine called Jeremy Page, who's with the economist, who is just the most incredible example of, he almost feels like an anachronism now because he's like a surviving example of a traditional journalism we're almost losing. So Jeremy speaks really good Chinese. He speaks good Russian. He's spent and he's barely been back to the United Kingdom in 30 years.

14:44He's been just Russia, China, India, and has went from the times. And there's now one of these kind of absolutely classic examples. I praise Shashank Joshi sometimes from the economists for his work on defense, but Jeremy really, you know, is in there. And he's one of the guys that's pointed out that I do at least know some names. There's a man called Lu Xia Ye, who was the Chinese ambassador to France, a big wolf warrior, who created lots of controversy, being derogatory about Baltic states, has been appointed as their super employee for Europe. And it's quite interesting appointment, just happened a few weeks ago.

15:19And he is really trying to do all this stuff of reaching out to Europe, saying Europe should have a say, Ukraine and Europe should be involved and the negotiations between. Oh, that was a big part of Wang Yi's press conference, is Ukraine has to be involved, Europe has to be involved. We want peace, but not peace at any price. This is why it was so interesting. And when you think that, you know, there's Marco Rubio on his way to Saudi today, there's a BBC correspondent on the plane with them. No, that's fine. That's exactly as it should be. But his opposite love with China, say, so really, really interesting things.

15:55None of which I've seen pretty much anywhere in our media. The traditional story about China, 20 years ago, was they're really good at sort of copying and imitating, but they'll never be able to build the components for an iPhone. Well, guess what? Now, basically, iPhone's built China. So the surviving claim as of six months ago, was yeah, well, they're very good at stuff, but the three things they're never going to be able to do. And those were supposed to be chips, commercial airliners and AI. Well, they've really jumped forward with AI chips. It's still true that they're struggling on some of the most advanced stuff, but they can do really good seconds to that level chips, which is allowing them to fly much cheaper and pretty effective fifth generation fighter jets now.

16:38There's still a question about whether they're going to be able to get into the building aeroplane space. And that's a really interesting space, where in fact, the real heroes, which we don't talk about enough are Europe. Absolutely. Because nobody would have bet on Airbus being able to take on Boeing. In fact, if Airbus had failed to take on Boeing, you could have provided a good story of, you know, Europe's taking, taking weekends off and spending too much time having summer holidays. And, of course, America won. And actually, the truth is Airbus is now much more advanced than Boeing, with a lot of its systems.

17:07I mean, 737s are kind of 1960s and some are technology. So let's see if China can get there on planes. But my guess is they will. And that it's very, very short -sighted to assume that they're not going to be able to get there with planes chips. I think they're already demonstrating they can get there with AI. The other area that Wang Yi and some of the other presentations looked at was this whole business of America scrapping international development and aid, USAID. This quote was unacceptable self -interest at the expense of others. Gaza, Trump's approach will make things worse, not better.

17:41It was, I felt, a very clear attempt at repositioning. Now, we shouldn't overlook the fact that, you know, you've got this utterly repressive no real freedom of speech. The week is attreated absolutely appallingly. But what I sensed in this, and, you know, I'd love to know what your guy, the economist thinks, because he obviously knows millions more about this than I do. But am I reading too much into it, you might ask him, and saying that this felt like a sort of strategic repositioning, seeking to exploit what they are now perceiving as the potential for chaos. And of course, the other thing that is always at the back of their minds is Taiwan.

18:20I know you want to talk about, well, maybe this is a good link to Russia, because what he said about their relations with Russia, he said, they are steadfast, a constant in an uncertain world, not a variable in geopolitical competition. In other words, they are very much saying they are aligned with Russia. They've had these military exercises this week with Russia and Iran. This is, I guess, just a plea to the serious media in the UK and Europe and America is, I think we need to learn more about China. We need to see China other than through the present of its dictatorship. And the other thing about Geron Torky, you know, we talk a lot about American politics as a sort of Geron Tocracy.

19:01The other thing I hadn't realized about the Politburo, Xi Jinping accepted, because he's an exception in so many different ways, you have to leave when you're 68. So they've got this constant sort of conveyor belt coming up, bringing up new, slightly younger people who become the rulers, Xi Jinping is out on the class of his own. Taiwan is very interesting. There's big problems within the Chinese military, huge corruption scandals. Their competence is being called into question. And there is a strong argument at the moment for Xi Jinping that he doesn't need to move against Taiwan now and that the smart money in China is on waiting for Trump to self -destruct that they can just sort of sit back as it were with the popcorn and watch the movie of the United States and Europe ripping themselves to pieces before they have to make any decisive moves or take any risk.

19:51On Ukraine, there was a very interesting question from somebody last week on whether China could step in as the peace guarantor in Ukraine. But I think China again is very reluctant to do that. They haven't engaged in a military conflict since 1978. They don't have the full confidence yet in their foreign service and their military to do that kind of security guarantee. And then I collapse with the US very very difficult to trust China. I mean the massive uptick, not just an espionage and funding for universities that we've talked about, but uptick and Chinese cyber attacks, you've talked about the size.

20:33He's tens of thousands of people now sitting in Chinese cyber attack facilities and we discussed in a podcast earlier and they're reliance with Russia. I mean that that's probably the most important thing that we've sort of touched on today is your point that in this congress, they're describing Russia as a stable status quo power when in fact we in Europe would see it as an extremely destabilizing power undercutting global norms and laws. So I mean I think in a way China missed a chance by getting so strongly behind Russia keeping the Russian economy going in that way they missed a strategic opportunity which India missed as well to align strongly with Europe.

21:12And they would have been a much stronger position both India and China to say okay Trump's gone off in a crazy direction will make a EU China or an EU India alliance if those countries had been firmer and clearer in aligning with Europe against Russia. But does that not mean that they actually would it would suit their interests for America to stay locked into what's happened to Ukraine rather than force America as some in America want them to choose between China and Russia. You can either see China as the enemy or you can see Russia as the enemy you can stand by Ukraine or no you go towards the China as enemy and I think there is this debate going on inside the American administration as to whether they should focus on Russia or China.

21:53Absolutely and I think you're completely right that the basic way of describing US foreign policy at the moment is there are the total isolationists which is we want to stick to the Americas and we don't care what happens in the rest of the world and then there are the people who are the prioritizers. We do care about the world but what we care about is China and we don't care about rest of the world but you're also totally right that China's money is all on just sitting back with the popcorns and watching the movie of America and shooting itself in the foot, undermining its alliances and they don't really need to get involved in any of these places because Trump's doing all their work for them.

22:27Let me just tell you what Donald Trump said in one of his 78 press conferences this week. He was asked whether these military drills between Russia and China and Iran are of concern he says no not at all because we're stronger than all of them we have more power than all of them. I rebuilt the military that's not bad considering he's only been there a few weeks and fortunately Biden did nothing with it but we don't even want to talk about it he just did. I think if you look at what's happening let's see what's happening with the Russia Ukraine thing I think in the near future you can have some pretty good results coming out of Saudi Arabia so there we are there's there's strategy at its finest so Russia you've been looking at Russia yes absolutely so I've been talking to Peter Palmer and Seth whose book nothing's true everything's possible you've praised in the podcast in the past I praise it every time I talk about Russia talking to Owen Matthews who's another very long standing Russia analyst very interesting things happening as they try to struggle to work out what to do with this new world with Trump or or delight in it essentially what's happening is that as America seems neutral or even pro -Russian the target is shifting to Europe one of the things that we will now see is a very very coordinated hybrid social media campaign run by the Russian television services to do all they can to divide Europe talk up far -right parties in Europe create scandals in Europe undermine Europe's commitment to defending Ukraine it'll be an absolute barrage not just of information warfare bit of personal attacks trying to discredit journalists discredit politicians use western politicians who rushes close to to undermine them and we do not begin to understand what's coming on Peter Palmer and Seth what is saying that we need to begin to learn from the Swedes and the Finns some of this defense budget there's an almost defense budget that Starmas announced needs to go into political warfare in other words information warfare it's not that enormous I mean 2 .5 to 2 .7 long term three when the polls are already talking about 5 % and even the Germans are sort of changing the rules on which their economy is running in order to sort of boost defense spending I think I told you did I tell you I went to this I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about this but I went to this place this place in let's leave it as a place this place right and at this place they're these people who are there are engaged in countering some of this Russian stuff particularly in the Baltics okay and so I said and it was very very impressive but I said to them so what have Russia got I said is this like is this used this it this is pretty much it what Russia got they got and they've got they got about a thousand of these so you know we are up against and of course the other thing that they exploit are the what you know sometimes they call the useful idiots you know the reason why some of these information warfare campaigns are successful is because the ventilation often comes from people who are on the receiving end in other words if Britain or let's say France or Germany during the election when the AFD was getting boosted by Russia it was it was boosted then by musk and then people who follow musk and see muskers are kind of American libertarian on the right they don't even think that they might be helping Russia in what they're doing so I what I find most terrifying about what's going on and I think we're doing well not to be talking too much about Trump because I think people are sick to death of him but look just one point about Trump in this context is that I think what most people are finding so difficult to handle at the moment is this sense that even if he is not a kind of fully fledged Russian operative if he were he's pretty much operating according to their playbook that's pretty terrifying there's nothing that he could do at the moment which wouldn't be exactly what they wanted I mean I was thinking about this that if he wanted to design the most cunning KGB SVR campaign to discredit the American president that short clip which he shared on true social of Gaza with dancing girls and gold statues of Trump would be the most perfect propaganda wave discrediting Trump and he's he's sharing himself the other thing that's interesting is that of course it was Russia that in the 2000s pioneered the idea of politics as a reality TV show broadly speaking Russia's been through three transitions under Putin the Putin that you first met when your your friend Tony Blair was saying I think this is someone we can do this with so the late 90s early 2000 Putin now let me just correct your way that was fatural garbage off what Tony actually said I think this guy is going to be okay that was what politely could be called the managed democracy phase and that was a really interesting moment where from the late 19th century 2000s they had this sort of carnival of very very extreme parties statements played out on TV played out in the newspapers where basically Putin sailed through the middle with oligarchs funding lots of mini parties with more mad positions than him in order to undermine the communist and that was a reality TV moment then there was the shift to the kind of hybrid regime and then finally the shift to the sort of more totalitarian state that we see now but it's still weird I mean it's not 1984 it's not that you can't say anything if you're a Russian economist you can go to academic conferences and you can say that we're too reliant on China strategically there are these telegram channels where the different Russian security services fight each other so the FSB the SVR the GRU and the presidential administration will have their own telegram channels there are some things they're not allowed to say right they're not allowed to attack fundamentally the war attack fundamentally Putin but they can generally have a go with each other and you saw a bit of this with the progoation attacking the central command yeah but what ultimately happened and I guess this is where your Trump analogy becomes interesting is that what began as spectacle what began as sort of reality TV what began as kind of provocative nationalist talking points finally people began believing they're in rhetoric the mass kind of stuck and the big example of this was that when the first noises came at the end of 21 beginning of 22 particularly from CIA saying we think that Putin is actually going to invade Ukraine you know we can actually see mobile crematoriums moving up to the frontline almost every real Russian expert including many many people in Ukraine said it's not going to happen he's always saying stuff like this you know he's always saying he's going to invade Ukraine don't worry this is just part of the reality TV this is part of the show and then it turned out that in the end he believed his own rhetoric and the tank thrilled him discussing this all this with your people in Russia this week where what were they saying about the economic situation was what you were saying earlier in relation to China you were essentially speaking about our kind of confirmation bias we tell ourselves that the Chinese economy is not doing so well we tell ourselves they're falling apart and I would just read your piece on the conversation this morning by a guy called Julian Cooper's from the University of Birmingham and he's suggesting actually the Russian economy is proving to be a lot more robust than we expected the budget spending on the military but also on big infrastructure products and transport links with China and so forth and they're doing things like giving better maternity payments because they're absolutely petrified at the low birth rate at the moment two stories so on the negative side demographies against them their population shrinking it's it's aging there are real problems with inflation big big problems with inflation and a lot of the chat in Russia that you pick up is not political it's economic unhappiness with the way that inflation is going and the way that interest rates are much too high and you can see stories of people not pulling supplies to the front and there's a lot of distortion towards the military economy and towards the border with China but many other parts of the country being neglected on the other hand you're absolutely right that the Russian economy has not been crippled and that's partly because although we stop taking Russian gas in Europe at huge cost to our own economies Russian oil still flows everywhere including in Europe China and India in particular have been big big buyers and kept that economy afloat the defense spending and it's difficult to know what percentage GDP they put in as as you know some estimates are if you look at the whole thing it maybe as much as 40 % of their economy directly and indirectly connected defense is providing a stimulus and our sanctions package has never been precise enough too much of it unfortunately has been quite symbolic again we're not serious and and this may all become a relevant because Trump may be about to lift sanctions and you know welcome Putin into the world and get his economy off the ground again but if we were really serious about sanctions you would have a unit thinking morning noon and night about targeting a dozen tiny bits in the system ghost ships transfers through UAE Indian oil buying a new company popping up here and that's not the way that we've been doing it one of the figures we're missing here desperately is Alex Navalny whose widow we interviewed on leading because he was somebody who really understood the regime he was the target of unbelievable relentless abuse and you know that that's where you really see the kind of abuse that went against Hillary Clinton during her campaign or the abuse against Soros but Navalny and Russia experienced it like the power of a million you know he was accused of being a kind of MI6 stooge and also a Kremlin stooge he was accused of being a Nazi and also a communist but he knew how to fight back and he did it by combining panorama investigations to corruption with brilliant social media campaigns can I hit them where it hurt and really knew where the regime was in pain which is why in the end they had to murder him they didn't have to really they chose to murder why they felt they needed to murder him you mentioned the the oil there and the ships and the other thing which again there's so much awful stuff coming out of Trump's mouth and administration at the moment but the other thing that was just unthinkable even a few years ago Canada through the G7 trying to bring together fresh action against these Russians the shadow fleet these ships that are sort of training around the world helping people break sanctions and shipping oil run plays and America vetoed it and we're back to the point of well who does that help a hell's Russia doesn't help America it certainly doesn't help the G7 so you know we are at that place and this is why I think Mets in the statements that he's making Macron, Tusk, Kierstamer who I think rightly is still trying to hang on to the idea that we can we can keep the Americans on board but they're all of them preparing for the possibility that this isn't just sort of Michael Wolf saying you know Trump's this is just the latest episode in his reality TV show that this is actually real and it's incredibly dangerous as we step up as Europe steps up we have got to be ready for the Russian assault in from every direction and information warfare propaganda social media what's going to happen on Twitter what's going to happen Facebook Europe is going to have to somehow be ready and have the units to fight back because it's going to be horrible as they tied a tear into our democracies support pro -Russian far right groups and do all kinds of stuff so this is just the beginning okay let's take a break

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35:05welcome back to the rest of politics for me Rory is here and we asked Campbell and Rory you keep promising that we're going to do more and more content for our members and this week I had the absolute pleasure on the back of Mark Harnies astonishing almost 90 % of the vote in the Liberal Party leadership I spent an hour talking to Carolyn Fairburn who was the ex head of the CBI here but also knows she's got she's got she part lives in Canada she's married to Canadian knows Canada really well but also a wonderful guy that you and I spoke to last year a strategist and pollster Bruce Anderson so we had them on together it was a really really enjoyable chat and interesting the best moment for me was when Bruce said that he's moving in relation to where the Mark Harnie can actually win the general election and remember that he was there were 25 points behind Pierre Poyer ever the populist conserved him not long ago he says he's moving from could to will the Mark Harnie will with it as though we'll see but here's an incredible story and so if you want to become a member and listen to some of this extra point content that Roy and I putting out then go to the rest is politics .com and one really interesting thing for members which is exclusive to members is we've done an interview with the Danish Prime Minister so that's a full interview with the head of state this is Metafredrickson or Rory Rory constitutionally offensive she's not the head of state she's the head of government they're a monarchy come on Rory you're monarchist you should know that very good very good thank you aster I I stand corrected Metafredrickson who is the Danish Prime Minister and therefore the head of government and a really interesting controversial figure came from a very left -wing background started as an anti -apartheid environmental activist and has moved very much right in many ways she's a very strong anti -immigration voice in Denmark but she's also been an incredibly strong voice for Ukraine against Russia and for sorting out Denmark's defense spending treading a very difficult line with Donald Trump and all of that are played out in our interview with Metafredrickson again available for members just on that Roy today we should tell this there's there's the general election in Greenland and now that is not normally something that would get to be global attention but I suspect that because of Trump's threat against Greenland it will get exactly that so that's right let's talk about Syria so just a sort of quick update on this because this is if you want an example of where the modern world of social media and fake news and mad stories and personal attacks take off you you cannot find a better example in Syria the amounts of confusion around what's actually been happening in Syria is unbelievable so as far as anyone can piece it together and people are beginning to try to put it together now so we're recording on Tuesday last Thursday there were attacks from the alawight community against the new government and the alawights matter because Assad's regime was at its core very dominated by alawights he came from an alawight family it's a the alawights are a traditionally persecuted fringe muslim religion which was not always recognized by orthodox muslims as being muslim at all because it has various secretly satiric rituals and were treated as second -class citizens under the Ottoman Empire over the last 50 years since the Assad regime has been in place they have been considered by the regime as their core loyalists so they staffed the intelligence services the senior ranks the military a loss of the brutality and torture over the last 15 years has been conducted by these people and this regime of course collapsed collapsed a few weeks ago as this very surprising sweep to victory of Ahmed al -Shara who we interviewed together in Damascus former al -Qaeda commander in Syria took the country and the regime collapsed at which point these senior members of the regime the retreated mostly back to their own traditional community places in Latakia and in the mountains along the coast and there was a big question and the big question is very very similar to denazification or debathification in Iraq which is the questions that we actually asked him at the time which is what do you do you know let's say somebody was a general in Bashar al -Assad's forces let's say he was running torture cells let's say he was called the intelligence service do you make them sign up for an amnesty pay them a salary bring them back into the modern forces in which case a lot of your own supporters say you have got to be kidding these people have got to be brought to justice they have blood on their hands or do you say these people cannot be brought in can't be trusted leave them on the margins in which case you have heavily armed former regime elements starting an insurgency and fast forward basically the story was that on Thursday there were attacks against government forces some people say up to 40 coordinated attacks against army barracks and hospitals the government responded but as the government responded other people got involved freelancers militias combinations of people coming down from idlib individual Syrians coming in on motorbikes some people connected the Syrian national army in Turkey and they conducted horrifying attacks against al -wight villages in which at least hundreds maybe as many as a thousand people were killed including civilians including in some cases women and children so we have a situation where suddenly the whole regime which has been in a very sensitive position you know as we said when we did our interview the odds are against amadashara because he's having to deal with the al -wights and the former regime he's having to deal with Kurds he's having to deal with ISIS he's having to deal with Israel he's having to deal with Turkey all this stuff seemed as though it was coming completely unbuckled just at the moment he was trying to get sanctions lifted and of course the social media campaign has been we always told you so this man is an extreme al -Qaeda terrorist and he has instructed his tack theory jihadists to massacre minority communities and in particular there was a huge emphasis from people like Marco Rubio on the killing of Christians although there's very little evidence that hundreds of Christians were killed in fact these Syrian observatories yesterday was suggesting that number of Christians killed may have been three what you were essentially saying is that something truly terrible has taken place and that some of government forces who are loyal to the the current administration have been involved in some of that but then actually the overall picture is much much more complicated is that your kind of basic point yeah yeah yeah and and that he's facing amadashara is facing two problems he's facing the problem with what to do with the al -awaited community and the former regime elements but he's also facing the problem of what does he do with his own people and his own allies so he ran al -Qaeda Syria and then he created HTS which brought in other groups but there is there all these other armed factions and he's trying to bring them into the army and one of his big challenges there are tens of thousands of armed Kurdish fighters that he's trying to incorporate into the military now ultimately this is all his fault in the sense that he is the head of state right he should be controlling these people but when we were interviewing him we were saying you know how are you going to be able to balance your vision of Syria which he says is of a moderate multi -ethnic or multi -sector in Syria against the fact that you have these very extreme supporters who were pushing for another vision can you control them how do you navigate all those things and I think that's what's coming apart and at the bottom of it is money because if he had money and he he doesn't have money because of US sanctions but if he had money he would have the money to pay the salaries of the so the former regime elements might be less liable to go into about him he could pay his own people he could get oil going he could get civil service salaries going he could deal with the fact that is serious poverty and economic crisis now unfolding in Syria and he can't do any of that despite the fact the categories have offered to pay the cash for salaries the Turks have offered to bring in barges for electricity the Saudis have offered to bring in oil but none of them can do it and the categories the Saudis nor the Turks because of American secondary sanctions trump is stopping us and also he said if I'll go into some details with this interview that I'll show I did yesterday because it's an interesting example of sort of leadership communication if you want to put it like that but one of the points I was going to make but I'll make it now because it speaks directly to what you've just said he essentially says that they've had pretty much no contact from the Americans since they since the fall of Assad and since he's been there it's a very interesting thing he he so when we interviewed him as you recall he was you know quite nervous and quite different at times sometimes you had to slightly struggle to hear and as but as we said afterwards saying a lot of the right things because he was trying to speak to you know beyond Syria to to a Western audience and that's he's done something similar on the back of this so he's done an interview with Reuters which is apparently the first interview that he's done with one of the big global news agencies and the headline new Syrian leader says killings of al -awaits threaten unity and vows justice now that is that is again saying the right thing okay and he goes on to say the the mass killings of members of ousted Assad's military set were a threat to his mission to unite the country he promised to punish those responsibly including his own allies if necessary quote Syria is a state of law the law will take its course we fought to defend the oppress we won't accept that any blood be shed unjustly or goes without punishment or accountability even among those closest to us now because the risk with that from his perspective is it plays into the narrative that this is all about revenge attacks upon the al -awaits and as you were saying that may be partly what's involved but it's not it's not the whole the whole story but just just on what you saw when we were there would you make of that as a response to what's going on you're called in Reuters you do at an interview you try and land a very clear message that you want to be for the whole country not just for your own supporters is that enough or should he be doing more well it's it's definitely a good thing he's also run one of the al -await mothers mothers some of the victims to apologize personally he's set up a formal investigation commission to go in and look at what's happening but boy is he in a difficult situation partly because of his neighbors so Iran used to was you know was what propped up Bashar al -Assad's regime with his blah obviously his blah was destroyed by Israel on the attacks in Lebanon and that collapse the regime and as Iran retreated all the oil that Iran used to provide has stopped flowing Iran now has a direct interest in undermining the Syrian regime and causing chaos there Israel appears to have concluded that its interests are best served by a failed state in Syria and seem to be doing all they can to undermine and destroy Ahmad al -Sharat's regime because they consider him to be an al -Qaeda terrorist they consider that he hasn't changed and they think he'll eventually be a threat to Israel so you've seen Israel conducting continual bombardments against military positions in Syria so much so that I can hardly believe they have any targets left to hit they've also seized bits of Syrian territory they've announced that they will take the droves into their occupied bits of territory they're positioning themselves as champions of minorities which is a very odd position for Israel to take given their other positions to Middle East but they're saying then our speaking up for al -awaits speaking up for droves speaking up for Christians and they are absolutely leading the campaign in Washington to say on no account consactions be lifted they want Ahmad al -Sharat's government bankrupt without any cash collapsing and they want to fragment that country and then it's really interesting the fact that we did an interview as this goes back to your point about how the way social media operates the way polarisation is that and so for example the telegraph yesterday did a their picture to illustrate the the 14 1300 deaths whatever it is was a picture of you and me with al -Sharat it was one of the best pieces of guilt by association I've ever seen it by life and we've been we've been receiving both I've passed on some of them to you I haven't passed on them all because we've just been inundated but people who are sending us accounts of massacre videos of some of the killings that are taking place and some of it is from people and organisations you sort of feel like you can trust because you know their reputation but others of it it reads clearly it reads well but you don't 100 % know and then on the other side we had this I forward you a message I got from Netanyahu's office essentially saying pointing out that the foreign minister of Israel had said this all underlines why your interview with al -Sharat was very ill judged and very badly timed as though somehow that was a sort of dot painting the picture towards what's going on now I still will defend the interview on the grounds that if somebody goes from being a terrorist to finding himself now as the recognized leader of Syria then it is to my mind a bit crazy not to want to talk to people like that and that doesn't just go for being for us doing a podcast it more even more it goes for people who are running the big governments of the world it's extraordinary above all you know we would be perfectly willing to interview Steve Bannon Vladimir Putin Donald BB Netanyahu anybody else who wants to come on our show the fact that we interview somebody that's our job as forms a journalist which is to give voice and let people hear from other people but I think we provided a very very fair balance summary on his al -Qaeda links on his past there was nothing naive about it and most of the stuff that's happening on social media is really really interesting because what you can see and look this is not about being self -centered about the attacks on us although it's been pretty amazing thousands of attacks on us accusing us of supporting al -Qaeda against massacring Christians but look at where this attacks coming from they're coming some of them from UAE based accounts and the Emirates is very very angry that they feel that they've been left out they tried to back Bashar and I said at the end and feel very unbalanced about what's happening attacks from Russia obviously because Russia was a back of attacks from people close to Israel who are using this as a way of saying well you criticise what's happening in Gaza but why are you not criticising these attacks against Christians and minorities and then of course the right in Europe and Britain you know that's why the telegraph will pick it up and and Musk you know Musk has again been spreading incredible fake news he has been spreading this idea that you know the idea that hundreds of Christians have been massacred and deliberate attempts by attack theories which as far as anyone can see simply isn't true but Musk just promotes this so his thing and and I talked in some details somebody that we've named checked before on the show who does some really impressive work on this called Amil Khan and Amil Khan maps these social media networks and their strategies and he has decided about seeders and spreaders so the seeders is somebody like Elon Musk that puts the story out and then the spreaders are real accounts and then an enormous amount of bots and all authentic accounts who retweet and put forward these things he's done it in real detail on things like Sudan where he's shown the incredible difference between the way that Egyptians do social media campaigns and the way that UAE in Russia supporting the other side does it they're use of AI content they're use of video which is incredibly popular they're so -called citizens journalists who turn up on the ground and film things the way that software is used to identify how to propagate it and this is just connects back I guess to what we were saying before the break we need to brace for what's about to happen in Europe and the Russians have got used to it over 10 -15 years Hillary Clinton has got used to this George Soros has got used to coordinated attacks which have come at him from Russia first but then increasingly from Israel Hungary etc but you and I are just beginning to touch the edge of this in some ways it's quite flattering it implies that they want to discredit and destroy us but what's happening is is basically beta testing so they want to find what is the right attack line so with you it might be Iraq war David Kelly with me it will be MI6 office running a corrupt NGO why don't you say anything about Pakistani grooming gangs and now on to war mongering Ukraine supporting al -Qaeda and killing Christians in the Middle East but this is them navigating their way around increasingly multinational with very very interesting use of bots and quite cheap the Iranians are supposed to spend only about 12 million dollars a year destabilizing Iraq in this fashion and I don't think we're beginning to be ready for it yeah I um yeah it's changed yesterday with Carol Kavollada who the journalist who exposed a lot of the kind of Russian activity in relation to Brexit and got a lot of grief from all the kind of reform and right wing media people for her troubles and I did a tweet saying I've always thought that the kind of Trump is a Russian asset was a bit for the conspiracy theorist but it's hard now not to think that maybe there might be something in it and basically Carol who I like and respect the lot and she replied kind of where have you been you know this is what this is essentially what we've been saying and this is what Brexit was about now you know it is true we have never ever because the lack of will within the the last government we've never got to the bottom and literally as I'm sitting over my phone I was just sort of looking for that for Carol's tweet I couldn't find it but what did pop up was somebody saying somebody called spaceology not sure why Alistair had so many doubts about Russian interference this it's it's a picture of Lord Lebanon so you know we you're where you're right and this goes back to this place that I told you about that I'm not allowed to talk about we are pretty I think we're a long way behind the game compared to what our traditional enemies are doing and it becomes so much harder because our traditional ally the United States America now looks like it's more of an ally of their tradition and our traditional enemy than it is of of Europe which is pretty terrifying pretty terrifying well final shout out for real serious serial analysis don't please look at Twitter and believe weird videos being shared on Facebook two people I'd like to make a real call out for who I think are extraordinary Darin Halifa who works for the amazing international crisis group does the most beautiful sensitive thought for reporting and knows the region really really well and it's particularly interested on Turkey and what will happen in Syria if Syria doesn't manage to balance its relationships with the region will it end up with Turkey getting involved in fights with the Kurds and ceasing bits of territory and secondly Charles Lister who has done amazing work on on on covering the whole story from the beginning and really understanding the roots of Afindal Shahra and where they're going so yep to shout out the two of them okay on a scale of one to ten how much do you believe Elon Musk when he says that Ukraine tried to take down 20 yesterday I would say less than zero less than zero okay less less than zero but one of the things that you'll be aware of is that Elon Musk has talked openly about the fact that he regularly uses ketamine special K this kind of horse tranquilizer that people used to use to party he uses it because he thinks that it helps manage his depression but I was one of my relatives had to have a a serious operation on the hand and they were put under ketamine in the United States and so I sat down in the hospital and watched them emerge from ketamine it is unbelievable what it does to your brain the things they were saying as they emerge from this ketamine high the dreams they were having the fantasies they were having and I don't know what quantity of this stuff Musk is using but I was slightly concerned about the idea that he's on his social media accounts if he's on ketamine well so I think we've heard in danger running over and I think let's just finish with with two kind of really obvious banal things first is a huge shout out to these very serious analysts who are doing the detail work and we'll keep pointing you towards them and and I think the second thing is what an unpredictable world this is I mean you and I talked about the risks in Syria and we could see that there were risks from the alowites and risks from ISIS and risk from his own factions and risk from the Kurds and risk but guessing which one of those was going to blow up first and I think the story of the Kurds in Syria still needs to be played through anyway thank you very much indeed yeah and as we said at the job we're going to talk about reform and for our group at low like we've got loads of questions about that as we let why don't we start with that in question time tomorrow because I think we're already we're already into time added on for injuries very good looking forward to tomorrow sit a bit bye bye