Episode Info
- Season19
Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Episode Summary
The world’s leaders descend on New York City this week for the annual gathering of the United Nations—think of it as our global town hall. Amid the backdrop of the Ukraine war, spiralling inflation, natural disasters and heightening superpower tensions, there is a lot to be discussed. It comes also on the heels of the G20, where Indian PM Narendra Modi played a pivotal role in shaping global agreements on Ukraine and pushing for the African Union to join the bloc—an equivalent, he argues, to the EU. As the Global South continues to refuse to pick a side in the war in Europe, we are asking this week: is the West’s global dominance over?
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Transcript
INTRODUCTION
Mcfarlane: You're listening to One More Decision, a short update from the team that brings you One Decision, the podcast that looks at the big choices made that shape our world. I'm your host, Julia McFarlane, journalist and broadcaster. And we're joining you today from New York because the world's leadership are gathering here this week for that global town hall, the UN General Assembly. We're in a hotel in Central Manhattan, and like hundreds of others just like it, the lobby is buzzing with dozens of languages from the delegations who've traveled here from all corners of the world. We drop our full episodes of One Decision on Thursdays where we talk with leaders, politicians, diplomats, and experts. But today, we have a short update ahead of the UN General Assembly, or UNGA as it's known. And joining us is my cohost, Sir Richard Dearlove, the former chief of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service. THE WEST, THE GLOBAL SOUTH AND A SHIFTING BOARD
Mcfarlane: We are in New York this week, and I think it's interesting that this UN General Assembly is happening shortly after that BRICS summit we saw recently where we saw India urging more countries to join the BRICS community. And then at the G20, which was also hosted by India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi managed to get quite a lot of surprising international agreements and consensus, not just on Ukraine. He succeeded in getting everyone to water down the language slightly in order to get more people behind the statement at the end of the summit. Are we seeing a period now where the West's influence is on the decline? And we've seen the last two years that Western leaders have really struggled to get the global South to side with the West, to side with Ukraine, to implement sanctions on Russia. And we're seeing actually that there are a huge number of countries in the international community who are not willing to be persuaded to sing to the West's hymn sheet. What do you think about that?
Dearlove: Well, I think I've got a longer memory than some. This isn't quite as new as it's being perceived by the media. During the Cold War there was something called the non-aligned movement. And the non-aligned movement were, as it were, the main countries which were not associated with either the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact, or with the United States. The leader of the non-aligned movement, or one of the leading countries, was India. And India's attitude throughout that period was extremely equivocal. Yugoslavia also was very influential before it broke up. And South Africa — I mean, all of these countries were significant in the non-aligned movement, which politically maybe was not as important then as it is now. But I remember, you know, very clearly the way that India played its cards. And at that time I was working behind the Iron Curtain, I was in Czechoslovakia, and the relationship between Czechoslovakia and India at the time militarily, for example, was surprisingly close. So I don't think we should be particularly surprised. I mean, what's changed is of course, you know, Pax Americana, which was the main, let's say, mainstay of the international security system in the aftermath of World War II, is no longer the sort of main determinant factor. You have the rise of China and you have the massive decline of the Soviet Union and Russia. So I mean, I think what we're seeing is the pieces on the board are shifting enormously. And the thing I would say is most significant at the moment, and maybe is determining a lot of the things that you've just mentioned to me, is the question of how the nations close to China line up on the issue of dealing with China in the future. So India, Japan in particular, what are their future roles going to be? And what is their relationship with the United States? And the sort of security pacts which are beginning to be built, I think have a label on them, and the likely label, as far as I can see, actually is Chinese containment. But at the same time, there are a lot of nations sitting on the fence, not quite sure which way to go, and I'm not going to predict the decisions that they're going to take. But I mean, how this plays out over the next decade — and it will be over the next decade — will determine what the future international situation looks like. And then obviously, Africa, politically weak, economically probably quite significant because of the control it has of natural resources, much of which remain unexploited. So the future role of the African Union, I agree, is going to be important, but politically at the moment is not particularly consequential.
Mcfarlane: Well, there was something very interesting that I heard with an interview between Christiane Amanpour and the Ukrainian foreign minister, where she asked him about how Ukraine really needed to get African countries on side because they're obviously a huge voting bloc in the UN and there has not been the kind of support on the African continent for the Ukrainians. And it was interesting because he said, it's interesting when you talk to the leaders of African countries and they will go to summits with Putin, they will smile and shake his hand and be all very friendly. But he said behind closed doors — this is Dmytro Kuleba — he said behind closed doors, they tell him, they tell the Ukrainians that their feelings for Putin and Russia are very different and are not how they are in public. But what is there is fear. There is a fear that they have of Putin and Russia's retribution. And, of course, we've seen this string of coups and destabilization across Western Africa recently. And we've seen how the Wagner mercenary group is very deeply embedded in a lot of African countries. A lot of these leaders of African countries fear getting on the wrong side of Putin and what he can unleash upon them. What should the West do about that? Because that is a very real and understandable threat that they face.
Dearlove: I mean, you make a very good point. I mean, it's been quite well illustrated in, you know, former bits of Africa which were very much Francophone, and, you know, we're talking about Mali, Burkina Faso, we're talking about Niger, Côte d'Ivoire, and there is the sort of difficulty of post-colonialism and the breakdown of their relationship with France. So on the one hand, you have that as a destabilizing factor. And let's say Macron, for various reasons, has not at all managed that successfully. In fact, he's made a complete mess of it, in my view. So that's let the Russians in. And also, the Chinese are very quick to come in with money and to buy influence and to buy control of natural resources. So this sort of stress is being played out in these countries, and it's not clear because most of them are totally dependent economically on the sort of significant help that they're getting from the nations that, you know, are hovering over them and investing in their natural resources. You can see what I'm saying. And I don't think this hasn't been played out, but I think behind closed doors, if you sat an African leader down, many of these ones — they are probably very questioning about the nature of the Chinese interest in their countries and the nature of the Russian interest in their countries. And I think many of them are in the process of getting their fingers badly burned in these relationships and maybe are beginning to regret. But then there is this post-colonial fear, of resentment, so they're not running back into the arms of the French government. I mean interestingly, the UK now, in some of these areas of Francophone influence, has very good relationships with some of these governments because they don't want to talk to the previous colonial power but they do want to talk to, let's say, a European power. I mean it's a very confusing situation which I would say is in evolution. And I think we'll see a lot of shifts and changes over the next three to five years as this plays out. But my guess is that the Russian hold or arrival and presence is actually pretty fragile and not at all constructive. And, you know, I question its durability.
CHINESE INFLUENCE IN UK POLITICS
Mcfarlane: And Richard, just to update our listeners on a few things that have happened since we last did one of these bonuses, was that we talk often about the Conservative Party's links with Russia and some dubious questions, but I think that does a great disservice to infiltration that we've seen recently in the UK. I'm being a bit facetious, but obviously there was that news that there were two alleged Chinese spies working in parliament. And then that was followed a few days later by news that the Conservative Party was warned by MI5 that some of their selected candidates to run as MPs could also be Chinese spies. What do you make of that story that came a couple weeks ago?
Dearlove: Well, it's the Chinese trying to assert — I was gonna say assert influence is more serious than that, trying to sort of infiltrate our political system. And I don't think any of this is particularly surprising. And you know there's plenty of models out there which you can look at which tell us why they're doing it and what they're doing. It's exactly what they tried to do in Australia. They tried to put people whom they had a measure of control over into the Australian parliament, they tried to make strategic purchases of land in bits of Australia, they were up to all sorts of tricks. Basically the Australian government quickly took a very tough line and you know they've had a tough relationship with China, but basically, you know, Australia's economy is wrapped up with the Chinese market and vice versa. And these two countries are intertwined politically but have a tough relationship. I think we are seeing, you know, a similar game being played out in the UK. And I mean I've given other interviews and tried to explain this at length. Obviously Chinese intelligence will be interested in the political system in the UK and getting more information about the people within it and their attitude to China and those that are friendly and those that are not friendly. And this is all sort of basic stuff. I wonder, in this instance, I don't think we're dealing with either of the Chinese intelligence services. We may be. There are two of them. There's the Second Department of the People's Liberation Army, which is the military intelligence wing, and then there's the civilian intelligence, which is the Ministry of State Security. But there is a third department, which is called the United Front Work Department. And this is a big part of, as it were, the Chinese Communist Party's influence system. It has over 40,000 employees, it's massively funded, and its job is to undermine China's critics. Its job is to, as it were, destroy those political initiatives which are critical of China, and at the same time to entice China's supporters into a closer relationship to support the Chinese Communist Party. And it's played a really important role historically. There was a period when the party, this organization, was not so prominent, but it's been heavily revived by Xi Jinping. And I think what we're seeing probably is the activities of this department. If you cast your mind back about eighteen months ago, there was a Chinese lawyer, a solicitor called Christine Lee, and she was throwing tons of money around in parliament paying off MPs. I mean, it was originally founded by the Chinese Communist Party, way back after the revolution in China, to knock out the parties which were opponents of the Communist Party. And it has a sort of pedigree which is aggressive and its work continues. And I think this is almost probably the explanation. But the other thing you have to remember is that in the UK the legislation has changed. So there's a new national security legislation which makes it illegal to be a lobbyist or to be active, you know, in the political scene in the UK without declaring who you're representing or your —
Mcfarlane: This is the Brits' version of the FARA Act that they have in the US. Right? The Foreign Agents Registration Act. So if you work on behalf of a foreign government, you have to register. Yeah.
Dearlove: I think probably maybe we're dealing with some sort of classic espionage. And you can't draw a clear line between classic espionage and the activities of this department. But maybe we can do a separate podcast on this, because if it's going to continue to play out, it needs quite a lot of explanation. And I'm sure that there are lots of listeners to our podcast who would like to hear this, given a proper explanation.
Mcfarlane: Well, there's certainly one host of this podcast which would love a proper explanation, but that's for another time. Thank you, Richard. Great to catch up. That's it for this week's episode of One Decision. We drop new episodes every Thursday. Like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Drop us a line. Tell us your thoughts. What decisions have impacted you and where you live? You can write to us. Our email is 1decision@1decisionpodcast.com. From me and the team, thank you for listening, and see you next time.
