Episode Info
- Season27
- Episode19
Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Nicholas Casey
Nicholas Casey is a New York Times Magazine staff writer who was embedded with the Sudanese People's Movement Army and reports on the Sudanese civil war.
Episode Summary
In this week's episode, One Decision hosts Kasia Madera and resident spymaster, former Chief of Britain's MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, are joined by the New York Times Magazine staff writer Nicholas Casey to uncover the sober reality of the Sudanese civil war. Earlier this year, Casey was embedded with the Sudanese People's Movement Army, a rebel group fighting for democracy. He shares what it was like to report on the world's "forgotten war" and why peaceful intervention in the region has been largely absent. Plus, how countries like Egypt, Russia, and the United Arab Emirates are playing a major role in funding war efforts.
Listen & Subscribe
- Watch on YouTube
- Listen on Apple Podcasts
- Listen on Spotify
Transcript
COLD OPEN
Casey: This time around, it's like we're almost living in a world that has kind of got war fatigue after war in Ukraine, war in Gaza. And then this war, it it hasn't captured the attention.
Madera: That was the New York Times Magazine writer, Nicholas Casey. He was embedded earlier this year with the Sudanese People's Movement Army who were fighting in Sudan.
Casey: The war actually began with a revolution where people were very hopeful. They protested against Sudan's dictator, Omar al-Bashir, and they won. That didn't last long.
INTRODUCTION
Madera: For over a year now, Sudan's been in a turbulent civil war. It's a fight among armed forces that's resulted in thousands of deaths. An exact number is unclear, but in May, the US special envoy for Sudan estimated as many as 150,000 people have been killed, and nearly 10,000,000 have been displaced. I'm Kasia Madera, and this is One Decision. I'm joining Sir Richard Dearlove to discuss the global and political consequences of the Sudanese civil war, including Russia and Egypt's potential involvement in this conflict. Nicholas Casey joins us to talk us through the rebel movement that's fighting for democracy. Nicholas, welcome to One Decision. Sudan is a country that historically, it has just had so much war, so much civil war since its very creation. And at the moment, what we're seeing are these two armed forces up against each other, the Sudanese Armed Forces versus the Rapid Support Forces. And in the middle of all of this, of course, the civilians. But you, you were embedded with yet another group. Just tell us about it.
INTERVIEW
Casey: Yeah, this summer, I spent about three weeks with, yes, as you said, another group, that's fighting as well in Sudan called the Sudanese People's Liberation Army, the SPLM, because they also go by the movement too, North, because they control a part of Sudan that was, used to be part of South Sudan and is now its own area. They are one of the more interesting actors in the war. So much of the headlines, the the raids, the battles have been taking place between two generals that have been fighting for large regions largely in the North part of Sudan. But this area, which is called South Kordofan, is controlled by these rebels that are some of the few armed people I've ever met that say that they're looking to establish a pluralistic democracy in the country. And I introduced myself to these people, along with a photographer named Moises Saman, who came with us in the summer. And we spent a lot of the summer looking at the territory that they had conquered. They've been fighting the government for almost forty years now, and they've actually, in this war, been able to establish a much larger footprint in in Sudan for themselves and and for their people who are called the Nuba people who live in the South of Sudan.
Dearlove: But is the SPLA backed by South Sudan? Is it is it principally a Christian movement as opposed to Muslim?
Casey: That I mean, that's their their history. Right? The SPLA to kind of back up actually started they had a big role in the creation of South Sudan. This was kind of the Christian, Black, and even animist part of the South, which was in contrast to the North part of Sudan, which is Muslim and largely ethnically Arab. So this group is a group which, after the creation of South Sudan, which created that sort of largely black and Christian country South of Sudan, which is called South Sudan. They were actually left within the South part of Sudan proper. So they're continuing to fight against the government in the North. And they don't have the ties that they used to, to South Sudan, but they are kind of culturally, religiously very similar to what you've got in South Sudan at the SPLA.
Madera: Nicholas, would they want to create their own state, yet another part of Sudan? I wouldn't even know what to call it in this capacity now.
Casey: Yeah, we spent a lot of time asking them, well, now that there is, sadly, another war in Sudan, what do they see as their endgame? Do they want to use this as a chance to break off and create their own enclave? And repeatedly, commanders that we were interviewing said, no, actually, what they want to do is to be able to be at the table when the new government, whatever is going to rule Sudan after this war is formed, and that they will kind of continue to push for, like, an inclusion of their ethnicities and their groups into the larger framework of Sudan, what they hope comes out of this. And granted this might be a bit of a pipe dream, but they're looking for kind of a secular democracy to emerge out of this war, which is what they've been pushing for for for many years.
Madera: It feels like a big ask what they're pushing for given what you're seeing on the ground. We've got the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, warning that this current violence, this level of violence that we're seeing right now is emblematic to what the US recognized as genocide back in Darfur, back in 2003, where an estimated 300,000 people were killed. So, it feels like even getting people around the table to discuss a future for Sudan is incredibly far away.
Casey: I think you're right. And I think that practically speaking, the most that a group like the SPLA can hope to achieve right now is to create an area that's their enclave, which they have done, to kind of govern it through the rebels and under their rules and and practices, and really try to shelter that place, which they have in the South, from the worst of the atrocities of the war which are happening. Now, while they have not been able to march into Khartoum and are very unlikely to do that, they have been able to keep the RSF out of their territory. And they have been able to conquer more land from the SAF, the Sudanese Armed Forces. So if we're looking in sort of the smaller perspective of what can rebels do when they have attractive land, they've been able to accomplish that even if they haven't been able to get to the larger goal of trying to sort of transform Sudan overall.
Dearlove: But why do you think, Nicholas, this is I mean, I'm thinking now the bigger context in Sudan. I mean, this is the almost the forgotten war. I mean, it's catastrophic, and it's receiving not a great deal of international attention. I mean, I saw shots recently by a BBC reporter and the displacement of people from Darfur across into Chad. I mean, absolute seething chaos and human suffering, worse probably than what's been happening in Gaza in its own way. And the international community I mean, how do you explain this situation? Because it is remarkable, and it's very it's very troubling, I think, that there's not more attention being paid to this crisis.
Casey: Yeah. I mean, you and I both remember more than a decade ago during the genocide in Darfur when this just became a household name. People were talking about Darfur in Sudan. George Clooney was making visits there, trying to drum up support. And, you know, the whole story of the lost boys in Sudan was, again, something that you would constantly see on television. This time around, it's like we're almost living in a world that has kind of got war fatigue after, as you said, the war in Ukraine, war in Gaza. And then this war, it it hasn't captured the attention of the public the same way. That was largely the reason why we wanted to go and do a big story about it. But it's not just it hasn't captured the attention of the public. It also hasn't gotten the attention of lawmakers or some of the decision makers in Washington. I think the thing that's been surprising and disappointing to see here is how little the Biden administration did while this war was going on. And now we're in this situation where looking at a potentially massive famine that could take place in this country and also spread over into Chad. And you have other countries who are paying attention. United Arab Emirates, for example, which has been arming the RSF. It is really disappointing, I think, to see the US having become sort of the non-actor that it is in one of these huge crises that's going on in the world right now.
Madera: We've only just seen President Biden visit Sub-Saharan Africa first time. And I just wonder the whole of the African Continent. Is it just overlooked by the United States? But we also know that, of course, the US has been trying to get these two groups, these two warring forces round the table. It's just not working.
Casey: I mean, I think this Biden administration has been very different from past administrations. There's there's no doubt about that now that it's kind of in its last weeks here. The Biden administration is also operating in a world stage where America has lost a lot of influence, in many places. I used to cover Latin America for many years, and I remember when I started there that the US was the major power that was there, and I've seen, since I've left, China muscle into this area and become largest trading partner to many countries in Latin America and have an extreme amount of influence. And you've seen a similar process happen in Africa, not just with China, but with other countries like, the UAE, Russia as well, which has a huge presence in different African countries. And it means that when people from the White House are trying to call the shots, when they're trying to demand a ceasefire or get people to the negotiating table, it's incredibly harder than it it used to be. I think it's both sometimes a distraction in the White House and sometimes a lack of interest because of these other wars which are raging. But I think you're also seeing in Sudan and other places this diminished influence that the United States has over conflicts, given many different actors from Russia to countries in in the Persian Gulf, that are also seeing Africa as part of their sphere of influence and either arming or using their own soft power to try to influence how the war's taking place.
Dearlove: Nicholas, who who are the primary proxies in the war, and how important are they? I mean, you mentioned the UAE, and and, clearly, there's been some Russian backing. But are they sort of playing a crucial role in perpetuating the conflict and arming and training the parties? I mean, I because I think it's important for us to try to understand whether the you know, what the the the ramifications and dimensions of it, these additional players are.
Casey: Yeah. I mean, a lot of this is happening in the shadows, and we don't understand exactly what the support is entirely for some of these countries. But what we do know is that a small amount of support in this war can go a surprisingly long way. It's because Sudanese armed forces are using old, you know, military material from the Soviet Union. The RSF is kind of a descendant of the the Janjaweed, and they're cruising around in old Toyota Land Cruisers. So, you know, if someone can introduce, for example, drones into this war, that has a huge impact. And we know already, from the Times' reporting, by my colleague Declan Walsh, that, you know, there's the presence of UAE support that's come in through supposed humanitarian aid. We also know that there are drones from the UAE that are going to the RSF. On the other side, you asked about the proxies. I mean, the Sudanese armed forces have got the support of Egypt, and they also have seem to have Iranian drones there. So, yeah, again, like, this presence of, like, updated weapons, drones, while it would be a drop in the bucket, this kind of military aid in a war like Ukraine, and this war actually does go a long way. So that's that's why it's become so important. I think most of the countries who are participating in this war, who are not part of this, you know, they're they're not from Sudan, they don't see this as one of their big priorities because they've got many different, you know, horses that they're like kind of backing in different wars that are going on around the world. But for, you know, RSF or SAF able to get any of this aid, like I said, it can go a long way because of the condition of the weapons that they've been using so far.
Madera: Is there a reluctance for the West to get involved because the RSF and SAF are just so powerful and they've been really, really controlling this country, stopping a civilian government from getting a hold, a proper hold. They're just too powerful.
Casey: Yes. I think there is. I mean, first off, when you have a war, it's between two generals largely, and neither look like they're going to offer a really positive vision, a very optimistic vision of what comes next in Sudan, yeah, there's there's not a lot of will from Western governments to try to back one or or the other. And as you kind of pointed out earlier, I think part of the desperation or disappointment in trying to influence the outcome of any war in Sudan comes from the fact that in 2019, there was a democratic movement which was able to topple Sudan's last military dictator, al-Bashir, and out of that big hope, we got to this situation. If there was a time that you would think that Sudan was going to come out of this as a pluralistic democracy that we've been talking about, it would have been that year. But almost immediately after that, there was a period of, it clear who was exactly in charge, then, soon, like, the civilians were, dismissed and swept away. And then after that, the, you know, the military powers that were running the country, these generals were at war with themselves. So, yes, when you're a a Western power and you have to make a very clear decision over what side you're gonna back, it's not clear who who who you're going to back in this war. The thing that you want is just a ceasefire.
Dearlove: But it's a very depressing picture that you paint, which I'm sure is accurate. But is there any likely progress towards an outcome? Because it seems to me, in terms of the fighting in South Sudan, that, you know, it's it's a balanced conflict. I mean, neither side has the upper hand, and it just ebbs back and forth, the civilian population in the meantime suffer massively.
Casey: Yeah, I really, you know, I hate to say it, but I think for Sudan, no one is looking towards a model government coming out of this. What is the hope is that the fighting ends, because under the fighting is the stage of hunger. The amount of civilians that potentially can be killed by a famine pales in comparison to the losses that we've seen from the war. So if there's a priority right now, it's to escape a massive famine spreading across Sudan, not necessarily it's picking and choosing what sort of ideal government comes out of this war.
Madera: I just wonder what we're seeing is a really high amount of conflict related sexual violence. And I just wonder, Nicholas, just where is that coming from? Back in April 2024, the US ambassador to the UN was highlighting that there is evidence that women and girls as young as 14 were the victims of sexual violence. And this was perpetrated by RSF who originated from the Janjaweed, as you say, and they were the president's armed forces. They were brought together by the former president. But this high level of sexual violence, where is this coming from?
Casey: I mean, I think it comes from just a really unfortunate history of this war. There's been a lot more tools other than the conventional tools of war that have been used to prosecute it. I mean, this is not just sexual violence has been used, cattle raiding has been used in the past, burning of entire villages has been used, especially when you're talking about the RSF, anything gone really for this group. And this is why it's inspired like so much terror among the Sudanese over the years. Why has this been taking place more seemingly than in the past? It could be because there are more eyes right now on this time around, but I think it is just because of the lack of control right now you've got on the ground in Sudan. And even you know, we call this organization the RSF. I mean, we've been calling it organization. But when you see how it is actually run, you don't see very much command and control in the RSF. You see a lot of local gangsters, local leaders who are using the banner of the RSF, to do what they will. And, unfortunately, so much of this has become sexual violence in addition to traditional warfare.
Madera: Nicholas, when it comes to the group that you are embedded with, the Sudanese People's Movement North, who supports them? Where are they getting their arms from and their motivation to fight?
Casey: They're actually different than the other two because they're smaller and because it's not assumed that they're going to take, you know, walk into Khartoum. They've been largely on their own. It's they're they're natural allies of the government in South Sudan, but because of the peace treaties between Sudan and South Sudan, the South Sudanese government has not openly supported the SPLM. What you have seen, though, is that because they have been able to take over more villages and towns in the surrounding area, they've been able to arm themselves largely using the weapons of the SAF. So they will go into garrison town, raided of all of its weapons, tanks, and often get many of commanders and foot soldiers who themselves are Nuba people to not just surrender, but sometimes join them as well. So their model of arming themselves actually looks a lot more like what you would see of rebels maybe in Latin America in the sixties. You know, when Che Guevara was outlining the way to start a rebel movement was to begin to capture the towns and the garrisons of the opposing side and add those to them. It's much less the model of trying to find proxies and patrons that you're seeing with the SPLM and more trying to use the weapons of the government against the government.
Dearlove: But, I mean, it's a very remote and landlocked area. I'm thinking now the SPLA. I mean, the logistics of them getting fuel, getting ammunition, as it were, being able to service and run stuff that they've captured from the Sudanese army. It seems to me however entrepreneurial. And, I mean, I have been to the area to the south of that, and these are very extraordinary people when it comes to sort of survival and living in difficult conditions. But it it it it's extraordinary. They've been able to sustain themselves as a fighting force.
Casey: I mean, yeah, you're right. Just just trying to get to this place to see them was just an incredible odyssey. And we also saw just how things like fuel go along these same routes. And when we went to go meet the SPLA, we first had to land in South Sudan and Juba, then fly using a, on a World Food Program flight up to the border to a refugee camp, and then from there, go in on kind of a convoy of trucks in what took about twelve hours to get to their capital in in Kauda. Over as you said, it's landlocked. It's not an official border that you have. And I think it is, first off, very amazing that these rebels have been able to sustain themselves, get fuel, get tanks, get weapons to be able to kind of defend this piece of land. But then also, I've kind of written about many different rebel groups, largely in Latin America, in the past, sometimes you see this landlocked mountainous situation also works to their favor. This means that during the rainy season, no one can come and kick them out because all the roads are flooded or covered in mud. It works both ways. It becomes a challenge for a rebel organization to be able to maintain itself. But once it's there, it's very hard to dislodge them. They can't really expand out or pose a threat to the capital, but the capital, it's hard for them to threaten the SPLA there.
Madera: And Nicholas, what do they make of you? You and Moises, you guys rock up there and you're asking questions and watching their lives. And I wonder how you interact with them. Where do you sleep? What do you eat? How do you even convince them to allow you to enter into their world?
Casey: Well, we got in touch with their commander Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, who was in Kenya at the time. So communication with him was actually easy initially. He goes in and out of the rebel territory, and he gave us the green light to go. You know, look, this is an area that does not have hotels and restaurants. You're you're kind of on your own. But we were also embedded with them. So they were taking us to places where they knew the chief of the town who could put us off, give us a place to stay. It was quite warm. The rainy season hadn't completely started there, so most of the nights we were kind of sleeping under a mosquito net outside. But that's what a lot of people do. Wasn't a whole lot different than how average Nuba, people were were getting getting around during during the day. One of the things that we did have to make sure of, because this is an area where there wasn't much food, was that we were bringing a lot of our own because we didn't want to, in our presence, create a burden on the people that we're going to to interview. And you asked, like, how we were received. I think, you know, the rebels were really happy to see us, I think largely for the issues that we were talking about earlier, which is this is one of these wars which no one has been talking about at the scale that we've seen of Ukraine or of Gaza. So any chance that they have to be able to tell their side of what's going on, which isn't just a political side, just to let people know that there's not enough food in this area is a chance that they really wanted to take. So the entire time we were very welcome there when we were traveling and trying to do our work.
Madera: Nicholas, when you were embedded with the Sudanese People's Movement North, did you and Moises, were you ever at a moment of danger? Was there a time when you saw any action?
Casey: Yeah, the closest, I mean, we did ask to go to their, the frontline. So we went to, where a lot of the fighting had been taking place around a city called Kadugli. This was an area of the city that had been surrounded on three sides by the rebels, and they were looking to, at some point, move in and try to take over. This was another garrison town where they saw that they could get a lot of material to to keep fighting the war. Unfortunately, though, we we we did not end in the middle of a battle. But part of, I think, some of the danger in this area has to do with whether you're in a situation that is fully under control. And we did run into a group of men who were coming back from a cattle raid that had just taken place over the other side of the border. And this was, you know, young men in their early twenties, all of them armed, and none of them with one of the rebel commanders, even though they had probably been armed with permission of of the rebel group. We had to drive through them with the cattle, and, fortunately, they were interested in having their photo taken. If they weren't, though, we would have been in a pretty defenseless situation. So these, I think, sometimes more than the actual war that you're covering, these can be the situations that you can't really predict because there's not frontline there. Fortunately, this turned out fine for us. But as a correspondent, it's often that sort of situation that I'm a lot more worried of encountering than necessarily kind of the battle that's a lot more predictable.
Madera: And did the the people that you were with, did they look at that kind of bigger picture? Were they talking about these external forces that were playing a part within their own civil war?
Casey: Not so much. And I think when we are talking about this, when we're looking at it from kind of a Western perspective, these are some of the first things that we see. Of course, because Russia, for one, is is is interfering in so many, other parts of of our lives, whether it's the US election or directly through an invasion of Ukraine. But I think when you are talking to people on the ground about war, what they're seeing more even than like tanks or battles, they're seeing hunger. So I think far away from what the geopolitical chess game is here, people are concerned about how they're going to eat, how they're going to provide for their family, whether if they've had a newborn, that newborn is going to make it to the end of this year and into next year. These are the concerns. This is what we were hearing mostly from people in this war. If you were talking to people about the war today, they would tell you first about the hunger more than about the fighting, I think, in in many parts of of of Sudan.
Dearlove: Is there any game at all left in the area? Are there any because further to the south in and this I was there a long time ago in the '19 gosh. Nineteen sixties. It was teeming with game.
Casey: Yeah. I I mean, I wish I could go back in a time machine and go on that trip with you because there isn't. This is a place which all of these years of war, starting with sort of the wars from the 1960s and seventies continuing into the eighties, just really depleted big game, destroyed the environment there. If you read something like Ernest Hemingway's The Green Hills of Africa, which took place in Kenya and not so far, or even see some of Rodger's, the founder of Magnum's original photos of the Nuba people in the same area, you see a completely different landscape that had water buffalo, zebras, sometimes big game like, you know, rhinoceros, you know, and and a lot of that's that's gone. And, you know, it's really sad. That landscape that you remember, at least so far as it is in Sudan, it's it's just not not there anymore. And to have that environment, you need to have you need to have stability. You need to have now a government that can protect the wildlife, but also be able to feed the people that that that live on that piece of land. You you have neither of those in Sudan right now or, unfortunately, for generations even before it. So Richard, just tell us a little bit about how you ended up within this region in the sixties, because it's certainly not the kind of package tour you'd get from the UK back then.
Dearlove: I was living in Nairobi. It was my first overseas posting. And I knew this character, who's written very famously about really living in nomadic areas. His name is Wilfred Thesiger. Some of our listeners will be familiar. So he wrote a very famous book about the Marsh Arabs. He wrote another book about crossing the empty quarter. And in his later life, because when I knew him, he was sort of in his late 50s maybe, getting on for 60, he had moved to Northern Kenya. And he, out of the blue, invited me and another colleague to walk with him around the Matthews range. And, I mean, this was like a serious walk. It took us the best part of three weeks, and I think we walked between two hundred and three hundred miles with camels and the local nomadic tribesmen from the area as guides. And, I mean, basically, we went in there. It was a closed area. We had to get special permission from the Kenyan government to see what had happened to it, because there was a conflict, a border conflict with Somalia at the time, and no one was quite sure what had happened to the people that lived in this area. And I don't think many Europeans have been in there for a very, very, very long time. And it was an extraordinary experience. And it's a landscape which is not dissimilar from bits of Southern Sudan. And of course, tribally, the tribes are interrelated from the Nuba people down through this area, which was mainly Turkana and Rendille when I walked through it. But I mean, it's an extraordinary part of the world. To hear Nicholas saying that sort of disappeared is just tragic because it was extraordinary and so beautiful, but so wild and so remote as well. And I've got an extraordinary photographic record, which as of now I think I'm probably going to give to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, because it is, you know, unusual. There's a lot of photos of local tribes, people, and which are pretty unique now. You may you may have some some artifacts you can give to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford too, if you want to. Yeah. Yeah. No. Actually, I've got I I've got a couple of amazing camel bells, which we'll probably go to the Pitt Rivers because they're they're very unusual too.
Madera: Nicholas, thank you so much for talking to us here, your stories, and talking us through your experiences in Sudan. Nicholas Casey, thank you for speaking to One Decision.
Casey: Yeah. Thanks for for having me on the show.
ANALYSIS WITH SIR RICHARD DEARLOVE
Madera: Thank you, Nicholas. Sir Richard, that was a really sobering conversation with Nicholas. There seems to be a lot more at stake with the civil war.
Dearlove: Well, I think what's extraordinary about Sudan is the extent to which it does seem to be detached from other international issues. It's almost as though this is a crisis in isolation. Apart from the horrendous human suffering in the area, the reverberations don't seem to have much geopolitical impact. I'm tempted to go around talking to people about it and calling it the forgotten war, because it is probably one of the most catastrophic conflicts. It doesn't seem, from what Nicholas was saying, that the proxies that are behind some of the movements are heavily engaged. It looks to me as though they're not fighting for control of resources or anything like that. You know, if you take the parallel in Libya, there's much much more engagement by the international community because of the ultimate importance of Libya in relation to oil and production of other commodities. Now, I'm puzzled by the Sudanese civil war because it is an isolated tragedy which has huge human cost. And apart from pleading from the international aid agencies, very little seems to be being done about it. And there's no heavy international intervention to stop the conflict.
Madera: It's something that is arguably just unresolvable. As you say, it's these two generals that are battling it out. When it comes to the RSF, that was the organization, that was the force that was encouraged by the former president before they then turned on him. They were a source of mercenaries for the Saudi coalition in Yemen with their war against the Houthis. Is there any kind of external engagement now with what we're seeing?
Dearlove: Well, the only references I've seen to external engagement are the UAE who supposedly are trying to broker a deal. But on the other hand, I have references to the fact that they're actually backing the Rapid Reaction Force as well, but they're doing it discreetly, or let's say clandestinely. The RSF itself is a successor organization, I think, of Janjaweed militia. And it grew out of the Janjaweed militia, who, of course, were ruthless in the campaign that they conducted inside Darfur.
Madera: So I think this conflict runs really deep. And what about reports that the Wagner Group, what about reports that they were somehow involved? Is that possible?
Dearlove: In fact, they've had a rather rough time of it recently and taken losses in, I think, Chad actually has been the main problem. Chad is of course adjacent and many of the refugees as we discussed has gone over the border, and there certainly has been reports of the Russians backing and helping the Rapid Reaction Force. And then you've got the Egyptians supplying and supporting the Sudanese army, but not to a sufficient degree to turn the battle in the favor of either side. I thought it was quite interesting when Nicholas mentioned what the impact of drones might be, because if you go back to the Ethiopian civil conflict with Eritrea, it was supply of drones that actually changed the course of the conflict and allowed the established Ethiopian government to come out on top. And that was widely reported at the time. So it does show you that a strategic but small scale intervention in these African conflicts with an appropriate technology that works and makes a difference can actually change the course of the battle.
Madera: It just shows how difficult and complex this situation is, and always at the forefront of all of this, the civilians who are just trying to get on with their lives in an impossibly difficult and very, very violent and brutal civil war. Sir Richard, thank you.
Dearlove: Thanks, Kasia.
Madera: Thanks for listening to One Decision. If you've enjoyed this conversation, check out a previous episode with Sir Richard Dearlove featuring the former US secretary of defense, Robert Gates.
Gates: We have large, aggressive adversaries in Russia and in China, in Iran, in North Korea. Three of the four have substantial nuclear capabilities and are building more.
Madera: To unlock more exclusive content, get timely updates on crucial global events and listen in on meaningful conversations with thought leaders. Be sure to check out onedecision.com. I'm Kasia Madera. Thanks for listening.
