Episode Info
- Season8
- Episode1
Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Admiral James Stavridis
Admiral James Stavridis is a former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO sharing insight on critical decisions facing the alliance and Russia's strategy in Ukraine.
Episode Summary
Admiral James Stavridis faced formidable threats from Russia while commanding NATO's forces in Europe. The former Supreme Allied Commander shares his insight into the critical decision facing the alliance's leaders as they prepare to meet in Madrid. He looks at how Putin is likely to respond to their latest moves and co-host Sir Richard Dearlove, who led the British intelligence service MI6 makes a major revelation about how Moscow has recently personally targeted him and other former national security leaders.
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Transcript
INTRODUCTION
Lockwood: Welcome back to One Decision, the podcast where we take a deep dive into what are some of the most consequential decisions made today. How a single choice can affect lives around the world. Who gets to make these decisions? And how does it feel for them? The North Atlantic Treaty Alliance was formed in 1949 in the aftermath of the Second World War. 12 founding members signed a treaty in Washington which enshrined the right of its members to collective defense. Despite the fact that seventy three years have passed and membership has now grown to 30 nations, that treaty has never been modified. The Supreme Allied Commander of Europe and NATO is one of the highest positions in the alliance, the second highest military role within NATO. The first Supreme Allied Commander was Dwight Eisenhower before he became the thirty fourth President of The United States. Admiral James Stavridis assumed the position after a long career at the US Navy, a retired four star US Navy admiral who served until 2013 and rose in his service to become commander of a strike carrier group in active combat during the Iraq and Afghan wars. He then went on to serve as commander of US European command based in Germany and then as NATO supreme allied commander in Europe in his final years of service between 2009 and 2013. During his time at NATO, he watched as troops were pulled out of positions in Europe in order to support allied missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a letter published on Bloomberg, he revealed that he had a hard time persuading his colleagues and bosses in Washington that Russia still posed a threat to Europe, which at the time appeared to be free. It's an assessment he revisited earlier this year after Putin ordered his troops to invade Ukraine. My cohost, Sir Richard Dearlove, former chief of British intelligence, joined me in conversation with Admiral Stavridis about how the Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought the role of NATO back into sharp focus.
INTERVIEW
Lockwood: Jim, thank you so much for joining us today. I have to ask you, first of all, about NATO because we have seen the NATO Defense Alliance evolve perhaps most rapidly since its inception in 1949 when the North Atlantic Treaty was first signed, in the last twenty years, the most rapid evolution. And that's perhaps largely because of the seismic global consequences we've seen of 9/11 and perhaps because of the advent of globalization and perhaps also because of the advancement of tech and all the evolving security threats that have come with that. And it wasn't just NATO, but a lot of Western defense forces, a lot of national defense forces suddenly needed to adapt from dealing with the Cold War conflict to fighting terrorists and insurgents in The Middle East. So my first question to you today, what is NATO's biggest challenge now? I mean, obviously the Russian threat is highest on the agenda given that there is a live conflict raging on the borders of Europe. But is Russia the biggest threat to NATO in both the short and the long term?
Stavridis: I think Russia undoubtedly is the biggest threat in the short term, certainly in this tactical moment. And I think the alliance has responded responsibly, sensibly, and in a measured way. Longer term, I think I see three significant challenges for NATO. One is in fact Russia. But here I want to make a point. We see Russia and China drawing closer and closer together. So I think I'm going to basket those two. And by the way, as a kind of a little trio, Iran is nudging into that set of relationships both with China and Iran. So let's park that as great power competition with authoritarian states. Number two, the big challenge for NATO that I see is cyber and cybersecurity. I think that in cyber, we have the greatest mismatch between the level of threat, which is very high, and the level of preparation which is still inadequate in many many ways. And here I think NATO collectively has some work to do to be prepared for challenges that come not only from the group I just mentioned but also from nations and entities to include Islamicists, to include cyber criminal gangs and criminal actors. I think there's a pretty rich field of endeavor there for NATO. And then thirdly, I think that for NATO, there are the I'm gonna wanna basket these, although they're very different, but it's north and south. And what I mean by that is the Arctic, the High North, I think is going to be a zone of competition. God forbid, it should be a conflict zone. And then to the South, the continuing challenges in The Middle East broadly, North Africa, radical Islam, I think those will operate as well. So I'm kind of gonna put it in three broad baskets, but I'll close on this, Julia. I get quite tired of people who say, Oh, NATO, it's irrelevant. It's Cold War vestige. I think it's anything but that. It has, unfortunately perhaps, but it has a great deal of, we say in the business world, TAM, total addressable market, meaning there's a lot of need out there for security.
Lockwood: Jim, I have to ask because you mentioned in an article for Bloomberg recently that when you were supreme allied commander of NATO, you said, and I quote, we were pulling troops out of Europe both to support combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and also because we believed that Europe was whole and free. I had a hard time trying to persuade my colleagues and bosses back in Washington that Russia still posed a significant threat to US interests and especially to NATO allies and close partners such as Georgia and Ukraine. Our footprint continued to shrink despite pleas from NATO partners like Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the Baltic states who were constantly warning me about the threat from Putin's Russia. Take us back to that time that you were referring to and what your assessment of the threat from Russia was back then that led you to make those warnings to your colleagues. And, of course, hindsight is a marvelous thing, but could this have been prevented or averted, do you think?
Stavridis: Well, it certainly got my attention when Putin rolled into Georgia in 2008. So I became supreme allied commander the following year and immediately began to hear quite a bit, not just from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, but from other former Warsaw Pact nations about their concerns, notably the Poles. And let's face it, history has a way with us. And when Russian Soviet tanks roll west, it rattles old ghosts in Europe. And it is going back to the 1939, the Finnish winter war, I think, is rattling around in the minds of the Finns right now, which is why they are seeking NATO membership. The Poles can remember Warsaw, The Czech Republic, Prague Spring '68, Budapest '56, I could go on and on, you get the point. The book of history is pretty clear about the concerns we ought to feel about Russia. And I think we engaged in some magical thinking in the era of Gorbachev and the fall of the wall, we sort of decided that this is a different Russia. Well, it turns out, unfortunately, it's not a very different Russia. And in those years, there were fewer of us who were making those kinds of points and everyone was seized with the so called forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Turns out the forever war may be across the border in Russia.
Lockwood: Richard, you were head of MI6 during the fall of the Soviet Union. Jim points out that a lot of the thinking back then was this is a new Russia. Take us back to when you were leading British intelligence and you were dealing with this collapse of this old time enemy. Did you believe back then that this was a new Russia? Did you believe that this was a hopeful time or were you a bit more suspicious?
Dearlove: Oh, I think there was a brief window of hope when, you know, Yeltsin was in power and then Yeltsin was eventually succeeded by Putin. I mean, I went to Moscow with Tony Blair to meet Putin later well, a little bit later on. And when we first met him, we felt that we could probably or maybe have a different relationship. And I think there was, you know, genuine gesture on our part to look at the possibility of a different relationship with Russia. And, of course, for a brief period of time, they did help us a little bit on issues like Afghanistan. I certainly went to what had been the Soviet Ministry of Defense. I was probably the first chief of SIS to go in there historically. And, you know, I met the head of the GRU unbelievably, and we sat down and we talked about the problems of dealing with Islamist terrorists in Afghanistan. However, you know, that honeymoon didn't last for very long, and we were brought back in the direction of, let's say, reality. And what I mean by reality is a sort of picture historically that Jim has just painted of Russia and its attitude towards its neighboring countries. And there were individual issues that cropped up pretty fast, Zakayev to do with Chechnya, the extradition of Berezovsky, and then just after I retired, murder of Litvinenko in London, I mean, of these things, and quite frankly, the relationship with the Russians went into the freezer pretty quickly, and we discovered that we were dealing with maybe it's wrong to say the old enemy, but we were dealing with a nation which we knew well and whose characteristics we knew well. And I mean, I was certainly one of the first when I retired in 2004, 2005, I gave a lecture at RUSI when I said, you know, the war with terrorism, you know, is important politically because, you know, it has such immediate consequences for everybody, but we mustn't forget the serious long term threat from Russia and to an extent from China. And I think, you know, that prediction has been proved largely right. And, you know, we've had many, many warnings before we got to the current crisis, which is so severe with Ukraine, specifically with Georgia, specifically with Crimea in 2014. So we had plenty of warning, but in a way our governments chose to shut their eyes and hope that things might be different. And of course, I think the classic example of this to an extent is the way that, you know, Merkel's Germany behaved towards Russia. And, you know, therein lies the origins of the seriousness of the problems that we now face.
Lockwood: I mean, I think that's absolutely right. And there were very you say we had lots of warnings, and there were certainly sort of instances that demonstrated that the new Russia was not a country that was playing by the rules of the international order. And, you know, we had Litvinenko, we had, you know, Skripal as well as, you know, Berezovsky and the hunting down of lots of Russians on foreign soil. We have had plenty of opportunities to wise up to the threat of Russia. But what could we have done to get Russia to play ball, to play by the rules? Is it something that is down to external countries or is it Russia's kleptocratic regime that is dragging it into a war it did not have to be in, that is triggering international isolation and looming economic crises for its citizens. Is this something that any of us can do anything about or is the solution something to be found from within Russia?
Stavridis: I would start by saying, in Russia, long tradition of unitary domination by solitary male figures. I've just summarized two thousand years of Russian history. You roll the cosmic dice and sometimes it works out. Sometimes you get Peter the Great and he pulls Russia into the enlightenment and leans to the West. But another time you get Ivan the Terrible. Then you get a Joseph Stalin and he kills 30,000,000 of his countrymen. But then the dice land on Gorbachev and Yeltsin and there is, I think Sir Richard categorizes it perfectly. There was a moment of legitimate hope. Those dice have landed on Vladimir Putin. He will be the czar of the Russians until he dies. And we've got to deal with that. And so the answer to the question is there is something we can do. What we have to do is recognize the iron grip Putin has on the levers of power and try and reverse engineer that where we can. And there are economic tools to do that, there are tools of espionage to do that, there are diplomatic tools that can be helpful, military, strong military deterrence, we can build that package. But at the end of the day, if you want to steer the ship of Russia, you've got to do it with the hands of Vladimir Putin on the wheel. I don't see that changing in the course of the next five years anyway. His health may be the most determinative path to the change in the course of the Russian ship.
Lockwood: I have to ask because NATO has really had its public image almost sort of galvanized, in the face of this Russian crisis. We've all been given a reason to look at NATO with fresh eyes, and no one more so than the Baltic states who've always been very strong members of the Alliance, but increasingly their nearby neighbors, Sweden and Finland. And there's a lot of talk about their moves to try and join the Alliance. Jim, what do you make of these requests from Sweden and Finland to join NATO? They previously didn't feel the need to be part of NATO, and that obviously changed, given what Russia has done with Ukraine. But do you believe their concerns are legitimate? Or do you think this is part of pan European posturing intended to show that Russia's actions are anathema to the international community? I mean, no one could accuse the Finns or the Swedes of not having the capabilities to defend themselves. So what do you make of these requests to join NATO that has given Russia another reason to be angry and on the defense?
Stavridis: I think the question you're asking has to do with risk and risk assessment. And if you're Sweden and Finland, up to this point, your risk calculation has been, you know, it's better not to be aggressive. It's better to try and have a neutral relationship, it's better to have strong economic ties with Russia, to continue a course of neutrality that's been in place for many, many years in both countries. What has changed? And I think the brutality, the lethality, the episodes of human rights grossly violated, the war crimes in Bucha, I think that has had a very clarifying effect on the minds of Swedes and Finns. And when I was NATO commander, I would actively encourage both nations to operate closely with us. They deployed troops under my command to Afghanistan, to the Balkans. Sweden participated in the war over Libya with their superb Gripen fighters. Can they defend themselves? Yeah, reasonably well. Again, back to the history of the winter war, 1939. The Finns fought the Soviets largely to a standstill. But at the end of the day, they, the Finns and the Swedes, watched what has unfolded in Ukraine and said, Nope, our risk calculation is different now. We now see greater risk from Russia militarily than we have in the past and therefore we want that NATO membership card. And I'll close on this by saying I would often say to friends in Helsinki and Stockholm, Look, you guys are so good, so capable, so professional. If you wanna join NATO, tell us on Wednesday, we'll have you in by Friday. It's not gonna be quite that quick. President Erdogan is gonna be a bit annoying here, but at the end of the day, this is gonna happen very quickly. By the fall, my view, they will both be members of NATO.
Lockwood: I mean, on Erdogan, I have to ask because there are now, I believe, 30 members of NATO, 30 different countries that have different ideas and different priorities. And given that you, you know, leading this organization and trying to deal with all of these conflicting priorities and all of these conflicting needs, Is there not a danger that NATO could suffer from UN sickness when it tries to absorb too many people, too many points of view, too many priorities? Is it wise to continue expanding?
Stavridis: I think it is wise to do what the NATO treaty and charter says. And I would encourage listeners to actually Google NATO treaty and read it. I think there are 32 sentences in it. Essentially what it says about NATO membership, I think is crystal clear and makes sense. It is that any nation can apply which is in a position to further the democratic ideals of the alliance and is and this is key, is in the European North American geographic zone. So I don't see a NATO that expands into a new democratic United Nations and let's bring in Japan and Australia as attractive as they would be as security partners. No, I don't see that. But within the realm of the current situation, I think Sweden and Finland make a lot of sense. I do want to draw a line under one thing. Occasionally I hear from American academics, normally professors who say things like, Oh, the root of the problem here is NATO expansion. If NATO had only had the vision and the foresight not to expand at the end of the Cold War, we wouldn't have these terrible problems with Russia. I think that is the ultimate in magical thinking. And again, open the book of history. I can show you so many times when Russians have rolled to the West in the modern era. And I defy you to find a page in that book of post World War II history where a NATO tank has rolled into a Warsaw Pact country. I can show you again and again where the Russians have done it and more recently in 2008, 2014, and 2022.
Lockwood: You say that NATO can't expand beyond its territory. It is the North Atlantic Treaty that was signed. But we had NATO troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those campaigns were incredibly they have left a toxic legacy for a lot of people, for a lot of domestic populations. Should NATO basically be an insurance policy for countries, the Article five aspect of NATO and should it stick to that? And given what you say about its geographic limitations, should NATO exist really as an insurance policy against the only real hostile power, which is Russia?
Stavridis: I think that the answer is somewhere in between NATO being a strictly fortress Europe that hunkers down, builds its military, and throws rocks across a transom at Russia. I don't think that's the right vision. On the other hand, I don't see NATO as the solution to the world's security needs and desires. I think the answer is kind of in the middle, which is to say, if you can find a nexus to real threat to the alliance that comes from somewhere outside of fortress Europe and fortress North America, then I think that is NATO's business. And Iraq and Afghanistan were failures of military and failures of diplomatic efforts, failures economically. There's a lot of blame to go around in how things turned out, especially in Afghanistan by the way. I think Iraq, let's wait and see. Let's wait and see. But I would say that NATO going to Afghanistan following an attack launched from Afghanistan against a NATO member, I think in that moment made sense as an out of area operation. But Julia, I agree with I think your fundamental point, which is that the bias of the organization ought to be your premise, building strong defenses, operating within its borders. Those out of area operations, I think ought to be the exception to the rule.
Dearlove: I just agree with Jim. I mean, I think that if you look at something like the terrorist threat, you know, specifically the threat from Islamic fundamentalism, you know, that was a European, a global threat in a way, and we weren't going to be able to do anything about it unless we moved outside the European continent, because its basis, its sort of R and R areas, the areas where they were training and recruiting, you know, were in Afghanistan, were in Iraq, were in other parts of the Middle East. Therefore, there was a logic about NATO intervention, which I think was entirely legitimate. But I mean, in terms of, you know, heavy deployment of military capability, then, you know, you're looking largely at the moment as the European theater, I mean, as we've seen. I think the big question for NATO ahead of time would be, you know, how we think and deploy when the Chinese threat in future maybe becomes more potent, and then, you know, you do then get into a different sort of geopolitical pose. But I think that issue really is some distance down the road. We haven't got there. Well, we're talking about it, we're thinking about it, but in terms of physical deployment, you know, we're largely depending on The United States in terms of how to, as it were, confront the Chinese threat in the Pacific and in the South China Sea.
Stavridis: Can I add a quick compliment, which is, your absolutely magnificent new aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth just deployed into the South China and was part of freedom of navigation patrols? And by the way, the French have done so, the Germans have done so, not under NATO umbrella, but as allies. And I think that's edging toward the incomplete agreement with Sir Richard, the idea that collectively we can be very, very capable in balancing, shall we say, China.
CYBER AND FUTURE THREATS
Lockwood: I want to jump back to something that Jim mentioned earlier, thinking about the future of NATO and the future of what modern defense necessitates, and that there is a huge chasm between the threat posed by the cyberspace and our collective defense preparations for it. And Richard, you have a particular interest in cybersecurity. I would love to hear from both of you on how you feel that threat is going to lead both governments and NATO to respond and what really needs to be done? Are we going to start to see a NATO pledge for spending on cyber defenses as well as generic defense spending pledges?
Dearlove: Well, inevitably, you know, the cyber domain becomes more important militarily, if that's the right way to express it, over time. And The UK and The US do have a tradition of working together successfully in this area, and maybe one should mention in this context as an extension of that Five Eyes, which of course includes Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. And I mean, that is an organization which is, I think, specifically well adjusted in terms of what its capability can be for dealing with this issue. I mean, Jim will know more about this than me, but I mean, that hasn't been fully transposed into the NATO context because of the number of countries that are members and issues of restrictive security and cooperation.
Lockwood: So are you saying that NATO should perhaps stay more on like conventional military?
Dearlove: No, I'm just saying that there is definite grounds to develop in this area. And I think, you know, one of the interesting aspects that I was discussing the other day with some ex GCHQ people was the impact that the war in Ukraine is having on cyber relationships already. Not much of this is in the public domain. It's not particularly secret, but, you know, the stuff going on in Ukraine, is going to, as it were, change NATO's perception of these issues, and of course, the stuff being captured by the Ukrainians.
Lockwood: What kind of stuff Richard?
Dearlove: I'm not gonna go into detail, you can ask Jim about that, but there's stuff that's been captured by the Ukrainians already, which the West knew about, but probably hasn't seen the physical plant.
Lockwood: Right, but I mean you obliquely mentioned you know stuff going on in Ukraine, but we haven't really seen cyber attacks in this conflict on a huge scale, have we?
Dearlove: Well I just think that that's probably not been in the public domain very much. I disagree with you. I mean, I could give you I mean, let's put it like this, I have been the object of the last three weeks of a Russian disruption operation. I'm not going to go into detail. And some of my and we're retired people, but clearly we're commentating on Ukraine quite a lot in the public domain, and the Russians don't like this. So, they've used their capabilities, which are pretty sophisticated, to make some awkwardnesses for us. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if Jim has had a similar experience, but I'm not going to ask him directly.
Stavridis: I would say it is a fascinating question why there has not been some kind of massive cyber attack that would be impossible to hide. I agree completely with Sir Richard. There is a great deal of cyber activity. It is the kind of personal attacks he talks about. It is kind of an ongoing low level set of attacks against command and control on the part of the Ukrainians. But there's been no big, for example, shutting down the Ukrainian electric grid, which Russia, my view, is capable of doing so. Three years ago, they knocked out half of it almost in a playful way to sort of demonstrate the capability. Russia has very sophisticated cyber tools, both for big public kinds of things, for micro kinds of precision guided strikes, and things kind of in the middle going after consumer chains, ransomware, often masquerades activity by the FSB. So why have we not seen more of the high end stuff, the public stuff? And I think Putin is holding those back because he wants something to play when the sanctions really start to bite in Russia. He is going to want at that point to use those kind of tools against the West to discomfort our populations in the way that his populations are being discomforted. So I think there is another shoe to drop on this in addition to what is happening, I assure you beneath the surface of the sea here so to speak.
ON HISTORY AND DECISIONS
Lockwood: Jim, I have to ask you because as much as you are a military veteran, you're also a very dedicated student of history and particularly military history. And you've written several books on history and geopolitics. And your latest book, which is out now, out soon, it's particularly appropriate for our podcast. It's called To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision. And in your book, you profile nine naval heroes across history who've each made pivotal strategic decisions in combat that have had profound consequences. The first one was just a few years after American independence, and then the ninth is a US naval captain on board the USS Theodore Roosevelt dealing with a deadly outbreak of COVID in 2020. And in your book, you scrutinize what these men and women did to prepare for these decisions if they had the prior opportunity and what lessons we can all draw from these examples, whether we are involved in combat or not. So I have to ask you, what was, do you believe, the most significant decision that you have had to make in your long career?
Stavridis: I think that for me, I'll give you two. And they're sort of different. One is a big one and one is a small one. A seemingly small one, but very difficult one was a hostage rescue operation in Colombia. And we had three American defense contractors who are being held by the FARC, the rebels who are fighting the government. And our intelligence network was constantly honing in on their location. So Richard knows this feeling very well. And you keep getting closer and closer. And at one point I was approached by my intelligence and special operations folks and they said Admiral, we think we've got them. And here is what the operation would look like. And I was so deeply concerned about the lives of these hostages, I failed to pull the trigger fast enough. And they slipped away. And in retrospect, that kind of life or death tactical decision I think is among the very hardest any commander has to make. And certainly a hostage rescue which will fail seven out of 10 times and result in the death of a hostage is a very difficult decision. So Colombia, jungle, hostages, in retrospect, we eventually did get them out. So perhaps in some way my hesitancy turned into a better outcome for them. On the other hand, it's a decision if I had to go back and do it again, I would make that decision with more alacrity and I think we could have gotten them with our intel and our special operations tactical decision. The biggest strategic decision I had to make was in Afghanistan. I had 150,000 troops in combat, 100,000 American, 50,000 from all the other nations, of course a brave and heroic and very significant contribution coming from The United Kingdom. And the big strategic decision I had to make there I think it was the right one. Made in concert with the then in country commander, General Stanley McChrystal, a wonderful friend of mine. It was to shift the way in which we were approaching combat away from hunter killer kinds of operations against the Taliban and shift it to a broader whole of government classic counter insurgency kind of mission. And those decisions we made in 2010. And I think the course of the war improved significantly in the sense that by the time I left and in the years afterward, we had withdrawn of the 150,000 troops, we were down to 15,000 total allied troops. So we took out 90% of our troops. The Afghan security forces appeared to have reasonable control over the country. We were thinking about, okay, what's the next end game, negotiations with the Taliban? And then I think The United States principally became impatient and unwound what had been very very good work. On that one, I stand by my decisions 2010 to reorient the campaign to a whole of government approach which I think was in fact successful until we pulled the pins out from it at the end game and the whole house collapsed. So there's two. One kind of tactical, one strategic, one I think I'd do differently and the other one I would stand by.
Lockwood: When discussing some of the shortfalls of these military heroes that you profile in the book, you mentioned a few negative character traits: hotheadedness, insecurity stemming from the emasculation, for example, of age or physical appearance, Vladimir Putin is a very small man. Bravado, not to be too stereotypical, but these are often traits that are stereotyped as being masculine. So would the military be better served if it were run by female leadership?
Stavridis: Well, I'll point out for you that of the nine figures in the book, one is in fact a woman, a four star African American by the way, named Michelle Howard, who makes a very, very good decision in a hostage rescue situation.
Lockwood: Captain Phillips, yeah.
Stavridis: Correct. She was the commander for the Captain Phillips rescue operation. And I have a lot of regard for Michelle. So perhaps that makes your point that better one good female admiral than eight other also rans. But no, in my experience masculinity, femininity, they are not hugely relevant in the context of what I've seen in military operations. And I commanded the first American destroyer to embark women in the crew. And I commanded it for a year with a male only crew. And then I was chosen to embark a significant tranche of women into the crew. So I commanded the same ship. All male, mixed gender. Better ship, mixed gender. And you can drop a plumb line from those days, that was in the 1990s, to the present day when we see women at every level in the military to include Michelle Howard. We've just selected here in The US the first woman admiral to head our coast guard which is bigger than almost any navy in the world. I don't see significant differences in male female and how they approach the role of senior military.
Lockwood: Jim, your book 2034 explores a way in which the next world war could start at how major power showdowns could spiral out of control. Take us through what your worst case scenario explored in this work of fiction. And is it a warning or is it a prediction?
Stavridis: It is most definitively not a prediction. It is a cautionary tale. It is a warning. And I wrote the book having read a lot of Cold War literature. We mentioned earlier a book called The Third World War by Sir John Hackett, but I think the movie Dr. Strangelove, On the Beach by the Australian Nevil Shute, the Bedford Incident about a war that is narrowly averted between The US and The Soviet Union in the cold waters of the North Atlantic. As I read all that cold war literature Julia, I began to think, you know, we are edging toward if not in a cold war with China. Where is the comparative body of literature? Where are the cautionary tales about what such a war would look like? So that's the genesis of 2034, a novel of the next world war. And it begins and here is where I would particularly point the cautionary part With China having outspent, outstretched The United States in its technology, China in possession of powerful cyber weapons, powerful space capabilities that render many of our surveillance systems inoperative and a very capable maritime power. Also, in 2034, The United States noticeably has no allies. We have not tended the garden of alliances and they have sort of fallen away from us. Whereas China has a very close relationship with Russia and with Iran. And then thirdly, in the book, in terms of cautionary, the political dysfunction in The United States that we see so manifest today has led to a real breakdown in consensus domestically. All of those come together in this very cautionary moment. And I think the idea of the book is we still have time. We still have time to increase our technology, to tend the garden of our alliances, to fix our disordered political house. All of these are met challenges. But that's the genesis of the book. And I hope it's a good read as well. It's a novel, it's fiction, it's my tenth book, but my first novel. I'm happy with it as a format.
Lockwood: I hope it stays as a warning and not as a prophecy. That's it for this week's episode of One Decision. Don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. We drop new shows every Thursday. From me and the team, thanks for being with us this hour. See you next time.
