257. Trump's Ukraine Betrayal: What's Next for Europe?
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Hello and welcome to the Battleground Ukraine podcast with me, Saul David, and Patrick Bishop. With Russia's full-scale and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine now three years old, our worst fears about the new Trump administration have been realized.

Not only has it frozen Ukraine and Europe out of the start of the peace talks with Russia in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, but Trump himself has now doubled down on his earlier concessions to Russia and insistence that Ukraine must cede territory and won't be allowed to join NATO anytime soon. By insisting that Ukraine needs to hold elections, labeling Zelensky a dictator and blaming Ukraine for starting the war in the first place.

You really couldn't make this up, Patrick, could you? You couldn't. It's a complete inversion of reality, isn't it? And it's, I'm afraid to say, a lot worse than we had anticipated. We'd sort of

held off judgment in the hope that people around Trump might be able to steer him onto a logical path, but that hasn't happened. So, so much for Trump's slogan of peace through strength. Instead, we've got exactly the opposite, a seismic overturning of Western strategic calculations that have lasted really since the end of the Second World War. And, you know, let's face it, a shameful capitulation to an aggressive state

that might well go down in history as not comparable to, but even worse than, the appeasement at Munich. In a moment, we're going to discuss with veteran journalist

War correspondent, military expert, Robert Fox, where all this goes to next. Robert's take on defence is second to none, I would say. He's a real insider. He knows all the players and he's part of the process himself. But we'll be hearing from him later. But first, let's just recap on the events of the last few days. I think it's necessary just to list them in order to demonstrate just how far we've got from what was normality, what was the

the status quo only a few weeks ago. So speaking after the meeting between his team and the Russians in Riyadh on Tuesday, Trump made a number of extraordinary comments at a press conference in Mar-a-Lago, his home in Florida, to which really revealed how totally he is enthralled to the false Russian narrative. I watched it live and my jaw was on the floor within a few minutes, it really was. First, he supported the

a Russian call for presidential election in Ukraine by saying, well, we have a situation here where we haven't had elections in Ukraine, where we've had martial law, essentially martial law in Ukraine, where the leader in Ukraine, I mean, I hate to say it, but he's down at 4% approval rating and where a country has been blown to smithereens. So he sort of recognized this was a Russian narrative and said this wasn't where he got the idea from.

It was his own thought. That's coming from me and coming from many other countries also. Naturally, he didn't list who those countries were. I mean, where does he get these figures from, Patrick? It's extraordinary, isn't it? You know, if it wasn't so scary, it would be funny. In reality, Zelensky's approval rating is closer to 50%, not 4%. And it's not uncommon, as we know in the UK, for countries at war to suspend general elections. We did just that throughout the Second World War.

war. But it was what Trump said next that blew apart, in my view, his remaining tatters of credibility with his, and I say this advisedly, former allies. First, he said he was disappointed at Zelensky's complaints that Ukraine was not invited to the US-Russia talks in Riyadh. He added, I hear that they're upset about not having a seat. Well, they've had a seat for three years and a long time before that.

This could have been settled very easily. He's referring, of course, to the war. Just a half-baked negotiator could have settled this years ago without the loss of much land, very little land, without the loss of any lives, and without the loss of cities that are just laying on their side. You should never have started it. This, of course, is directed at Zelensky. You could have made a deal. You have leadership now that's allowed a war to go on. So,

Just be clear on all of this, Patrick. In Trump's parallel universe, it's Ukraine's fault that it was invaded in both 2014 and 2022, presumably, because it refused to give up some of its sovereign territory.

Yeah, and, you know, naturally, Zelensky pushed back on this, and he said that Trump was living in, quotes, a disinformation bubble, which had been created for him by the Russians, who he described as, I think quite accurately, as pathological liars. I mean, you've got to remember, while all this is going on, there was a drone attack in Odessa, where we'd been a few weeks ago. It seemed like the most extremely peaceful environment, didn't it, then, Saul? And it's weird to think now that...

You know, a short time afterwards, the Russians are bombarding the power generation, blacking out, I think, 130,000 people without light, heating. The temperature's plunged since we were there. It's freezing. So, you know, what world does Trump live in? But, I mean, this pushback from Zelensky, which I thought was quite courteous and restrained, enraged Trump.

So he doesn't like to be challenged on anything because he then just went into overdrive on his true social network saying that Zelensky was nothing more than a dictator without elections.

and concluded Zelensky better move faster or he's not going to have a country left. So that sounds to me very much like a threat, Trump bullying, a sort of mafioso type utterance, I think, which is increasingly how I'm beginning to think is the way that Trump's mind works. And then he went even further. I mean, of course, this produced a lot of rebukes from European leaders, Macron, Stalmer, Schultz, even normally very mealy-mouthed about Stalmer.

saying anything provocative. But they, I think, had no choice really but to say this is not true. He is not a dictator. He's a legitimately elected leader. And that just made him even more determined to pursue this vendetta. So the speech in Miami on Wednesday night, he repeated all those allegations all over again in front of an adoring audience with Elon Musk in the front row nodding approvingly. So he's also gone back to this whole business about money, which

I think you agree Saul is one of his main motivations and tried to apparently accuse the Ukrainians of stealing some of the bitterly vast amounts of money that have been handed over during the Biden administration in the form of military and humanitarian aid. So he's always happy to insult Joe Biden. So he referred to his old categorization of him, the sleepy Joe, and said that the only thing that Zelensky was good for

was playing Biden like a fiddle. So if we look back on those days in Ukraine, don't we still thinking that, you know, there was still a bit of ambivalence there, there was still a tiny little sliver of light on the horizon when we thought that Trump could still come good on this. But

Here we are now. It's only been a couple of weeks. It's extraordinary, the transformation, isn't it, Saul? Yeah, I think you do have to follow the money in all of this, Patrick. We've been told this by people. This is all that Trump really cares about. And the warning signals were there quite early on. First, we had the revelation of the rare earth metals deal that Trump tried to impose on Ukraine. I mean, he was talking about a deal that seemed reasonably fair. And Zelensky himself said, yeah, we're interested in doing a deal. But the actual terms that were offered to Ukraine were

have now been revealed in the press, Ambrose Evans Pritchard of The Telegraph. We've seen a copy of the document that they tried to impose on Ukraine last week. This was dated the 7th of February. And in it, the terms are absolutely extraordinary. The U.S. was demanding 50% of recurring revenues received by Ukraine from the extraction of resources, including mineral resources, oil and gas resources, ports,

other infrastructure as agreed, and 50% of the financial value of all new licenses issued to third parties for the monetization of resources. That's any other country that wants to come in and help and invest in these things. It amounted, in Evans Pritchard's words, to the US economic

colonization of Ukraine in legal perpetuity and implied a burden of reparations. Reparations for what, by the way, Patrick? You know, Ukraine clearly did not start the war. This is not a 1918 situation. This is not a Versailles settlement scenario, but a burden of reparations that, in Evans Pritchard's words, cannot possibly be achieved. Now, not surprisingly, Zelensky refused to sign. And this, I think, explains Trump's recent outbursts.

Yeah, it goes on and on, doesn't it? When you actually look at what was going on in Riyadh, it's not just about setting the war in Ukraine. It's about basically forming a new kind of alliance and economic and diplomatic alliance between Russia and the U.S.,

Nothing about Russia making any concessions to end the war it started. So you have Sergei Lavrov, the veteran Russian foreign minister. He's been around doing Putin's dirty work for decades. He's immediately on the front foot issuing warnings, saying that deployment of Western troops to Ukraine as peacekeepers could trigger the, quote, uncontrolled escalation, all usual hyperbole you get from the Russians.

So he's actually emboldened. He feels he can make these kind of statements and will get no rebuke from Trump and his team. And he went on the appearance of troops from NATO countries under a foreign flag, the flag of the European Union or the national flag is unacceptable. So that, in my view, seems to me to very seriously fray the fabric of NATO, doesn't it? The whole kind of understanding that NATO is woven from.

And so there they are issuing all these threats. Russia, who in three years has failed. You've got to remember this always, that they have been proved to be utterly incompetent militarily. In three years, they failed to overcome a much smaller neighbor. They've lost about a million men one way or the other, and its economy is in danger of falling off a cliff.

There's lots of elements here that I don't really understand. So we'll come on to that a bit later on about the motivation. You say follow the money, but I think there's a bit more to it than that. Psychological reasons, I think, are in the mix somewhere, but we'll come on to that a little bit later. But what we both struggle, I think anyone who's got a brain knows

is struggling to do is see how any of this could do anything but harm America, whose reputation in the democratic world is now crumbling fast. I just want to mention what Bernie Sanders, you know, veteran US senator, he himself was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination a few times. You know, he's on the left, very much on the left of the Democratic Party. And he said in a

statement a little time ago. He said, what we're seeing is we're witnessing a sad moment in American history. President Trump is aligning himself with a dictator of Russia. Trump and his American oligarchs are now openly aligning himself with Putin and his Russian oligarchs. This Putin-Trump alliance means abandoning our allies, supporting authoritarianism and undermining

our democratic tradition. So this is coming from a very left-wing, by American standards, senior politician who I'm sure down the years has been attacked as a sort of red under the bed, you know, commie, sympathizer and all the rest of it. So it's Sanders now who is the American patriot and Trump who is the traitor in his eyes.

So what is at the bottom of this story? You must have had your, you know, like me, you know, I can't get off to sleep thinking about it. So can you see anything there that makes sense of what looks from most people as insanity? No, I can't. I mean, we're told by, you know, some of our Trump supporting listeners that don't worry, you know, stay calm.

stay strong in all of this. He throws out these sorts of comments, but he doesn't really mean them. And in the end, he has his old allies' best interests at heart. I can't really see that, Patrick, I have to say. I mean, the severity and extremity of this language

in the way that he's spoken to his former European allies and also, of course, Ukraine. You know, it's almost as if the last 10 years of Russian aggression never happened. What seems to be clear now, Patrick, we'll have to see how things turn out, is that Europe can't really rely on the US as an ally going forward. And it's extraordinary to have to say that. We were talking about, you know, the possibility of the US withdrawing from NATO and concluding it would never happen. I'm not so sure about that.

But far from it. We can't rely on the US any longer. And instead, which is, of course, what Trump's been urging, Trump and his acolytes been urging, we need to create new security structures to protect the continent. And the first step, which, of course, is already ongoing, is for all European countries to increase their defense spending. But that's just my take on this, Patrick. What do you think? Well, I mean, inevitably, when you think back to Putin's relationship with both Russia

Moscow and with Ukraine, there are sort of underlying reasons that are visible there, which might explain his, A, apparent admiration and affection for Putin and Russia, and his animus against Zelensky. Now, on the Russian side, very quickly, Compromat, we all remember those stories, don't we, about how the Russians had the dirt on Trump. Well, there's various varieties of dirt. There's all these various property and

business ventures. They've often been backed by Russian money. Then there was the story of a few years back, I think it was 2016, a dossier produced by Ex-MI6 officer Christopher Steele. Now he produced a report, which he was so troubled by that he handed it over to the FBI. He was in police. And among the more scurrilous allegations was that the Russian security services had filmed Trump

in a Moscow hotel engaging in some pretty revolting practices with various prostitutes. Now, this has been batted back and forth. You know, there have been various investigations into Trump's dealings with the Russians and indeed, you know, official inquiries which have come to the conclusion that they're groundless. Now, I don't know the truth of the matter. But of course, you know, inevitably, people are now trying to explain

his bizarre support for Russia's positions and repetition of their narratives as evidence of the fact that they're basically telling him what to do. On the Ukrainian side,

There's, I think, a longstanding psychological problem that he has with Zelensky. Now, there is history with Zelensky, of course, without going into all the details. Basically, he was accused of putting pressure on Zelensky to aid him in undermining the Bidens by showing that Hunter Biden had been engaged in corrupt activities in Ukraine. Zelensky didn't go along with it for one reason or another. In fact, it's...

events change so he was actually let off the hook but I think he undoubtedly bears a grudge against Zelensky for not rushing

to his aid on that. But beneath that, I think there's a deep psychological motive at play here. I think that Trump fundamentally hates Zelensky because he's everything he's not. Zelensky is genuinely charismatic, he's genuinely brave, he's genuinely popular, or he has been for most of his career. It's unsurprising now that people are towering off him after three years of war. I mean, the same thing happened to Churchill, didn't it, Saul? And, uh,

I think Trump is deep down that all the fawning that people do, the tech bros and all the rest of it, it's opportunistic. They want something from him and secretly they despise him and will one day turn on him. By the way, these last days have blown sky high. The idea that there's some way you can actually control Trump. There's such a thing as a Trump whisperer, this phrase that's been bandied around, i.e. someone who can reign it. He

his wildest behavior and quietly steer him towards a saner path. I mean, he's out of control, isn't he? And the idea that any outsider can get to him and get him to see sense is deluded. So I think Boris Johnson, who claims or has claimed in the past that he's got Trump's ear, is looking very foolish right now. Yes, that's right, Patrick. Well, to discuss where we go next, particularly where Europe goes next, we're delighted to welcome back Robert Fox, defense correspondent for The Evening Standard.

senior associate fellow at the Center for Defense Studies at King's College London and one of our best defense analysts Patrick you've known him for years of course you were reported from the Falklands War all those years ago how would you sum up Foxy's ability to get under the skin of defense matters? He's a terrific analyst but he's also a boots or has been down the years of boots on the ground reporter you mentioned the Falklands that's where we first met subsequently we used to uh

hang out together in all sorts of war zones, the Balkans, First Gulf War, Second Gulf War. So he's got that terrific ability, a great brain, great analytical brain, combined with knowledge of what it is actually like to be in a war. He's, down the years, he's been extremely close to virtually every senior defense figure, every senior commander, particularly in the British Army. So he's an insider, but he's still got a kind of outsider's

ability to call out failure where he sees it, to bring critical intelligence to the subject. So yeah, we're very lucky to have him and I'm proud to be his friend. Okay, we'll take a break there. Do join us in a moment to hear from Robert Fox on where Britain and Europe might be going next.

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Robert, welcome back to Battleground. Now, before we get into the nitty-gritty of the defense aspect of the story, I just want to ask you, what's your take on all this? Why is Trump making all these extraordinary statements? I think we are at a flex point. Are we seeing the real Trump? I think there's a very interesting argument put forward in the Washington Post with an op-ed or a feature.

in that they claim that there is remarkable similarity in the political conspectus in this sort of fantapolitica world of the imaginations of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, that they are autocrats, they stand for certain values, they are actually quite sincere in some ways in their being anti-woke, and they like strong men and they perceive of those that they can roll over

as being weak. And this gives an extraordinary attitude on the part of Trump and Vance. And Vance is very important in this story, as we saw from the Munich Security Conference, is that you insult your allies and you embrace your protagonists. Because I say potential antagonists, because in the discussion since

January the 20th. Trump land has not depicted Putin and Putin's aggression in Russia as that of the activities of a foe, as a potential collaborator, should I say, not ally. And I want to bring up two things that haven't come up in this argument to any prominence. And the clue was given in the Riyadh talks.

One is that Trump, on getting hold of natural resources, minerals, and so forth, particularly in the Arctic, sorry, I haven't gone off on one, is very, very serious about it.

Because when they went to Riyadh, guess what? There was somebody sitting in the background in the Lavrov team and somebody in the Rubio team. They were experts on Arctic exploitation. There is a guy that the Russians hold in their Canadian embassy who is one of the foreign ministry's experts on Arctic regions.

And it looks as if he's looking for some kind of deal there. This sounds quite wild because there's the other very big thing. It is not, is it the elephant in the room or the gray rhino? And it's the enormous weight of American debt. And I think that this is one thing that they're not mentioning, but I think Trump himself is well, well aware of because in a worst case scenario, and oh boy, aren't they propelling confidence towards a worst case?

that American revenues, federal revenues, will be consumed largely in repaying or paying interest or servicing the debt. And it is the burden of debt. We've heard a lot about it in the discussion of the European past, particularly in terms of what the leading economies in Western Europe, the nations with the leading economies, can afford in defense. But it's going to be a huge factor in the second Trump presidency.

But where it goes is very difficult at the moment because, as I think as your question hints, it's looking extraordinarily incoherent. I mean, even the rubbish talk, and it is rubbish talk, about America announcing at the Hague summit back at the end of June that we'll just pull out of NATO.

Oh boy, that's easier said than done. It would probably take a term and a half of a presidency to get America out of NATO. There would be the legislative process. It's a major treaty. It would have to have probably, certainly a majority, a solid majority, repeated in both houses of Congress and would be a long, long process.

And also the disentangling of involvement with NATO powers. I mean, how will they disentangle with the UK? Well, we know they can't. They can't because of things like GCHQ and the global overlook in surveillance and intelligence and the Five Eyes Agreement. So it's as if there's been, you know, things that you and I in our careers, Patrick, have witnessed so much. They're awful things, you know, particularly in Belfast when you see a car bomb go off.

And the thing blows up and a whole lot of debris goes hundreds of feet into the air and you're waiting for it to come down.

That's the sensation I feel myself in the debris. A lot of the debris is still going up and we've got to wait for it to come down. Is the bigger strategic picture here, Robert, Trump's preoccupation with China? You talked about the finances of America. That's undoubtedly a factor. But this need to get his hands on rare earth metals because China controls or at least

controls the bulk of the world's supply some of them are in ukraine that's his interest there he tried to impose that deal on ukraine didn't come off hence he's lashing out a bit it would also fit into your point about the development in the arctic but but is the broader picture actually he's trying to peel putin away from china because china is the major strategic threat to america in the medium to longer term by the way point one with the peeling away so is that uh

No chance. They're far too involved. This is a very strong feature of the Russian war economy and before. They're not going to be able to do it. Obsession with China, absolutely right. And it's not just Trump and the Republicans, because a lot of Democrat thinking was going that way. I instant Nicholas Burns, who has been making an awful lot of noise lately. The outgoing

ambassador to China, but he'd been with NATO, he'd been at the UN, and wrote quite an extraordinary piece in The Economist explaining why China is the thing. And he's converted a lot of the brokerage community in energy, you know, that everything is going to go to pot, forget about Europe, which is ridiculous. His article in The Economist was the China tilt.

He managed to get a pop in against Trump saying how disastrous it was to close down USAID because it was abandoning so much. And he manages to talk about, you know, now we've got to focus on China. Terrible about USAID. I'm bubbling on. It goes on for 2,000 words. Doesn't mention Africa.

Africa is going to be the key battleground. And this is what the closure, you follow people, she would say that in big interest of it, Samantha Power say, but you're giving more and more of Africa and African development, which is the huge thing of the next 50 years, one of the huge things. You're giving it to a battleground between Russian influence, as we see, and China and

And China is well, well in the lead there. Just to give it the statistics, I was doing yet another of my demographic surveys. I was talking to a couple of pals about this. You have to look at Africa. Within 80 years, we'll be 40% of the global population.

And it won't stay still. It will develop and where that goes. And Europe will have a very interesting role in that because for education, for broad civic education, if I can put it like that, Africa does not want to be given a choice, I think, between Moscow and Beijing. And that's where elites will still look to Europe.

however depleted Europe's resource is, and demographically challenged. Sorry to bring that one up again. That's fascinating. I think we could talk about that for hours. But to get back to the here and now and the challenge that's facing Europe to fill the gap that is widening between what America is and will be supplying and what they can do to step in and plug that hole.

Can we start off with just talking about the UK because you've been heavily involved in the defence review. This, for our non-British listeners, is an overhaul of the whole British defence capability and trying to come up with a plan that will match

spending, capabilities, budgetary resources to the very stark challenge that we're seeing now. What are you hearing about this? But just a bit on a specific before we get into that, what do you think Britain will be able to donate to peacekeeping capacity when the fighting, when and if the fighting stops? Funnily enough, I do think there will be some kind of peace mission, but probably

not much like anything you and I have seen. Because do you remember we got down into always when you and I were working in the Balkans, for example, with the advanced theology of whether it was going to be a Chapter 6 or a Chapter 7 peace mission, a monitoring or an enforcement. All that goes out of the window. I think there will be a monitoring and surveillance role, and I think we're

I think, which makes the British position interesting and delicate. I think it's going to be a hybrid between NATO...

and the EU. I don't think the mission could fly either flag per se. In fact, they'll have to devise some sort of logo of their own. And I want to bring up the old rusty old cliche again of the coalition of the willing, because that is what it looks like. And it will probably be commanded by France with the close collaboration and partnership of London. I think that that is pretty clear. And I think that's what Macron

has been saying to Starmer. And I think we've seen quite a sea change in Keir Starmer's strategic thinking, because up until about Christmas, largely under pressure from Rachel Reeves saying, you know, no, no, no, no, no. Look, Robert Patrick, your expenses are out of control. We do not want to spend more on defence. We spend too much anyway, was the word coming out of

the Treasuries in December. Now they realize they've got to spend more. And interestingly, as of this week and last week, they're beginning to say what they're going to do because they know they don't want a row. There's sure to be one when the Strategic Defense Review gets to Parliament, which will be, I guess, after the Easter recess. It'll come in then and choices will be told and what it will cost.

But lo and behold, just on Monday this week, John Healy at the Institute for Government said, oh, yeah, we're restructuring. And we've got this new structure where we have a quad running defense in this country under the politicians, under the ministers. And you have four figures who are equals. You have the permanent secretary. And I was sitting next to the permanent secretary, David Williams. He was nodding.

You have the chief of the defense staff who no changes. It's the biggest change since the late 1950s. And the chief of defense staff position was invented with Lord Mountbatten being the first. The chief of defense staff goes to an integrated strategic command and he becomes less a politician, less a functionary of Whitehall and more the ultimate responsibility.

responsible for operational command. So operational commanders come under him and more directly stated than before, the service chiefs answer directly to him as if he were like the chairman of the Joint Chiefs in the US. Quite an innovation that. Now, the two interesting ones for the new offices invented alongside him, the National Armaments Director, which is a big job and he or she will be appointed to clear up

the procurement mess. John Healy spelt it out. He said, how have we got to this state where we've got, it could be 42 or 47, whichever way you parse it, of major defense projects, of which only two by the National Audit Office are deemed as viable, are going on target. He said, we've got to undo that. So that's the NAD, the National Armaments Director. And why nobody has talked about this at all, I've known about it for about two or three weeks,

there is going to be the director of defense nuclear. And he or she will slug at equal weight with the CDS. He or she will have their own autonomous or responsible command. And it shows you, we've been hearing the blatherings about AUKUS, the tripartite thing with Australia and America.

on developing submarines and also cyber, because AUKUS is a lot more than submarine. Oh, it's far too expensive. We can't possibly do it. We've been hearing a bit of that, a bit of chirping of that from the United States as well as Australia. That is now mainstream. Nuclear is there, and it's going to be a very important piece of it. This is going to be the debate about what the SDR is going to do. How much can we afford that? But on the other hand...

And I think you're hearing from the three service chiefs who have submitted their findings, they don't want, for what they want to do, that much more. The Army needs radical reform, more so than the other two services. The Navy needs personnel. The RAF, as steady as it goes, because they've got their order of battle sorted out until the end of the 2030s.

more or less, assuming you can get a version of Tempest, and it will probably be an unmanned version, into service in the late 2030s. They are not asking for more people, and I think they're not asking for that much more money.

because they've read the lesson from the National Health Service. It's no use chucking billions and billions like that at it. I think it's about two to three billion over the next year or two that they would like because the one thing that they have to do, just to finish, and I always bring it up and they say, oh, yes, it's really terrible, but they don't want to do it when they're in their manifesto for defence and security is recruiting and personnel. And we are in a recruiting winter.

As, by the way, our most developed nations look at the state of recruiting in the United States. And I would commend a very long, no, a long read by their, even by their standards, but a very good piece about this in the February 10th issue of The New Yorker by Dexter Filkins.

America, to try and maintain its present level of about one and a half million service personnel all told, relies on immigrants and at the bottom end relies on undocumented and therefore illegal immigrants to make up the ranks and they're still not completely filled.

And this is a problem across Europe, of course, as well, isn't it? I mean, with the exception of Poland, I would say Poland has managed to make a military career very attractive. The pay is good. There are lots of opportunities. It's part of the sort of national culture. Poland, Finland, Norway. Yeah, Norway as well. And Germany started to turn it around when I was in Berlin.

A few months back, you know, there's recruiting, advertising all over the place, but presenting the warrior in a new light. I think this is something that we've got to do, isn't it, Robert, to make the profession of arms something that appeals to everyone.

people who would never have thought of it as something they wanted to do before. Have you got any thoughts about how you might do that? Obviously, tech is one area that can be combined, the sort of coolness of being in the tech world with the sense of duty, the sense of service that goes with the military. Yeah, I don't want to go in

so much to the problem. And there are enormous problems mithering on about it. But I think you've got to put it in contemporary terms. There is a general allergy against public service right across the piece. And we can see that and the people who just don't want to do it.

Where it is required, and I think this is one of the ways in, is for resilience, for social enhancement and protection at home and abroad. You are really going to have to change the dynamics because part of the thing at the top end is that they don't feel that there is a threat. And actually, the Norwegians, as I've mentioned, are absolutely right. We are under constant threat, cyber, underwater. We won't go there.

I do think there's a way to answer your question directly through it. And it is very unpalatable to almost all sides in the House of Commons and its education. I think one of the ways that could be enormously attractive if you have enhanced the project of foundation schools, for example, we've only got one. We've got Harrogate at the moment. And people who run Harrogate say,

Look, a lot of the people don't go into the services and we're not demanding that, but they have a disciplined life. They can get qualifications even up to eight levels. We can get them ready for uni and it works. But we would like to be there to be at least three or four more of them to get them through. And this is an amazing statistic.

The cost of getting a young woman or a young man through one of these foundation colleges, which is roughly sixth form level and a bit below through, the cost is one-fifth of what it will cost to maintain that individual were she or he to go astray and to go into youth custody and to youth detention.

It costs five times as much. There is a horrible, crude, sort of grand grindish, if this isn't a contradiction in terms, utilitarian argument to this. And it builds social cohesion. The other thing where I think they have been on all sides, astonishingly unimaginative, is cadets. Actually, kids like doing cadets. It's fun, particularly if you can fly a glider plane or get out of a classroom or do whatever you might like to do. It's like,

You know, the enthusiasm for what looks rather quaint in its ethos, like the scouting and guiding movement. And the problem is there aren't enough scoutmasters and guidemasters and brown owls and God knows what. And it's at that level. I think they've got to be less procrastinate about education, particularly public education and private education.

where it's a good thing to mix it with a bit of public service. And the other thing is, I think you and I would agree, there's a simple nostrum of ethics here that I have a great friend, a very successful detective story writer, former anti-mafia investigator in Italy, and I do commend anybody to read his book, Gianrico Carapiglia.

He writes lovely essays. He's written the most brilliant short essay about how altruism, that's my point, how altruism really pays. It's actually very rewarding. It's very profitable to you. And it's that sort of element that you've got to get, you know, going home and feeling sorry for yourself. I sound like a Victorian schoolmaster.

But there is a lot of indulgence. And this is one of the things that's been so dreadful to see from COVID for young men and women who went home in COVID and didn't come out again. I mean, I know some highly qualified people, you know, get up off your ass and take a risk into this thing. I sound like a terrible sergeant major, but I've been hopeless in the armed forces. I was always hopeless at team games. It's actually the sense of risk.

At risk if you do it, it actually can be quite fun too. I think it's that message and it's the message you have to frame at every forum I go to. They don't talk about the people end of it and how you can get things in. And at the very bottom end, sorry, rant, but a bit weird, schools. People like us, and I mean us, the audience, you need to get into schools and talk about the real world. I was...

Pulled up short about three months after the terrible events around Gaza, the October the 7th, by the great niece, who was the school in London, said, you know, could you talk to my head of SIG? We really want somebody to come in and talk to us about Gaza and Ukraine.

because the staff say we're not allowed to talk about it in class. This is a sick form. This is ridiculous, this sort of thing, that it's all too sensitive. We can't possibly do it because we're a multi-ethnic community. Everything's a multi-ethnic community in London and almost every part of the UK. But getting into schools and saying, you know, a critical attitude to information, the media, the press, and so on, what you're being told, it's part of the basic education that

And I can get a lot of people to acknowledge it, but very, very few to do anything about it. Robert, let's return to Ukraine just briefly. You've said you're reasonably optimistic that there will be some kind of peace settlement. And if there is, France and the UK might lead in some kind of, I think it was described yesterday as a reassurance force, you know, classic terminology, which doesn't really mean anything. But

but basically implies that we're not going to go in in any great number because we don't have any great numbers to send. But just give us a sense on how you imagine this might unfold, this deal. We've got the Europeans frozen out and the Ukrainians, for that matter, at the moment. Obviously, at some stage, they're going to be consulted. Do you genuinely think it's likely a deal will be struck after the comments that Trump's made over the last 24 or 36 hours?

How much time have we got? Because I want to deconstruct, if I could say, as I would say, parse all that. First of all, I think there will be some kind of arrangement. I don't think it will be a final deal, because if ever you can see the recipe, an expression I coined with you, I think possibly on an earlier podcast, this is absolutely set up to be a prime semi-Freddo war, which will go down, it will go up, and I think it will go on for a decade at least.

There will be a cessation of hostilities deal at some point unless the leadership in Russia has gone completely mad.

because they need to have an operational pause at some point. They've got resources. So that's my premise for why it will happen. I quite like the oversight or reassurance force. It's not only that they haven't got the forces, and this is where I think there has been a bit of a change in UK thinking over the last 10 days. And by the way, we have to emphasize before we go off the air,

how Jonathan Powell has become the key figure in all this. Yeah, you could say it's because we haven't got the numbers. Actually, it's pointless trying to get sufficient numbers as if it's the DMZ zone in North Korea out on the line. 1,200 kilometres?

You would probably, you know, the upper estimate of between 100,000 and 200,000, you can't do it. But where I thought Tony Rannigan and the others were right in saying there will have to be some physical presence, but oh boy, we know you can see so much. And that's the one thing that I don't want to over-egg it. The one thing that the Ukrainian war has shown, and the Ukrainian war is what...

the economists in Shashank Joshi and others that I think I've used the expression with you, it is the transparent battle space. You can see such an awful lot now, but there will have to be monitoring of key ports and so on. The Brits, by the way, I think will be absolutely on the front foot with the Black Sea. And I think the French will support them there. I think it's doable.

I think it will be quite a small force, about 20,000 to 30,000, because a lot of it really will depend on the air and will depend on satellite and surveillance. Again, that's where the UK, because it's changing its AWAC, is slightly weak. But I think the contribution, looking at it such that they are thinking of it, will be more Navy and RAF or as much as it will be our Army and Royal Marines. I think there will just be a small brigade.

And it's quite possible. But what they're trying to do is a chain of brigades. The French will certainly do that. The Germans will probably be shamed into doing that. And then you will get a Balkan bloc because, oddly, the Romanians and the Bulgarians have said, yes, we will do a brigade. The Poles will not. And it's not that they're being recalcitrant. The Poles will say, we have to guard our own space.

and the same will go to the Finns. And the Finns are an extremely positive force in all that. And the key in the maritime who will take a very interesting oversight role, and we're learning so much from them, as indeed we are from the Finns, in terms of your thing of recruiting and getting people involved are the Norwegians. And remember, the Norwegians have the money. They have an enormous sovereign wealth fund,

And they seem to be working very well with the Danes, who are tough and big thinkers. And the real revolution, I would say this, wouldn't I? Patrick knows, the Dutch. I can't make out what's going on with the Dutch. You know, I think when I was working alongside Patrick, do you remember Wim Kok when he was prime minister? They thought of cutting the defence budget in half.

They've doubled it nearly in the last three years and are very much up for it. And of course, the Hague conference is on home turf. And I think we really have to watch Mark Rutter

Mark Rutter may turn out to be one of these really creative secretaries general, very much like Manfred Werner was, who was superb at managing the transition from the Cold War into the hot piece. I think something will be done, and I think it will be quite a surprise. But it's very interesting now that how Stalmers, who is somewhat a...

Machiavelli, Comine, or one of the great, or Talleyrand, would probably say he's a total stranger to the arts of statecraft. But Sharma seems to be getting a new ad hoc team in which, curiously, it isn't Lammy.

John Healy manages the shot. But it's like Jonathan Powell, who, by the way, is going to be the ultimate arbiter and mark the homework of the SDR, the Strategic Dimension Review. That's clear now, before it is made public and presented to Parliament. It's Jonathan Powell, as far as handling Trump,

Peter Mandelson is an absolutely critical figure in this. And those two know each other, and they seem to be working the ticket and will be working the program for Starmer for the visit next week, from which a lot will happen. But I think, you know, given the naysaying of countries like Slovakia, but above all Hungary, that we are seeing...

Actually, a lot of talking between the coalition of the willing. We have to watch the efforts of both Germany and Italy to push a deal with Russia at any cost, just to add another complication, cheap gas. They are desperate to get cheap gas, and they want that to flow. And America is looking at it, and of course, it's not in their interest at all.

because it means those enormous profits that they've been making from LNG into Europe, both from America and from Qatar, that they will go down. The other thing that has to be added to the European piece, it's part of a very, very complicated piece. And I think this is where a lot of the American people

The pronouncements, if not the thinking, is wrong to sort of say that you can sideline Europe. Europe will be part of the picture. It is very much part of America's strategic picture. It is certainly part of a major feature in the strategic picture of China, of course. China needs or really wants the European market.

Yeah, no, that's fascinating, Robert. You've added a lot of context and a lot of meat to our earlier discussion. So thank you so much for that. We're going to see how things turn out in the next few weeks, of course, but great food for thought. Thanks so much for coming back on. Okay, it's a pleasure.

Well, that was fascinating food for thought, wasn't it? Ranging over everything from what Britain might contribute to some kind of peacekeeping or reassurance forces, Robert put it, to the broader picture and what Trump actually wants out of all of this in relation to China.

Well, sadly, we haven't had time to deal with questions, too many important events to discuss, but we will be devoting a separate episode probably coming out early next week. So do listen out for that. And of course, on Wednesday, another episode of Battleground 45 and also Friday when we'll be bringing you the latest from Ukraine. Goodbye.