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- [00:02]
Daniella Peled
Every day, the world presents you with hundreds of headlines. What do you believe? Who do you trust? The Financial Times cuts through complexity with clarity, accuracy and global perspective. Its journalism is guided by independence, not agendas. That's why leaders in business, policy and culture turn to one trusted source for facts, for insight, for what matters next. Source FT Read more and subscribe@ft.com.
- [00:36]
Dr. Nicholas Wright
You'Re.
- [00:37]
Daniella Peled
Listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 3 November 2025 on Monocle Radio.
- [00:43]
Andrew Muller
Another meeting about the future of Gaza. Unlikely to be the last. Germany's foreign minister attempts to explain that populist policy may not be as simple as it looks. And the march of our new robot overlords is halted at the gates of Basel. I'm Andrew Muller. The Monoc Daily starts now. Hello and welcome to the Monocle Daily, coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Muller. My guests James Rogers and Daniella Peled will discuss the day's big stories. And we'll hear from the neuroscientist Nicholas Wright about his new book, Warhead, considering, as the title very strongly suggests, what war does to our heads. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily. This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller and I am joined today by Daniella Peled, Managing Editor at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, and by James Rogers, Associate professor of International Journalism at City University of London. Hello to you both.
- [01:57]
James Rogers
Hi, Andrew.
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Andrew Muller
James, do you by any chance have a book coming up that you're working on?
- [02:02]
James Rogers
I do, Andrew, and I'm pleased to see I've pretty much finished working on it after a sort of rather lengthy process of checking that I haven't got any of my facts wrong or that I haven't made too many typographical errors. My book, the Return of Russia From Yeltsin to Putin, the Story of a Vengeful Kremlin, will be out in January and it's, I hope, concise political history of Russia and its relations with the west since the end of the Cold War.
- [02:27]
Andrew Muller
We do look forward to that, obviously, but where would you gauge your levels of terror that between it being sent to the printers and appearing on the shelves, it gets drastically overtaken by some sort of event?
- [02:41]
James Rogers
Well, I think this actually happened at the proposal stage. I went to see the editor I've published with. I've worked with this editor before, and I went to see her in late January 2022 and pitched an idea for a book about Russia and the West. And you can imagine that I rapidly rewrote the proposal. But the book does end in 2022 because I think it was sensible. This is a work of contemporary history. I think it was too early to draw any major conclusions about what's happen in the intervening nearly four years for the purposes of what I was trying to do. So the question I'm trying to answer is how did we get there from the optimism of 1991 to where we were in 2022? Fair.
- [03:19]
Andrew Muller
Daniela, regular listeners will be aware that your life is little more than an odyssey around obscurantist local history museums. You have recently been to a museum consecrated to the subject of salt and it's not your first. So the one that you have recently attended, which one was it and where would you rank it in the hierarchy of salt museums?
- [03:43]
Daniella Peled
Well, I visited the Salt Museum in Malta, which actually, according to the museum and my own personal and private tour guide around the museum, I think, not sure there were very many visitors, had a leading global role in the production of salt and the salt is a very, very high quality. Quality. And I can produce many more facts about salt, but I won't right now. But I have to say, despite the best efforts of my charming guide, it was slightly superseded by the Museum of Salt I went to in Fuerteventura earlier this year, which in turn was superseded by the Museum of Cheese, which I would put in my top, top 10, top 10 local history museums.
- [04:24]
Andrew Muller
Do you think there's a. Or did they speak of any sort of great rivalry between the Malta and Fuerteventaventura salt museums?
- [04:32]
Daniella Peled
Well, Malta was positioning itself more as a kind of geopolitical hub of the salt industry. Whereas Fraser Ventura. I think we're mostly trying to sell salt.
- [04:42]
Andrew Muller
So really, ideally people do need to go to both. They complement each other well.
- [04:46]
Daniella Peled
Ideally, I need to find a third. Perhaps listeners might be able to help me out here and that will happily conclude the triumvirate, I think.
- [04:57]
Andrew Muller
Yeah, listeners, if you do live near a salt museum, do please get in touch. All such tips will be be forwarded to Daniela, but we will start in Istanbul. I don't know if there is a salt museum in Istanbul. It's a big city. Who knows? Presently hosting a gathering of foreign ministers and adjacent representatives from Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to discuss what is to be done about Gaza. It is a little over three weeks since a ceasefire in Gaza, which has not been unblemished, but which has more or less held certainly relative to what preceded it. It does not however, answer the question of happens now in Gaza's short, medium or long term future. The conclave of emissaries from some of the world's key Muslim country seems in its advance press keener on fretting about the problems rather than proposing solutions. But maybe they'll surprise us. Daniela, is, is this actually doing anything or is this, as these things so often are, creating the impression of something being done?
- [06:00]
Daniella Peled
I think there's genuine desire to, to do something, not just, well, not least jockeying for position and for influence in the eyes of the White House and also in the future of, of Gaza. But the problem is, is there are no parameters really. There's a 20 point plan for a ceasefire and what happens afterwards. It's all very vague. There's talk about humanitarian reconstruction or availability, but there's no political timeline or component really what there is, is very vague. So how can a peacekeeping mission be a success if you have no, if you, you don't know what the deliverables are? So it's extremely vague. Israel in the past has not been particularly friendly towards the idea of international bodies getting involved in security issues, but also any contributors to this force. There are so many questions, you know, what about? Is it going to be peacekeeping or peace observing or peace monitoring? Who's going to pay for it? That's another really good, good question. I mean, Turkey has said now that they want it to be a UN Security Council issue. So I'm, I mean, I think reading between the lines there, hoping that the UN will pay for it. But yeah, there are very, very, very many questions and certainly a peacekeeping operation, it's not going to be very useful unless there's a political horizon. What are they, they're keeping the peace for what and who is going to take over. So in short, I think there is political will and there is genuine interest, but not necessarily down to the welfare of the, of the, of the poor people of Gaza who've suffered so much, but there is so much to play for that it's likely that nothing is going to happen, certainly not for several months.
- [07:57]
Andrew Muller
James, is there, as Daniela puts it, genuine desire here for something to be done or genuine desire to do something, or is it more like there's genuine desire for someone else to do something?
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James Rogers
Well, I mean, I think the countries who are negotiating in Turkey are probably negotiating good faith and are willing to make a contribution because, I mean, it's the only possible solution I think, for the longer term. But it's very, very hard to see how any such operation will start until there's a clearer sort of political go and also until a ceasefire is held for longer. You know, we're only a couple of weeks into what has been a very, very long process. It's not entirely clear there was a particularly strong desire on either side to stop the fighting at this point. It was something that in a sense a sort of happy confluence of events in the sense that President Trump decided that now was the time he wanted to exert the influence which he has over the Israeli government, probably the only external actor in the region who has any major influence over the Israeli government. But of course, none of these countries, however well intentioned they are, is going to commit any of their armed forces there until there's a clearer and longer term stability there, which I think is quite hard to foresee at this stage. But nevertheless, when that opportunity arises, there has to be a plan in place. So I don't think there's any harm in trying to begin to prepare that now and see what the challenges might be.
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Andrew Muller
Well, this is the key, well, a key thing, Danila. I think it is generally agreed that some sort of policing, peace enforcing, peacekeeping force is going to have to go into Gaza. But it is absolutely unclear who that is going to be. The United States has already said, well, hell no, we're not doing it. King Abdullah II of Jordan has already said no, absolutely not. Wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. Turkey, I paraphrase His Majesty somewhat. Turkey has said they might be keen, but possibly as Turkey entirely anticipated, Israel has said that not in a million years. So where does this actually leave us? Because it's desperately difficult to imagine any European countries volunteering to send their troops because that would go over incredibly badly with their constituencies. So who ends up sending their troops?
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Daniella Peled
Well, it ends up being a coalition. I mean, certainly Israel is not keen on Turkey, to put it mildly. And I think there's floated ideas that Azerbaijan would, was sort of deputized for, for Turkey as a force. But I think there are enough countries who are willing to be involved that, I mean, I'm trying desperately not to be like 100% negative about this, but there are enough Muslim majority countries that are willing to be involved that you, you could put something together. I mean, Egypt is willing and they've got this, you know, extremely well resourced army you have. Especially from Israel's point of view, the idea that this is actually on the table is, is a sign of, as Netanyahu likes to claim, this remade and reworked Middle east, you know, which he's, you know, night becomes day and day becomes night. He's claiming as a success for his policy, saying, well, look, you know, here we are, this brave new dawn, and we're gonna have, we're gonna have normalized relations with Saudi Arabia and you know, before too long. So that works. What works well for him? Again, beyond the practical issues, I think the other issues that the countries who send forces will have to contend with is being seen as police officers for the occupation, you know, enforcing the occupation. And for many years, even in Gaza, Hamas was preventing or trying to prevent other smaller groups from firing at Israel and so on. You know, the Palestinian Authority in the west bank largely derided for acting as Israel's enforcers of security. So that is yet another obstacle. But, you know, sharing the responsibility makes it much more of a plausible option.
- [11:52]
Andrew Muller
Just finally on this one, James, though, is the problem. Well, again, a problem that the longer that some sort of police force, peacekeeping mission, whatever, isn't sent into Gaza, the greater the chances of such ceasefire as we have unraveling.
- [12:11]
James Rogers
I'm not sure about that, actually. I mean, because I wonder if this sort of longer term stability would almost be a precondition of such a deployment. So maybe not, I'm not sure. I mean, nobody, but nobody is going to commit their forces, I think, to sort of trying to enforce or create peace. You know, I don't think nobody wants to get in between the warring sides there. So I would imagine that, you know, there'll be. This is why, you know, they're making these provisional plans or discussing, you know, having talks about talks, because once this is a sort of a time of stability and things are working a little bit better in the sense that there's not sort of active fighting going on, there may be a greater possibility, I have to say, for the longer term, I'm not particularly optimistic about the situation there. You know, a lot of conflicts take pauses because both sides are exhausted or worn out. And I'm not even sure that was really the case here. As I say, I think it was President Trump using his influence and getting those people who have influence, you know, indirectly on the warring parties to bring this ceasefire about and for which he deserves credit. But there's nothing here that addresses the conflict that's a century or more old.
- [13:18]
Andrew Muller
Well, to Syria now, which it turns out may be an instruction. Germany is unkeen, after all, to give people who have arrived in Germany from Syria during the last unhappy decade and change. Germany's foreign minister, Johann Vaderful on a recent visit to Syria, assessed as virtually impossible the chances of anyone living what he called a truly dignified life in Syria. The minister's remarks have gone over badly with two strata of German politics, one being the right wingers who wanted to repatriate Syrian refugees as soon as possible, whether they liked it or not. The other being centrists such as Vaderful's own cdu, who are desperately hoping not to lose further votes to the right wingers. James, is he wrong? Is it currently still completely impossible for people who may have become accustomed to life in Germany to go and live in Syria?
- [14:12]
James Rogers
I would imagine it's extremely difficult. I mean, this is a country that's had a decade and more of war. You know, I think it would be a very difficult place for people to go back to, particularly those people who, as you say, have come in the last decade and have found employment and have found stable lives and existences there. I think it would be very difficult. But I think, you know, it's very interesting the way this debate has played out. You know, this was one of former Chancellor Merkel's, you know, huge legacies, was this desire to offer sanctuary to those people whose lives were badly affected and torn up by the civil war. So it's going to be very interesting to see how this turns out, because it's about more than Germany and Syria, this story, in a sense, it's about how Europe deals with questions of migration and conflict in the coming century. And so I think this is why it's interesting. This debate seems to go across and within party lines. There's no sort of even clear party line with Mr. Vaderful's own party. So I think it's. It is going to be very interesting to see how this plays out. I think it's also quite surprising how bluntly he's expressed this, because it's not, you know, as you said, it's not what a lot of a substantial part of German public opinion wants to hear.
- [15:24]
Andrew Muller
Well, indeed not, Daniela. A few thousand people have gone back to Syria from Germany with a certain amount of federal funding. It was about 2,000 as of the end of August, so maybe there's been a few more since. That's out of perhaps a million Syrians in Germany. So clearly, the people who want to go back are not a majority so far. This talk of repatriation, voluntary or otherwise, is gaining ground in certain circles across Europe, as James suggests. But it's not. It's not really possible past a certain point, is it? I mean, Many Syrians now, if they've been there for a decade, many of them will have children who are basically just German. They live there now. It's their home.
- [16:09]
Daniella Peled
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I think it's, it's hard to underestimate the pull of home or the pull of the perception of home. And, and that's the same in many conflict affected societies. I remember in Afghanistan 10, 15 years ago, there was such an influx of people who'd been brought up pretty much in Iran or Pakistan. They went back because they wanted to rebuild, rebuild the new Afghanistan. You saw that in, in Iraq as well. So the, the pull of home is really strong and the idealism is really strong, but it would be extremely naive to think that it would be quite so simple. You know, Syria, the new Syria, has not been as much of a basket case as people were dreading, you know, after the, after the fall of Assad. Relative stability, though, doesn't mean proper development. And although governments might not want to be, to advertise it because it's much easier to say, well, yes, refugees should go home now. And I think the policy for a long time has been creating the conditions to make, to, to make people not want to go to the west, to create jobs and to create stability and to create opportunities and also opportunities for a more diverse reality and opportunities for women. I mean, the reality now in, in Syria is, is, is extremely worrying for minorities and, and for women. So not being an absolute disaster doesn't mean like that it's safe to, to return. But I, I, I think there is, I don't know that there. I, I've heard this from so, so many people and friends who have gone back for the first time in, you know, a decade and it's incredibly emotional and incredibly meaningful. But I think also because they knew that they could leave again.
- [17:57]
Andrew Muller
James, as, as Daniela suggests, it's, it's very, very easy to see as elections loom across the continent, what line the far right populists are going to take. They're going to say the war's over, off you go, you're not our problem anymore. Now that is crass and reductive and there's arguments you could make against it. But is there an argument you can make against it if you are a mainstream politician and actually win the argument? Because all the arguments against it are relatively nuanced and complicated. Even if they are correct.
- [18:29]
James Rogers
Well, that's, as I said, I think that's why this particular intervention is quite surprising. I mean, I think it's a very honest one. And I think it's actually a very important contribution to the debate, whether it's a useful one from the point of view of trying to win elections in Germany.
- [18:42]
Andrew Muller
Quite a lot of his own party are going absolutely nuts at it.
- [18:45]
James Rogers
Exactly. I mean, as I say, it just shows what a divisive issue that is, that even within a major mainstream political party, it's causing so much division. So I think it is difficult to know, particularly in this age when people don't tend to listen to anything more than anything a few words long. And how many people would read the sort of, you know, a sort of complicated, nuanced argument about this. I think it is a very difficult thing. But I think it's also, you know, if these issues are going to be solved for the longer term, you know, how Europe does deal with refugee populations, what contribution it can make to preventing conflict, which, after all, is one of the main causes of migration before we even get started on the climate crisis, then I think these sorts of interventions are important, you know, to have a proper honesty about the debate. But I would like to echo what Daniela said. I think, you know, something that's absent from this debate is, you know, I have happened to be acquainted with a number of Ukrainian refugees here in London at the moment. And, you know, a lot of them, many of them from the east, and a lot of them want to go home and probably privately accept that they won't, at least in the foreseeable future. And I think that makes it life can make life very, very difficult for them. And I don't think that's well understood by people, including me, by the way, who haven't been through that experience. But, you know, my encounters with them can lead me at least to begin to imagine it.
- [20:04]
Andrew Muller
Well, on the subject of Ukraine, last Friday, October 31, was World Cities Day. Happy World Cities Day to all who celebrate. As part of the Revelry, UNESCO welcomed 58 more cities into its UNESCO Creative Cities Network, occasioning unbridled rejoicing in jurisdictions including, but not limited to Aberystwyth, Conakry, Gdansk, Finza, Zaragoza, Lucknow, Giza, and Ho Chi Minh City. Big hello to all our listeners in each. And bonus, fun fact. Circa nineteen nineteen fourteen, Ho Chi Minh used to wash the dishes at the Drayton Court Pub in Ealing. So if you're listening to this while washing the dishes at the Drayton Court Pub in Ealing, dream big. We may be deviating here from the point, which is that among the cities freshly ennobled is Kyiv, specifically for Its music scene. Daniela, does this surprise you?
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Daniella Peled
Well, I mean, I'm looking at the list. I think they were quite liberal with the sort of, you know, this and that. They might have gone sort of an alphabetical.
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Andrew Muller
I mean, it's 58 cities. Almost quicker to name the cities that aren't included.
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Daniella Peled
Exactly. But, yeah, why not? I mean, I haven't been to Kiev for a long time, but my last visit to Lviv, there was all kinds of, like, busking and musical stuff going on. There was a lively, like, bar scene. I don't see why it would be any different, if anything. Conflict makes people, can make people more.
- [21:23]
Andrew Muller
Creative people forget this, James, that during conflict, life goes on, it finds a way. I mean, absolutely. Remarkably, I am reminded by this story of my first visit to Sarajevo in the. The dwindling of the siege, which was primarily undertaken. This was when I was still primarily a rock journalist, to meet the bands who had formed in Sarajevo during the siege, most of whom, it will not surprise you were quite loud. Yeah, but it goes on. You must have seen this yourself.
- [21:53]
James Rogers
No, I think I. I think this is tremendously important for Kyiv and I think for Ukraine, and I think it's really good for a country like that to be known. What is. What has Ukraine been in the news for. For the last four years, apart from war and about occasionally, you know, for people like me who followed football, how their football teams have managed, you know, to continue playing in certain competitions. So I think it's very, very important, I think, and it will, you know, it is often, actually. I mean, having worked as a journalist in some conflict zones around the world, it is surprising that some of the stories which resonate most with audiences are not, you know, this happened in the war today. Because people, they can often sort of create despair in people who feel they would like to do something and can't. This kind of story, I think, sometimes will stay with people more. And I think, as I say, I think it'll mean a lot to Ukraine and to Kyiv in particular, to be recognized for this. And may I just add a brief note on Ho Chi Minh's catering career in London, please. At the bottom of the Haymarket, which listeners may know is a very sort of wealthy street in the centre of London. Some theatres there. There's a plaque on a building which once was a hotel. And Ho Chi Minh worked there, I think, as a waiter. And I've always speculated that that must, in the early years of the last century, Muslim has informed his views of capitalism and goes to sort of explain quite A lot of his subsequent career. But I didn't know about the pot washing annealing because I live in West London and maybe I should go and visit that pub.
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Andrew Muller
It's quite a nice pub.
- [23:19]
James Rogers
Yeah, okay. Well I should look it out now.
- [23:21]
Andrew Muller
To be clear, I'm saying that as a genuinely heartfelt opinion. We are not sponsored by the Drayton Court Hotel in Ealing, although, you know, no reasonable offer refused. Daniela though, is this something that journalists covering conflict and the like could maybe think about a bit more beyond the war? Because James is right, people do tune out of wars. They get bored with them. It's all terribly exciting for a few weeks and then everyone just sort of zones out. But if you can, if you can come up with something surprising or even. Yeah, that point of connection, it can draw people back in.
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Daniella Peled
Well, I was looking down the list. This will not surprise you to see if I'd been to any local history museums in any of the.
- [24:00]
Andrew Muller
There's. There's no chance that you haven't of this is.
- [24:04]
Daniella Peled
But I noticed that Hebrok is for I think folk art and culture for history and I think there's very few journalists who haven't been to the region who haven't a done a piece about Christmas in Bethlehem. You know, don't judge us, we have to. But also in Hebron has got the last remaining keffiyeh factory that's actually produced in Palestine. The rest are like from China and so on. And that's another sort of stalwart.
- [24:32]
Andrew Muller
I have a keffiyeh from.
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Daniella Peled
I knew you were.
- [24:35]
Andrew Muller
I, I absolutely do. I, I also have some glass ornaments I bought from a glassblower in Hebron.
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Daniella Peled
Well, there you go.
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Andrew Muller
Yeah, it's, it can be done.
- [24:43]
Daniella Peled
So yeah, so, I mean so, so, so so journalists do, do do this sometimes without you know, huge originality but that's not really genuinely not a dig. But you know, you're absolutely right about, about the resonance of the public. The story that we did from Ukraine that by far, by far had the most viewers and, and feedback at the beginning of the full scale invasion about volunteer groups going to, to adopt the abandoned or lost pets of across Ukraine. So that tells you quite a lot about, you know, public interest in, in, in comfort. But it's also not, not a bad thing.
- [25:22]
Andrew Muller
No, well indeed not. Well now to Basel and to controversy. Come on, everybody. Gasp. There you go. Controversy of the secure around rather the security arrangements for the Basel Autumn Fair. The Herbst Messe as Autumn Fair is locally known is a tradition dating back five and a half centuries and sees downtown Basel converted into a vast fun fair. Sounds fine so far. Carry on. However, this year it was decided to subcontract some of the security monitoring work to AI powered robots, two wheeled contraptions equipped with 360 degree thermal cameras. However, these have now been stood down after the local data protection officer had questions about privacy and data storage and was dissatisfied by the answers. James, first of all, where would you be on a surveillance robot if one trundled towards you?
- [26:15]
James Rogers
Where would I be? I mean, if I was on a scale of 1 to 10 on this one, I'm absolutely with a data protection officer who's closed them down. I've got no time for the surveillance robots. So yes, the simple answer. But what would I feel if one trundle towards me? I don't even really like those things in the supermarket when they automatic check out when they're filming you, just because they're so unflattering. I think I look rather good in them sometimes, Daniela, actually, but I. No, I don't. I think, joking apart, I think there are very serious concerns about what happens to the material they're gathering, which I think is the reason why the local data protection officer has closed them down. Who's controlling them, what's happening to the data, where's it being stored and so on. I think, I guess, you know, this is really maybe just a step up from security cameras and I think I'm right in saying that this city of not the most surveilled, it's one of, it's one of the most surveilled cities in the world.
- [27:11]
Andrew Muller
I think this one we're sitting in.
- [27:13]
James Rogers
Yeah, London I think has got, you know, more. I mean, you certainly notice it when you're walking around London. Compared to other places, at parts, even other parts of Europe, there seem to be more security cameras here. So I guess in that sense it's just a sort of step up and a maybe sort of more efficient way of doing that. But I do think there are questions over it. So I'm not, as I say, I'm with the, with the authorities on this one.
- [27:35]
Andrew Muller
Daniela, I do broadly sympathise in that I, I do not myself care for an automatic till at the supermarket. I don't use them. I do kind of think that, all right, thinking citizens of Basel should have picked these things up and pitched them into the Rhine, but nonetheless the arg. The counter argument, certainly as applied often to CCTV and the like, is that you're in public, you can Be seen. So does it really matter if you are seen, for example, by a small robot onto wheels?
- [28:06]
Daniella Peled
I'm fine for the small robot on two wheels to see me, but it's always everyone else who is gonna. And, and it's not even my personal details on my appearance. It's going to be part of big data. I mean, this is not, it's like a huge, huge, you know, huge, huge chunk, chunks of data that's beyond our imagining. So. Yeah, and I'm not sure it. Does it make people feel safe? I mean, London, from my close observation servants, is not the safest city in the world, despite being so highly surveilled. I think maybe what they should have done was kind of make the robots more cute.
- [28:45]
Andrew Muller
Oh, that, yeah, that's just, that's obviously coming, Daniela, and it's just going to make it so, so much more annoying.
- [28:52]
Daniella Peled
Because it is, it could be much more palatable. So I think maybe that's the, maybe that's the next move.
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Andrew Muller
No, it is going. I mean, Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, will once again be conf. To have been absolutely right about absolutely everything. James, do you suspect, as indeed do I, that this, not only is this the future, it is going to be a future in which our actual human police officers and security guards, et cetera, are provided with even more excuse never to actually leave the station?
- [29:25]
James Rogers
I don't know what you would think so, wouldn't you? Because, I mean, it is, it is clearly, you know, it's very efficient and cost effective, I suppose, but. And you know, for particularly hazardous places, you know, the already used robots of sorts in bomb disposal, for example, I guess there will be cases when it would be a very good idea to have things like this just walking around a fair and keeping an eye on people in the way that, you know, police officers might do in any large, crowded public event. I don't think that's. It's quite the same, is it just.
- [29:53]
Andrew Muller
Finally on this, Daniela, because that is the obvious point of comparison, is this somehow more upsetting or discombobulating than a police officer equipped with all the stuff that a police, a human police office can now be equipped with body cams, etc.
- [30:08]
Daniella Peled
I don't know what's peculiar if we talk about the, the British context is that we have this obsession with the idea of bobbies on the beat, that if you have pairs of police people walking around your city, hopefully, and ideally with those sort of slightly eccentric helmets on, that all of a sudden the bad guys will be, I'm saying, ideally.
- [30:27]
James Rogers
And hopefully sometimes the football match is.
- [30:29]
Daniella Peled
Still happening, but this is it. It's, you know, it's the kind of feeliness, isn't it, of security, the thinkiness of security. Like if we have the presence there, that human touch, something, you know, some it magically will improve. And again, I live in Camden. It's a quite a central part of, of London. There are an awful lot of police people on the beat and there's an awful lot of street crime. I'm not sure it's made much difference at all.
- [30:53]
Andrew Muller
Well, on that happy note, Danielle Appelled and James Rogers, thank you both for joining us. Finally, on today's show, the cost of warfare is generally assessed in terms of its physical, casual, the lives lost, the living injured. The psychological effects, however, are also considerable. Less understood and certainly only much more recently appreciated, a new book by the neuroscientist and advisor to the Pentagon, Dr. Nicholas Wright, attempts to assess, as the subtitle has it, how the brain shapes war and war shapes the brain. The book is called Warhead. I spoke to Nicholas earlier and began by asking about how the different parts of the brain fit together in times of conflict. Conflict.
- [31:34]
Dr. Nicholas Wright
So our brain is very much like an orchestra. You know, you need all the different parts of the orchestra to give you a Beethoven symphony, right? You need the percussion. So down at the very base of the brain, you have things like dopamine, you have pain, you have really powerful drives and you need those banging away in the background. On the other hand, you also need, you know, brass wind and all rest of it. So how do we think about, how can we react quickly in uncertain environments? We need things like fear for that to that's areas a little bit higher up in the brain and then going all the way through to the frontal pole, which is the very end of the journey through the brain. At the very other end of the brain, that part of the brain helps us think about our own thinking. Okay, so that's in many ways our most sophisticated capabilities are in our brains to think about our own thinking. And we often need that in warfare, for example, to reflect and ask, are we doing what we should be doing? So I think we need the whole orchestra.
- [32:34]
Andrew Muller
Is it possible, though, to train people or educate people to get better at thinking clearly in those circumstances? Because everybody I've ever spoken to, which by now is a lot of people who has been directly involved in combat and in warfare, and certainly in my own extremely limited experiences of seeing it up close, it does have extraordinarily deranging effects on the way your brain works. It is all that stuff about time seems to slow down interminably or speed up very, very quickly and weirdly somehow both at the same time. And it's very hard to make sense of anything while it's actually occurring. Is there any way through that?
- [33:13]
Dr. Nicholas Wright
I mean, you're absolutely correct. And again, thinking about the different parts of the brain's orchestra, I mean, if you're going to be really effective, you're going to have to think about many different parts. So to give you an example, fear. Fear can be debilitating. Surprise can lead you to into a shocked paralysis where you're really unable to react, attacked. Clearly, a lot of that is what happened to key French troops in May 1940 when they were attacked by the Germans with their blitzkrieg. Now, they were not where the Germans attacked because that's what people will often try and do. Where they were not the cream of the French troops, they were the less well trained French troops. And so training is really important because training can help turn what can initially be a fearful response into something that's much more. More, you know, in which you can cope. But then equally, you also need to think about a sort of much more sophisticated ways that we think with our brains. How can you think through problems? How can you reflect? And that's something that, for example, the Germans, and it gives me no pleasure to say this, but they were better than us. They're better than the British and the French on land in World War II at thinking creatively and planning. And you, yes, you can teach those types of planning technologies, techniques through things like war games and other techniques for more sophisticated planning. So, you know, there are lots of other areas, but those are just two areas in which you can train people to be better. And where, for example, the British army after World War II took on a lot of those German techniques and the American army and used them very effectively.
- [34:44]
Andrew Muller
Now, there's a couple of other elements of human thinking, I guess, almost glitches in the system which warfare at both the macro and micro level does bring into focus. One is denial. And this, this is interesting because you talk about this at the macro level in a couple of instances, the way that nobody wanted to believe Russia was going to actually attack Ukraine, nobody wants to believe now that China would ever invade Taiwan. But whenever I've asked people who've been involved in conflict what was your first understanding that this was actually going to happen, Their answer is usually when it actually happened up until the moment it does, nobody wants to think it's going to. Why is that?
- [35:25]
Dr. Nicholas Wright
That I think there's a range of different opinions in society. One of the most, you know, famous books on war that's been written in the last 15, 20 years and that framed a lot of the debate was by Steven Pinker, who was a thinker, an American thinker in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And his. His idea was basically, you know, there is an arc of history. People are rational. It bends to, you know, the arc of history bends towards peace. Things should be okay. People said exactly the same thing before World War I. War is irrational. And of course, we had the cataclysm of World War I. We could have exactly the same type of thing now. But there are plenty of other people who do worry about war. I would say people like me, literally, it's my job is to help people think through conflict and think about these things better, to help avoid war where we can and then win wars if we need to. And then, of course, there are some people who don't think enough about the absence of war or how we can control escalation or how we can create peace, and they are just too interested in war. And I won't say who they are, but there were a fair few of them floating around as well, on the other side of the spectrum. So I think we have a lot of different perspectives on war. Only some of, you know, some people ignore what's going on. But I think there are a lot of people who hopefully, and this is one of the key themes of the book, how we can be wiser and we can position ourselves so we can worry about war and think about war and cope with war and be optimistic that we can come through war more effectively?
- [36:47]
Andrew Muller
There is a lot going on in the book, far more than we have time to unpack. But I did have one kind of counterintuitive question I wanted to close with. And it's prompted by what you just said, that Steven Pinker idea that the world does get more peaceful, that conflicts are fewer and further between. And when they happen, they're not quite as bad as they used to be. Nevertheless, they do still happen. And I have wondered about this myself. Seeing bits and pieces of conflict up close, it is hard to avoid noticing that enjoying it's the wrong word. But there's something appealing about it to people. It satisfies some urge we have, whether it gives people a sense of purpose or some other thing. But is there still, at some fundamental level, part of us that actually enjoys it or somehow yearns for it.
- [37:37]
Dr. Nicholas Wright
Not everybody, but every brain is built to win or at least survive a fight. You know, all humans have come both through prehistory and history to this point and every, many of them have had to have survived life threatening emergencies. So we all have that basic fact that our brains are built for conflict. Not only for conflict, but for conflict. Now there are some people who obviously do enjoy conflict. Now if none of us did, then then we would not be able to compete against those who do. And so it's probably a good thing for all of us that some people do enjoy conflict. And you know, and enjoy is not necessarily the right word. I think it's much more often about being tested. So I like running marathons, which a lot of people think sounds utterly ludicrous, but it's partly about testing ourselves. And I think for all humans, violence has been something that has been there. The idea of the hero, the idea of something that is life threatening, something that is incredibly risky, something that is meaningful and you said gives purpose, that's always there for us humans and it always will be.
- [38:47]
Andrew Muller
That was Dr. Nicholas Wright speaking to me earlier. His new book, Warhead how the Brain Shapes War and War Shapes the Brain, is out now. That is all for this edition of the Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, James Rogers and Daniella Peled. Today's show was produced by Chris Chermak and researched by Joanna Moser. Our sound engineer was Steph Charles. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening.