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A
You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 2nd March, 2026 on Monacle Radio.
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Which will last longer, the Iranian regime or Donald Trump's boredom threshold? How should Europe respond? And will anybody notice? And why are markets taking so far, at least a relatively sanguine view? I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily starts. 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 Bertu Ersholik and Quentin Peel will discuss today's big stories. We'll have the latest from Tel Aviv, and we'll speak to Kenneth R. Rosen about his new book about conflict in much colder climes. 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 Bertieu Ursolich, senior research fellow for Middle east security at rusi, and Quentin Peel, journalist and regular Monocle Radio contributor. Hello to you both.
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C
Hello. Greetings.
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D
Hi.
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A
Thank you.
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B
All things considered, we will probably be skipping the light introductory banter today, but we will have more from both of you shortly. But first to Israel, which has today continued operations against Iran and against what it says our targets are associated with Hezbollah in Lebanon. In ISRA itself, an Iranian ballistic missile evaded air defenses and struck a residential district of Beit Shemesh, killing at least nine people. One joined first of all from Tel Aviv by Nimrod Goren, senior fellow for Israeli affairs at the Middle East Institute and founder of the Israeli foreign policy think tank, Mitvim. Nimrod, first of all, can you give us some idea of what the atmosphere has been like in Tel Aviv today? Obviously become relatively accustomed to Iranian attacks over the last year or so, but how has today been?
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E
I think it's of different magnitude, what we've seen over the last three days, not only because of the immense firing that is happening from Iran into Israeli territory, but also the sense that we may be in the midst of some transformational moment in the Middle east. And for Israel, perhaps a final act of all that happened since October 7, that aspiration of Israelis on the ground as they run in and out of shelters day and night. The hope is that when this is ending with a strong partnership with the U.S. we'll see a change within the structure in Iran. It is not also political, it's also military, but it also impacts the immediate region and eventually leads Israel to continue its future in a very different setting than the one we've been facing over the last two, three years and therefore it's a daily price that people are willing to pay. Also given the harsh casualties that Israel going to suffering from that attack.
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B
Is this what you've been hearing from Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? Does he see this, do you think, as some sort of climax of post October 7th operations? I mean, has he said why? For example, this is different from the 12 Day War of last June.
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E
From the Teriyao perspective, he would have wanted to continue the 12 day war in June. The narrative is that Trump made him stop before Israel went all the way. And this is the time in which the close alliance and coordination with the Americans may enable these attacks to continue until the final outcome is reached. Netanyahu, of course, also has his political calculation that is already in an election year. So when he's shaping the narrative, he also wants that to feed the story that he's going to present the public as he tries to get reelected in several months of time. We don't even know when that will be. And definitely kind of closing the circle of October 7, what began by the Hamas attack and will end from his aspiration with the end of the current reality regime for him would be a good story to go to the polls beyond the impact it will have on Israel's national security.
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B
IDF operations are ongoing in Lebanon. This kind of follows, but kind of doesn't. Hezbollah launches at Haifa because there were already operations ongoing in Lebanon last week. Have we got any sense from Israel's government, from the idf, from elsewhere, how viable and how dangerous an organization they think Hezbollah still is despite all the setbacks that have been inflicted on Hezbollah in the last 18 months or so,
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E
Hezbollah is much, much weaker than it used to be because during the two years of fighting Israel ca from Hezbollah aspiration, the hope was that a ceasefire that was reached between Israel and Lebanon basically relating to Hezbollah in late 24 will eventually lead to the disarming of Hezbollah. This did not happen in the way that the Israeli government wanted to happen, not in a sufficient manner. And several months ago there was a real threat of Israel going to another full fledged military operation in the north against Hezbollah to do the disarming. Definitely. Now the context in which this is part of the operational design is comfortable for Israel for the IDF to try and do now on its own what the hope was that the Liberian government will do and not delivering as much as they would like in a favorable condition in which this is done within a context that either is enjoying border support or rather than going alone to a second Nimrod.
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B
Just finally, I mean, nothing has been confirmed along these lines yet. But would there be much in the way of public support, you think, for yet another large scale ground invasion of Lebanon by Israel?
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E
You know, Israel, we have been facing war for so long. So on one hand people say, yes, we'll do what's necessary for our security, but on the other hand there is fatigue in prices that have been cast and people want to go back to the daily life. So I think ground operation definitely has the threat of leading to more casualties from Israeli soldiers, something that we do not face when it's mostly airstrike. So I think Israel will prefer to do the airstrike mode if some precise ground operation may be needed. It could happen, but I don't think there's much appetite to go beyond that and not necessarily a need to go after Hezbollah in that manner like it was in Masjid 2 and a half years ago. So I think the current condition, Israel has the upper hand. It has a dominance both in Lebanon, boss, as we see on the sky in Iran. And I think the preference would be to keep it that manner rather than to invade the ground operation.
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B
Nimrod Goran in Tel Aviv, thank you for joining us. You're listening to the Daily on Monocle Radio. We will now bring our panelists back in. Bertu Ershelik and Quentin Peel. The Islamic Republic of Iran has had two supreme leaders since its establishment 47 years ago. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed by ongoing U. S. Israeli air raids on Saturday, had held the job since 1989. Iran now appears to be governed by a temporary leadership troika, including President Masoud Pezeshkian and jurists Alireza Arafi and Gholam Hossein Mohsini Eji Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi has suggested a new supreme leader could be anointed within days, though for obvious reasons, any contender is really going to have to want the job. But I wrote over the weekend about how these operations so far seem somewhat in keeping with President Donald Trump's ideas about short, sharp shocks just disrupting things on the basis that the status quo could hardly be any worse. Is there therefore any argument that whoever the next supreme leader is, again assuming they can find one, they will almost by definition be an improvement?
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A
Yes, in a sense, I suppose it's difficult to tell. But what the regime will want to do and do swiftly is to demonstrate their ability, their resolve for continuity. So I suspect, despite the fact that any new Ayatollah will have a target on his back. Given the context of ongoing air campaigns and a high level of intelligence penetration, clearly inside Iran, the regime will nonetheless want to demonstrate that it has the. The mechanisms in place and is continuing to act like a functioning state despite being at war. So they will seek to replace Khomeini very quickly. That said, at the same time, the regime was designed to survive, it was designed to be resilient. There were deep contingency plans in place. And so the question is, and there are different schools of thought, different views on this now, the significance of the Supreme Leader's assassination, is he quickly replaceable? Yes, potentially. Institutionally, there are others, there are other contenders. And succession planning has been something that has been debated in Iran for quite some time. This did not come out of the blue in that sense, but at the same time, Khamenei was such an influential figure. He was the center of gravity institutionally, ideologically. He had great symbolic, symbolic worth and value. And the fact that the regime was not able to protect him physically, I think shows some weakness. And that will not be missed by those in the Iranian opposition in country and elsewhere as well, and as well as across Iran, linked armed groups in the region. This is undoubtedly a moment of vulnerability for the regime, regardless of how quickly they appoint someone to replace him. This is a moment of great fragility.
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B
Quentin Bersho is obviously quite right to point out that what the Islamic Republic wants to do is survive, because that's what all regimes ultimately do want to do. Do you see, however, that their response abroad in the last 48 hours is going to help them with that? Because I have been trying to count up just on my fingers here, the number of countries they have attacked or attempted to attack since Saturday. We are nudging or clearing double figures, by my estimation.
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E
Yes.
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C
But I think that's quite deliberate. They are deliberately spreading the damage, if you like, to get more and more people who might be able to put some pressure on Donald Trump, perhaps less so, on Israel, to actually pull back. So all those countries in the Gulf who are now seeing that they're being really quite badly damaged by having this explosion immediately across the water from them, very keen now to restrain it and not allow it to go. So there is method in the Iranian madness, if you like. And I don't think that it's. They don't have that many friends anyway. I mean, always they were loners in the Middle east, except for their allies like Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen and so on. And perhaps in Syria. So they've always ploughed a lonely furrow and I think that their tactics have a certain logic.
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B
Yeah, I am reminded on that score that when the 12 Day War started last year, we were at the Globesec conference in Prague Virtue and I remember asking one relatively senior European minister for their thoughts on this off the record. And they said, well, one of the problems the Iranians are going to have is that they're about to be reminded that fundamentally nobody likes them, they have always had vassals and clients but no actual allies. So maybe they do think that lashing out at the Gulf Corporation countries is a cost free endeavour. But are those GCC countries rather going to actually be able to keep out of this? I mean we have seen within the last hour it's been reported that Qatar has shot down two Iranian SU24 aircraft that I guess we can add to the three American F15s, rather shot down accidentally by the Q80s earlier in the day. But are the GCC countries going to be able to keep out of this?
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A
No, it's unthinkable that they would. I think every minute that passes we're inching closer to stronger condemnation and stronger entanglement of the GCC in this war. It's unavoidable. Iran escalated very quickly on Saturday morning soon after they were struck and they escalated by targeting their Gulf Arab neighbors. This is the nightmare scenario for the gcc. This is what they have been trying to avoid for decades. And bearing in mind that over the past few years there was a period of cooling in tensions across the Gulf, there was a period of normalization of detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia, this has now been severely ruptured. And so whilst I do not buy into the madman theory that Iran is attacking without any consideration, without any tactical plan, indiscriminately they are targeting US assets, personnel and interests certainly in the Gulf. And they're trying to distinguish between that and civilian infrastructure. But it doesn't feel that way from Dubai, from where you are in Kuwait and Bahrain. They feel as though they are under fire. And this is a region that has been trying and succeeding to present themselves as being a good place to invest, that they're open for business. And now you look at Dubai and is that going to be the case after this is all done? So the risk that what Iran's strategy, that Iran's strategy might backfire and counterintuitively for Iranian planners, it might end up inviting military action by potentially other European states, I think that's a Real possibility.
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B
We will come back to that prospect shortly. But we should talk about Quentin as well. What. And the good news for you here, Quentin, is that we are, in your guess, as good as anybody's territory, what the United States is actually doing here. Because if we think of this, I think perhaps we can as Gulf War iii, Gulf War One, it was pretty clear what the objective was. It was to evict the Iraqi forces who had occupied Kuwait, and that was done with the full imprimant imprimatur of the UN Security Council, etc. Gulf War Two, though the missiles and the weapons of mass destruction turned out to be figments of somebody's imagination, there was at least an objective. Followed by turn Iraq into a liberal democracy. Still kind of a work in progress here, as far as I've been able to tell, Quentin. The plan appears to be decapitate Iranian regime, sort of hope for popular revolt.
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C
Yeah. Almost deliberately precipitate a civil war, which is a terrifying prospect and one that seems to suggest that nobody has learnt any lessons from the disaster of Iraq, the disaster of Libya, that, you know, you intervene, you decapitate the regime and then. Ouch. Oh, God. We haven't really thought it through. We haven't got any coherent alternative. And looking at Iran today, there is no organized opposition. They're all over the place. Nobody is.
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B
The regime have all the guns. Sorry, the regime have all the guns.
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C
Indeed. Yes. And I think, you know, there's a lot of mistrust within opposition forces in Iran. It's a much, much more complicated country as well than. I mean, look at the mess we've made of Libya. And they're still fighting a civil war a decade after we intervened there. And it's an absolute nightmare if that happens in Iran. The danger for everybody in that region is terrible.
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B
We have. Just. Before we move off this angle, Bertu, some insight possibly into the thinking of President Trump, who in the last 24 hours seems to have randomly rung a few reporters. Mr. President, if you're listening, we're right here trying to test out various lines that might play. And to the New York Times, he suggested the Venezuela model as. As he put it, perfect, I. E. You cut the head off the snake. And he's not this capable with a metaphor. So I'm. I'm metaphorizing on his behalf with. Possibly with the hope that a new head grows back, which is somehow an improvement, or this. This is running rapidly out of steam. But he does not appear to have apprehended virtue that Venezuela and Iran are not really even slightly similar propositions?
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A
No, they are not. Absolutely they are not. And if the president does end up giving you a phone call, Andrew, I think it might be an apt moment for you to describe to him why that is the case. Yes, we've talked a lot about his thinking and in the lead up to the operation on Saturday morning, a lot of ambiguity around what the desired end state was, what the strategy was. And it's gone back and forth between some version of regime change, regime collapse, a pathway to political transformation. So different iterations of what that might look like. But I think what President Trump means there, if you read between the lines and try really hard to do so, is that he wants some type of government inside Tehran with whom he can have a conversation about, about their economic prospects, about oil, about the future of the regime, someone he can talk to. I don't think this looks like the kind of democracy promotion and human rights based agenda that we saw, at least rhetorically, in Iraq. And then, of course, there's the issue of the nuclear capabilities. And this is something where the US And Israel seem to be quite aligned in that Iran, they say, cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons. And pressing further on that point, Iran cannot pose a threat to the security of Israel and others in the region. And of course, Trump has said, you know, Iran might be in a position to build ballistic missiles that could hit U.S. targets in a number of years. Sort of seemingly very far fetched, far fetched allegations. But the point being that there's a lot of speculation about end state. Interestingly, today, President Trump said, well, someone claimed that I would get bored. I am not going to get bored of this. And this is not boring. So he's alluding to the fact that he is going to remain committed to this. I think a timeline of five to six weeks was mentioned today.
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B
Yeah, he did then literally immediately after that, start talking about the. The new drapes he'd had put up. I'm not making that up. Let's move along slightly to the varying view from Europe. Spain, for one, is not having anything to do with it. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has expressly forbidden US Aircraft from flying offensive operations from Spanish bases. The United Kingdom is already more directly involved than it might prefer. The Royal Air Force base at Akrotiri in Cyprus has been struck by an Iranian drone. And Akrotiri is not merely an RAF base, but actually a British overseas territory like Gibraltar or the Falkland Islands. The UK has announced that it will allow American planes to fly off British runways in operations against targets related to Iranian missiles. Quentin, is Europe's whole thing at this point, is it fair to say, basically wishing this wasn't happening and that it would all stop?
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C
Absolutely. And desperate for it to go away, but really not knowing which button to press to make it stop. And I think, I fear that we're seeing, you know, Europe's incapacity to seriously influence the US President is becoming very clear yet again, because, you know, all of them don't want it to happen. They say, get back to negotiations. Well, we thought we were involved in negotiations. And so it's also very difficult for them because they all have domestic audience who would be horrified at them getting involved, who remember the Iraq war with absolute horror. And that includes the United Kingdom, who were backing the Americans in Iraq, but equally the French and the Germans, who were not backing the Americans in Iraq. So they absolutely think this is very badly organized, very ill thought out, and we don't think it's justified. It's not justified under international law. And to decapitate a head of state like that, to actually go in and assassinate a head of state is just not the way that they think anything should be done.
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B
But on the specific incident of this Iranian drone striking Raf Akrotiri, minor damage reported, no casualties. But given what Quentin was saying about the disruptive effect on domestic politics of the Middle east, of which presumably the Iranian intelligence services are well aware, might that be the strategic logic for sending a drone as far as Cyprus, because they know that this will cause a huge political row in the United Kingdom?
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A
Yes, it's an act of provocation. There's no question about that. I think from very early on, Iran has made it clear that it wishes to not only regionalize, but internationalize this conflict and to draw in and create pain, sort of hurt the United States and its European allies to a point of pressure where Trump will be convinced that there is no good continuing along this path. But the danger is, the further you go down this path, the harder it is to scale back, to walk it back, because there will be various moving parts and vested interests in making the operation look like a success. And President Trump will be very concerned about his legacy. In theory, there is a world where he can say that the assassination of the supreme leader was a win, and perhaps that will be sufficient for him, depending on how badly things go from here on out. But the American administration continues to speak with a high level of confidence about the coming hours and coming days and potentially weeks. But it's highly speculative, very slippery ground. Iran is a different type of beast. And whilst I don't think anyone in the region will shed a genuine tear for the death of Khamenei, I know there were pro government rallies held in Tehran and there's a high level of sort of performativeness to it. Yes, I mean he was a head of state but not anywhere near a respectable one. So I don't share in any grief over him. But of course there will be international legal condemnation issues and debates and what kind of precedent does it set and all of this. But in some ways circling back to your first question maybe Andrew, was this the regime was so appalling, so horrendous to its own people that in a way the devil that we know argument just didn't hold. Anyway, what might come next could be worse. And we've seen these theories. The IRGC led interim government or whatever might come next could be more hardliner, more conservative, more vicious, more aggressive. I think there's going to be a long, protracted, painful period of negotiation inside Tehran, elite bargaining, different centers of power to try to compete for the future of the country.
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C
But what about an uprising of minority groups like the Kurds in Iran or the Baluchis or whatever and actually a chaotic outcome where the future Iranian hardline regime actually can't hold it together any longer and we do just disintegrate into civil war.
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B
Well, one of the many, many, many unforeseeable consequences of wars in the Middle east is the effect on the global economy. The vicinity over which hot metal is traveling in both directions includes the world's second busiest airport, among other transport hubs, a decent chunk of the world's energy production and the Strait of Hormuz at the entrance and exit of the Persian Gulf, the chokepoint through which around a fifth to a quarter of the world's gas and oil are shipped. In the last few days, at least three tankers have been hit by Iranian drones or missiles. But while gas and oil prices are up and stocks generally down, neither are by especially panic worthy margins, at least not yet, etc. Quentyn, are you surprised by that? Does this suggest that the markets don't really think this is going to last?
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C
I think they're slightly holding their breath. I mean the rise in the price of gas is pretty horrifying, 50% up, but okay, oil price is only like 9% up. Nonetheless, that is potentially quite, quite disruptive. And in a markets that are already quite uncertain, they're worried about the AI bubble, they're worried about Donald Trump's on off tariffs. This day and so on. So the markets are actually, I think, saying, how long is this going to last? So if it's a one week operation, they will say, phew, thank God, and it's gone away. But if we're talking about seriously six weeks or something, I think the markets have got a lot of wobbling still to go.
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B
I mean, Iran has threatened Bertrand very much, not for the first time, to close the Strait of Hormuz. Do these relatively, I guess, sanguine responses suggest that no one really thinks they're actually capable of it?
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A
Well, I think there are a few factors here. One, and again, the big question is, of course, as Quentin was saying, is duration. How long does this last? But one factor to consider was that on Sunday, OPEC agreed to raise production not by much, but potentially enough to temper the uptick in the cost of oil today when markets opened. The second is that there are pipeline capacity that could circumvent the Gulf. This includes Saudi, uae, Iraq. These are temporary remedies to a far more structural problem. If this continues into the indefinite future, this isn't sustainable. The big shock today, I think, came with the hit to Qatar's LNG export capacity that has created serious concerns in the market and the price of gas. In terms of Iran's ability to close the Strait of Hormuz, this has been modeled for years. Iran has tested what the limit is capabilities are. We in the security and defense worlds have sort of war gamed this. So this isn't a surprise. They don't need to close it for long for it to have an impact. They can create harassment, disruptions, anxiety. But the leverage that Tehran holds there is their threat to close the Strait to four moose. If they do so and somehow the market is resilient and continues afloat, then Tehran loses that leverage. So they want to be able to play that card quite carefully. And bear in mind, thus far, China is the main importer of Iranian oil that has been adversely affected. And President Trump knows this. And he went into this thing with the knowledge that he wanted to sever that tie between China and Iran and China's access to cheap but sanctioned Iranian oil?
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B
Just finally, finally, then, Quentin, especially given President Trump's morbid obsession with stock prices, could that affect outcomes if they do take a bit of a dive in the United States, making this even less popular with American voters? Because certainly in polls conducted before action was taken, and given that there may be now a bit of a bump, rally round the flag effect, something like only 27% of American voters said they were in favor of military action against Iran. And I think that has to be measured against the fact that I reckon you could get somewhere between 5 to 8% of American voters to say they were in favor of military action against Legoland.
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C
It really is an extraordinary situation where I think what worries me is that Donald Trump is capable of sort of using Iran as a distraction from things going wrong at home. And, you know, we think, oh, my God, this is a huge war, massively destabilizing to the rest of the world. And to Donald Trump, it's almost like a video game. Hang on. You know, I'm actually not sure that I'm going to really push this through, but maybe I will. You know, it's so much of it is theatrical and so much of it's related to his domestic audience. I think that's what he's worrying far more than the effect on the rest of the world or tourists in Dubai or anything like that.
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B
I mean, and just finally, finally, finally, Bertu, because it is the case that President Trump is a showman, not a statesman. And I think another useful metric is to remember does anybody anymore the 90 minute long crusade against the Islamist militias of North Nigeria, which occupied some of the early hours of Boxing Day. Do you think, though, that we do have to countenance the fact that this is possible? You know, this is a possibility for the first time in American history, it may end a war simply because the president got bored with it.
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A
I think President Trump, I mean, to be serious, I think President Trump, he does care about American troop casualties. He must. He must. And even though he recognized, acknowledged on Saturday in the declaration, in his declaration of what was happening in the combat operations, he said we must expect American casualties. He will be veryhe will have to respond and be very sensitive to the implications that will have at home with, tragically, if coffins start coming back to the United States. So therei think, I hope he doesn't lose interest prematurely. And at the same time, I hope he doesn't go so far as to buy into some thinking in Israel that they need to go in and finish the job, because what finishing the job might look like is so unclear and would potentially wreak havoc on Iranians to an extent that they haven't yet experienced, but certainly do not deserve to experience in any way.
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B
Bertu Ershelik and Quentin Peel, thank you both for joining us. Finally on today's show, the fact that we now have a major conflict in the Middle east should not encourage anyone to stop worrying about a major Conflict in the Arctic. It being only a matter of weeks since it briefly looked like we were going to be treated to one between the United States and Denmark over Greenland. A new book by Kenneth R. Rosen, Polar Submarine Spies and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic, considers this prospect and proposes some means of avoiding it. I spoke to Ken earlier and began by asking about his contention that he believes such a conflict is all but inevitable.
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D
That note in the beginning of the book was written in 2024, and that's how relevant it remained. That note was a plug for what I had known to be true for five years, or many people knew for the last 10 years to be true. I think a conflict that will unfurl in the Arctic doesn't look like a traditional conflict that we're were used to seeing in Eastern Europe or clashes in the Middle east, but certainly some that would be something that would destabilize the region to the effect that it's been destabilized now, becoming a geopolitical linchpin.
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B
Who would be the likeliest adversaries in such a conflict? I mean, when you wrote that introduction, did you have any money on the United States and Denmark?
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D
No, absolutely not. I always felt that NATO was working towards strengthening its Arctic positions. The former Secretary General of NATO had virtually called NATO's Achilles heel. And so the combatants really were Russia, predominantly with NATO and the US by itself catching up far behind.
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B
But that's also a point you make. You write that, and I quote, america fails by all metrics in the Arctic, at home and abroad. At which point we should remember, of course, that the United States is, thanks to Alaska, very much an Arctic country. In what concrete respects, though, do you see those failures? Where specifically is the United States doing less than it should be?
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D
Well, from a community perspective, there are a lack of necessary scientific early warning equipment for say, typhoons. So communities are often waiting until the last minute to find out about weather systems that will damage their communities. Many of them are relocating from the shorelines inland because of of the rise of the sea level and the lack of sea ice preventing storm systems from reaching them. They're often neglected when it comes to Congress and White House debates as far as reparations that need to be paid. But more specifically toward the military question, I mean, the bases that are in Alaska and Greenland, the American ones, the runways are buckling, the security fences have major gaps in them, and we don't even station the types of equipment that necessary to defend the Alaskan Arctic, the American Arctic, let alone to protect the rest of the lower 48 by virtue of our base in Greenland. So we haven't really put an emphasis or a premium on our Arctic defense capabilities while our adversaries are upping up their offensive capabilities.
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B
Was President Trump then not entirely wrong when he suggested that Greenland was undefended or insufficiently defended?
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D
No. And I make a point in my book to note that the Kingdom of Denmark had failed to construct properly and maintain its command and control systems aboard its naval fleet that often visited Greenland. But I think he was wrong in his suggestion that we didn't have the available agreements to be able to expand that military capability. We have those agreements and we could, but that's just a lack of desire from the Department of Defense or the Department of War, whoever you ask, and the White House for putting and stationing those fifth generation fighters or those short to long range missiles at those bases.
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B
But do we understand exactly though what Russian ambitions may be for all that, it is obviously often difficult to determine precisely what Russia is thinking about anything, because you do speak to Nina Kruscheva, the granddaughter of Khrushchev and the distinguished historian about this. She describes Russian ambitions in the Arctic as. As they seem to be in many other places as discombobulation.
- [36:12]
D
Yeah. From the outside perspective, it looks like Russia wants a little bit of everything everywhere all at once. Right. It's got its hands in Eastern Europe. It's messing with Central Europe. It's also antagonizing the Nordic and Scandinavian nations. But primarily its focus has, aside from Ukraine, been on opening up this northeast passage along its border in the Arctic Ocean to the north, having commerce, being able to maintain commerce and open up a viable pathway for shipping vessels, whether it be liquid natural gas or oil tankers or regular tourism vessels, to use its waters to bolster its economy and to overcome some of the issues that are facing many nations who call themselves Arctic nations primarily because of climate change. It's an existential threat to the Kremlin, 60% of its countries underlain by permafrost and above the Arctic Circle. So there's a real question about its longevity if it doesn't figure out its Arctic stance. But it's been figuring it out much longer than the rest of us have.
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B
Is there any sense to which that Russian discombobulation is seen by China as a. A proxy, deliberate or otherwise, for its own ambitions? I think China, I think I'm right in saying, classifies itself as something called a near Arctic nation, which is arguably a bit of a reach. If you look at the globe.
- [37:30]
D
Yeah, and they're not alone in that designation. I mean, India and Turkey have also more or less called themselves near Arctic states. But as far as China's cooperation with Russia goes, they've been seeking to fund and help fund projects along Russia's northern coastline because the Russian economy has been hampered by Western sanctions. But I think we'd have to be cautious about understanding the cooperation between China and Russia, given that that Russia has this main stakeholder status in the Arctic and if it gives up too much of it, it could lose it to China. And I think the Kremlin and President Putin is well aware of that possibility. So it wants to maintain its control while also benefiting from its, its partnership with China.
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B
I mean, do you see, though you talked about that, I guess, lack of military presence in the Arctic. Do you see a similar dereliction in terms of, of civil administration, that it's not taken seriously enough just in terms of governance, even by those non Russian countries which surround the Arctic? You do write about attending the Arctic Circle assembly in Reykjavik in 2023, which a team of us from Monocle Radio were also at. You don't seem to have been terribly impressed by the level of discourse.
- [38:44]
D
Well, I think it was more about showmanship, and I hit on that multiple times in that section of the book. It wasn't seeming like there were things that, that were actually getting done. And it seemed more of a tribute to the former Icelandic president and his friends who created the Arctic Circle Conference Assembly. You know, I wanted to see more of this desire to really work on the Arctic. And invariably every conversation about Russia or China lacked Russian or Chinese voices, to say nothing of the indigenous conversations, that lacked real participation of the indigenous communities by virtue of a small attendance by Western nations. So, I mean, for all the bolstering of, you know, we care about indigenous people, we care about climate change, we want to work more closely with China and Russia in the Arctic. They weren't given seats at the table.
- [39:34]
B
At which it seems timely to remind our listeners that you've learned a lot about the Arctic yourself by living there. You lived in Juneau, in Alaska. You wrote for the Juneau Empire. What did you learn about the region from that level of involvement with it?
- [39:50]
D
That it really takes a special type of person to live there for a long time. There's a desire to separate yourself from the rest of the world, to be so far removed and to be in some ways self sustaining, if not to rely on a very close knit community. So to see the geopolitical narratives, the Militarization narratives start to reach these regions in which populations have long desired a remove from the rest of that is really disheartening. And I learned that there is no more need for external actors in a region that just needs to tell the external actors what it needs to survive, not the other way around.
- [40:28]
B
And just finally, what sense did you get from the people who live there about the increasing of their reaction to the increasing interest the world is taking in their region? Because. Because, I mean, I've heard fairly well, they're no more a monolith than any other group of people. And I've heard varying responses. There are people who do see that there might be opportunities in increased trade and increased tourism, for example.
- [40:53]
D
There's a small minority of folks who think that they could benefit from the increase of natural resource extraction and extractive industries writ large that are looking to come into the region. But many of them are trying to shift their base from combating climate change and having those conversations with the houses of power to now discussing, well, you know, we don't need militarization. We need help to build homes. We need help to relocate our communities. We need to continue our subsistence lifestyles. And yet the narrative of their independence and their subsistence lifestyle has now shifted to economic value. And I think a lot of the local communities are trying to navigate that whirlwind.
- [41:33]
B
Your book does close with a list of suggestions and proscriptions, and I won't spoil it for potential readers by giving any of them away. But if you could recommend one thing that what we can call the Western world could and should do as soon as possible, what would it be?
- [41:51]
D
I think aside from welcoming Russia back into the Arctic Council in a more meaningful way, I think we do need an Arctic military code of conduct. At present, the Arctic Council, it was not designed to discuss security matters, but clearly that has changed. And if we want to see the Arctic Council persist in this form of bilateral agreements and Western cooperation, we need to introduce something that can limit the militarization of the north so that we can focus on the primary reason for all these discussions, which is climate change.
- [42:21]
B
And you think Russia can and should be welcome back as an actual trusted partner in that process?
- [42:27]
D
I don't know if they should be trusted, but they certainly should have a voice in the matter, if only as a fig leaf or an olive branch, to say, you know, it's an important stakeholder, and we recognize your value in the Arctic, and we value our own interest in global climate change. And without the knowledge that we're losing from not participating with Russia and scientific research and climate science studies. We're only damaging ourselves.
- [42:51]
B
That was Kenneth R. Rosen speaking to me earlier. His new book, Polar Submarine Spies and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic is available now. That is all for this edition of the Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Bertu Urshelik and Quentin Peel. Also to Nimrod Goran in Tel Aviv. Today's show was produced by Tom Webb and researched by Anneliese Maynard. Our sound engineer was Steph Changu. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening. Listening.