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The Monocle Daily
Violence erupts in Mexico after killing of cartel boss. Plus: is Hungary a thorn in Europe’s side?
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You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first
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broadcast on 23rd February 2026 on Monocle Radio.
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Mexico's government and Mexico's drugs cartels flex muscle at each other. Hungary seeks to spoil observances of Ukraine's fourth anniversary of resistance. And would you place your love life in the hands of randos for a free weekend in Singapore? I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily starts now.
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Foreign.
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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 Terry Stiasny and Jacob Parakilas will discuss today's big stories and we'll hear from Daily regular James Rogers about his new book chronicling the post Cold War history of Russia and where it all went wrong. 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 Terry Stiasney, political journalist and author most recently of Believable Lies, the Misfits who Fought Churchill's Secret Propaganda War and by Jacob Parakilis, research leader for rand, Europe's Defense Security and Justice Research Group. Hello to you both.
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Hello, good evening.
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Terry to you first exciting preview of developments later in the show where we coincidentally had an item about British politics. Anyway, but there has been a bit of British politics in the last hour which we should get a quick reaction from of at if ever is correct from you, Lord Mandelson, if that's what we're still calling.
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I think we call him Peter Mandelson now, don't we? I think he's technically still a lord but anyway, the former, until recently the British Ambassador to Washington, before that the European Trade Commissioner, the Northern Ireland Secretary and the Business Secretary in various UK governments has been erected, arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office and there have been images of him being taken from his home in, by the Met police in, in the back of a police car. He's obviously previously denied any wrongdoing but obviously this relates to the investigation that was going on into the Epstein files and the suggestion that he might possibly have forwarded sensitive government information to people who should not have had it. I mean this is enormous. This is a man who has been a figure in British politics for the last 40 years and it's just really a sign of, you know, how far these investigations have gone.
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Just to follow that up though quickly, Terry, obviously not charged yet and obviously denies everything, etc. But this is the same reason that Andrew Mountbatten Windsor got his collar felt last week. And I think we should emphasize to overseas listeners in particular that misconduct in public office is potentially very much not slap on the wrist territory. This is an area in which British judges generally have no sense of humor at all.
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No, it is potentially an extremely serious offence. At its absolute maximum, it can carry a life sentence in prison. That said, it's also got quite a high bar to prosecute it. The people have to, it has to be shown that someone knew that they were deliberately doing something wrong. But it's a very old offense within English law. And yes, as you say, something is taken extremely seriously.
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And Jacob, we will also be talking a bit about Ukraine later in the show. And helpfully for our purposes, you have been there relatively recently.
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I was there three weeks ago now, in the middle of a particularly cold snap, which coming from, I mean, sitting here now today, having just gotten back from holiday in Portugal, I feel like I've seen the extremes of weather in continental Europe in the space of about two weeks.
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But what was your sense approaching the fourth anniversary of how the morale of people was holding up? Because I was last there in Odessa last June, July, but that obviously much different weather, not quite as absolutely miserable as I'm sure it was in Kyiv at this time of year. But even then, six, seven months ago, when I asked Ukrainians were they prepared to fight on ad infinitum, their answer was invariably some variation on, well, what choice have we got? Is that still the attitude in Kyiv?
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Yeah, it is. I mean, it surprised me, honestly. I mean, I've been going with some regularity for the last couple of years and every time I'm struck by the level of determination and one person, I mean, and you know, I go to Kyiv, I don't go closer to the front. I don't go to the countryside. The people I speak to are a very, very specific subcategory of Ukrainians. So I don't want to represent this as some kind of slice of life, but the sense that I get, the people that I talk to reflect on the fact that the Russian strategic bombing campaign, as brutal as it's been, as designed as it has been to break morale, has really had the opposite effect. Not that people aren't frustrated and angry and cold and suffering, but that it makes them more determined to stick their finger in the Russian's eye and to keep surviving.
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Well, we will start in Mexico, where members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or cjng, appear not to be taking a philosophical view of the demise of their kingpin, Nemesio Ozaguera Cervantes, better known and widely feared as El Mencho. El Mencho was killed yesterday in the course of an attempt by Mexican authorities to run him in. Eight of El Mencho's bodyguards and 25 members of Mexico's National Guard, roughly the equivalent of of the FBI, are also reported dead. The CJGN have launched a wave of retaliatory violence across Mexico, torching vehicles and businesses. Flights to some airports were cancelled as of this broadcast. President Claudia Sheinbaum insists that order has been restored. Jacob first of all, 108 days and I counted until Mexico kick off against South Africa in Mexico City to commence the 2026 Men's World Cup. Is this Mexico trying to clean ahead of that?
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I'm not sure that it's specific to the World cup or any other timing. The type of intelligence that you get to capture to launch an operation against a cartel kingpin is not stuff that you can sort of dial up or down at the political level. You might be able to put a little bit more pressure on the military, the National Guard, the federal police, local police forces to redouble their efforts, but it's not as though they had the guy dead to rights and they waited for a moment when there would be an opportune sort of house cleaning pre World cup opportunity. You move when you get the opportunity. Basically, I think more broadly it reflects a sense that this government has determined that it's a national security interest to decapitate cartels, to strike the leadership, which has been an intermittent strategy that the Mexican government has pursued against cartels going back decades. Again, it ebbs and flows depending on which administration we're talking about and how bad the violence is. But it does have a lot of historical resonance with Mexico's approach to its cartels.
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Nevertheless, Terry, an extraordinary demonstration of the CJNG's power. It's across Mexico. It has closed airports. Extraordinarily, given that we are talking about an outlaw drugs gang, they have placed several entire cities under what they call a curfew. It's starting to look like maybe a bit of a score draw at best for the government. On the one hand, they have removed one considerable player, but they have also demonstrated their relative powerlessness, haven't they?
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Yes. Obviously, if you're the government, you want to be able to absolutely control your whole territory. You want to be able to show that you are the law and that you can enforce it. But when they've got these kind of paramilitary style groups, they've got access to military style vehicles. They're obviously highly organized. That is, you know, it's, you know, seems to be fighting, you know, not quite a, not quite a war, I suppose, but a type of war, I suppose at least. And I suppose one of the dangers that arises from this is that not only are they fighting against the government, but it's quite likely that the cartel will be kind of fighting amongst itself. You know, my knowledge of this coming primarily from, you know, watching the Sopranos, watching Mafia films. Once you, once you get rid of the top guy, everybody else tends to, you know, have a turf war to see who then succeeds.
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Is it, though Jacob and Terry does allude to it, is it properly appreciated outside Mexico how formidably tooled up these organisations are? Because you can find footage of the CJNG and other cartels online and it is authentic footage. It does not look indistinguishable from the actual militaries of some nations. They have armoured cars, they have tactical gear, they have not just the rifles you might expect, but, you know, grenade launchers and similar other light weapons, armed drones. I mean, it is extraordinary that this situation has reached this stage.
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I wouldn't call that a new development. So I actually did my PhD research on drug violence in Mexico from 2006.
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Well, what would you know?
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Well, yeah, I mean, you know, I should say it's out of date. My PhD research is now out of date. But it does, I mean, you know, I said something about sort of the cyclical nature, but it is cyclical. You have, you know, going back to 15 years ago when I was doing this research, you had similar footage then. I mean, the armed drones thing is relatively new. But the idea of cartel gunmen in matching uniforms with improvised armoured vehicles, increasingly sophisticated improvisations. But armed vehicles, anti materiel rifles, matching logistics. So not just we have assault rifles, but we have assault rifles that fire the same calibre of bullets to simplify logistic chains, that sort of thing. That was true 15 years ago as well. There's kind of step changes. As I say, the drone usage is new and worrisome. If you believe stories that Mexican, that there are Mexican nationals working in Ukraine and then bringing that knowledge back to Mexico and Colombia and Latin America to sort of spread that methodology of violence and the use of small drones for tactical purposes. But the idea of there being sort of well equipped, well armed, tactically sophisticated groups challenging the government is not new so much as it is another outburst of this long running campaign of Mexican government versus the gangs just finally on
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this one, Terry, because obviously we will be covering this and ensuing developments across our shows this week. But this is difficult for any government because many countries around the world, this one included, do have experience of being somewhat plagued by non state militias. But it does seem at least more negotiable when you are dealing with a non state militia, which is motivated in the main perhaps by ideological concerns, which the drugs cartels are not so much, unless you count a desire to continue selling cocaine and ideology.
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Well, no, if you are primarily motivated by money and there is obviously a big trade going through from Latin America, through Mexico and then on into the United States and that demand for drugs is presumably not going to go away anytime soon. You can't, these aren't people. It's not like Northern Ireland or something. You can't just sit down and, and negotiate because there isn't really anything to negotiate there. We could say, well, we'll let you sell a few drugs, but not too many, and please don't launch your grenade launchers during the World Cup.
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You know, although informal conversations of that sort have probably been had from time to time.
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Could be, could be. But I mean, I think they must be very worried, particularly, you know, as you're saying with the World cup, you've got, you know, Guadalajara being one of the host cities that's going to be hosting matches there. And obvious, obviously you want tourists and football teams and people, dignitaries to be able to come to that.
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Well, to Ukraine now, which will tomorrow observe the fourth anniversary of the launch of Russia's 48 hour lightning conquest of the country, still very much a work in progress. Somewhere north of 1 million casualties later, one European country which does not seem minded to extend congratulations to Ukraine on four years of heroic resistance is Hungary, which is poised to block the EU's next package of sanctions on Russia and fellow problem child Slovakia are miffed that Russian oil has ceased to be forthcoming since January 27 when pipelines in western Ukraine were damaged by what Ukraine claimed with a commendably straight face, was a Russian drone strike. Jacob, do we understand after several years of this now from Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, quite what his thing is, because it will be. Have I done the maths right? Yes, I have. 70 years this year that Russia invaded Hungary. I mean, we're getting to the edges of living memory here, but it's not like there's no history. You would think Hungary might be a bit more sympathetic.
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I mean, I think the thing you
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have to remember is that this has been, there have been Previous instances of Hungary blocking EU action, and they have always backed down eventually. I mean, the EU operates on consensus, which in theory means that you have to have all 27 member states on board. It also means that the other 26 member states or 25 member states, if there are two blocks, lockers, can gang up and can essentially use their own leverage to force governments into line. So my guess would be that in the next few days, some kind of concession is made or some kind of threat is made, or more likely, some kind of concession threat package is put together, you know, the carrots and sticks all bundled together into one, which results in the lifting of this Hungarian, Slovakian blockade and the passage of the aid package and the sanctions, because that's what's happened before. Past performance, no guarantee of future results and so on. But that tends to be the dynamic. So I don't know if Orban and FICO are planning on trying to get some specific concession or if they're making some kind of gesture for domestic or foreign political consumption, but I don't think either of them expect to be able to hold out indefinitely against what is otherwise a widely held, widely popular view within the eu.
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I mean, Terry, is that what's going on here is this. And Jacob's right to point out that there is a pattern here. Viktor Orban picking a moment like this to both seek attention and concessions.
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I mean, I think it's interesting that, you know, you mentioned the 1956 invasion, and the polls were literally picking up that point and saying, Hungary, you have forgotten. Have you forgotten what it was like to be invaded by Russia and seeing the rest of Europe saying that, you know, Germany saying, we're astounded. Lithuania, that we're upset and frustrated. And, okay, some of this is a bit for show and a bit performative. But I think, you know, part of this is to do with the Hungarian election campaign, and I think that part of this is for that domestic audience we're talking about. You know, there's this amazing image of one of the posters of Ursula von der Leyen and Zelensky and the opposition literally pouring money down a golden toilet. That's. That's with a Ukrainian flag on it that's going. Gone up all. All around Hungary. So I think this is partly for that kind of domestic consumption to say we don't want to be pouring this money into Ukraine without end. But, you know, I mean, Orban, yeah, he's been. He has, as you say, he has been doing this kind of thing for a while, and maybe it Might be easier to get some kind of a deal after the elections in April. But of course, the trouble is that Ukraine needs that money.
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Now, Hungary's position on this, and also Slovakia's Jacob, has long been that they deserve some sort of carve out some sort of exception because they are landlocked and it's therefore more difficult for them to access seaborne LNG supplies, et cetera. But I mean, at this stage, that's nonsense, isn't it? By which I mean it's nonsense that four years into this we have an EU and NATO member that is Hungary sourcing 92% of its energy from Russia, for which it is paying Russia with money, which Russia is then spending on further arms to drop on Ukraine.
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Yeah, I mean, other countries, as of February 2022, also had a significant dependence on Russian oil, which they have successfully managed to largely obviate. And I think if there had been a concerted effort to source other types of energy, there would have been. And look, the internal politics of the EU are complicated and you end up with things that don't seem to be strategically sort of aligned with the goal. The disputes between Poland and Ukraine over grain, the Polish farmers blocking highways and border crossings, that sort of thing. There are other, There are other elements of this, there are other interests that sometimes are at cross purposes to the overriding strategic imperative of supporting Ukraine and getting Russia kicked out of Ukrainian territory. But there's a difference between sort of tactical dissent and strategic dissent. And I think that friction is what you see with Hungary and Slovakia.
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Terry, as you mentioned, there are elections due, parliamentary elections due in Hungary in April. Would you care to estimate the degree of the, I'm sure, extremely thinly veiled joy across most of the EU should Orban and Fides get rolled?
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I think certainly their near neighbors, I think, would be pretty much delighted to see this, because you know, of Orban being such a spanner in the works and then constantly having to threaten, you know, if you don't behave properly, we might have to throw you out and then not doing it. But, I mean, the polls seem to sort of be very widely differing as to whether that's something that's going to happen.
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Happen. Well, here in the uk, the two long established major parties, Labour and the Conservatives, find themselves in the historically unusual position of running second and third in opinion polls. Both are trailing Reform uk, the latest vehicle of Nigel Farage, architect of Brexit, now leader of reform and member of Parliament for Clacton on Sea, which, for the enlightenment of overseas listeners and Indeed, Nigel Farage is in Essex. Of the two legacy parties, it is the Tories most worried that reform has outflanked them on the. But a new poll by Prosper UK suggests in the seats the Tories lost in the 2024 general election, most of their former voters went not to reform, but to labor, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens or just away. Terry, this seems hilariously counterintuitive that the Tories lost votes to the left rather than the right. Are you surprised by this?
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I'm not really surprised by this. And this is a report from a group of sort of more centrist or either Conservatives or ex Conservative MPs who have looked at this. But if you looked at the last general election, there is a kind of swathe of yellow Liberal Democrat yellow that runs basically west from London out towards Bristol. And the kinds of places that, you know, when I was growing up were absolutely always true blue Conservative places like Whitney, which used to be David Cameron's constituency, for instance, that have gone to those, gone to those other parties. I mean they've got labor mps and in places now that have never had a Labour MP in certainly in living memory and sometimes in, in the whole history of the seat. So yeah, it's. If you look at what happened at the last election, that was certainly the case as to what might happen at the next election. I think that is a bit more
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tricky to follow that up though. Should therefore the Labor, Liberal Democrats and Greens just be massively encouraged by this, thinking that, well, between us we have what you might think of as a progressive majority and we're also leeching up, apparently all these disaffected Tories who can't stand Nigel Farre Barrage.
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It is, it's. But it's quite fragile though, I think partly because you're not used to having so, so so many labor mps in, in the west country or also in places like the east of England, they're suddenly having to deal with very un. Non traditional labor things. They're just suddenly discovering that, oh, we've got a massive farming constituency here and farmers don't like having extra inheritance taxpiled on them and suddenly turning around going, oh yeah, these, these are not the people as Labour mps we are, we are used to dealing with. And I was talking to a, a Tory MP recently and I said well, how worried are you about reform? And he said, well, I'm actually, he said he was worried about reform more because it split his own vote and in his seat was more likely to let the Liberal Democrats come through in an area where the Lib Dems had always done quite well in the past.
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Jacob, what did you make of the conclusions about engagement? And this is, this is not a, this is not an issue unique to the United Kingdom. Polities all over the world fret about the numbers of voters who don't turn up. I mean, belief beggaring numbers, even in US elections. In a presidential election as consequential as the last one, a hefty old chunk of people stayed home. What is the answer to that and is it compulsory voting? That's a leading question.
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I'm going to decline to answer the leading question. No, I mean, I think one of the things that is underappreciated, I think, is the thermostatic nature of public opinion and that you had 14 years of government by one party and admittedly five of those years in coalition with another, but in sort of as a majority coalition partner and after a certain amount of time, I think there was a natural sort of, well, let's let the other guys have a chance. You see that in American politics, American politics is a little bit different because you have two parties and so the coalitions express themselves differently and the way the political system works and it's a presidential system with defined terms. But I also think that there's a natural, okay, we just had an election, it's been an intense few years. We've had Brexit and then as soon as Brexit was over we had Covid and as soon as we started to recover from COVID Russia invaded Ukraine and variety of scandals and issues. And I think there's a natural inclination for a lot of people to just want to kind of shut down and not engage in politics and just focus on your own life for a while. And at the moment, especially since now, it's easy to forget if you spend your life swimming in political news. But we're only what, 18, 20 months past the last election, which means that it's another 3ish years until the next one. And I think it's a very natural reaction, not necessarily one that's helpful for sort of ongoing democratic engagement, but a natural reaction for a lot of people to say, I'm just not going to engage in politics and I'm going to, I'll give a sort of instinctive reaction if asked by a pollster, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time and emotional capital engaging with the sort of day to day cut and thrust of politics. And that distinction, that difference between the way those of us who Engage deeply in politics, experience politics and the way that the average voter experiences politics, and I use that term very advisedly, but people outside the bubble experience politics, I think explains a lot of the sort of weird staticky effects that you see with polls like this. Oh, that's counterintuitive.
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Is there just finally on this one, Terry, anything here for the Conservative Party? Like, might they start thinking, well, maybe there is a market somewhere here for what we might have thought of as sensible, stolid, old school, school, one nation Toryism. Not that that appears the natural metier of the current leader of the Conservative Party.
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No, it very much isn't. But I think, you know, one of the things that they could possibly benefit from is that reform in particular, they're running at about 30% in the polls at the moment, but actually quite a lot more people, if you ask them, do you like or hate reform, there are just, just as many, if not more people who really strongly dislike them. They are quite a polarizing party. And I think some of the Conservative MPs who did manage to hang on seats, the kind of people that would support this, you know, this report would say, look, we did it by being a bit more sensible. We did it by actually filling potholes and actually being a good constituency mp. And I think those are the people that have managed to, some of them, managed them to cling on well to
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Singapore now, which seems weirdly preoccupied with the loneliness of Americans. Singapore has a long tradition of state operated matchmaking. Its Social development unit, launched in 1984 to address declining birth rates by encouraging the interaction of the eligible. Singapore has now launched a tourism campaign encouraging Americans over 21 to send their details to a panel of aunties. This being a Singaporean term for busy bodies of a certain age, these sages will select two likely types for a four night first date in Singapore, all expenses paid. Jacob, would you be tempted by this?
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Well, I should.
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You are American over 21?
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I am American over 21. I've also been married for 16 years. So
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this would probably go over quite badly.
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Go over quite badly into my face? Yes, yes. I mean, if I try to put myself in the shoes of the person who I was before I met my wife, I would say, I mean, yeah, I'd give it a go. I wouldn't have any particular expectation that it would produce. I mean, my very, very brief record of being set up by people was not filled with success, let's say. So I don't have a lot of faith that someone who's never met me would pick that I would actually be compatible with. But sure, four night, all expenses paid vacation, why not?
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I mean that part of it does sound fun, Terry, but the problem is of course, like if you got set up with just an obvious total dud and the chances you would have to say, all due respect to the Singaporean aunties, I'm saying that's at least an even chance. What would be your preferred evasion mechanisms should you be set up for four days in Singapore?
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It's quite hard.
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It's a small place, you weren't feeling well, you probably bump into one of the aunties, you know, around the place. I think sort of, you know, a quick hire car to Malaysia probably is fine.
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This is not like, like four nights in London or New York City. Like you can lose yourself there easily.
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Yeah, you get the impression the aunties would be keeping an eye on you and seeing what you were up to. You might have to say that you went to a dodgy food court.
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And you know the slogan here, Jacob, is aunties, not algorithms. Congratulations to the Singapore Tourist Board who are up all night working on that one.
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But.
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But might they be on to something in sensing an AM app fatigue?
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Yeah, I mean again, my non single status predates the app era. Slightly dating myself here, pardon the expression, but I mean I do from people I talk to and people who I have heard, I think there is a level of app exhaustion and something which is not algorithmic, which is not app based, which isn't swiping, probably has a
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certain amount of appeal and might. Might it therefore, Terry, just finally on this, I mean it wouldn't make any less sense than current arrangements to actually just outsourcing all this stuff to a panel of experts, would it?
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B
No, but I do have some logistical questions about this. Okay, how's the second day going to work?
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C
I think you're on your home.
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Do you have to go return the favour to go to America? Where are you going to live?
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My admittedly cursory response leads me to believe that in terms of the second date, should there be one, you're on your own.
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B
Yeah, so this is, you know, the aunties haven't really sorted this one out yet.
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C
Well, on that slightly lowering thought, Terry Stiasney and Jacob Parakilis, thank you both for joining us. Finally on today's show, for depressingly obvious reasons, there has not been a shortage of Russia related literature these last four years. Pondering where it all went wrong, James Rogers, whose voice will be familiar to daily listeners, is better qualified than most to offer such a diagnosis. He was, for a time the BBC's correspondent in Moscow and was previously the author of the Tremendous Assignment, a history of foreign reporting on Russia. James's new book is the Return of From Yeltsin to the Story of a Vengeful Kremlin, chronicling Russia's path from defeat in the Cold War to self destruction in Ukraine. I spoke to James at Midori House earlier and began with the big question of Russia's modern history. Did it have to be like this?
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D
I don't think it did, Andrew, no. But I have come to the conclusion that by the end of the 1990s, some form of renewed confrontation was inevitable. The reason that I say that was that if you look back through the archive sources for the people I've spoken to, and just if you look at the political events within Russia itself, I don't think that Western policymakers, broadly speaking, understood just how people felt. They didn't understand the concerns of people there. They didn't understand how it felt lose the massive standards of living. And I don't think, in short, they understood the political consequences of what I call in the book the time of humiliation. That's how I term the 1990s. Russia was. People were impoverished at home and Russia was being ignored on the world stage. And remember, this is a very quick transition from having been a superpower for most of the population's lives.
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C
So it's your contention that the 1990s, that is shortly before President Putin arrives in the presidency, is actually the big missed opportunity?
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D
That's my conclusion, yes. And I think Putin understood very well how to harness this humiliation politically. I think he possibly sensed, as a former KGB officer formerly based abroad, he probably felt some of it himself. And he understood very well how to harness that. He understood what the population wanted, which was a degree of stability, a degree of order and a degree of prosperity. I don't think that the confrontation as it's come to manifest itself, in other words, as a military confrontation, was inevitable. I think it's possible it could have been some sort of trade wars from time to time. It could have been diplomatic spats. I think it's Putin who decided it would be a military confrontation. And I think if you look back through his quarter of a century and more, at the top of Russian politics, you know, he goes through. He delivers a degree of stability, he delivers a degree of Prosperity in the 2000s, helped massively, of course, by rising oil prices, from which Russia benefited hugely. After that, he goes about trying to reassert Russia's position that enjoyed by the Soviet Union and even before that by the Russian Empire on the world stage. Because we know from his history essays those are the terms in which he
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C
thinks you're right to point out that the transition from the Soviet Union to whatever Russia became was, was dramatic and abrupt. I mean, I can remember studying the Soviet Union in school in Australia in the mid-1980s. And if, if you'd come to our classes and said, this country won't exist in five years time, I think we would have thought you'd been out in the sun without a hat on. But there is this narrative that the west was, you know, hubristic and overcome with its own victory in the Cold War and thereby did not take Russia serious. But again, if we go back to the 1990s, knowing then what we know now, what do we do differently?
- [31:42]
D
I think very simply, Western policymakers kind of forgot that Russia was there. I think, you know, they made the post Cold War world was made by the West. Of course it was because this system of liberal capitalist democracy or whatever you want to term it, had outlived that of Soviet style socialism. And the post Cold War was built by the West. And I think from a Russian point of view, exclusively for the West. And if you go through the 1990s and beyond into the early years of this century, you see a series of big incidents like the war in Yugoslavia, particularly the confrontation in Kosovo at Pristina Airport that happened when the Russian forces tried to take control of that during the Kosovo war. We look at Iraq, which interestingly, one of my interviewees, now UK National Security Adviser, then Chief of Staff to the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, he actually puts the fracture point there. He thinks at that point, you know, this is when Russia felt that the west was just not acting in good faith. And that's backed up by the findings of others. And Fiona Hill, Presidential adviser on Russia, put this to me too. She said that the Russian Foreign intelligence service actually knew that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. They assumed therefore that the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies knew the same and were just acting in bad faith. And at this point Putin concludes, well, well, actually this is just about regime change. If they can go for Saddam Hussein, longtime Soviet and now Russian ally, then maybe they can come for me one day. And that's when he starts worrying. Then of course, this is followed by the so called color revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine. So we see Putin adapting this sort of, you know, isolationist and almost paranoid, one might say, mindset, always fun to
- [33:21]
C
Hear from Russia, accusing others of acting in bad faith, obviously. But how much of it, though, for all the mistakes that the west may have made in its ignorance and hubris in the ninet, 1990s, how much of what we've seen, especially since, and especially in the last five to 10 years, is basically just paranoid, self pitying nonsense from Russia? Because this is what always strikes me, is that that whole Western frontier Russia has with Europe, for all anybody has any designs upon Russia at this point, could be defended by one pimply conscript in a tollbooth. Yeah, there is no threat to Russia
- [33:58]
D
from the west, which is why I want to be clear that my argument is not that this is all the West's. It's absolutely not. My argument is that some kind of renewed confrontation was inevitable, but that it was very much Putin that decided it should be a military one, having established his rule at home and suppressed any sort of political dissent, by the way, with consent. You know, we have this unwritten rule that if you keep quiet, you know, you can get rising living standards, you can go on holiday to Turkey and things like that, with things which Russians have just never been able to do before, at least not ordinary ones. And he decides that, you know, having established that he wants to, to go after restoring Russia's greatness as he sees it on the world stage. And we see this in a military form because he's harking back to the last century, broadly speaking, when Washington and Moscow decided between them what the European security architecture would be, who the leading powers in Europe would be, and the Europeans themselves had very little say in it.
- [34:51]
C
Obviously Putin's imperial delusions should not and cannot be indulged, because where does that even end? Does he envisage being the next Russian leader to walk at the phalanx, head of a phalanx of troops down the Champ Elysees? One hopes not, but obviously that can't be indulged. But are there lessons that perhaps we should have learned from the last 30 years that we could apply to some sort of future relationship with Russia?
- [35:16]
D
Well, we are going to have to have a different relationship of some sort in the future, aren't we? There was one fascinating document I found in the National Archives here in London, Andrew, which was written by Tony Bishop, who was a translator for British prime ministers from the 1950s onwards. On his retirement he offered. 1960s onwards, on his retirement he offered the piece of advice about just spending some time and taking Russians seriously. And I think that was what was really absent in the 1990s you know, another thing that's become clear from my research is just reminded me how very busy diplomats and ministers and their advisors are when they're on these visits. And Bishop just says, you know, take some time, talk to people because they want to feel that they're being taken seriously and respected. And I think, you know, that was all part of really what I came to conclude, that Russia was just ignored. And it was never really considered that Russia would seek to re establish itself as a big European power and certainly not that it might do so in the hostile manner in which it has.
- [36:11]
C
That was James Rogers. James, excellent new book is the Return of Russia From Yeltsin to the Story of a Vengeful Kremlin. Very much recommended. And that is all for this edition of the Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Terry Stiasney and Jacob Parakilis. Today's show was produced by Monica Lillis and researched by Anneliese Maynard. Our sound engineer was Elliot Greenfield. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening.