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- [00:02]
Carol Walker
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]
Announcer
You'Re.
- [00:37]
Carol Walker
Listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 20 November 2025 on Monocle Radio.
- [00:44]
Andrew Muller
Is the United States trying to make Ukraine look like the uncooperative one? 50 years without Franco. Why do some Spaniards miss him? And have Americans ceased being impressed by English accents? I'm Andrew Muller, the Monocle Daily. Start 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 Carl Walker and Charles Hecker will discuss the day's big stories and we'll visit the island which serves as both metaphor and manifestation of the friendship between Sweden and Finland. 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 Carol Walker, Times radio presenter and political commentator, and Charles Hecker, risk analyst, Russia expert and author of Zero Sum the Arc of International Business in Russia. Hello to you both.
- [01:55]
Carol Walker
Yeah, good evening.
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Andrew Muller
Good evening, Charles. You have recently been yet again gallivanting about the globe, attempting to interest the peoples of various jurisdictions in that book.
- [02:04]
Charles Hecker
Yes, I have actually a non book related trip to Cambridge, Massachusetts, otherwise known as the Other Cambridge, for a few days there, followed by a weekend in Providence, Rhode island, and then a quick bounce over to Dublin there and back on Tuesday and Wednesday.
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Andrew Muller
Is there a huge Irish market for books about business in Russia?
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Charles Hecker
I hope so. That was the assumption, actually. I was speaking at a conference there and managed to squeeze in just the tiniest of plugs for the book.
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Andrew Muller
Well done, Carol. You have, as usual, been prowling the corridors of power here in London, specifically at Westminster. How foreboding is the mood at the moment?
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Carol Walker
I think Labour MPs, that is, of the governing party of Keir Starmer are really pretty grim and all they're talking about is how long Starmer's going to last, who might replace him, what's going to happen when nobody's got a plan, nobody's got a strategy, there's no candidate, there's absolutely no leadership challenge that's underway. But everyone's.
- [03:15]
Andrew Muller
Other than that, it's all going pretty smoothly.
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Carol Walker
But other than that and the government falling apart. And number 10 decided that they'd try and put a stop to all of this by briefing everyone that if there was a challenge, Starmer would definitely fight to try and stay in number 10, thus ensuring that it became part of the mainstream conversation as opposed to just gossip behind the scenes. But still, it, it's, it's all good. It's all good meat and drink for political journalists like me.
- [03:43]
Andrew Muller
Well, indeed, we, we do have a packed slate of international stories to discuss. So I don't want to get too bogged down in this, but I am genuinely intrigued. Carol, is there, is there a short answer to the question how it has come to this for a party that was elected not even 18 months ago, with the kind of majority that should have you thinking about this is our decade?
- [04:04]
Carol Walker
It is quite a difficult question to answer, but I think the short answer to that is that Keir Starmer never really had a very clear plan about what he wanted to do other than try and be not quite as rubbish as the brief succession of conservative governments that he'd taken over from, which is a low bar. And then every time he did try to do something, particularly on the economy, cutting welfare payments, cutting winter fuel payments that go to even the richest pensioners in this country, he was forced to back down at the slightest whisper of rebellion within his party. So he then gets the reputation that he can be pushed around and it's just been a catalogue of disasters since then, really.
- [04:54]
Andrew Muller
Well, we will start in Ukraine and with the peace plan apparently cooked up by the United States and Russia, in the drafting of which Ukraine's input was not solicited, nor that of any of Ukraine's European allies. US officials are reportedly in Kyiv pitching it to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, more or less. Right now, the 28 point plan is believed to be heavily weighted in favour of everything Russia has been demanding for three years or so. Territorial concessions, restrictions on Ukrainian military forces, while offering less shrift to Ukraine wants, that is for Russia to somehow make do with the 11 time zones worth of territory it already had. Charles, does this sound like one of those things that is sort of designed to fail, that is, the US and Russia will pitch this bunch of absurd propositions to Ukraine, which President Zelenskyy will not agree to because really he can't, and thereby allowing the US to say, ah, well, you see, we tried, and Ukrainians are being difficult.
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Charles Hecker
This is sort of like me coming to you and saying, andrew, I'm coming over to help Heat your house and bringing a flamethrower with me. I don't know if this is specifically designed to fail, although you could say that most of Washington's foreign policy initiatives these days, one that you can, ones that you can decode or try to make sense of, have failed anyway. This is a non starter from the very beginning. And whatever this mission is from Washington to Kyiv, there is almost nothing in it for Ukraine to agree to. Over and over and over again, President Zelensky has said that Ukraine is not prepared, nor is the Ukrainian public prepared to cede territory. And that's the thing at the very top of this list. So I just don't see what all the effort is about.
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Andrew Muller
Does it look like, Carol, that the United States is, and specifically President Donald Trump, is looking here for an excuse to just ditch Ukraine? Because, I mean, clearly, you know, this is the one of. This is the conflict he said he would fix within a day of taking office. It is clearly something he does want to be able to, you know, put on whatever CV he sends to the Norwegian Nobel Committee next year. But he has obviously become increasingly frustrated. Is he trying, trying to find a way to just give up on it?
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Carol Walker
Reading Donald Trump's mind is always a difficult one.
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Andrew Muller
I apologize for asking you to do that, but someone has to.
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Carol Walker
There was a point where the President appeared to have been listening to not just the Ukrainians, but Ukraine's allies in Europe, here in the UK and indeed the supporters of Ukraine, including those within the Republican Party, saying that, look, you've got to support Ukraine in this. And President Trump was talking about how fed up he was with President Putin because President Putin kept, oh, going out there and dropping bombs and missiles and drones on Ukraine as if he hadn't noticed how long that had been going on for. But he seems to have now, even in entertaining discussion of this plan, gone right back to where we started. These are Russia's original, almost original demands. We've had sources at the Kremlin talking about dealing with the root causes of the conflict. They want a government in Ukraine that is looking to Russia, that is not looking to Europe. These demands include seizing the whole of the Donbass, which has been the source of bitter fighting, cost tens of thousands of lives over the last three years or so. He's saying that Ukraine should halve its military forces, get rid of all its powerful weapons, refuse to have any foreign troops on its soil, and accept the Russian language as the language of Ukraine, which would be completely and utterly unacceptable to anyone in Ukraine. So you either Think, oh, well, he's just caved in and he wants to do a deal with the Russians and somehow see if he can make Ukraine accept it. Or you have to accept that maybe there is actually a slightly longer strategic plan in that he wants to isolate Ukraine or say that he's fed up with the way that Ukraine is approaching this. But I think what he's overlooking in this is that there is a huge amount of support here in the UK across the rest of Europe, and particularly in those Eastern European states which are closer to that conflict.
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Andrew Muller
Charles, it's not unheard of, obviously, in any negotiation for one or both sides to start by staking out fairly maximalist positions, the idea that everybody comes in a bit and finally reaches some middle ground. But is there any sense of that here? If we look at what we understand of this 28 point plan, is there anything there that you can imagine Ukraine and Russia inching towards each other on?
- [09:59]
Charles Hecker
No, in a word, you know, and I don't know what the assumptions that the Trump diplomacy team, and I use that expression advisedly, but I don't know what the assumptions are that they're making on the way in here. You know, there is a theory that says that now that Lukoil and Rosneft have been sanctioned, that Russia's income streams from oil exports are down quite significantly and that there is perhaps a new financial incentive for Putin to come to the bargaining table. That can only be partially true because over three and, you know, three quarters years of sanctions, nothing has moved the dial for Putin so far. And so we've turned up the heat a bit. Will this change his behavior? It's highly unlikely because economic considerations are not his number one driver to begin with. And then there's a bit of thinking that says, well, you know, the Zelenskyy government is in real trouble right now. It is as a result of corruption charges against some of his closest and most senior advisors. And so does that bring him to the table? Well, maybe, but maybe not. And so, you know, I just don't see, you know, when you say, is there anything in here? You're right, that negotiations have to start very far apart. And the whole point of diplomacy is to bring those two sides together. Except this is where they have started every single time before. And the progress since then has been absolutely zero.
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Andrew Muller
Just finally and briefly on this, Carol, because we will doubtless have further opportunity to discuss this in coming days. If this does go nowhere, which does currently seem its likeliest destination, and if the United States does, then does Say something to the extent of, well, we're done, we've tried, we're fed up with this. Is Europe actually now, do you think, in a position where it is willing and able to give Ukraine what support it's still going to need?
- [12:01]
Carol Walker
Not to the extent that it's getting at the moment, no. It won't be able to provide many of the higher caliber weapons and missiles which the United States has been provided. It will be a huge funding shortfall for the Europeans to make up, although they have already started to take up up some of that slack. And I mean European nations, European NATO members have all come up with these goals of how much they're going to increase their spending by on defence, but none of them have actually got there yet. Most of them haven't. I think Poland does spend 5% of its GDP on defence, but I mean the UK is still inching up somewhere towards 3%. And we are hearing reports here in the UK only this week about the extent to which the British armed forces have been hollowed out because of a lack of funding. So the idea that they could spend a huge amount more on Ukraine I think is hard to see. So I think it would make a huge difference. Look, if President Trump walked away from the negotiations, that would be one thing. I think if he was to walk away from providing support to Ukraine, I think that would be a really serious setback for the Ukrainians.
- [13:18]
Andrew Muller
Well, staying in Washington D.C. tomorrow the Oval Office will host an encounter to which neither host nor guest can be looking forward to. Overmuch. President Donald Trump will welcome to some extent or another New York City Mayor elect Zoran Mamdani. During the mayoral campaign, Trump, a sometime New Yorker himself, repeatedly denounced Mamdani as an extremist and or a communist and accused him of having never done a day's work, which was arguably lofty talk for someone who has spent roughly a quarter of his second term on the golf course. Mamdani, for his part, seemed to recognise that Trump's rage was as good as an endorsement and goaded the present accordingly. Charles, I can see this going one of several ways. We could, we, we, we, we could get, you know, Zelensky 2.0, that is the sort of chair hurling brawl in the Oval Office. Or we could get, and I sense that this may be where it goes, a lot of polite rictus, teeth gritting.
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Charles Hecker
Yes, but secretly you're hoping that it goes the first way, don't, aren't you? I mean, I suppose it's the host's prerogative. To do this, but you've stolen my opening line. And that was to sort of compare this to, you know, the bar that's been set for when Zelensky went to the Oval Office and was, you know, essentially, you know, thrown out and, you know, had a lavish lunch, canceled and sent packing. You know, these are two people whose combination is just. I can't imagine a more volatile situation, and it will take the slightest spark to set it off. I mean, there are two people who are sort of socially, philosophically, politically, and economically on the furthest and most opposite ends of the spectrum. That's number one. Number two, however, they have this one thing that they both care deeply about, and that's the city of New York, but they both have completely different images of its future descriptions of how to get there. And, you know, there's something at stake here for Trump, I think, because, you know, he's a property developer. He is, at least on paper, a billionaire. And these are the kind of people that Mamdani would like to just turf out of the city. So, you know, if he gets turfed out of the Oval Office, then, you know, payback might be quite painful indeed.
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Andrew Muller
But there is, is there not, Carol, a certain symbiotic relationship already in play here? I mean, for each one of these men, the other one, kind of a boon, like Donald Trump and Zoram Mamdani, are each other's ideal bogeyman.
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Carol Walker
Yeah. And I guess they both like to think of themselves as disruptors coming from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Look, I think the dynamic, the personal dynamic is going to be fascinating because an awful lot of leaders have learned that the way to try and get what you want out of President Trump is to. Is to grovel, to flatter, to do everything you can can to pander to his ego. Mamdani's going in there saying that, look, if Trump says something that's not for the good of New Yorkers, I'm going to be the first one to say it. And he's pointing out how he's going to be standing up and talking about how the Trump administration's economic record is causing huge pain for a lot of New Yorkers. And, of course, it was that cost of living, those cost of living issues that helped him win that election. I just wonder whether Mamdani will realize that there is federal funding at risk here. Trump threatened to suspend that during his election campaign, although he's since said, well, maybe we'll help them a bit. But I think you just have to remember that the scale of the rhetoric. You know, he's been described as a communist. I was sent on the day of the voting in New York a tweet from a serving Republican Congress congressman with a picture of the 911 attack on the Twin Towers and the slogan, wake up, New York. And these are the sort of messages that the Republicans were sending out in advance of him winning that contest. So let's see how it goes between Trump and Mamdani. I'm sure we'd all love to be a fly on the wall.
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Andrew Muller
I mean, we see there, Charles, a demonstration of the peculiar American political spectrum. The idea that Zoram Mamdani is any sort of communist is ris, as was the fact that the same people used to describe Barack Obama as a socialist, which he just wasn't. But there has been a lot of talk, Charles, obviously, among excited Democrats about the idea that Zoramdani, or at least the way he went about winning this election, might represent some sort of future for the Democratic Party. I mean, maybe it might be prudent to give it 9 months to 12 months and see if he can actually govern. But is there anything actually exportable here for the Democratic Party nationwide, or is he a new who ran a campaign in New York?
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Charles Hecker
Yeah, this is part of the problem facing the Democrats, and that is two of its most prominent national figures are from places that most of the rest of the United States hates, and that's Mamdani in New York City and Gavin Newsom in California. And so it's highly problematic. I mean, I think that Mamdani's politics may be on time for what New Yorkers want, but they may not be to the liking of what the rest of the Democratic Party's electorate is up for. And, you know, there is a test. This idea of letting it sort of percolate for about nine months is a very good idea, because Mamdani will learn, as every elected official, especially new ones, learns. And that is that campaigning and governing are two entirely different things. And, you know, not only are you going to run up against the difficulty of securing federal funding from your ideological enemy, but an enormous amount of what happens in New York City is actually at the discretion of the governor in Albany. And that's a second battle that Mamdani will have to fight. It's a battle for infrastructure, it's a battle for money, and it's a battle for influence. And so, yeah, let's see how it goes. If he unlocks all of New York's problems, maybe, you know, the rest of the flyover states will take note.
- [19:42]
Andrew Muller
Well, to Spain, which is today noting the passing of half a century since the death of General Francisco Franco, the prototypical fashion who overthrew the Spanish Republic in the country's civil war of the late 1930s and went on to rule Spain for nearly 40 years. The unmistakable subtext of most of the official observances of the anniversary is that Franco isn't much missed. His passing enabled the restoration of Spanish democracy, which has held up pretty well since, give or take, a deeply weird Francoist coup attempt in 1981. However, judging by opinion polls, the Francoist tendency does have a certain nostalgic cachet. One in five Spaniards report positive feelings about Franco's era, and support for authoritarianism is reportedly spiking among the young. Carol, first of all on that point, is this the Spanish version of, you know, British people getting all misty eyed and sentimental about World War II, I. E? This is largely an indulgence of people who weren't actually there and don't remember it.
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Carol Walker
Yeah, I mean, I think there's certainly an element here that the far right parties Vox and the so called Conservative Party there are certainly trying to tap into. Not just nostalgia for some of the few things that were going right in the Franco era, but just picking up on the discontent there is with a whole younger generation. And we're seeing it here in this country, in many other European countries, young people who feel that they're being governed by an elite that doesn't really understand their concerns. Their cost of living is going up, they're having big problems getting jobs. That's a real problem, particularly, particularly in Spain, of young people not being able to get onto the sort of career paths that they'd hoped for and just brushing over the fact that tens of thousands of opponents of the Franco regime were brutally murdered, dissidents who disappeared, who no one ever found again. There is a generation that didn't live through that and is perhaps less viscerally aware of what it was like. And it does seem extraordinary that really, I mean, comparatively soon after his death there seems to be this effort by some within the political sphere and on the right in particular in Spain to try and use his death as an opportunity to try and talk about the good things that happen when you have a strong authoritarian leader.
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Andrew Muller
Charles, those complaints that young people have in particular there that Carol enumerates, pretty much every generation of young people has more or less the same complaints, but these are the first young generations who have a radicalization machine in their pockets. And is that going to be partially the difference, because apparently one of the things driving this is the Francoist tendency has taken with alacrity to TikTok and are using sort of AI generated animations of the Cordillo being sort of bold and impressive and promising to make the trains run on time and so forth.
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Charles Hecker
Yeah, I mean, first of all, I just have to say that there are upwards of 500 different celebrations commemorating Franco's death. And it's so much so that you sort of wonder, you know, are they saying goodbye to him or do they really miss him? And all of this sort of celebrating is just, we want him back on the calendar, we want him back on the agenda. And if there is a younger constituency that would like to see a return of an authoritarian to Spain, they've got good company. They've got company in lots of other European states.
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Andrew Muller
Indeed.
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Charles Hecker
So where sentiment seems to be the same, and I think in Spain and elsewhere, this is emblematic of a few different trends. And the first is that life's tough these days and governing is complicated and domestic and international politics are almost unfathomable to most voters. And so somebody who comes along with an authoritative voice offering easy solutions is enormously appealing. Secondly, and maybe this isn't so much the case for the younger generation, but for everybody else who is talking about this, nostalgia has an incredibly corrosive impact on the way that people view their pasts. And this is true in Russia, this is true in Germany. This is true in a lot of other countries that have had very, very difficult pasts and sort of wish that the best parts of them would come back. And failing to understand that, you either, you can't cherry pick totalitarianism. And then finally in Spain, there hasn't been, and I don't know whether it's too late or not, but there hasn't been the lustration, the truth and reconciliation, the sort of putting to rest of frankism that a lot of other countries around the world have had. And until and unless you do that, it will always come back.
- [24:44]
Andrew Muller
Just finally on this. Carol, it strikes me that there's another myth at large here, which is this idea that dictatorships rule by one strong man issuing edicts from on high is by definition more efficient than sort of brawling, messy, compromised democracy. But as anybody who has ever spent any time in a country ruled in such a fashion is able to confirm, precisely the opposite tends to be the case. Dictatorships are usually an absolute shambles.
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Carol Walker
Yeah, I mean, those who do want to peddle the values or the benefits of dictatorship often overlook Rather a lot of the inconvenient truths about what life was like under that kind, under that kind of rule. And I think it is exactly as Charles was saying, they offer these simplistic views here in the uk, we have reform UK saying, oh, it's just a fault of the scale of immigration and we'll sort that out and then everything will be brilliant in the country, we'll sort it out. And that kind of simple, clear message does seem to resonate with voters who are fed up with everything else they've been served up and think, well, that sounds quite good, why not give that a try? But I do, having spent a bit of time in Spain and our daughter spent quite a lot of time in Spain, that there are still an awful lot of people there who, if they don't have memories of it themselves, their parents do, or they have lost family members who simply disappeared during that. So I would hope that this flirting with celebrating this moment, using it to commemorate and Lord Franco's death, the people who are actually celebrating his achievements will be remain a small minority.
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Andrew Muller
Well, to the United States, where it says here the locals are not as beguiled as they once were by the British accent, though Americans went to all the trouble of holding a revolution to throw off British cultural and political hegemon and ensure that they would never again be subject to the capricious whim of a mad king. A partial success. It was long believed that Americans still believed any British accented person to be preternaturally suave, sophisticated, wise and commanding, as if these islands were populated by a race of David Nivens anyway, apparently no longer, according to this thing in the Times. Charles, why are you no longer impressed by Carol's accent?
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Charles Hecker
Carol has a wonderful accent and an absolutely silken broadcast voice and I think that.
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Andrew Muller
Good save, Charles.
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Charles Hecker
Well, you set me up. I think that the moment Carol were to step off a British Airways flight in New York City, she would be welcomed with open arms and everybody from hotel check in desks to waiters and waitresses in restaurants and the New York public would embrace Carol and her accent enthusiastically. Having said all of that, here we go, here's the. But, you know, it's high time we got over all of this and you know, look, I mean, it's funny, I mean, I've lived here for, you know, what feels like a million years, years, and American people say, oh, you haven't taken on a British accent? Of course I haven't. But I think it's about time that we've gotten over this accent and what we attribute to it. Because you're absolutely right, Andrew. I mean, this isn't a country full of David Nivens. Quite the opposite. And maybe, just maybe, it's the sort of universality of television and the fact that downtown ad, as Americans like to call it, is, you know, basically now on American television 24 7. Perhaps we're all finally just getting used to it.
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Andrew Muller
Carol, what has been your experience in this respect of the United States? Because I get a sense of it. Because the assumption most Americans I meet in America initially make is not that I'm Australian. They just recognize that I don't quite sound American, so they assume I'm English. And obviously that conversation never. Well, obviously that conversation never proceeds because as an Australian, I take about half a second to go, oh, dear God, no. And so I never get to find out what their assumptions about the English are. But what have you found?
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Carol Walker
Well, do you know, I would say that I have found people quite receptive to a British accent.
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Andrew Muller
I mean, I don't anymore, apparently.
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Carol Walker
I don't go to the States a lot. I was last there, I guess, a year and a bit ago during the election campaign. And I think perhaps it's no longer true in places like Washington or New York, but we went, for example, to Texas and were talking to a lot of MAGA Republicans. And I have to say they were, oh, wow, you know, I'm not going to do a Texan accent. I'm not going to do it. Don't worry. But they were, they were very charming about my, my, my British. Oh, you must be British. They were quite impressed by that. Although of course they all.
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Andrew Muller
You're like 15th in line to the throne or something.
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Carol Walker
Well, I had to get over. Over the fact that despite the fact that they did love my voice and they were very welcoming to us, they did feel that they had to express great pity for us living in this dystopian nightmare, which was the story that they've been told about what it's like in the UK and London in particular, where the whole country's completely gone to the dogs and, you know, we're totally overrun by immigrants and we have this horrendous Muslim mayor of London, all of that.
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Andrew Muller
But, but in fairness, Carol, two thirds of the people at this table are in immigrants.
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Carol Walker
Precisely. Well, look, they were very charming and a number of people who I dealt with did immediately mention it, were still quite impressed with. Had it there, had it in North Carolina, probably less so in the big, more cosmopolitan cities. But I was quite struck and quite surprised by that, to be honest.
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Andrew Muller
Charles just finally and looking at I guess the same proposition in the opposite direction. Do people in this country make assumptions, assumptions of you based on your accent? Do people you meet initially assume that you are a gun toting, Bible chewing, big hat wearing, etc, etc?
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Charles Hecker
I don't have an accent, you know, no. Thankfully, none of those assumptions are made about me and my positions on various things or about my intellect or lack thereof.
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Andrew Muller
But I mean, remember, Charles, the British are a famously polite people.
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Charles Hecker
That's right. I never say what they mean and never mean what they say. But see, I grew up in Connecticut and folks who are from Connecticut take pride in the fact that they, they, we claim, they claim that we don't have an accent, that we speak an incredibly neutral brand of American English. It's everybody else in the United States that has an accent, not us.
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Andrew Muller
Charles Hecker and Carol Walker, thanks both for joining us. Finally, on today's show, Finland and Sweden cement their place in NATO. But there is another institution working behind the scenes to the relationship between the two neighbours, strong, not with weapons or treaties, but with dialogue and cultural exchange. Helsinki correspondent Petri Borzoff has been to the Finnish Swedish cultural centre, Hannah Holman, to find out how this small island near Helsinki is wielding soft power in an age dominated by hard.
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Petri Borzoff
On a small green island just west of Helsinki, surrounded by pine trees and the calm waters of the Baltic Sea. On the surface, it's a conference center and a hotel. But for half a century, it's also been one of the Nordic region's quietest diplomatic assets, a place where Finnish and Swedish leaders, thinkers and artists meet in a relaxed setting to exchange ideas. When Monocle visits, the island is hosting a security and defence policy forum called Hana Ting, with current and former defence ministers from Finland and Sweden present. But despite all the talk about drones, defence spending and deterrence, soft power still has a seat at the table.
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Announcer
Hana Holman was founded 50 years ago to ensure that the relationship between Finland and Sweden is developed and deepened. And we are called a cultural center. And there is a very specific explanation to that, because Hana Hommen was founded during the Cold War where Finland's possibilities to have Western dialogue on sensitive issues were limited. And it was very practical to call it a cultural center, but to define the mandate very broadly, to cover anything from defense and security to economic development.
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Petri Borzoff
Gunvar Crunmann has been leading Hannah Holman for more than two decades. She says the center's unique status, semi official, semi private, lets it do what Governments sometimes cannot.
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Announcer
We can take initiatives that governments not always are able to take for different reasons. And we can sort of pilot things. And if we fail, it's our failure. If we succeed, it's the pilot success.
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Petri Borzoff
Hannah Homan's programs range from leadership training to joint research projects in forestry. But they all share a simple building trust.
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Announcer
So when people know each other more deeply, there is trust. And trust is the basic of international cooperation. And we used to say that what is the Nordic goal, the Nordic gold is trust. And that's the foundation of the well being of our societies. A lot of the programs we do is really based on identifying the right people that should know each other and should trust each other. And from that a lot of good things will come.
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Petri Borzoff
That sense of trust is helped by the setting itself. The modernist building from the 1970s is surrounded by Nordic sculptures and filled with design design classics such as Svens 10 Itala and Uriya Kucapur. You can step straight from a meeting on security policy to the shoreline and maybe even a dip in the sea. Charlie Salunius Bastarnach from Nordic west office has been coming here for years.
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Andrew Muller
It's such a fascinating and also useful combination of being a location where you can have these really high level public but also private discussions looking at the art, sometimes having lunch and then the idyllic setting where you could literally go dip your toes in the water. But then if you want to just have a. As sometimes is needed, a one on one discussion, you can go outside and just wander among nature, as it were. It's kind of like a third neutral location. It's not the beautiful Swedish Embassy, it's not a Finnish ministry location or parliament. It is a neutral third location, but with its own deep cultural kind of layers and importance.
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Petri Borzoff
It's this neutrality and a touch of Nordic design that makes Hanneholmen attractive even to politicians used to harder surroundings, such as Finland's Defence Minister Anti Hakkanen and his Swedish counterpart Paul Yunsson.
- [36:17]
Charles Hecker
The hard defense must be in a good shape and it must strengthen up. But still this political landscape, how voters and politicians are kind of seeing the world, this is the soft power and that's highly important. So this is a part of that. Hannah Holloman is an important part of our cooperation between Swedish industry, cultural life and of course this defence is now quite hot topic.
- [36:47]
Announcer
To me, Hano Holman symbolizes the past between Sweden and Finland, but also the.
- [36:53]
Petri Borzoff
Fact that we share a common destiny. Sweden and Finland are each other's closest partners and now we are not just Swedish, Finnish.
- [37:01]
Announcer
But we are partners.
- [37:03]
Petri Borzoff
But we are true allies inside NATO. I work very much with guns and.
- [37:07]
Announcer
Bombs and hard military power.
- [37:09]
Andrew Muller
But yet you are here.
- [37:10]
Announcer
Yet I'm here.
- [37:11]
Petri Borzoff
And I very much appreciate also the culture exchange that von Olme represents. That mix attracts not just diplomats and civil servants, but weekend visitors from the Helsinki region. And for Sweden's Ambassador to Finland, Petar Eriksson, the center remains something unique in diplomacy.
- [37:29]
Andrew Muller
It's a huge asset in my work because of course the embassy symbolizes the country and of course we work with the bilateral relationship. But Hannah Holtman symbolizes the relationship as such. And it's both Sweden and Finland. And it's not just the governments. The governments have a sort of a background role. It's run by a board with representatives from Sweden and representatives from Finland. But it's not sort of politically driven in that sense. It's driven by the idea that Sweden and Finland have something a lot to work on together. And this is the place where you can do it.
- [38:09]
Petri Borzoff
Today, when much of Europe's diplomacy is defined by war, deterrence and the so called hard power, Hannehommen's leaders believe Bayer's softer approach still matters, no matter how.
- [38:21]
Announcer
Hard the subjects are, no matter how difficult also some of the participants might be in a discussion. We really make the most of it in trying to preserve a level of integrity and decency in the conversations that are conducted at Hannah Holmen, I think this way we try to contribute to preserving a democratic, open society based on what we think still is the basis of Nordic value.
- [39:03]
Petri Borzoff
For 50 years this island has been a place where art, politics and diplomacy can share the same table. In a world where bellicose rhetoric and power politics increasingly dominate international relations, Hanneholmen is a reminder that dialogue itself is still a form of power. And that power, however soft some might think it is, still matter matters. For Monocle Radio in Hana Holman, Finland, I'm Petri Wurtsoff.
- [39:36]
Andrew Muller
Thank you, Petri. You can read more about Hannah Holman in Monocle's brand new December January issue. That is all for this edition of the Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Carol Walker and Charles Hecker. The show was produced by Tom Webb and researched by Joanna Moser. Our sound engineer was Steph Chungu. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks. Thanks for listening.
- [40:21]
Petri Borzoff
Sa.