Fiona Hill

Gorbachev I mean he was so different from Andropov and Chinenko and others as a person but he was also constrained by the system and he wanted to have change but he wanted evolutionary change he didn't know how to do it but he didn't want to bring the whole system down look at Khrushchev when he came in you know after that whole period of you know

Everybody trying to figure out what to do after Stalin had died, and there was all this kind of back and forth, and eventually Khrushchev emerges.

And, you know, he tries to make changes to the system, but he's also a creature of a very specific context.

He's grown up in the same system, and he kind of brings all kinds of elements of chaos there into the whole thing.

And, you know, gets into a standoff with the United States that we know is the Cuban Missile Crisis.

And eventually, you know, gets removed.

You know, we're looking at what's happening in the United Kingdom right now.

They've just churned through three...

prime ministers and actually five prime ministers in, you know, kind of as many years.

But all of those prime ministers have come out of the context of the Conservative Party.

They're all, you know, kind of just shades of, you know, the same thing.

They've all come out of the same academic and, you know, kind of privileged backgrounds.

Even Rishi Sunak, the new prime minister, who's the first, you know, Indian or Anglo-Indian prime minister in British history.

It was a kind of phenomenal, you know, kind of as a child of Indian immigrants, but also a

A person of great privilege from the same academic and party background as the others.

You know, so there are always differences with those human beings, but those contexts matter a lot.

Well, Putin's definitely been thinking about it, right?

I mean, he is the kind of person, if he's got an instrument, he wants to figure out how to use it.

You know, we look at polonium, we look at Novichok, you know, we look at all kinds of things, you know, that he's also presided over in Syria.

He has, you know, put in charge of the war in Ukraine now.