Jeremy Bowen

The full-scale invasion four years ago was the first clear sign that the world had changed. What's happened since then is not just about the impact of four years of killing and destruction on Ukraine and Russia. It's also about the impact on the rest of Europe and the wider world. Old assumptions about security, about the safety of the future have been overturned. Leaders are finding ways to spend more money on the military.

That's because the world is more dangerous now than at any time since the height of the Cold War. Russia's war effort depends on allies in China, North Korea and Iran. Ukraine relies on NATO countries. Perhaps President Zelensky had a point when he told me at the weekend that it amounted to a world war.

Other principles are at stake. President Trump has abandoned the idea held since 1945 that big countries should not take land from smaller ones by force. He is pushing Ukraine to accept President Putin's demand to give up territory that Russia has tried and failed to capture in return for a ceasefire. The war between Russia and Ukraine is still flashing danger signals across Europe. Will the war end this year? Not the way things look now.

Tiger Parks are a familiar site in Thailand, popular in particular with Chinese tourists, but criticized by conservation and animal welfare groups for the conditions in which hundreds of animals are kept together in small spaces. This leaves them vulnerable to outbreaks of disease. More than 70 have died over the past week in one zoo after contracting canine distemper, possibly from the chicken carcasses which make up the bulk of their diet.

Lempparit ja parhaat yllärit. Sittari hoitaa.

The world has changed so much that it's going to be very difficult for a couple of strong leaders to impose their will on everybody. The danger is that little crises can become big crises and suddenly things start slipping out of control. One of the things that would stop, you'd hope, things slipping out of control is some kind of rules-based system.

There had been a failure after the First World War. There was an international organization called the League of Nations that never really worked. So after World War II, so much had changed. The United States had become a world power, a world military power, an industrial power.

The old European powers were broken, Britain included. And when Churchill was speaking in that speech you referenced, his whole strategy in the Second World War, apart from just fighting on, was trying to get the Americans as engaged as possible. So, yeah, there were rules because awful things had happened, and they brought in things like the Genocide Convention and a lot of the fabric of international law that we might recognize now. But naturally, there were other things going on.

Yhdysvallat tekevät asioita, eivätkä niitä tarvittaisiin, vaan ne tekevät asioita siksi, että ne hyödyttävät heitä. Tuntui niin, että jokainen järjestelmä suomalaista turvallisuutta, jota Amerikassa johtaa, hyödyttäisiin Amerikasta. Tarkoituksena olisi saavutettavaa stabiliteettiä kontinenteissa, jotka olisivat todella huonosti huonosti. Tarkoituksena olisi saavutettavaa uusia markkinoita myös amerikkalaisille.

And as the relations between the West and the Soviet Union rapidly deteriorated after the Second World War and the Cold War kicked in and started going, there was a sense that they had to get together to stop what was seen by some at the time as the inexorable rise of communism and Soviet power. So by 1947...

Britain was bankrupt. And Britain sent a message to the Americans saying, we can't do what we would like to do. We haven't got the money. So the then president of the United States, Harry Truman, decided that America had to formalize its global post-war role. What he came up with, the Truman Doctrine, which was an idea that America would intervene in conflicts to protect people, and also in their own interests, and really it was about

Resisting Soviet Communism. And out of the Truman Doctrine came the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe. And out of that too came in 1949 the North Atlantic Treaty.

which was the foundation of NATO, North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Those things allied with the other conventions, genocide, human rights, rights of the child and so on that came in. All of those things shaped the way that they thought the post-war world might go. And for a while in different places it did work, actually, in some ways. But now, many years later, things have changed.

Well, first let me say that from the outset, the idea of this rules-based order, not everybody accepted it was going to be a great idea. As European empires decolonized in the 50s and 60s into the 70s, countries became independent. They didn't necessarily want to be told what to do by Europe.

The old colonial powers plus the United States and the other superpowers, Soviet Union or whatever. There was something called the non-aligned movement in that period where countries said, we're not going to be part of the East or the West. We're going to try and do things for ourselves.

But yes, certainly in terms of the security of Western countries. And you asked for a specific example. Now this isn't actually about European security. At the time it was seen as something about global security. And that was the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq.

Kuwait, major of course.

oil producing country and at the time the United States and the West very much depended on oil coming from the Arabian Gulf. And as a fairly young reporter, I was part of the BBC reporting of that. I went to Saudi Arabia just after the invasion of Kuwait in August of 1990.

On the road to the border through the sandstorms. American convoys are bringing more men and more equipment to confront the armies of Saddam Hussein. Drove up to the border with Kuwait. This is where the Americans say they've drawn a line in the sand against Iraqi aggression. The Americans have started deploying troops to Saudi Arabia. There was an enormous military build-up. Saudi intelligence told us that the Iraqis are dug in about 25 miles inside Kuwait.

Luulen, että kun sanoit, että tämä toimii, niin järjestelmä toimii, koska sitten presidentti George H.W. Bush meni Yhdysvalloille. Viikkoa sitten Yhdysvaltojen alueet aloittivat virallisia tavoitteita Irakissa ja Kuwaitissa. Jos jokainen oli perusasiantuntijana, se oli varmasti ensimmäinen presidentti Bush. Tämä virallinen toiminta, joka on otettu yhdessä Yhdysvaltojen päätöksiin,