Odd Arne Westad

speaker

116 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 7 Jun

Odd Arne Westad’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 192. Are We On The Brink Of World War III? (Odd Arne Westad) · 7 Jun 2026 podcast

Put yourself inside Xi Jinping's mind now.

What does he actually want to happen with regard to Iran and with regard to Ukraine?

There he is.

We're talking around the time that Trump's just been to see him, then Putin went to see him.

I presume those conversations were very, very different.

What was he saying to Putin about what he'd like to happen in Ukraine?

And what was he saying to Putin about what he'd like to see in Iran?

One of the other parallels you draw from different periods of history is the sort of very broad theme of globalization and also technological development as well, and the role that

Globalization's ups and downs have played in preparing the ground for war and technology as well.

So bringing that into the modern era, what can we draw from previous experience of the rise or collapse of globalization and the development of technology?

that maybe should make us less or more worried about the period we're in now?

What your explanation, particularly about the speed, makes me wonder is the extent to which China has had an incredible advantage in terms of its own development by not being a democracy.

And I sometimes wonder whether one of the reasons why Donald Trump displays such dictatorial tendencies himself is because he's very conscious of that.

He wants things done at speed, whether that, and okay, we may see them in terms of his own personal wealth and his own personal status and what have you, but he doesn't want all these obstacles in his way.

And Xi Jinping has managed to

you know, to get rid of an awful lot of obstacles that might have been in his way.

So should we be worried maybe that ultimately there's a bigger battle going on here and that dictatorship and the lack of democratic values is projecting itself as being far more efficient, far more effective, and in the end, far more lucrative for people than the democracy that we hang on to?

This episode is brought to you by Vauxhall.

Electric cars have become part of life on the road and Vauxhall is supporting the UK's transition to electrification.

And there's more.

Showing 41–60 of 116 · page 3 of 6