Sir Niall Ferguson

And actually, on the second point, he's right.

So that's part of it.

But Azim, I think the really important idea that's at work here

is the reverse Nixon theory that people close to the president occasionally talk about.

And that's the idea that by being very nice to President Putin over Ukraine, you are going to peel him away from Xi Jinping and try and drive a wedge between the Russians and the Chinese.

And the reason people say reverse Nixon is that they're thinking of that moment in 71, 72,

where Nixon and Kissinger got into touch with Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong.

Nixon went to China in 1972.

That was the big moment when suddenly the Soviets woke up and realized that the US was closer to China than they were.

And I think the idea here, it helps explain why they appear to be so

inexplicably nice to Putin, why they seem to be ready to throw Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukraine under the bus, is they're trying to get into a closer relationship with Russia and peel Putin away from Xi Jinping.

That's the most Nixonian thing about this administration strategy.

And I want to just, you know, spoiler alert, I don't think it's going to work.

Well, first of all, I'd be really careful about saying you agree with J.D.

Vance in Hampstead, because your neighbours will be far less friendly towards you if you go around saying that.

This administration is making itself very unpopular very fast in Western Europe, in the UK, in liberal America.

So when you're agreeing with J.D.

Vance, you need to take

Well, it actually went back much further than that.

Even in the 1960s, Americans, including Kissinger, were complaining about the unevenness of the burden sharing.