Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
He was very scarred. In Dresden, you know, there was the Stasi, which was the East German secret police. And then there was the KGB element of which he was a part. And, you know, as the popular mobilization, the democratic impulse took hold. I mean, is NATO enlargement, as the Kremlin would maintain, is that the cause of Russia's imperial actions towards its neighbors? Or...
Is it Russian imperial actions towards its neighbors that leads to NATO enlargement? Because, you know, when Russia expands, it expands through invasion and occupation. When NATO or the EU enlarges, it does so usually because a country petitions to join. There is a process. You have to get the consensus of all existing members. And it can take years in the case of the EU.
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Chapter 2: What influences Putin's imperial actions towards neighboring countries?
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I recently spoke with Professor Doneca O'Bacon. He is a professor of politics at the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University. We had a very wide range in conversation. Part one of that interview took place last week. And the second part of the interview, we covered a wide range of geopolitical topics, focusing on the shifting dynamics of global power.
Chapter 3: How does NATO enlargement relate to Russian expansionism?
We discussed the transition from a bipolar to a multipolar world, highlighting the decline of the US and the rise of China. We explore the ambitions of leaders like Trump, Putin and Xi Jinping and emphasize their desire for spheres of influence. And this has become even more important when we hear the likes of Mark Carney talking about middle powers.
We then delve into the complexities of international relations, including the Tsitsitsis Trap, which is this notion of rising and declining powers clashing. We discuss Russia's invasion of Ukraine, China's ambitions in Taiwan, and the role of drones in modern warfare. We touch on the political landscape in Europe, particularly in Hungary, after the recent election win for Peter Mayer's party.
We concluded the interview with a reflection on the importance of democratic values. Geopolitics has been a common trend so far in this podcast series. And that reflects the changing dynamic world which we live in. And we need to have an understanding of international affairs, geopolitics, this new multipolar world.
If we are to profit in relation to our portfolio construction, in relation to our investment ideas. Hope you enjoy the interview. And more importantly, I hope you find it useful. In terms of broadening out the conversation a bit then, Danica, in terms of we hear a lot about these multipolarity now.
We're moving, transitioning away from a bipolar world where we see a decline in the US for a whole range of reasons. Debt, trade, just societal issues. And we get into this kind of spheres of influence positioning where it seems that Putin has an ally in terms of that outlook with Donald Trump and perhaps Xi Jinping as well, which is a bit worrying to say the least.
Oh, absolutely. And I think you've hit the nail on the head there that, you know, all those three leaders that you mentioned to varying degrees and with different tactics and strategies and perspectives and temperaments converge on this desire for a sphere of influence. So Donald Trump has said, you know, he wants Canada to be the 51st state. He wants Greenland and indeed has Canada.
made all sorts of threats to Denmark and indeed, you might say, Europe collectively and his NATO allies, who he constantly refers to as them or they. It's not we. He talks about getting Panama back. You know, he is certainly looking for at least hemispheric, you know, dominance. And, you know, they constantly emphasize that they are the preeminent economy. They have the largest military and
So that hemispheric dominance is a prerequisite for global dominance in many respects. And this comes, of course, at a time, as we know, when the U.S. economy has been in relative decline for some years. So you might say this is a desperate gamble on their part, alienating allies and adversaries at the same time. China is the economy on the rise.
There is a kind of a theory in international relations or a notion of what they call the Thucydides trap. It was formulated by Roy Allison, essentially one of the dangerous times of any civilization. you know, situation is when you have a rising power and a declining power. Both of them think that they can take the other. Certainly, the US still thinks it's preeminent.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of the transition from a bipolar to a multipolar world?
I don't think it has necessarily increased or decreased because China's playing a much longer game than Trump has patience for. And this is where I think they differ from the Kremlin and Putin. He is, you know, a gambler and he has gambled over the years, but he's kind of, he has been up until, you might say, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and
I wouldn't say a cautious gambler, but a gambler who knew how much he could bite off. So Chechnya was, of course, his first war. It was relatively manageable. It was popular at home.
Chapter 5: How do Trump, Putin, and Xi Jinping seek to establish their spheres of influence?
And then, of course, you had the intervention in Georgia in 2008, which, again, was a five-day war. It was popular at home, achieved his strategic objectives, minimal cost. You had Crimea, of course, in 2014. and the stimulation of conflict in the Donbass region. Again, it was considered a success from his perspective. There was minimal response or repercussions from the West.
So the lesson he learned is that this kind of gamble paid off. And as I said, he went a step too far, of course, as he now knows, with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But China... tends to be different in that respect. And I think what we see with the Chinese objectives with Taiwan is that they are suffocating Taiwan.
It's a slow strangulation of them politically, diplomatically, economically, militarily. I mean, they are testing them continuously with these military exercises. I mean, Taiwan is a country of 20 million people. Geographically, it's smaller than Ireland. It's spending a huge proportion of its economy just to
Chapter 6: What is the Tsitsitsis Trap and its significance in international relations?
to be what they call a porcupine or a hedgehog. They know, of course, that they are not a threat to anybody else, but they want to, because they're an island, of course, and they're a good hundred kilometers plus off the coast of China, they want to give the impression to China that it would be very costly militarily for them to invade Taiwan. But that costs a lot of money for the Taiwanese.
They have a demographic that's declining, one of the lowest birth rates in the world. And that's, of course, a concern when your adversary is, you know, with India, the most populated region of the world. So it's... I don't think that it's going to be necessarily linked to this war in the Middle East. As I said, I think it's more...
connected, certainly this is how the Taiwanese see it, with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, because this is a clear attempt to acquire new territory. I mean, the U.S. is trying to, well, it's sometimes very unclear what the U.S. is trying to do in Iran, and they revise their own objectives daily.
Chapter 7: How is drone warfare changing the landscape of modern conflicts?
But if we are to take the other regimes at their word, You know, the Russians are trying to acquire territory in Ukraine in a way that would say the United States is not trying to acquire in Iran. But China is trying to acquire additional territory. It is trying to acquire Taiwan. How the war ends in Ukraine, I think, will have a bigger influence on China's calculations. Because if Russia...
manages to come away from its full-scale invasion of Ukraine with additional territory, and of course the people who live in that territory, we can't forget that, it will send a signal, it will certainly create a precedent where you can revise borders by force and suffer minimal consequences to the regime, assuming the Kremlin survives and Putin survives. That was never, of course, always clear.
We've seen, of course, it's now forgotten the Prigozhan Rebellion of June 2023, when it seemed during that momentous Saturday that the Kremlin was going to be overwhelmed by this invading force coming from the south. War is always dangerous for dictatorships. It's a point they often make because, you know, democracies generally have a certain consensus about when they go to war.
That's where Trump is a bit of an outlier, by the way. He didn't get kind of an electoral mandate of any kind for this war. And he certainly didn't go fighting in Iran with the majority of Americans behind him. Opinion polls demonstrate that. But for dictatorships, they're particularly dangerous, as the Argentinians discovered when they attacked the Malvinas, the Falkland Islands in 1982.
The regime collapsed when they suffered military defeat. Because When a dictatorship loses a war, it loses also that perception that it has a monopoly, of course, of power, which is an essential ingredient for any dictatorship. And that's why I think the Chinese would be cautious.
They will wait until, as I said, Taiwan looks extraordinarily vulnerable after they've been weakened by a thousand cuts. Russia made the gamble with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It's already suffering as a result, but the regime is still intact. But Donald Trump...
You know, he seems to have the only thing that's, you know, because I know he has a policy against diversity and equality and inclusion. The only thing that seems to be inclusive about him is the range of countries he's willing to consider applying pressure to and intimidating in one form or another.
So that is one of the reasons why, yes, we live in an unstable world, one in which, you know, none of the major parties, they've made it clear, adhere to international law, even to genuflect in this direction.
Yeah. So you mentioned Ukraine there, Donika. I mean, there are reports, and you're closer to this than I am, but that the drone warfare that the Ukrainians are utilizing is providing good results on the battlefield in terms of massive Russian casualties. But are we seeing a bit of a turn? What is the status at the moment in terms of this attritional war that we're seeing?
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