We

will come on to that, to your theory later on. What I'd like to do now, though, is to talk about the increasing alignment of what Elliot Cohen calls the coalition of the malevolent, namely China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. And what you've called two or three wannabes who might be joining that or have joined that group. Do they have anything in common? What naturally aligns them? There seem to be some things, of course, that drive them apart. Can it survive this axis?

Yeah, I agree with you. There are some things that drive them apart, but I'm rather impatient intellectually with those who want to say that they're not natural allies. Okay, they're unnatural allies, but they are, I mean, together. I mean, they are, and they do have some things in common. One is a resentment against the United States, but most importantly, the sense that democracy in general, and the United States in particular, are on irreversible decline. They point to our national debt that is mushrooming. They point to January 6th. They point to a Congress that will not deal with some of the fundamental issues in Washington. But they also point to the weakness of a coalition government in Berlin, of the turnover of prime ministers in UK, the French situation, some of the primary democracies. You'll notice that in Japan, the leading party lost its majority here a week ago. Their view and what brings them together is we're on irreversible decline, and there are opportunities for a much more authoritarian form of government basically to surmount the challenges today and to deliver a new world order. And let me give you let me give you one example here. On January 2nd of this year, the Russians launched a major offensive against the Ukrainians' energy infrastructure. They did so using Russian and North Korean missiles that incorporated Chinese technology. They had 170-odd drones from Iran, and they clobbered the Ukrainian energy infrastructure. Now, you can say they're not natural allies, but this is why I say it doesn't matter, because they do have some common ground, and that provides the opportunity for them. And certainly, a victory for one of them is a victory for all of them. In other words, a partnership without limits, such as was signed following the Chinese Olympics, a partnership without limits between Russia and China is quite simply linking the Asia-Pacific theater with the European Atlantic theater by the heartland being linked the way it is, and NATO declaring China as the decisive enabler of Russia's war in Ukraine. So there you see the nexus. We're going to have to deal with this reality. Can

you see a kind of Article 5 like we've got in NATO building up with this access of ill will, as Neil Ferguson calls it? China's buying 50% of Russia's oil and coal, 20% of its natural gas. Iran has got drone factories in Russia. We've now just heard that an entire brigade of North Koreans is going to be fighting in Ukraine. To what extent could they come together so much in such a way that an attack on one would be an attack on all? Well,

it could happen by accident. It could happen by design. It could happen simply by opportunism. China thinking that the democracies, NATO following the American election, maybe there's a slackening of support for Ukraine. Russia reinforced by the North Korean troops and aided by China. And Iran starts making advances there, and China thinks now is the time to move against Taiwan in a more aggressive way, maybe not a full-throated invasion, maybe a blockade of some sort, this sort of thing. So a victory for one is a victory for all and provides opportunities for what you just brought up. Remember that if a victory for one is a victory for all, a defeat for one is a defeat for all. So this is a double-edged sword here. And the question is, will the Americans stand firm? Will the democracies hold together? We had Jen Stoltenberg doing a masterful job for 10 years at NATO, but I don't see that sort of organization in the Pacific, at least not yet. You see the Quad, India, Japan, Australia, the United States. You see AUKUS, UK, Australia, the United States. Now you see both Japan and South Korea saying they are interested in pillar two of the AUKUS. Then you also see for the last two years running the NATO summits, having the attendance of the leaders of Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and New Zealand, Japan, Australia, and South Korea all showing up at the NATO summit. So you can see that threat is now registering across the democracies. Do we have the leadership now, such as you've examined during World War II, to actually turn our effort into one that is cohesive and say no further to the authoritarians? That is the question of the day. And

if you look at Taiwan, the incursions have trebled recently. They've come very close to the Taiwanese territorial waters in a very confronting way. They've got the disinformation campaign using influences and so on. China has the political will, the economy, the desire, certainly the ideological belief that Taiwan needs to be reincorporated into China. Has the Taiwan crisis actually begun, would you say?

Oh, no doubt. The Taiwan crisis has begun. Remember, going back to 1972 when Nixon opens to China, and certainly when President Carter makes his stand, we make it very clear at that time we were continuing to support Taiwan to include with military. And we have not changed anything here. But China has changed because of one man, and that's President Xi. And you have to understand President Xi as the sole decision maker there as you look at this pre-war activity that's going on right now with Taiwan. And there is 110 miles of very bad water spoken as a naval officer between China and the island of Formosa of Taiwan. So it's not a simple thing to say it would go into a combat situation. But if you look at President Xi, a Marxist economically, locking up his entrepreneurs, putting Chinese communist members on all his corporate boards of directors, this sort of thing, pouring money into state-owned enterprises. He is a Leninist politically, locking up his political foes. So he is hearing no opposition. And if you want to see what happens then, like Putin locked up all his opposition or shot them, and he's told in six weeks we can take over Ukraine. That didn't turn out so well. So the danger of a Leninist Marxist in charge, when you couple it to a nationalist foreign policy, where a very muscular China is treating all other nations like tribute states who owe tribute to the emperor, then you have the very potential for what you're talking about. And this could easily slip into another wartime situation. The Japanese prime minister last year said that the next Ukraine could be in the Indo-Pacific theater. And of course, he was talking about Taiwan. I think his very sharp remark is instructive for us. But

that would involve two nuclear powers coming face to face, i.e. China and the United States, in a way that didn't happen in Cold War I. I mean, couldn't this be worse than Cold War I? I

think it has the potential to be worse, more unpredictable, specifically, because we don't have the kind of almost informal, some formal, but mostly informal agreements in practice that we had within the Soviet Union. So, yes, it is very unpredictable. I would say, that it's increasingly precarious, as the Americans seem to be unable to get a degree of political unity in terms of budgetary efforts and overall military efforts, and to create the kind of bilateral relations with various countries in the absence of a NATO-like structure in the Pacific, that China may feel that now is the time to do it. And now, of course, it's up to that one man, President Xi. And

discussing the nuclear issue, the United States has about 1,500 warheads, Britain and France 250 to 300, Russia 1,500. But China, which is at the moment only got 500, wants to have 1,500 by 2035. One can understand under these circumstances why 67 percent of south koreans want them want to have nuclear weapon themselves um and uh shouldn't they be allowed to get them well i don't

want to speak to the internal korean situation they have a very legitimate concern with the threat across their border, and thus this nexus between Russia and North Korea, China, which is Korea's number one treaty ally, and how this is all coming together as a destabilizing force. China, since World War II, has expanded its military more than any other nation on Earth. Part of that is the massive expansion of its nuclear force that began just a couple years ago. And their lack of willingness to engage on arms control talks and their unwillingness to be transparent about what their goals are, has the potential to create a broader arms race. You bring up South Korea. That's not the only country that's looking toward nuclear weapons these days. And I think when you look back during the Cold War, you saw in our own way the Soviet Union and the United States both trying to restrain the spread of nuclear weapons. We no longer have, again, that equilibrium between us. And China appears to be unwilling to do anything if it could in some way stabilize the situation. For example, the Americans just this week have been talking to China about getting a hold of what Korea is doing with this expanding nuclear situation and sending troops to Russia to fight in Ukraine. And so far, that has been met with absolutely no indication of Chinese interest even in dealing with that. So if you extrapolate from that their level of interest in doing anything to stabilize the situation, whether it be with nuclear weapons or with a partnership without limits with Russia or vis-a the North Korean threat to peace in the Northwest Pacific, I don't see anything that they're going to do, and I believe it's because President Xi sees anything that disrupts the global order right now, the World War II, post-World War II global order, that the democracies led by the United States put in place, he sees this as opportunity for China. And

Putin, who you've described as straight out of Dostoevsky, has a, and also you said that Russia is turning into an economic colony, an extraction state for China. He seems to be very much the junior partner, doesn't he, compared to Xi. He's lost half a million killed and wounded over the last two and a half years in Ukraine. What does history tell us that Russia's likely to do?

Well, the real tragedy for Russia, and I do refer to Putin as a creature straight out of Dostoevsky, because if you read Russian literature, you think, my gosh, that sounds a lot like Putin. I mean, you see it in there. And he goes to bed every night with nightmares of Russia being surrounded. And perhaps he's drunk enough of his own whiskey that he actually believes this, that NATO is a threat. In fact, NATO is not a threat and has never been a threat to them. And the real tragedy right now is there's one country in the world that can best help the Russian people. And that's America. We're far enough away from Russia. We're not afraid of Russia. We don't fear them. We're strong enough to stand up to them. the tragedy is that under Putin, that opportunity has been lost for at least a generation, and perhaps permanently, because of the nature of this growing relationship with China, which is going to be a very difficult customer, as anyone who's dealt with China knows. And Russia is going to be drawn further away from Europe. They've already lost market share in the energy sector in Europe, and they're going to be tied to a very unhealthy partner. So the situation that Russia faces right now is trying to, with a very unsentimental view of their soldiers, continue to feed them into this meat grinder of Ukraine and try to come up with something that he can call a victory there out of the disaster that he's unfolded for the Ukrainian people, for the Russian people, and for the people of Europe. I don't know that he can do it if the democracies stand firm. If the democracies don't stand firm with Ukraine, then Putin has the potential to eke out something he could refer to as a victory and somehow hang on to power, diminished economically, now a subordinate to China and the Russian people continuing to see their economy and their society become downgraded in the future. With

regard to North Korea, only two treaty countries, it only has two connections, two treaty partners, China and Russia. We've read about these 3,000 or so troops going to Ukraine. It's got 50 nukes and it's working on a deliverable system that could actually nuke San Francisco. What do you see as the way in which one can deal with a country like that? Yeah,

it's a good question. I mean, we have soldiers on 24-7 alert in California and Alaska, manning interceptors. They are specifically designed to defend against an attack by North Korea. I think the way we have to look at it is twofold. One, who makes all the decisions in Korea, and that's the politically unaccountable Kim. So we're going to have to hold him accountable. In other words, he has to know that he will not survive any such attack that he initiates. That is the only way to convince him that this is not the right thing to do. with this, again, is allies. As you know, there has never been a peace treaty between the North and South Korea. We have a ceasefire, basically. The United Nations force is still there, and we should look to expand the number of nations in that force and make certain that we have an international effort to checkmate politically, economically, diplomatically, the North Korean efforts to throw their weight around. But I think ultimately we're going to have to make certain that Kim knows that he, his family, will not survive any such reckless behavior. And that, alongside an allied response, I think is the best way to check this kind of misbehavior, since China and Russia apparently have no interest in being responsible stakeholders in the international community and doing what they could, I think, easily do in terms of getting a handle on Kim. Whenever

you look for chaos in the world, sorry, certainly in the Middle East, you find Iran, don't you? In 1983, Iran declared war on America. It hasn't really let up terribly much since, has it? There are five major threats that you've identified that Iran uses against America and the West. They're slightly on the back foot now at the moment, aren't they? Is this a good moment to take advantage of that?

I think they are on the back foot there in Tehran right now, largely due to the Israeli military and secret services efforts, but also due to the Abraham Accords of a couple years ago. And I think that we're at a point where you say, okay, if they're on the back foot, and I think that is objectively the case, at least for the short term, what do we use this time to do? And I would give you three lines of effort. One of them would be you want to do everything you can right now to expand the Abraham Accords. And if that means feeding the people of Gaza so that in other Arab capitals they sense that they can expand on what the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates had the political courage to do here a couple years ago. And if you can expand on that, then you create a stronger regional opposition to the mayhem that Iran is trying to foment. The second point would be in Lebanon, you would want to support the Lebanese armed forces. For example, it's the only multi-confessional organization in Lebanon. So if we were to say with Lebanese Hezbollah being bloodied there in South Lebanon in the Israeli campaign, is there a way to come up with a solution where strengthening the Lebanese armed forces and saying only the Lebanese armed forces will be found south of the Latani River, start restoring Lebanese sovereignty over their country that has been basically lost to the Iranian-supported Lebanese Hezbollah. So there may be an opportunity there. That would be a second opportunity. The third one is to start a process for a two-state solution in Palestine. Now, I hear all the problems to doing that. I just don't see the alternative to a two-state solution. So even if it's going to be a 10- or 15-year process, start now. put technocrats from Egypt and Jordan, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Kuwait, in charge of four ministries in Gaza. The first would be security, to get an international security force in there, mostly Arab probably. It would be a security ministry with the understanding they will never have an army, they will have a heavy police force, but no army. You would want to have a ministry of health, a ministry of education, so you raise children without this ideological hatred of everybody else in the world. And you would want a ministry of commerce. Technocrats under the king of Jordan, with the promise to the king of Jordan that none of the Palestinians will get Jordanian citizenship. That would destroy the Hashemite kingdom. But with international support, have the king of Jordan running the technocrats. And for 10 or 15 years put in a rail system that links the West Bank to Gaza so that they're linked up. Hamas, PIJ have no role in the future after what they did in October a year ago and make darn certain that the international community stands with the King of Jordan so that what he can do is create a new future for the Palestinian people. So I think three prongs, Lebanon, restore the Lebanese armed forces in sovereignty south of Latani, and perhaps in part of Beirut, certainly expand the Abraham Accords as much as you can, using whatever efforts it takes to include humanitarian efforts in Gaza, and then create a process, a 10-year process, 15-year process, to a two-state solution. Back over to you. Well,

at least that is a sort of practical series of suggestions. I want to look at those five threats that I mentioned earlier that you've identified and how each of these can be dealt with. In part, actually, you've answered this question, but the first is cyber. The second is the maritime threat, especially in the Straits of Hormuz and with regard to oil. Ballistic missiles against Israel, which of course we've seen recently. The nuclear problem, how close they are, how many months away they might be from getting a nuclear weapon. I think you've called Israel a one-bomb country. It doesn't require too much in the way of nuclear to destroy Israel. And then, of course, all their various proxies, like the Republican Guards, the Houthis, the Hamas, Hezbollah, various militias in Iraq and Syria and so on. Do you see a way of dealing with all of these separately, or do they have to all be dealt with together?

Well, I think you have to do both. You have to deal with them as a group, as a threat, a combined threat. But you also have to deal with each of the individual threats as you try to neuter them. I think that however you do this, it takes the widest possible international organization to do it. Again, allies, allies, allies. And the point I'm making is that if cyber is a threat, and I think it is, I would liken it to Iranians juggling light bulbs filled with nitroglycerin. They don't know what they're doing. And one of these days, they're going to drop one, and it's going to cause havoc somewhere, and you're going to see many nations now having to deal with the outcome. So you can't deal with something like that that sees no borders without having an international group associated against them. And this also involves the punishment of nations that support them, economic punishment, this sort of thing, as this threat grows. For example, the maritime threat that they are employing their Houthi proxies to carry out down in Yemen against the Red Sea route. It's interesting that we have now identified the Russians as helping identify ships in order for the Houthis to target them. In other words, you see this connection again of Iran and Russia playing out there. So it's going to be something where Russia comes under even more sanctions, I think, as we continue to isolate them. And sanctions either get weaker or stronger. They never stay in a stable way. So we're going to have to always be tightening the sanctions on those who support Iran, but do so intelligently, not with a meat axe, but with a scalpel to make sure we're causing maximum damage with least harm to borderline states, to states that are not pro-Iran, but have certain economic interests there because of the cheap oil, this sort of thing. We've got to figure this out. And it's hard and it's complex, but it's going to take an international consortium to blunt the five threats that you just outlined.