Transcript: Are we sleepwalking into a third world war?

This is an audio transcript of The Rachman Review podcast episode: 'Are we sleepwalking into a third world war?'

Gideon Rachman

Hello, and welcome to The Rachman Review. I'm Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times.

This week's podcast is about the rise in conflict around the world and the risk of a third world war. My guest is . . . Well, actually, I'm the guest. This week I'm going to walk around the desk to the other side of the microphone and be interviewed by my friend and colleague Alec Russell, who's the FT's foreign editor, about my new book, which is out in Britain this week. It's called War is Interested in You: The Breakdown of International Order and the Threat of World War III. Speculation about a third world war is growing, but is all this talk just hype and hysteria or is there a real danger?

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Alec Russell

What's your understanding of the nature of the relationship between President Trump and President Putin?

Volodymyr Zelenskyy

I think President Trump's such man that he speaks about it, I mean, openly and loudly, that he loves such people and he respects such people.

Alec Russell

So that was President Zelenskyy of Ukraine speaking to me, Alec Russell, here in London just last week.

Gideon, this month we have seen a sharp and dangerous deterioration in Ukraine's relationship with the Trump administration, and as your book makes clear, the Ukraine war has been fundamental to the breakdown of the old global order and the rising risk of a wider war.

You start your book at a very interesting juncture for the west, 'cause you were at the Munich Security Conference of February 2022, just a few days before the outbreak of the war. Just tell us why was that such a significant moment for you, and indeed, for the world?

Gideon Rachman

Well, it was certainly one of the most memorable weekends of my journalistic career because it was a very strange atmosphere. The western intelligence services and governments had come to the growing conviction over the previous two or three months that Putin was indeed poised to invade Ukraine. And unusually for intelligence services, they decided to publicise this because they thought it might be one way of trying to sort of drive him off what he was about to do.

So you had the west briefing very energetically at the Munich Security Conference, and by this I mean the Americans and the British primarily, that, you know, war is about to break out. And you had President Zelenskyy of Ukraine in the hotel making a speech and actually being asked, you know, is it wise for you to even be here with Russian tanks sort of circling Ukraine?

And in the same hotel you had vice-president Harris of the US, the leaders of Germany, Britain, various intelligence chiefs, generals, even some Russians still at that point. So it was a very strange atmosphere, partly because even at that juncture, some of the Europeans, even some of the Ukrainians, were not convinced.

So I recount in the book meeting a friend actually, a guy called Markus Ederer, who was the EU's ambassador to Moscow and just off the plane. So I said to him, you know, Markus, what do you think? You know, he'd been seeing all the senior Russians and he said, they're in a very, very weird mood, and some of them look like they're in hostage videos when they talk to you, but I don't think they'll do it because it doesn't make any sense.

And even some of the Ukrainians said to me, can you stop, like, talking about us being about to be invaded because it's gonna destroy the economy. Putin won't have to invade. In a couple of weeks there'll be nothing left. And I said, well, I'm sorry, this is what I hear. And indeed, there was, on the other hand, this absolute certainty from, say, the Americans.

I remember seeing briefly vice-president Harris and she said, Putin has already made the decision to invade, and we're not giving up, but we're now in the position of trying to stop a decision that's already been made, to reverse a decision that's already been made, and that's gonna be difficult. And she was right, because four days later, the Russians did indeed make their dash for Kyiv.

Alec Russell

I mean, if the Americans and other intelligence services were so certain that this was gonna happen, was there nothing more they could have done to stop it?

Gideon Rachman

Well, you know, the Russians were denying up to the last point that they were gonna do this. So they sent sort of emergency missions. You know, they sent Bill Burns, who was a senior figure in the Biden administration, the director of the CIA, to Moscow. They tried to talk the Russians off the path they were on. They tried to publicise it and create a kind of world backlash. But I think in retrospect, Putin had been on this course for quite some time, and one of the things that really started to sound alarm bells even before the troop movements could be viewed on satellite pictures and so on, was when Putin published an essay in July 2021, setting out really the case for invading Ukraine. And they thought, wow, you know, this is really getting pretty serious.

Alec Russell

As you know, Gideon, over years of covering the world and global affairs, things are suddenly incredibly clear after the event, aren't they? What things mean. And in your book, you raise the really quite frightening prospect of a third world war. Presumably there are some people who turn to you when they hear that you're writing about the threat of a wider war, and they say, come on, that's going a bit far, isn't it?

Gideon Rachman

Sure. And I wondered whether it was going a bit far. In fact, I even had a debate with my publisher, you know, should one put that on the cover, or will I look like I'm hysterical?

Alec Russell

And they said it doesn't matter 'cause it'll sell.

Gideon Rachman

Well, that certainly, but I felt better about it as a claim or as something to put on a book cover or to talk about when I read what world leaders are saying, 'cause they talk about it all the time in a way that I don't think has necessarily registered with the public.

But if you look at Donald Trump's campaign for the presidency last time around, one of his central themes was we are on the brink of World War III. Now, OK, Trump is Trump. He speaks in hyperbolic language, but he's not alone in doing this. Zelenskyy, although he makes a different argument as to how to avert World War III, has said many times that if we don't stop Putin, there will be a third world war.

Mark Rutte, the secretary-general of Nato, has said we must prepare for the kind of wars that our grandparents, our great-grandparents, fought. Not too ambiguous there. And even Xi Jinping of China, in more slightly metaphorical language, talks about it all the time because one of his favourite talking points is we must avoid Thucydides' Trap, which is a theory that the rising power, China, inevitably clashes with the established great power, the United States.

But what he doesn't often say is that China's own military build-up is what is contributing to this concern that there is going to be a clash, not just in Europe, but in the Pacific between the Chinese and the Americans over who exercises hegemony there. And of course, we have the war in the Middle East, which is not the bloodiest war in the Middle East. We've seen worse. But it's certainly the most widespread because it's now sucked in the UAE, Saudi Arabia; countries that seemed like safe havens are now no longer safe havens. So there's clearly an argument, an open discussion about whether we're heading for a third world war. I still cling to the idea that actually I don't think it'll end that badly, but it could.

Alec Russell

So in the scenario of a third world war that strategists in a number of countries are really having to think about now, is that a scenario whereby these three different theatres or potential theatres of war, namely Ukraine, Russia, the Middle East and Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, is the scenario of a third world war that these all come together as part of the same war? Or is it just that one of these could just get bigger and suck more and more countries in until it becomes a de facto third world war?

Gideon Rachman

Well, that is a very good question, and I think it is interesting when world leaders chuck around the phrase third world war, and as I say, they do. They don't really generally define their terms. They're not academics. But if I had to sort of boil it down, I'd say there would . . . a world war, but generally have two characteristics.

The first is that it would involve the world's most powerful countries directly fighting each other, as they did in World War I and World War II. And the second would be that it's not just a single region. It's not just Europe. It's not just Asia that these conflicts overlap and in some ways become a single conflict.

And so it was interesting, for example, when Zelenskyy used the third world war phrase, it was in the context of North Korean troops arriving, you know, to fight Ukrainians because they'd been called up by the Russians, and then suddenly you think, oh, you know, this is two conflicts merging. You can see elements of that in the Iran war where, although Trump is very keen to downplay it, the Russians are widely believed to be giving the Iranians intelligence to target American bases in the region.

So I guess those would be the two key elements, but these things are ambiguous. You know, I mean, if you think about it, you know, here in Britain and in Germany, we would say, well, the second world war clearly started in 1939 with the German invasion of Poland. But if you're Chinese, you would say, actually, it began earlier with the Japanese attack on China. If you're American, you'd say it begins later with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. So it's not cut and dried as to when these things begin and end.

Alec Russell

So if we just return briefly to the Russia-Ukraine war, one of the key issues for Ukraine's western allies and partners and America in particular has been the fear of getting sucked into a war with Russia, which of course then raises the hideous spectre of nuclear conflict.

Tell us a little bit about that period in, I think it was in late 2022, which you write about in your book, when this scenario suddenly started to loom very prominently in the minds of people in the Biden administration and elsewhere.

Gideon Rachman

Yeah, I mean, I think that it was always on the minds of the Biden administration, and it was in the intention of Putin that it should be on the minds of the Biden administration. He begins the war with a more or less explicit threat to go nuclear if the west intervenes. And Biden says on the record, I will help Ukraine, but I won't get involved in World War III. So again, you have this World War III talk really right there from the beginning. And it is the case that, you know, I'd spoken to them at the time and then subsequently if you spoke to the Biden team, they were very conscious of the risk of getting into a direct conflict with Russia.

And again, in the book, I talk about a discussion at that Munich Security Conference with a guy called Tom Wright, who was a key adviser to Jake Sullivan, who was Biden's national security adviser. And Tom was already turning over in his mind the risks that, you know, what if, for example, Russian planes crossed into Poland chasing Ukrainian planes, and then the Poles shoot them down, and then we'd be in a conflict between Nato and Russia. So that was very much on their minds.

But then there was this particular incident in October 2022 when the Americans begin to think that the Russians are maybe laying the ground to use nuclear weapons, 'cause the Russians at that point were doing very badly. They had been not just driven back from Kyiv, but they'd lost Kherson, they'd lost Kharkiv. And the Americans, I think, had a specific piece of intelligence saying that if the Russians began to collapse militarily, there was a 50/50 chance that they would use a nuclear weapon. And they did think about that seriously enough to actually ring the Russians and threaten, I think, that's not absolute confirmation, but to threaten to get involved directly in the war in conventional weapons if the Russians used a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine.

In fact, it's a story I've tried to follow on this podcast. I interviewed Lloyd Austin, who was then the defence secretary, and asked him about this, and he, I think, if you listen to that podcast, he doesn't deny that he did that. He just says it was a very serious conversation. So I think that was really a kind of mini-Cuban missile crisis going on right there.

Alec Russell

When you talk about 2022 and that whole period, I guess one, it reminds us that this war's been going on for nearly five years now. And if there's a persistent theme to the west's response, certainly in the eyes of many Ukrainians, it's that the west has been consistently too cautious and has sort of lacked clarity and conviction, and has always been making decisions a little bit too late, and so on.

And I suppose two people who certainly under the Biden administration embodied really the west policy were the US secretary of state Tony Blinken and the national security adviser Jake Sullivan. How do you think they will be viewed in history? 'Cause you write in your book about meeting Jake Sullivan years ago, and he's a bright young thing, but how is history going to judge them for their role in steering the world?

Gideon Rachman

Yeah, I mean, key question, because as you say, the Ukrainians do feel quite bitter about it. I mean, I've had Ukrainians say to me, you know, they would always give us just enough not to be defeated but never enough to win, because they were overly frightened of Russian clashes and of Russia going nuclear.

And it is certainly the case that the west was very cautious in the beginning, and there were certain forms of weaponry which we didn't give them because we were scared it would trigger escalation, whether that was long-range missiles or tanks or fighter planes, and eventually all those things were supplied to Ukraine, and it didn't trigger this direct clash between the US and Russia.

And I think that, you know, talking to the Biden team for the book afterwards, they are a bit defensive about it, but I have some sympathy with them because they were learning by doing. You know, this was a new situation. You know, maybe they were too cautious. But if you're worried about a nuclear war, I think it's probably right to be cautious.

You know, and they believed that it was incredibly important to help Ukraine, and Sullivan says, you know, and we did throughout this period, but they were constantly having to balance their primary responsibility to their own people, to their electorate. And also one has to remember this was a period, and still is a period, where America was very bruised by wars that had gone wrong, forever wars.

The Ukraine war is preceded by the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, which is probably the first sort of big foreign policy disaster of the Biden years. Although again, the people in the book will say, well, we messed it up, but it was ultimately the right decision. But that was the immediate backdrop to Putin moving into Ukraine. So there was this sort of slightly war-weary group that we're having to make these decisions.

Alec Russell

The second sphere of conflict that the west has grappled with in recent years, and indeed on some occasions inflamed, is of course the Middle East. The recent history of that might trouble American policymakers more when they look back at how they handled, for example, America's great ally, Israel. You know, did they do enough to rein Israel in? And I think most people would probably look and say, I don't think they did.

Gideon Rachman

No, absolutely not. I mean, again, talking to them at the time and subsequently, what is interesting is that trying to prevent Israel committing mass atrocities or war crimes, whatever term you wanna use, some would say genocide in Gaza, was one concern for them, but it was only one concern.

Firstly, I think you have to accept that on October 7 and immediately afterwards, there was a feeling, you know, a shared feeling of horror at what had just happened to Israel and an understanding that they would have to retaliate. Although, interestingly, arguments between the Biden administration and Netanyahu over how much to retaliate broke out immediately because the Israelis said, well, we're gonna stop all food going into Gaza. And the Americans said, well, Biden cannot come to Israel until you agree not to do that. So that's like a couple of days afterwards. And that becomes a theme.

But the Americans have other concerns. Firstly, they're trying to restrain the Israelis from starting a wider war. They're trying to stop them from going into Lebanon. They're trying to stop them from going after Iran, and that fits into this general war weariness picture I was talking about. And of course, American domestic politics weighs very heavily. And the politics now look like they antagonised the Democratic left and lost all of that, but they were also worried about the pro-Israel vote in America, and that did weigh quite heavily, and donors, all of that, ahead of an election.

And I think in retrospect, some will be franker about mishandling it than others, like Philip Gordon, who was Kamala Harris's national security adviser. You know, there's a quote from him in the book where he says, look, the Israelis kept saying, you know, we'll finish this in two weeks. We need another two weeks. We need another two weeks. And essentially, he says, we got played. And he said, you know, if you had said to us at the beginning that we will support Israel through thick and thin and they'll kill X thousand people, would we have signed up for that? And he just says, I would hope not, which is an odd way of putting it.

Alec Russell

Yeah. Of course, in the closing months of the Biden administration, when Donald Trump, then campaigning to be president, campaigning to have a second term, was the loudest critic of the administration and saying, I will bring peace. I will bring peace to Ukraine. I will resolve the war in the Middle East, and I will be the president of peace. And 18 months after he took office again, the war in Ukraine is utterly unresolved. Sure. And we have this war in Iran. Your book is about wider war, but I mean, there's a war raging at the moment between America, Israel and Iran. Can you see any scenario for it being brought to a close?

Gideon Rachman

At some point, sure. But, I mean, Trump's transformation from peacemaker to warmaker is really remarkable. You know, his whole shtick in the campaign first against Biden and then against Harris was, these guys are gonna take you into World War III. They're doing far too much to help Ukraine. They're going to, you know, start a war elsewhere. They're crazy warmongers. And as we remember, 'cause it was only last year, he spent a lot of 2025, his first year in office, campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize, saying, you know, I'm the great peacemaker, I've settled 11 wars, and you know, give me this Nobel Peace Prize. And then suddenly he becomes a warmonger.

But I think actually that was also always there, 'cause at the same time as campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize, he is threatening to annex Greenland and indeed preparing to attack Venezuela. And that attack in early part of this year and its success I think then leads him to the folly of the attack on Iran because he, I think, becomes sort of drunk on that victory, thinks, wow, I've got this incredible tool, the US military, which can win these wars in a day.

And Netanyahu shows up in the Oval Office two or three weeks before and says, look, we can do this again. Iran is tottering. We could just push it over, and you've got another great victory. And although there were advisers around Trump who said, might be a bit more complicated than that, Trump dismissed it.

And partly he dismissed it because they had actually attacked Iran in July 2025, June, July 2025, and Iran had really not reacted. So he just thought, well, they won't react again. But this time the psychology is different because the Israelis start by assassinating the entire leadership of Iran, at which point the Iranians really know they've got nothing left to lose. You know, there's no point in trying to appease these guys. So they then do things like close the Strait of Hormuz, attack American bases around the region, and maybe even, to their own surprise, it's more effective than everyone thought it was going to be. And America finds, as I'm afraid Putin found in Ukraine, I'm afraid I don't like making the comparison, but I think there are some comparisons in this belief both from Trump and Putin that they could win this war against a much weaker opponent very quickly.

And Trump has found actually it's not that easy.

Alec Russell

So this brings me to the third potential arena of conflict, namely China and Taiwan, which, I mean, if there were to be a war between China and America over Taiwan, that would be yet more consequential for the world and the global economy than Russia, Ukraine and the war with Iran. You talked about how both Putin and Trump had miscalculated about taking on a seemingly less well-prepared and more . . . Well, I guess, a sort of minuscule foe. Do you think that could have been weighing on Xi Jinping's mind? Do we have any sense of what the current thinking is in Beijing over Taiwan?

Gideon Rachman

Not much, and I think for a reason that is a bit analogous to Putin and Trump, in that these are all, in different ways, very centralised strongman regimes, and the decision to attack Ukraine is Putin's decision essentially.

The decision to go after Iran was essentially Trump's decision because of the authority that both these leaders have within their system, and I think China under Xi is pretty similar. In the end, it's Xi's call. I don't know what the intentions are, but you can look at Chinese actions, and China clearly is giving itself everything it might need to attack Taiwan or to blockade it, and it is upping the heat on Taiwan.

You know, the incursions into Taiwan's air defence identification zone, the rehearsals for invasion are becoming more intense. Whether Xi looks at the problems that the US is having, that Russia is having, and thinks, maybe I won't go there, that's one possibility. He will, of course, also be looking at Trump's own rhetoric on Taiwan because one of the things that Biden did several times was to say, if China attacks Taiwan, America will defend it, which was actually a much stronger statement than previous American presidents had made.

In the past, they've gone for what they call strategic ambiguity, not really saying. Trump has sort of gone back to that and has at times implied, Well, you know, why would we do this? And I sympathise with that. If it's the third world war, you know, much as I'm an admirer of Taiwan, I think it's a great place and an exemplar of democracy in east Asia, you would think quite hard before going to war with China over that.

But of course, we're talking about deterrence. And once you start saying, well, we won't defend Taiwan, then the risk of an attack possibly rises.

Alec Russell

Yes. Well, actually, in your book, you reflect back on the countdown to the first world war and the second world war, and the miscalculations that first the Kaiser and his generals and then Hitler, and I suppose his generals, made about deterrence and vows to defend countries and so on. So those are not good analogies for Beijing if it decides to take that big step, or for Russia.

Gideon Rachman

Yeah. Or indeed for Russia. To think about, well, how do great global conflicts break out? Because I think one of the interesting things is you and I, we talk to people who make these decisions in a way, thank goodness we don't have to.

I'm not sure why one would want a job like that, although I must guess it's exciting at some level. But they often have a sort of a theory about how to prevent war, which is a sort of semi-articulated. There's thinking behind it, as in, we must be tough, or we mustn't be tough, or we mustn't provoke. But they're behind those, there are various ideas, and I think one of the things that's unsettling about Trump is I think he's drawn very much to the spheres of influence theory of how to keep peace, and it's reflected in the US national security strategy and just in the way Trump talks. And that theory says, look, just accept that great powers are great powers, and they are going to demand to dominate their regions. And the way to avoid war is to let them dominate their regions. Just accept that.

And so the US is saying, we are gonna dominate the western hemisphere. The implication is that Russia should be granted a sphere of influence. Quite how far that would go, one doesn't know, but it's kind of inevitable. They're a big country. They're gonna dominate their region. And that maybe China should be granted its own sphere, and that if everybody respects everyone else's sphere, it'll be OK.

The difficulty with that is, as I implied, that these spheres are ambiguous. You know, how far does Russia's sphere go? Are we saying Ukraine, half of Ukraine, or maybe, you know, they could start reclaiming influence over the whole of eastern Europe, which they've asked for incidentally. They've said, you know, we want the withdrawal of all Nato troops from the countries of the former Warsaw Pact. You know, at what point do we say, no, we can't go that far?

And similarly, when you look at the China-Taiwan question, Trump may think it makes no sense to defend Taiwan. On the other hand, Taiwan produces 90 per cent of the world's most advanced semiconductors. Would the US really accept that capability being in the hands of the People's Republic of China? I don't think so. So this sphere of influence thing I don't think really works as a theory of peace, which means one falls back on deterrence. But deterrence can break down as it did in 1939 and 1914.

Alec Russell

If that is the case, and so if as a result, the best scenario for a maintenance of some form of global order and a commitment to peace over much of the world, that depends on America resuming its responsibilities again, doesn't it?

Gideon Rachman

Yeah, or some kind of alternative structure, but it's hard to think of one that doesn't at the moment rely on America. And you've got to think that basically the US-led alliance system has underpinned the global security order really since the late 1940s and the formation of Nato, and then the treaties that the US signed with Japan and South Korea and so on.

And the US is, to use the kind of phrase, has become the world's policeman. And by and large, that did keep the peace in the cold war. At least it prevented direct conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. And since the end of the cold war, it has also operated, and I think also underpinned by the new calculation of the fear of nuclear war.

And maybe that will be enough still that great powers now understand in a way they didn't perhaps in 1914, I think they did in 1939, the dangers of direct conflict between them and how catastrophic that could be. So maybe that will see us through again. But I think the danger is that, firstly, nuclear weapons are proving to be slightly less of a deterrent than we thought in some ways.

But I think the bigger problem is that Trump keeps undermining the idea that he would necessarily defend Nato countries. And, you know, the same with Japan, the same with South Korea. Anybody who looks at the way Donald Trump behaves would say, well, you know, really? Would he definitely defend South Korea? Definitely defend, you know, given his relationship with the North, or definitely defend Japan? And once that doubt opens up, then you get into a situation a bit like in 1914 or 1939, where the Germans in 1914 knew that Britain had guaranteed Belgian neutrality, but thought, hell, that treaty was signed in 1839. There's no way they'll actually enforce it. It's a scrap of paper, was how the German foreign minister referred to it.

And, you know, we now think about the outbreak of that war as kind of inevitable. But even in the last week before the war broke out, Hitler did not believe that the British and the French would defend Poland, even though they had signed a defence guarantee for Poland some months earlier. And it's those kinds of miscalculations where people say, well, there is this treaty, but I don't believe they'll ever actually do something. That's when deterrence breaks down and wars break out.

Alec Russell

I mean, certainly if you're Vladimir Putin right now, and you're looking at the positions the Trump administration has taken in the last 10 days vis-à-vis Ukraine, you're thinking, well, the west is a bit of a paper tiger or whatever, aren't you?

Gideon Rachman

Completely. And you're thinking, you know, if you're Putin, you know, my early career began with this, what he calls geopolitical catastrophe of the collapse of the Soviet Empire. I was in East Germany at the time, and I've had to live with that humiliation and so on. How sweet at the end of my career to reverse all that.

But of course, Russia is formidable, but it's also, as you say, been fighting now the Ukrainians for longer than they fought the Nazis in the second world war, and they still haven't got out of the Donbas. So there is an argument that Russia itself is not that formidable. But, you know, you speak to some people at Nato, well, they say, yeah, but they've still got this army of over a million people. They've got the world's largest nuclear arsenal, and we in Europe cannot really fight without American capabilities, and Putin may know that.

Alec Russell

I mean, the nuclear arsenal is probably why Zelenskyy has little chance of getting one of his great wishes, which is to have access to Starlink in the skies over Russia. He likes to say that if he had that, he'd take out all the Russian missile launches in a couple of weeks and the war would be over.

Gideon Rachman

Yeah. Oddly enough, they have actually attacked Russia's strategic nuclear bombers. There was an operation called Operation Spider's Web, where the Ukrainians used drones and took a lot of those out, and that is one of these examples of the slight erosion of nuclear deterrence, 'cause according to Russian nuclear doctrine, that would've justified a nuclear response from Russia, and they didn't respond nuke. But these uncertainties, though, are also dangerous because, you know, we're in a world where we think, well, is that the red line or isn't it? And that is an uncertain world.

Alec Russell

Well, that takes you to the heart of the Trump administration, because I remember speaking to a man called Richard Grenell, who is one of Trump's aides and erstwhile confidants, maybe he's still a confidant. And he said, we believe that predictability is a terrible thing, which is the most extraordinary thing to say really when you think of what you're saying about red lines.

Gideon Rachman

Yeah. Well, I suppose then he's resurrecting yet another theory, the madman theory, that people aren't gonna attack you if they think you're crazy. And Trump's certainly doing, you know, doing his best to convince people that he's crazy. But I think when it comes to deterrence, it is meant to work on the principle that people really believe that you will follow through on your commitments, your alliance commitments. If they stop believing that, the deterrent goes.

But I mean, we've talked a lot about Zelenskyy. You've seen him much more recently than I have. Can I revert to my normal role of interviewer and ask you a question? When you saw him in London, what was his mood? Did you get the impression he thinks there's a danger that he's gonna be sold out and this is the endgame?

Alec Russell

So I saw him with a colleague last Wednesday night, and he'd just spent the day in Britain. He'd seen the King, he'd seen the new-ish Prime Minister Andy Burnham, and spoken to British generals and so on. This was, of course, at the end of a terrible few days for Ukraine and for him as Trump had unilaterally waved aside sanctions on Putin over the sale of oil.

He'd been pressuring Zelenskyy to have a ceasefire and stop hitting Russian refineries and so on, and there was more that was unfolding. And I think Zelenskyy thought, enough equivocating. Everyone's been telling me for several years that the best thing to do with Trump is to praise him, to flatter him, to thank him and where's it got me right now? I've had a ceasefire for three days. I haven't been bombing Russian oil refineries, and in those three days, the Russian drones and missiles have kept coming in and I don't even have the air defences to ward them off. I'm done with this. And he spoke his mind. It was truly remarkable. I wasn't expecting him to be half as outspoken, but he just, I think, thought, Enough.

Gideon Rachman

Do you think he's made a mistake?

Alec Russell

So the calculation that they seem to be making is that it's almost trying to reach over Trump's head in a way, and Zelenskyy kept going back to this idea that he thinks that the American people will not be happy to see senior people in the Trump administration doing business deals with Vladimir Putin's regime, even as they are bombarding Ukraine and presiding over this terrible war.

I think you could argue that he didn't have much of a choice because there's also the issue of his domestic audience. He's having to appeal to his domestic audience at the same time as try and handle his western allies and partners. Certainly, there are plenty of people in Brussels who thought it was a mistake and whose heads were in their hands when they woke up the next morning. Grenell said, reading on the FT's website, what Zelenskyy has said, and they felt this really was a miscalculation.

Gideon Rachman

Yeah. Well, I suppose it's part of the kind of fascination of the jobs that we both do that you are seeing history unfold and you're seeing the actors make their decisions as they go. And that was really what I've been trying to do in the book.

I mean, is trying to do like two things simultaneously, give a sense of as these events unfold, why did people make the decisions they made? You know, and not just the Americans, but also the Russians, the Chinese, the Europeans and how all these things interact. Precisely what we're talking about. Zelenskyy decides, I've had enough of this. What does that mean and how does that go down in Washington? How does that go down in Russia? All of that. But then the other thing I've tried to do is take a couple of steps back and say, well, what are the bigger forces driving all of this? Why are we in this situation, and how's it all gonna turn out?

Alec Russell

Well, Gideon, we look forward to the sequel. It will be the return of the old world order and how the west did a U-turn and came back from the threat of World War III. Thank you very much.

Gideon Rachman

Thank you.

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Alec Russell

That was Gideon Rachman, host of The Rachman Review and author of a new book, War is Interested in You, which is out this week. Gideon will be back in his normal role as host of this podcast next week.