Transcript: Global threats — contrasting views in Europe, Asia and the Pacific

This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: ‘Global threats — contrasting views in Europe, Asia and the Pacific’

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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 differences between how Europeans, Indians and others in the Indo-Pacific see the world’s problems. My guest is Michael Fullilove, the director of the Lowy Institute here in Sydney, Australia, where I’ve been spending the last month. Michael’s just back from two of the biggest security forums in the world: the Raisina Dialogue in Delhi and the Munich security forum in Germany. As a result, he’s been fully exposed to the very different ways in which Indians and Europeans understand global threats. So can these clashing views ever be reconciled?

S Jaishankar
You know, what’s happened today with Russia is essentially, a lot of doors have been shut to Russia and the west. OK, we know the reasons why. Russia is turning more to Asia, or to parts of the world which are not west. Now, I think it makes sense to give Russia multiple options.

Gideon Rachman
That was India’s foreign minister S Jaishankar, speaking at the recent Raisina Dialogue in Delhi and making it clear that India still takes a fairly indulgent attitude to Putin’s Russia. The Indians have pointedly not joined in western sanctions on Russia. That’s a very striking contrast with the mood in western Europe, as anyone who listened to last week’s podcast with Anne Applebaum will know. And yet there are common points in the global approach of India and the western democracies, most notably a shared concern about China. Jaishankar’s comments were made in a conversation with Michael Fullilove. So when Michael got back to Sydney, I started by asking him about the contrasting moods in Munich and Delhi.

Michael Fullilove
It was head-snappingly different and it was quite a shock really, to go from the dark, sombre energy in Munich to the tremendous policy bazaar that is the Raisina Dialogue. The positive chaos that you sense every time you go to India — the energy, the optimism, but also a lot of confidence in India’s approach to the world, a feeling that they’ve got the balance right, that they’ve got a new sort of flexible foreign policy and that India’s time is coming. So I felt in Munich, Europeans very down at mouth, a lot of solidarity and urgency still on Ukraine, but more coming from the margins of Europe or the smaller countries in Europe, I would say. Of course a lot of bad news from the battlefield in Ukraine — Zelenskyy looking tired, Russian nukes in space — a lot of negativity in Munich and a lot of positivity in New Delhi.

Gideon Rachman
And you were on stage on a panel with Jaishankar, the Indian foreign minister. He’s a brilliant presenter of India’s case. And yet making it to Europeans must be quite tough now because the Europeans are feeling pretty threatened. And here are the Indians saying, you know, we still need a good relationship with Russia. How difficult is that now? Or is India in such a strong position they can kind of get away with it?

Michael Fullilove
Well, I agree with you. I think Jaishankar is one of the smartest and most effective foreign ministers in the world because, you know, you and I encounter, we’re lucky enough to encounter lots of foreign ministers. Most of them are just getting through their day. They’re getting through their call sheet. Jaishankar has a worldview, and it’s based on studying history, thinking about India’s interests over the course of a lifetime. And he is prosecuting that worldview. So that’s why he’s so formidable an interlocutor. Not to say that one agrees with everything he says, but he cannot be ignored. And I think the Indians feel that their time has come, that on the Russian side, lots of Russians in Raisina, whereas none in Munich, I think.

Gideon Rachman
That must have been an interesting dynamic. I mean, where they just steering clear of the Europeans? Was there any fraternisation?

Michael Fullilove
I didn’t see any. I steered clear of them. They were sort of on their own panels. But yeah, a Russian presence along with a Ukrainian presence. And I think Jaishankar’s view is that it makes sense for India to keep the channels of communication open with Russia, because it means that Russia is not pushed into China’s embrace.

Gideon Rachman
So when Jaishankar presents it, he very much presents it as a pragmatic thing. Don’t push Russia into the arms of China is a key message. But I saw BJP’s spokesman, for example, in Munich, going a bit further and saying Russia is an old friend of India and we’re not gonna give up on that friendship. Do you hear that as well? I mean, if not from Jaishankar but from others.

Michael Fullilove
I asked Jaishankar whether there was an overconfidence about the relationship between Russia and China because Jaishankar’s view is that the Indian role can actually give Putin options other than Xi Jinping. And Jaishankar said to me that there’s a, you know, a long tradition of Russian statecraft. They won’t allow themselves to be dominated by one party. I’m not quite so convinced about that. I think that China’s economy is closing on America’s, even as Russia’s economy is in danger of being overtaken by Australia’s economy. I think Putin understands that in the long term, Russia will be the junior partner of China. So personally, I don’t share India’s confidence that there will be a Russia-China split.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah. I mean, I suppose one commonality, though, between India and Australia and the US and the thing that makes the relationship still very strong is the shared anxiety about China. So how closely do you think the traditional western alliance and the Indians can and are working together on China?

Michael Fullilove
I think that China might be the organising principle actually behind a lot of Indian foreign policy. We think about the swing towards the west. When India joined the Quad countries, these four highly capable like-minded countries — the United States, Japan, Australia and India — that’s seen in western capitals as a great advance that India as a member even though in the closed councils of the Quad, it’s often India that is not quite as forward-leaning on Quad matters as the other three countries. So I think that is a function of the fact that India is another giant next to China. I think the memories of the border dispute in 2020, in which I think 20 or so Indian servicemen lost their lives, are very strong. I thought China was a big theme in Raisina. For example, the Indian defence secretary called China a bully. Jaishankar himself pointed out that on the question of UN Security Council reform, which is a long-standing preoccupation of the Indians. Jaishankar, without naming China, said the biggest opposer of UN Security Council reform is a non-western country — meaning China.

Gideon Rachman
Which would be bitterly opposed to India ever joining, yeah?

Michael Fullilove
Yes. And he’s determined to preserve its equities on the Council. So I think that’s where there is commonality between the sort of the west and India — that both of us, in different ways, see very much the danger of an Asia that is dominated by China and wanting to preserve a balance of forces, including an active, forward-leaning India. But India sees the world very differently from the rest of us. And so we have to take India as it is, as a big emerging giant. We have to see where the commonalities with which we can work. I think we need to be more ambitious. I’d like Australia, which the Australia-India relationship has thickened very substantially in the last couple of years, but I’d like to see what more can we do on the economic front, encouraging more Australian investment in India and vice versa. More interoperability between the Australian and Indian militaries, more communication between our foreign services and our intelligence services. I think we need to do more with India while always understanding that they come at the world from a very different place from Australia’s.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah. And I mean, when the crisis really happens, I’ve had Indians say to me in terms, look, forget it. India will never get involved in a conflict over Taiwan. Whereas here in Australia, you know, the government’s very careful to remain ambiguous on that. But I think a lot of people in the security world assume that Australia probably would be involved. So that’s a pretty fundamental difference, isn’t it?

Michael Fullilove
Jaishankar asked me actually on the panel in Raisina. He asked me, Is Australia more of a western country or an Indo-Pacific country?

Gideon Rachman
He asked you? He became an interviewer?

Michael Fullilove
He asked me, yeah. And I said, look, we all have multiple identities, minister. You know, I’m a Tottenham Hotspur fan but I’m a big Australia cricket fan. I like the South Sydney Rabbitohs in rugby league. I went to Taylor Swift with my son a couple of days ago. We all have sort of multiple identities and Australia is both a western country and an Indo-Pacific country. But when it comes down to it, I think our membership of the west, our tradition, our history of making common cause with a global ally — first the Brits, first the United States — I think that’s a subterranean element in our foreign policy that is not gonna go away. And I think that differentiates us certainly from India, which sees itself as much more flexible. I think we can be flexible, but we are stitched in to the west through the alliance with the United State, the membership of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network. That element of our identity is not going anywhere.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah. And so coming back to Munich, which you had been to just before Delhi, I mean, you said there was this very gloomy mood. How much does that resonate here say if you’re sitting in the Australian security establishment? Do you feel, well, that’s really bad, but we’re a very long way from it. Or is it actually something that worries Australia too?

Michael Fullilove
Well, we know it worries Australia because Lowy Institute polling shows that Australians are very seized of the Ukraine issue. I think about 8 in 10 Australians, the last time we polled, are in favour of sanctions against Russia, military aid to Ukraine. So I think we understand that there’s a global balance. And if we get to a point where Russia can invade Ukraine and can pull off some sort of victory, then how long before it invades or threatens or coerces a Nato country? And you’d be crazy to think that those sorts of fissures in the international rules-based order don’t also have implications for Australia. Of course, they do. So I think those issues do matter to us. But I think whereas in Munich, China was almost not a factor. Wang Yi spoke, but it was not a well-attended session. And of course, naturally Europeans are focused on the near threat and that is Russia. I think here in Australia, as in India, China remains a very dominant sort of preoccupation.

Gideon Rachman
And one theory that you hear kind of doing the rounds in the security world is that the Russia and China threats, if we want to use that word, are sort of linked and that they’re almost geographically linked, because this is one territorial bloc. They have common border and that’s another reason why even sitting in the Indo-Pacific you may have more of your eyes on China, but in some ways this is all part of the same picture. Is that generally accepted? What do you think?

Michael Fullilove
I don’t know if I’d put it quite that strongly, but remember that Australia has always seen itself as a country with global interests. We have never defined our interests as only being in the south Pacific or only extending to south-east Asia. That’s why there are Australians scattered in cemeteries across the Middle East, across western Europe, all throughout Pacific and south-east Asia. Australia has always seen itself as a country with global interests, if not global capacities. I wouldn’t say that there’s one theatre, but there is a global game. And the different elements — Russia’s behaviour, China’s behaviour — are connected to each other, they feed into each other. China was no doubt discomforted, you know, a year or so ago when it looked like Putin was on the back foot, when Prigozhin was marching on Moscow, when it felt like the west was having its moment, that the connections between like-minded democracies were thickening. I think that would have caused a lot of anxiety in Beijing, whereas when Putin is in a stronger position, I think the connections between these two authoritarian states are significant.

Gideon Rachman
So the other place you’ve been travelling a lot — very exhausting given the distances from Australia — you’ve been to the US. How concerned are Australians by a sense that everything may be overturned if Trump wins?

Michael Fullilove
Yeah, I’ve been twice to the United States in the last couple of months. It is a crazy idea, I think, for those of us in the rest of the west, that there is an even-money chance that Donald Trump will return to the White House, but I think that’s the case. And certainly, you don’t have to go to the United States. At Munich as well there was a clear sense that Trump is looking stronger and that Biden is looking weaker and older, and that has to be a source of great anxiety because of the implications of having someone who would be hell-bent on exacting revenge on his opponents, who said in the lead up to Munich that if a delinquent Nato state were invaded, that not only would he do nothing, but more or less he’d say, you know, have your way with him, he would say to Vladimir Putin. So the stakes are high.

The positive argument I would put is this: that the economy in the United States is strong. It’s roaring back, and that you think at some point Biden starts to get some credit for that, that presidents tend to get re-elected, that surely the troubles that Trump is up against, the days that he’s gonna have to spend in courtrooms in Manhattan over the next couple of months when he should be out campaigning, surely these things start to come into play.

I think the other thing I would say as an historian is that the presidency is a team sport, and it’s natural that we focus on the frailties and the strengths of the individuals at the centre, and hence we keep coming back to Biden. But of course, when we think about the performance of administrations, we look at the team. When you look at George W’s presidency, you don’t just think about W, you think about on the foreign policy side, Condi, Rumsfeld, Powell. You think about the people around them. And being in the United States, I was struck by the strength of the Biden team; with Blinken, with Sullivan, Avril Haines, with Burns. It’s actually a strong sort of team that America can field at the moment. And so I sort of take some optimism from that, that that will be rewarded by Americans as well.

Gideon Rachman
And in fact, one of the things that strikes me about that team is that unless they’re hiding it very well, it’s distinguished by the fact that they don’t really fight much amongst each other. Whereas you mentioned the George W Bush team, they were at daggers drawn. I mean, Condi Rice and Rumsfeld. It was very, very difficult. Is it your sense that this is an unusually cohesive administration?

Michael Fullilove
I think it’s very collegial. They’ve all known each other for a long time. They’ve worked together very closely. They have a sort of a division of labour that seems to work where they send Burns out to do sort of special missions and Blinken does other things. And compare that to what we had in the first Trump administration, which was sort of the Hunger Games, with chiefs of staff being sacked and secretaries of state being sacked and a really poisonous relationship between the team.

So, look, I don’t know, do Americans consider these things? Probably not. But to me, I think there is a slightly unbalanced sense to the international commentary on Biden’s age. Yes, he’s not a young man. Yes, you would prefer that American presidents were in the prime of their life. But if you judge Biden on his performance in office, against all the challenges in the complicated environment in which he’s operating — on the economic side, on the foreign policy side — I think he’s doing well. And at some level, one hopes that would be rewarded in November. But, you know, there’s nine months to go, and that is a long time in presidential politics and there are so many incidents that could push it in either direction that it’s hard to come up with a prediction closer than, you know, it’s probably an even-money bet.

Gideon Rachman
As you say, Michael, you are a historian of the US. You’ve done a book on the New Deal, you’re doing a book on John F Kennedy. When you look at Joe Biden as a Democrat and as president, how much do you think he’s in a line of continuity with those presidents, particularly in the kind of commitment to the western alliance?

Michael Fullilove
I think he started in the Rooseveltian tradition. You remember, even though he had a very narrow mandate, he wanted to go big on economic reform, in particular with the rise of the new left in the United States. But over time, he’s probably reverted to more of a Kennedy-esque, tough-minded approach; foreign policy-led, just as JFK did. There’s also an interesting Kennedy connection, because Biden has always historically been close to the Kennedy family. And of course, Caroline Kennedy is his ambassador here in Australia. And yet Robert Kennedy Jr is running against Biden, to the dismay, I might say, of the rest of the Kennedy family. So those connections continue.

I’d say if you think about Biden historically, he looks like a pretty successful president. In three years of course, he’s made all sorts of mis-steps, as anybody does, but a very solid foreign policy record, the economy roaring back. I guess the caveat on that is Ukraine. I think last year it felt like . . . 

Gideon Rachman
And Afghanistan?

Michael Fullilove
Of course. Yeah, Afghanistan was definitely a black mark. But you know, what happens in Ukraine over the next few months, of course, will feed heavily into how historians think about the Biden administration. And again, coming out of Munich, there was a deep sort of sense of unease that things could go quite poorly. I hope that’s not the case. I am an enormous admirer of the moral, physical, personal courage of Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians. I hope that Republicans in the Congress come to their senses and pass that military aid bill, which is so essential. But, you know, I did come back from overseas, I guess, to finish where we started, with a sense of unease that the wind is in our faces a little bit at the moment.

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Gideon Rachman
That was Michael Fullilove of the Lowy Institute in Sydney ending this edition of the Rachman Review. Thanks for listening. Please join us again next week.

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