#13 Tim Marshall | Prisoners Of Geography, The Taiwan Question & The Arctic

Tim Marshall is the author of many books and many articles. 

He spent almost 30 years as a foreign journalist including holding the post as the diplomatic and foreign affairs editor for Sky News.

He is the author of the international bestseller 'Prisoners Of Geography' which is the subject of the conversation we had on the podcast. Tim is a fascinating bloke with endless insight into the happenings around the world.
 
The conversation was wide-ranging including all the following topics.

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00:00 - Introduction
02:50 - Did You Romanticise The Foreign Journalist When You Were A Boy?
06:07 - Getting Into Foreign Journalism Back In The Day
09:19 - What Are The Downsides To Foreign Journalism?
15:39 - Explaining The Wonderful Complexity Of The Arctic.
29:12 - What Would Your Australian Chapter Say?
39:05 - Discussing Taiwan & Therefore Inevitably, China...
44:23 - The Changing China Narrative.
57:08 - What Two People Would You Witness A Conversation Between Dead Or Alive?
57:56 - What Country Are You Most Bullish On?
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- Access Tim's Books, Articles & Podcast through his website in the link above.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So this was a podcast that I did with Tim Marshall. And I reached out to Tim uh on Twitter at the beginning of the year because I had read his book as a gift that was given to me over Christmas. And it was such a it was one of these amazing moments of synchronicity where this idea that's been so front of my mind for such a long time just sort of falls into your lap as a perfectly form formulated book. And I uh I loved it. It was such an entertaining read. And Tim was very generous by giving us an hour of his time. We spoke about China, we spoke about Taiwan, we spoke about Australia, we spoke about the Arctic, we spoke about Russia, we spoke about um war journalism because Tim, actually, I should give his his biography, his profile a little bit. He's a British journalist and was formerly the diplomatic editor and foreign affairs editor for Sky News. Okay, so Tim is a very serious journalist, or at least he was in a former life. And in total, he had over 24 years at Sky News. He reported from the Balkan countries and the Balkan Wars of the 1990s. He spent the majority of the 1999 Kosovo crisis in Belgrade. He was one of the few Western journalists to report from the main targets of NATO bombing raids. He was in reporting from the northern African countries during the Arab Spring uprise. And he has so many other feathers to his cap just in that part of his career alone. He went on to author the subject of this conversation, the international bestseller, Prisoners of Geography, and he's authored six books in total. He's got another one coming out in the future. He was such an easy guy to talk to. You know, he has uh a great sense about him. So um I had such a good time in this chat. You might feel that I sort of rushed a lot of parts of it, but that's because I did. I wanted to fit a three-hour chat into one hour. Hopefully he gives us a chance uh and comes back around in April when he starts promoting his new book and we can do a proper deep dive into the ideas of prisoners of geography, into geopolitics, into him himself. I mean, we can talk about um foreign correspondence today, the changing landscape. Is it gonna be blogs? Is it gonna be YouTube? Is it gonna be individual content creators that are out there creating this great news, or is it still gonna be coming from the big platforms themselves? Okay, so before we bring Tim into the conversation, I just want to remind you all to subscribe to the podcast, take up your phone, swipe it up, and just press that subscribe button. The absolute hardest thing for me to be doing over here in content creation is the discovery and pump your good juice into the algorithm, put your energy into the algorithm, where it's the YouTube algorithm, the podcast algorithm, or reading the blog online, leave a review, subscribe to the podcast, subscribe to the YouTube channel, and let's see if we can get geopolitics trending somehow, because I think uh this is a subject that is endlessly fascinating and needs to be distributed much further. So, too much preamble. Here we go, my conversation with Tim Marshall. Before we get into the book, I want to actually ask you about your career as a uh journalist. I suppose maybe you still are technically, but beforehand, you know, through and through bleeding journalists and you had a wonderfully fascinating career, it looks like. But basically, I just want to say that your bump as a diplomatic editor for Scum News is littered with exciting, hairy, and I'm sure very interesting experiences, just to name a few. Um you were reporting from Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia during the Balkan Wars in the 90s. You reported from the front lines and the invasion of Afghanistan. I'd like to know what it means by the front lines, but then also you were reporting uh from many of the northern African nations during the Amar Spring uprising, and I'm sure many, many more fascinating experiences as well. But before we get into the geo uh geography, the geopolitics, I wanted to ask you, uh, did you think when you were a boy that you would sort of be going on these adventures? Like, how much did you romanticize the foreign journalist?

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Oh, very much so. When I was about 10 or 11, I heard the BBC radio D-Day landing recordings. And you know, with a sort of very posh tumbly wandly voice wrap. And now we're just approaching the beach, and it's sort of very crackly, and you can hear gunfire. And of course, when you're a kid, you know, it's comic book stuff. You don't know the reality that there's people, you know, getting their limbs ripped off. Um, so yes, I mean, I will admit to having a romantic view of it and and a bit of a wanderlust. I've never thought I could ever do it. I left school at 16 and did various things, but you know, eventually got into it in the 20s. And um and I never lost that romanticism. Well, I started to lose it before before I slow shortly before I quit, which is a good reason to quit. Um, never really lost the the romantic side of it, but but realized fairly early on, you know, there's a rather harder reality to it. But but it was those BBC recordings of of the D-Day landings. Oh that that sounds fun. I mean, of course it wasn't, but you know, as a 10-year-old, that sounds fun.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Yeah. If if I uh put myself in your younger shoes for a minute, you know, huge influences on me are men like Christopher Hitchens, uh, who obviously did a lot of um foreign journalism, and I really romanticize uh that as well. So it's you know, it's funny the sort of difference in generation, you know, you have the D-Day Landing.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

Um, because you know, you are going to what to us are strange places and interesting people, and it, you know, it is not a reporting job, it's not a nine to five job. You said at the beginning, you know, maybe I'm still a journalist, sort of. I mean, I'm more a sort of analytical writer, uh, an accessible analytical writer now. You know, I'm not a reporter anymore. I don't go and see and tell, which is the classic uh idea of a journalist. I mean, there's many different roles, you know, there's subeditors and they are um very, very clever and what they do, many of them. But you know, the classic idea of the journalist is the is the reporter.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

You you um hinted at maybe uh it maybe being it being an over-romanticized lifestyle. So I do want to get to that. But before you said you you stopped school at 16 and then you sort of just got into it. I mean, what's the gap in the middle there like? Did you have professional qualifications, or did just this serendipitous chance come around and all of a sudden, wow, I'm learning from someone and doing it?

SPEAKER_00 6:18

To a degree you make your own luck, but serendipitous chance. Um, I was working on the building sites, I was a painter and decorator, um, very good at snow cementing. Um joined the forces, it was four years in in the RAF. And then uh I came out and I was in London, uh unemployed, and I was doing a French conversation course at night school, just you know, it was free in those days. I guess I bumped into um uh a woman that worked at LBC Radio, told her my dreams, and um she gave my handwritten CV to someone that needed a sort of um T-Boy, basically, uh LBC Radio, which was on Fleet Street. And you know, I there is no way in hell, this is the luck side. There's no way in hell if I just sent that CV in, probably badly spelt, not a not an ounce of experience, yeah. Uh, that I would have even it would have gone straight in the bin. Um it's because it was handed to this woman who probably hopefully, God willing, said, you know, look, no, interesting lad, have a look at him. Yeah, uh, so it it was it was chance, and that that uh it was a three-day gig and it turned into 30 years.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Wow, that's so amazing. These days, I imagine that sort of uh line of getting into an industry, whether it's foreign journals on. I suppose it is possible if the right person is sort of doing the handing over, I imagine.

SPEAKER_00 7:47

Still happens, but but uh it's it's it's a problem in journalism because when I got into it, there was an incredibly eclectic mix of public school, uh which in the British sense means privately educated, yeah. Um uh working class barra boys from East London, you know, it was an amazing mix and and it really gelled together and and and worked. Whereas now uh to get in certainly into national journalism, uh certainly in the UK and definitely in America, you know, you have to have been at one of the best universities and and be academically good, as well as having other, you know, I'm not saying that that there's an it's easy for these people, but they only they're the only ones who seem to be getting in. Very few people get in at shop floor level, at T-Boy level. And it's a it's a problem because it's another way in which the newsroom does not reflect the audience to which it's uh broadcasting or reporting.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

I suppose there is, I mean, a lot of questions are bubbling to mind about trying to speak about what say your take is on journalism now and maybe what foreign journalism might look like going into the future. Um, but I think it would drag too much time away from the crux of what we really want to talk about.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

There's still some great work being done. Uh I wish there was more storytelling, but there's still some great work being done. And I what I have said to younger people coming in is never listen to old geezers like me saying, Oh, you've missed the golden age.

SPEAKER_03 9:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

It's always the golden age because journalism is if it can be great fun.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Um, what are some of the downsides to the line of work? I think the upsides are perfectly clear. Um, but perhaps you want to talk about some of the downsides.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

Um downsides are for most people, it's not that well paid. You know, you've really got to get to a certain level before it's it's a well-paid job. Um the hours, um, the expectations, because although it's slightly softer now, I think, than it used to be a couple of decades ago, that certainly at national news level, there is an expectation of what do you mean you've done 12 hours and you're going home? You know, the story's still on. No. And obviously you you can leave a newsroom and go home, or you can say I'm not coming in on my weekend off, but you do that too many times and you missed the promotion, yeah. You know, it's it's hard, and you really have to give up quite a lot. I mean, I I've missed um nearly missed my own wedding. Uh I was in Serbia during the war. Um, you know, it's tough and it requires a certain uh dedication and sacrifice, and that is just the expectation. Stress, um sometimes moral judgment, sometimes am I doing the right thing? Uh you know, comes into it, especially out in the field. But you know, there is a we but you know you could say that many, but many of those things have many jobs, so I'm not complaining about.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Oh, but it it carries more weight in, I suppose, your line of work when you're seeing something and experiencing it and then sort of watching the conversation about it being totally different around the rest of the world. I imagine that as a frustration might be immense.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Like well, it is. Uh I mean, I'm I I was I used to come back to the newsroom in uh during the Balkan Wars with a nickname Marcelovic, because um I'd spent a lot of time on the Serbian side uh and in Serbia and on this Bosnian Serb, not on their side, but with them reporting on them and explaining their point of view. And the narrative at the time was very much that the Bosnian Muslims were victims, as indeed they were, and the Serbs were the aggressors, as indeed they were, but it just wasn't as simple as that. So I chose to try and explain a viewpoint, and of course, you then get accused of being on the wrong side, yeah. And again, it happened in Syria. Um, I I chose to try and explain the government and those that supported the government because half the country actually did explain why they felt the way they did. And of course, some people think, well, you know, you're supposed to be saying that they're the bad guys, and you know, it's just not the way I ever tried to work. So there's that pressure, but I'll tell you a little quick story. There's also this moral pressure, especially as it when you're trying to make a name. I I I covered a ferry sinking in Finland, 700 dead, a really awful, terrible, terrible story. And um, I got to the hospital after some of the competitors who'd been getting lots of pictures, and there was hardly anything, and an ambulance pulled up, and people were pushed out and dead into the hospital. And I just assumed they were from the ferry, and we were driving off, and I realized I'm gonna put these pictures on saying they're from and I don't know. So I went back to check, and they said no, no, this was something else. Ah, so I still didn't have any pictures, and I remember feeling this real pressure. Well, just put them on. And I mean, luckily I didn't, yeah, you know, things like that happen, and not some people succumb to that pressure, and they're not bad people, but you need to have that strength of character to to take the bollocking from the boss that you didn't get the story. And I imagine you cannot cross that line.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

And I imagine when you're in a war zone or a very hairy um sort of happening in a developing nation where there isn't any oversight and you can kind of decide your own system. I mean it's been done. It's been done by some.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

It's been um I won't join in the dissing of him, even though privately I do, and he's passed away, and some people might work it out. But there is a very well-known correspondent who didn't make it up, uh, knowing it couldn't be checked. Very well known. Uh, I like I said, I don't want to join in dissing by name. But when I remember when I first got into it, there was these these legendary stories, which apparently were true of reporters. Um the the most famous one from a television one was a guy who had filmed a woman uh streaking in agony because her child had been pulled dead from an earthquake rubble. But he got to the satellite station, which is like a two or three hour drive, and he was told this story from London. It's an amazing story, 50 miles from where he'd been, of this woman crying with joy as her child is pulled alive.

SPEAKER_01 14:14

And he used the same pictures and said they were often so the one photo could it convey both emotions.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Yeah. Oh, that's he used the footage he got of a woman crying in grief, yeah, as the story of the amazing three-day you know.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

Wow, it used to happen. Less so now, I suppose. Maybe more of a slide, yeah. I mean, who knows? Um look, you kind of left a little carrot there about a fun story about almost missing your wedding. Um, though I do want to re-emphasize the time. Is it a is it a fun little story to tell?

SPEAKER_00 14:51

No, I can say uh I was I was one of two British journalists that stayed because we were all expelled. And I knew if I left, um, I won't go into the right how I stayed there, but yeah, yeah. I knew if I left, I may not be able to get back. And I was the you know, the only uh one of just two Brits there. Uh in fact, only three Western reporters there, I think. Um, but I'd made some good contacts and I said, Look, I'm getting married. And they said, All right, go on, you can come back. So that's it. Did the missus later spend? I went back a couple of days later.

SPEAKER_01 15:25

Did the missus know that you had made a decision where it wasn't certain that you could make it on time?

SPEAKER_00 15:32

I was going, no, no, I was going back.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Yeah, okay. Yeah, certainly. All right, look, let's let's move on to uh the book, Tim. Um Prisons of Geography specifically. So I was gifted this book on Christmas, and I really just had the most glorious couple of days sitting in front of the Boxy Day Test match, reading it. It was fantastic. Um I am afraid that um because of the scope of geopolitics, a lot of it kind of gets lost, you know? Um, because I'm for me, the interesting part is looking at the macro view, um, looking at what what shifting panel looks like, what sort of underlying influences could topple the favorite. Um, you know, what does the an infrastructure project really mean? Um, I don't know, these sort of questions, but you probably have a much better insight into me as to why geopolitics isn't, you know, kind of one of the primary themes of the very popular podcasts or maybe more popular books and so forth. I suppose yours is an exceptional outliner to the um idea of maybe geopolitics not being an extremely popular field. But nonetheless, um I think a really cool a cool way to sort of introduce it as an exciting topic would to be for you to talk about the Arctic. To be look at it through the lens of the Arctic, because it's the last chapter of the prison of geography and and you give a brilliant overview of what's going on up there at the moment by analysing this seemingly unimportant, boring, and uninhabitable giant sheet of ice. But the truth is that there's a lot more happening there. So can you give us some flavor and maybe explain what's happening in the Arctic?

SPEAKER_00 17:02

You meant you mentioned geopolitics and the macro, and I agree with you. I think I think a macro view, uh especially for a general audience, is essential. But I also think that if you want to give the macro view, you better know the macro view as well. Because I don't think you you can do one without the other. You know, it's when you drill down to a certain level, you know, I'm not an academic expert, you can then do macro, because if you don't get the detail, um you you don't get the the wider view as well. On the Arctic, um again, uh I don't know how micro this is, but it's you know it's worth knowing in the Arctic. Well, when I wrote this book five years ago, the figures are more or less the same because I'd looked them up recently. Uh Russia's got 28 icebreakers and America's got two. I mean, that's a tiny little detail, but when you know that, and then you know how many troops Russia has in the Arctic, how many cities it has in it, etc., etc., you know, it's very easy to then get the macro and view that if there's going to be a competition in the Arctic, I think I know we're gonna win it. It's gonna be Russia.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

Is that even taking into account all of the NATO icebreakers as well? From memory, I think there was maybe uh Finland at eight, um, Norway had a few, um, them together as a force, or yeah, no, but but they don't have they don't have the right and the jurisdiction to be up there um off the 200 miles of exclusive economic zone off the the the the coast of Russia, you know, and Russia again, you know, you just look at the map and you see they've got half the Arctic, yeah, and they claim more than they've actually legally got.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

So it's this alleged wasteland, and yet it isn't, and it's worth getting a map that looks top down at the Arctic, you know. I mean, classically on a world map, it's up there, on a map of Europe in Britain. We see Britain's here, Europe's there, there's the Arctic up there. But if you do a top-down, you see it's this big round lake ocean, and then you see which people that border it, I think it's seven or eight nations. And that's when I go back to these things about the macro micro, like 28 uh icebreakers versus two, uh, how many troops they've got, how many bases they've got. So they are in a Russia is in a much better position to take advantage of two things that's happening, both because of global warming. One is uh access to the oil and the gas. There is you know so much up there, you can't get at it because of the climate, but if it becomes more attainable, they will get it, they will attempt to get it. And you know, given that their coastline is so long, their 200 miles of exclusive economic zone is obviously a lot more than everybody else is combined. Then the second thing is the trade routes. If the northern route opens up 12 months a year, that ships can go through it, then they're gonna be stopping at ports and uh they're gonna be dropping off and getting uh goods and equipment, and you charge money for that. And so Russia will have that as a cash cow, and other trade routes will slightly diminish. Cairo, uh Egypt, for example, SUS can help slightly. So Russia is very well positioned that if the climate modelling is correct, they will take uh advantage of it. Um, the other Arctic countries, Canada, they have a lot of experience, but they have a smaller population, smaller GDP, not than Russia, but certainly than America. And it was Hillary Clinton, which was Secretary of State, that said, we have villages on the Arctic, they have cities. Uh and it's true that they do. So it's it's I mean, so it's been five years since I wrote that, and uh, it has all happened very, very slowly. There has been more and more economic interest in there. The big energy companies are up there. Uh but it's slow. Russia, if again, if you look at Russia's militarization of it, they have begun to open up, I think, more than 12 of the bases that they I was gonna say snowballed, that they mothballed uh uh when they couldn't they didn't have any money at the end of the Cold War, you know, after 89, they they mothballed all these Arctic bases, but they're beginning to open them up again. And you know, there's a reason for that, and we've just been through them.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Do you think that it's um um is it assuming the climate modeling was perhaps wrong or slower, is it still possible that uh access tech to technology could give access then to the oil and the trade routes, nonetheless, and therefore it is as important? Because you could if you look at it at a big macro view, um, the way that many policy responses are very simple. Bluggish to the response of climate changes because you can't definitively say the model is going to be right. And therefore that might be an excuse for, say, the US and Canada and maybe Northern Europe to be like, well, we're actually going to take it as seriously as Russia is. Whereas Russia has um they've got a much worse hand, don't they? So they kind of have to put their chips into one or two big buckets.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

Whereas and they have Putin has has put a hell of a lot of chips into the Arctic. And also you will not find an American president or a British primary, well, we're not an Arctic nation, uh, you know, a Norwegian political leader making the sort of bold statements that Putin makes about the Arctic and about the riches that they say they're going to get from it. They are they are betting heavily on it. Uh, and you can, you know, it follow the money, uh the old Watergate um saying was. Uh, and and when you follow the money of what Russia is spending it on, it's spending it on nuclear-powered icebreakers, on oil exploration from their big uh huge uh energy companies, and when you look at their Arctic Brigade, Arctic Brigades, where you look at where they're putting missiles, how they're beef opening up these these bases, you know, you you they are putting chips, they're they're confident. And already, I mean, when I wrote five years ago, I think one or two ships had gone through in the two-month gap that there was. Uh, but now it's a regular occurrence. Um, you know, it's still not, it's not a major world trade route yet, but it's certainly uh more and more people are looking at it, and more and more ships are going along the northern route across the top of the world.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Yeah. It's funny some of the details of what Russia has been doing to try and um, I don't know, windsoft power over the region. Like they wanted to get the ocean renamed the Russian Ocean. That's right. Uh they they planted a titanium flag. Whatever. As far as we know. Exactly. You know, it's so right at the point of the North Pole under the ocean. I mean, and then they tried claiming that the um some the Siberian shelf or something was like sovereignty of Russia, and this kind of made its way half into the into the there isn't there is a legal argument to be made about that.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Um Lonsumarov continental shelf that does stick out from underneath Siberia, uh-huh, and it does extend right into almost the middle of the Arctic Ocean. And there is a legal argument that gives you more jurisdiction, but it will not stand up in a court. You know, the EZ, the exclusive economic zone, nearly every country in the world abides by those. As far as I know, Russia accepts them. As an aside, it's a similar debate. At the moment, Turkey um is claiming it has uh a continental shelf that comes out from the Turkish mainland into the Aegean and further into the Med. And it's using that as its claim against Greece and Cyprus because all sorts of gas and oil have been found, especially off the coast of Cyprus.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

And so Turkey, Turkey is saying, which doesn't recognize EEZ, Turkey recognizes the concept of the uh the continental shelf, and it's using that as its legal basis for um putting um its its um survey ships and indeed warships in in what are essentially uh Cypriot sovereign waters.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

Oh, okay. That makes things delicate, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 25:33

Oh, it got so delicate last year, and France is very much supporting Cyprus as an EU ally on this.

SPEAKER_03 25:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

There's an a related issue which comes to Libya. Libya, the the Libyan government in Tripoli, which Turkey supports, not the opposition government, and the Turkish government have made an agreement that they they have that that their two territorial waters meet, but they meet exactly where the Cypriot waters are. And France has taken Cyprus's side on this. And last year there was a Turkish warship, a Turkish ship heading towards Libya, which the French could interdict because for weapons smuggling, not a not, and there was a Turkish warship by it, and the Turkish warship locked its radar onto the French warship, meaning it's targeting it. You know, that's that's the the thing you do before you press fire. Two NATO countries.

SPEAKER_01 26:29

That's how dicey things are. That reminds me of the of the great anecdote of this guy in the Soviet Union and lost his name, but he's he he saw a blip on these radar screen, right? And he sort of took it upon himself to not initiate the auto-response newt codes. I'm sure you're familiar with this anecdote. I forget all the details of it.

SPEAKER_00 26:49

No, no, no, I'm not.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

I'm just thinking, okay, no, well then then I'm then you should certainly look it up and and it's fascinating, I don't remember the guy's name. But supposedly he was sitting there in one of these observation towers, however it worked in the Soviet Union, and he saw what what looked like an incoming attack on his radar. And he has, you know, he's within the Soviet system, right? So he's a very strong protocol, which he must follow at all fucking costs. And he, as the story goes, he double checked that it was uh the attack that this radar was telling him it was before he passed it up the chain of command. And him doing that double check, I mean, changed the course of history, supposedly, you know, because a good Soviet soldier doesn't double check, he just sends it up the chain and and off it's gone. There's no getting it back at that stage.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

Um yeah, that's an interesting uh uh uh uh connected point is is the culture. And uh, I mean, in Western culture, there is a degree up to a point of taking your initiative. You know, it's not like that in in some systems, it's so rigid, you're so frightened of you know taking initiative. Nothing ever gets done, or mistakes are made. Um that looks like it was um almost one of them. I'm actually writing, I've just been writing recently at the moment uh about um a similar sort of scenarios, but in space, because I think that that's that's what's coming now. Killer satellites, they're already there. The Chinese test, you know, the Russians tested one last year. They they clearly fired a projectile from a satellite at another satellite. The first time it's thought that it's been done in space and um did it in proximity to an American satellite as well. Mistakes up there um may be mistaken for uh precursors to massive wars, because the future war will be you will try to take out your opponent's satellites that can see everything that's happening on the ground. And if you do that, there is a danger that there's suddenly one side is blind and it might panic and think there could be a nuclear attack coming. I I think that this is one of the danger areas we're heading to, but you know, we've always had.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

There is more to say about the Arctic, but I do want to move on um to the bottom of the world. So we go from the top to the bottom. Australia has missed out in the analysis, and I just wanted to ask you when I write a chapter on my blog for Australia, very much in the style that you've written for prisons of geography. What are the main things I have to include? What can I not omit?

SPEAKER_00 29:30

Well, you know better than I do.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

I very much doubt that.

SPEAKER_00 29:35

Well, first of all, you're a bloody long way from anywhere. Um, although actually that's not exactly true, is it? But it it it you look to your left, if I'm I'm looking at the map, you look to your left, you got what, 6,000 miles before you hit the African coast, and you look to your right, you got 7,000 miles before you hit the Latin American or American coast, and you got 2,000 miles back that way before you hit New Zealand. Now, above you, yeah, so that's your focus. So, first of all, immediately you think, uh, better have a navy. We haven't got a navy to keep the sea lanes open. Any fool could blockade us and we'll starve because we're not self-sufficient, especially in energy. So as soon as you look at the map, you think better have a navy. Then where is the threat coming from? Nowhere except up there.

SPEAKER_01 30:30

Oh, you could say China's a pretty strong threat.

SPEAKER_00 30:32

Yeah, well, yeah, we'll come to them, but in the in the first instance, it was Japan. And in those days, another thing immediately, we need a navy, but we need uh someone else's navy as well. The British. And you relied on the British, and then in 1941, your prime minister said very, very clearly in terms, we know London is not going to take care of it. Well, with the Yanks now. Hi, America. And at that point, you jumped into the Americans' bed. And I don't blame you in the least. And the American, I think it was 150,000 US troops showed up into Darwin. Now it's China, but it's the same scenario. Uh, and America and you are natural allies for a number of reasons. Because um, and that's why they've got the Marine US Marine base up in, I think it, I think it's Darwin. Um, and it's why, I don't know if you've followed it recently, the Chinese are going to be opening a port in uh Papua New Guinea, uh just for fishing. Yeah, right. Um so you know, you just look at the map and you know what Australia's gonna do. It needs a navy, it needs to not be blockaded, but it needs a bigger friend. And this century there'll be another choice to make. You know, you ditched us, you went with the Americans. This century you've got another choice to make. You're gonna ditch America and go with the Chinese, or are you gonna stick with America? Big, big choice. So at the moment, it's pretty obvious what you're gonna do, but you know, things change over the decades. Um, what else about Australia? Um it's a shame once you go over the Blue Mountains. Oh, it's all desert. I mean, they generally didn't know, did they? Um, there's a professor in 1920 at uh Sydney University, the first geography professor.

SPEAKER_03 32:27

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

And he said by 2000, the maximum population in Australia, 20 million, and he was castigated for this because they had this idea of originally of sea to shut shining sea, like the you know, Americans got over the Appalachians through the fertile Midwest, over the Rockies. Fantastic. You got over the Blue Mountains, which is why you all live where you live. Yeah, just bush. Um, but but he was still, they still said, no, no, we can make a big deal out of this place, Australia, and grow the population. But it was around 20 million. What is it now? About 25.22. Yeah, I mean, I've I've got a wee bit off topic, but uh you are growing. Oh, you're directly on topic. It's Australia. A finite amount of space. Oh, look, I I I could talk about a lot more about Australia, but you're you can you like everybody else, you are liberated and constrained by your geography. There's only one place to live, mostly it's that curve, and you know, that's where the rivers are. That that's the the Darling, Murray Darling Basin, only one of which you can you can't get very far up it. That is where Australians live and will continue to live despite all the technology. Um, that's that you know, you are a continent, but you're also um you're also I don't have a word for it, you're also a credit.

SPEAKER_01 33:52

Yeah. Two two interesting things um came to mind while you were saying that. But I just want to also say, I think um it's the case that only five percent of our land is arable, so we just have giant space, but you can't do much with with much of it except store things and mine things, but you can't grow things and you can't live.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

Um and then on the plus side, you've got well, you have the copper, which of course now you're in two mines for obvious reasons about it. And I think is it lithium?

SPEAKER_01 34:19

You've got some really, uh, we got my um iron ore, we've got uh uranium.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

Um I mean you are you're not a lucky country, but um for sure we are, you know. And and also the the territory also gives you some protection against invasion because what's the point? Yeah, you can you can have a navy strong enough to protect that that crescent. So if somebody wants to land in Darwin, well, they've got 2,000 miles before they get to anybody, notwithstanding the good people of Darwin.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

Such a such a good theme as well. And I've left that for the last question, but you highlight you made very obvious there the importance of the geography of a place in determining these things, because it's much bigger than just the politics. But two things that came to mind natural analysis, I'd like you to explain uh just expand on that for a bit. But first, you mentioned all the rivers are there in Sydney, and this is also a theme through a prison of geography. You say in Africa, they've got the most beautiful rivers in the world, but you fall off a cliff every couple of kilometres to what used to they, because obviously, and then America, on the other hand, has these perfect rivers for transport and England, uh the Britain, sorry, likewise, um, perfect rivers for transport. So I wonder, are rivers still that important though? Because I mean, aren't trains rivers of their own? And we can sort of just more efficiently build our rivers? I mean, I don't I'm not suggesting a canal, I'm more suggesting a train, but it's primarily for transport, right? Or is it all the water aspect as well?

SPEAKER_00 35:45

Well, i it's both. Um, you you have a point that trains have taken the strain, uh, but not much of it. But I don't know the figures off the top of my head when you break them down, but I know that 90% of the world's trade is carried on water, even now. 90% is carried on water, um, and obviously a lot of that is is the is the waterways, the international canals, the rivers, etc., etc. Because and it remains so much cheaper to to go by water. Obviously, it's slower. So um it still is uh uh extremely uh important, and I've actually forgotten the question.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

Uh natural allies. Oh, yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

Yeah. Um I'd say you were natural allies for a number of reasons. Um I mean the history uh of Australia and and its demographics, you know, is obviously because of Britain and Ireland and other places and in Europe, but increasingly your demographics are changing, but your politics isn't particularly. You are, you know, you remain a very strong democracy. And so even if the demographics change, uh, and you will no longer look back to the old country as much as you do, why would you? But you're the the you if you're creating a modern, multicultural, multi-ethnic, democratic Australia, you will you're less likely to ally with with China. Um, you will ally with fellow democracies, which are America. That's what I was wondering. Just that firepower to protect you, yeah. And and and and you have the the same mindset, but also I think Japan.

unknown 37:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

Um, I I think they're a natural ally for you.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

Are they a natural ally because they're uh uh not an ally to China? Is that a big part of this?

SPEAKER_00 37:48

Well, that's yes, that's very much part of it, but it's also because they're a democracy.

unknown 37:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 37:52

Uh I mean, I mean, you know, there are limits to this, you know. I mean, I'm sure we I mean Turkey, all through when it was a dictatorship when the colonels took over, you know, it carried on being a NATO member. Um sorry, but but Japan, yeah, you're probably familiar with the quad. Um India, Australia, uh, Japan, America. This is the quad that frames the Indo-Pacific region. And the quad is increasingly, I mean, it's an informal agreement between the four countries, mostly the more common countries, navies, but it's it's one that's growing in importance. And uh it is vis-a-vis the four relationships with China, all of which are not particularly good. And and so, you know, the the quad precedes the the last couple of years' serious difficulty with China, um, but it it the difficulties have strengthened the quad. There's even something called the quad plus now. You know, they're trying to get South Korea and maybe others into it. Sure. Um and I just think when you look at the geopolitics and then you look at the map, the quad makes perfect sense because in the middle of it is China.

SPEAKER_01 39:03

Yeah, yeah. So I've said a few times in this podcast um that Taiwan will sort of be the political moment of my generation. Um, much from my parents' generation, maybe it was the fall of the Berlin Wall, for example. So whether it's a China regression or a uh Taiwan liberation, I think Taiwan will really be the political moment of my uh generation. So, how much am I wrong with that preamble to assert that China are the pests of the world?

SPEAKER_00 39:32

The pests, did you say?

SPEAKER_01 39:34

Yeah, the pests.

SPEAKER_00 39:37

Well, in the you know, oh this is a problem. What what do we do? Yeah, do we stand back or do we defend them? I I don't I'm fascinated to see if we the Brits put their new aircraft carrier through the uh South China Sea this year, because the Americans might like them too. Um I mean, what's it for? Um I I hadn't thought of it in those terms, and I think that's really interesting. I mean, yeah, fall of the building wall. I mean, just you know, just seismic one of the defining moments of the previous uh century. If China was to take Taiwan back militarily, oh it would be a bloodbath on both sides. I mean, we kind of, you know, you kind of think, oh, little little Taiwan, and it is compared to the gigantic China, but when you look at their firepower, Taiwan has firepower, especially its defensive firepower. Oh my god, it's it's it's incredible. You know, it would be a bloodbath for the Chinese to take it. I'm not saying they wouldn't, you know, they've probably got a lot of people that they think are expendable. You know, we've all done that in the in our past histories. We get also the that's another story.

SPEAKER_01 41:00

But there's also that implication as well, if there it'd be a bloodbath between the Taiwanese and the Chinese, but it would almost trigger a Western reinforcement, would it not?

SPEAKER_00 41:10

Yes, the current arrangement is that if it's an aggression by China, um first of all, Taiwan mustn't declare full independence. That's the agreement they have with America. In unless they have they declare full independence, America will come to Taiwan's aid if there is an attack. Okay, if Taiwan claims declares independence, uh and China attacks America if it chooses to say.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Wow. That's so interesting how that was. Like, we really don't want a war. So these are the terms.

SPEAKER_00 41:53

But China clearly its military stance is that it is positioning itself at some point to be able to do it. Being able to do it and doing it are two different things, but they're clearly positioning their military to be able to do it. And you look at their their um amphibious assault, the amount they put in, the amount of money they put into amphibious assault um training, uh, etc. And they they're getting aircraft carrier. Well, they've got one and a half, two aircraft carrier groups now. So I mean, I do they will not give up their dream. They intend to get Taiwan back this century. It doesn't mean that they will, but a big part of this is the attitude of the quad countries, uh, especially the Americans. And at the moment, the Americans are minded to stand by Taiwan. It's not just because of Taiwan, with which they have an excellent relationship, it's it's to do more as well with keeping the international sea lanes open, pushing back against the Chinese pushing out. It's very worth looking. There's a map that you can get that looks at the world um looking uh westward from China's perspective, you know, as if you're standing on the Chinese coast looking that way. Okay. And what you see in front of you, if you're Chinese, is a wall, which they're nine-line dash, they call it, and it's uh Japan and it's Taiwan, and it's the Philippines, and they see a wall in front of them, all of which are American allies. And to really control the region, they need to get past that wall. And Taiwan is part of that, and if you give up that, you've just opened up a huge brick in that wall. So it's you know, it's not just about standing by our plucky little friends from Taiwan, it's about that bigger picture of not blinking and not allowing China to say this is our area, not yours. So America at the moment is not going to change its stance of keeping the international sea lanes open if necessary by force. China is not going to give up its uh dream of uh pushing the Americans away and taking Taiwan. And yes. In your lifetime, the crunch will come. And if neither side blinks, the war will come. But if there's a compromise, both sides will try and reach it.

SPEAKER_01 44:11

I suppose optimistically, for Taiwan, you perhaps uh, you know, uh, I don't know what's the right way to say this. Uh, your your bittersweet in what the coronavirus has sort of done to China's relationship with the world, because it has, in my estimation, sort of weakened their soft power definitely, but even also maybe um their actual power and the Western narrative really changing uh to from China is just a country that's trying to do the best for their people and raise them um out of the out of out of poverty. How amazing is that? Sure, maybe they've got these weird customs, but that's okay, so be it. We have our weird customs too. To now it's like, wait a minute, they're pretty imperialistic. And if they had no consequences facing them, they might do some terrible things. Uh uh that's just my estimation of how the narrative has sort of shifted.

SPEAKER_00 45:06

Um, I agree with everything you said up until imperialistic, although you know that's a difficult word because what does it mean in the 21st century? Does it mean you go and grab a piece of land and take it in Africa? Um, no, I mean it has changed, hasn't it? The idea of imperialism. Well, let's come back to that in a minute. No, you're absolutely right. I thought China played it quite well for the first month or so when their lies that they were telling most we believed it. And they did give the genome sequencing, they handed that over very quickly, which was thank God they did, although we might not even have some of these vaccines. I don't know. Um, excuse me. Um, but then it became apparent um over the over the following six, seven, eight months, a that they'd been lying through their teeth, b that they were covering it up. Um, c that all this soft power kit they were giving to like Italy and places. I mean, the EU was absolutely in disarray. The Italians were begging Brussels uh to to enact uh um uh to trigger a law that they have, and and Brussels refused. And so Italy didn't get any help for months. And so China said, We'll help you. And it was a great bit of soft power until all the kit they sent didn't work. Same with the kit they sent to the Brussels.

SPEAKER_01 46:21

I didn't see that.

SPEAKER_00 46:22

I thought I thought they were just like look, some of it did, and some of it was done perhaps for genuine altruistic reasons, but a lot of it was simply soft power, and then if you're gonna go, if you're gonna do soft power, get it right. They didn't got it wrong because half the kit didn't work, and so a lot of people was like, ah, and then over across the year, you saw them also using the COVID crisis as cover. They the incident in with India, where dozens of Indian troops were killed, and in fact, quite a few Chinese troops were killed in hand-to-hand fighting, which you kind of think is guns and bayonets. No, it was fists and clubs on the dozens of them died on each side uh in a in a mass brawl. But this is because the Chinese had moved across the demarcation line, but they were using the world's attention was elsewhere. They sank a fishing vessel, I think it was it doesn't really matter, uh, except for the people on it. Um but you know, they sank that. They sailed a carrier group right around Taiwan. I think it was the first, they did a whole bunch of stuff. Uh-huh. No, everyone else was busy. Um, and then the there was the the the um sanctions against Australia for daring to say that the Chinese had done X, Y, and Z with COVID. And then suddenly you get your, I think it was the barley, the wheat, this, you know, all these sanctions piled in on Australia. And what what happened across the globe is that people started to pay more attention to China and what it's doing and its soft power. And there's been a flurry of stories over here in the past six months about their their inroads into our universities. Uh Wahwei, the the 5G phone company. Initially we said we would accept them and now we've reversed it, and that's you, okay. Nice. So a whole bunch of stuff in the past six months. A lot of people have woken up to how China is trying to dominate the world. They're not blaming the Chinese for it. Every great power tries to dominate the world, which brings us briefly back to imperialism.

SPEAKER_01 48:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:28

They are not an imperialistic country the way that the Brits were, uh, or indeed the Japanese. You know, they don't intend to occupy uh places places and say we are the sovereign power here now, or at least the protecting power.

SPEAKER_03 48:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:44

Um, but but yeah, they are absolutely when it comes to places like Africa, moving into African countries, dominating it commercially, bringing in thousands of their own workers instead of employing local people, putting in what they say are volunteers, but are in fact Chinese police officers as security guards. Um it's a form of imperialism. And then a subject I know you you you you know something about, which is the the debt diplomacy, you know. I mean, Sri Lankan port is the best example. Yes, certainly we will um lend you all this money to build the port, and knowing full well you can't pay it back. Oh, so it's else. Yeah, they're doing it, it's not, you know, they're they're doing it. Look, the Brits did things like that as well. I'm not, you know, I'm not I'm not saying they're inherently uh evil or anything, but they are behaving in this manner.

SPEAKER_01 49:39

What makes it evil, right? Or just what what what separates it from maybe the way people think about how the Brits did it, or the French, or even the Americans in Latin America? Like what what what the I think what separates it is the fact that we have a bit of an insight into the Chinese culture. Matthew Tai uh runs this fantastic YouTube channel, and he's an American who lived in China for a very long time and sort of got chased out of there a while ago. But he has Matthew Tomai, uh T Y E last name.

SPEAKER_00 50:10

Oh, yes, yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:11

He should be coming on the podcast soon. So it'll be good to talk to him about exclusively this, but it's like a look into China's culture, right? Um, the sort of decimation of the actual ethnic minorities that live in the country and the actual microcultures that live in the country. The fact that um education is, I mean, it's it's a completely authoritarian state, right? You could China thinks of people as Chinese or foreign, right? You know, you could be Vietnamese and walk into China and Australian and walk into China, but we're both foreigners. There is a racism to that, because there is also the um China is a superior culture narrative. And so anyway, that's a bit of preamble to say that because we sort of know these things about China, there is a different paint with which these debt trap diplomacies are uh are brushed. For example, in Africa, if the United States was financing the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, I'd feel very differently about it than the fact that the Chinese are financing it, as at one example. Um, do you what do you make of that?

SPEAKER_00 51:21

Um I find it problematic to use the modern word because I I know where you're coming from. China uh is not doing what it's doing around the world for everyone else's benefit, far from it. But it is behaving in a way that we used to behave, perhaps some elements of it we still do, yeah. But British imperialism had incredibly dark moments in the massacre at Amritsa. Um basically taking other people's territory and getting all their riches for decades. You know, so I hesitate to think that they are that we were better in our imperial phase than China. I mean, there was this the probably racist element of the civilizing effect, and there are some good end results of um building railway networks and things and education, but it's it's a very hard argument to make about the positive side of it. So I don't think that we we were necessarily any better than China. Sure. I think what we have done in the past few decades is learned more about our behaviors and our crimes. And I think we would be hard pushed to repeat them, even if we even if we could. I don't think we would try to do that because I don't think we have quite the same attitudes anymore to um different peoples. We've come a long way, not far enough. And I yeah, I I d I doubt China. China hasn't been on that journey, but sure. Um there is a very, very strong strain of Chinese nationalism. Well, I should say Han nationalism, because there are many different Chinese, you know, there's Mongolian Chinese and um Tibetan Chinese and the Uyghurs Chinese, but the Han ethnically is an exceptionally strong uh strain of nationalism within the Han. And um and and it shows when they go to African countries and elsewhere and they do their economic deals, and they are not interested in workers' rights, and they're not interested in uh saying to the government, great, we'd love to do business with you, but we do have an issue with uh what's happening with you know these political prisoners or whatever. And Western foreign policy, for all its hypocrisy uh and its problems, does actually try to at least do some good as it moves and net good. And that just is not part of the the communist party and the Chinese way of thinking at all. Yeah, not painting us a sense, but we I think there it I think it is justifiable to try to tie um uh international trade with human rights, and that is just simply not on their radar.

SPEAKER_01 54:41

I um I think a good example of an infrastructure project that they're involved in that might highlight this the best is the now it hasn't been built, but the Chinese Nicaraguan Canal, which I read about in um your book, I believe. So this is objectively um an atrocious thing to do the in to the environment, you know, you just cut a half pipe through the some of the thickest jungle in the world, right? It's um connect a hot and a cold ocean into a freshwater lake. It's it's it's disaster on every single level. And um, but there's economic upside for doing it, right? So if we look at it through the the say the British uh uh lens or the Chinese lens, which I don't think we necessarily have to, but just if you did for the sake of argument, we'd look at that and um say if it was a British private firm behind it, people be like, wait a minute, is the economic upside worth the uh catastrophic environmental damage you're gonna do there? And the you know, you would literally chop the country in half. What about all the um what about all the displacement?

SPEAKER_00 55:48

You know, there would be a consideration, but up to a point, Millard, you know, you know, our companies are also, you know, I mean British Petroleum, for all the greening that it's doing, is still also doing all sorts of things. And the French are in um Niger uh because they need the uh uranium, the green uh yellow cake there for to keep the lights on in France. And the working conditions in Niger are absolutely appalling. I think the bigger difference is that if a British company was doing something like that, let's say that the canal project, which as you say is not probably not going to go ahead now, they got a few hundred meters in each side. Um, uh and we got to hear about it, our environmental movements, which are growing, would be up in arms about it, and the moral pressure would uh translate into political pressure on the government and on the companies in China. Forget it, they just don't have that because it's closed um society. Um, so you know, I mean it's delicate, isn't it? We're both treading slightly on dangerous ground because it's very easy to talk about these things as if we're all, you know, in the 21st century, brilliant, wonderful like we understand the complexity, we're not, but I do think we have um different standards.

SPEAKER_01 57:08

Okay, Tim. Uh what two this is a baseline that I'll ask all the guests. Um, what two people would you witness a conversation between in history? Any people you want, dead or alive.

SPEAKER_00 57:19

Oh man, um Moses and Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 57:34

Okay, look, it's it it's it's pretty much it's impossible to not give a great answer for that kind of question, but that would be you know, give me a few more minutes and I'll come up with about 10 different examples.

SPEAKER_00 57:44

But I just love you know, Moses saying, look, it's written here, and Jesus saying, Yeah, but but to tweak this bit here.

SPEAKER_01 57:51

Yeah. Um what country are you most bullish on in the immediate future? Do you mean if you could if you could invest in a country, what's gonna what's gonna give you the biggest returns? Um and not like Vietnam. Vietnam, okay, cool. Do you want to explain why quickly?

SPEAKER_00 58:18

Uh like the Chinese, they're pretending to be communists, but you know, they're not.

SPEAKER_03 58:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 58:25

Uh um and when you have um control to that degree, and you're a capitalist, um, you can make things happen. I am not defending it, I'm not thinking it's a good idea simply on the investing, which I wouldn't do, but if I could. And as a last thought, um there's another reason why we need to defend democracy and actually realize the benefits of it, because it's taking some pretty heavy knocks at the moment because the point the Chinese have shown that it was wrong to say, as we did for a whole century, that only a democratic capitalist country can be economically successful because they have a dictatorial closed one-party state, and their economy has been a roaring success. It's got lots of structural faults, but absolutely all. Uh they have lifted 400 million people out of poverty. Amazing achievement. There's 700 million in poverty, but 400 million is lifted, and they've proved that model wrong. Um, and consequently, the message around the world is you don't need to be a liberal democracy to be successful as we saw all the successful liberal democracies of the 20th century, and that really damages democracy. So uh despite um saying, yeah, I think Vietnam will be potentially successful, I'm not supporting that as a model. Um, I do think that this liberal democracy is the best system tried so far, and you lose it at your peril.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:02

Well, Tim Marshall, uh what an absolute pleasure. I can't believe you got to come on. I haven't asked you about your new book.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:08

Um I'm glad you mentioned that.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:10

So it's due and April. Do you want to tell us about it?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:13

I only had it here um simply to raise the microphone to a higher level. You know, it wasn't it wasn't here to actually show you.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:21

Uh huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:22

It's the follow-up after five years and four different books, it's the follow-up to prisoners of geography, power of geography, and it looks at um a lot of the regions we didn't get to in the first book. And if you're wondering how I knew all that arcane stuff about your own countries, because the first chapter's about Australia.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:39

Perfect.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:41

Well, this chapter is about space, and that's my favorite chapter of all.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:46

I'll I'll include the link to that Waterstone special where you get the um the globe. Um running for the globe.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:53

Yeah, so mate.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:56

This is this is plastic. I'd love one of those Bellaby ones. It looks amazing, but well out of my price range. See you later. Thanks, mate.