Putin's Gamble: Get the inside track from a global expert on Post-Soviet politics, Professor Donnacha

Dive into the geopolitical chess game involving Putin, NATO, Ukraine, and the US. Discover how these power dynamics shape the conflict and influence global stability.   Professor Donnacha Ó Beacháin has lived in central Asia for an extended period. He was a curious 18 year-old traversing between East and West Germany in 1989 before the Berlin wall fell. Interestingly, one Vladimir Putin was also in Dresden at the same time is an Irish political scientist, university professor, and media commentator. He holds the position of Professor of Politics at Dublin City University, where he has been teaching since 2008, focusing on post-Soviet politics, unrecognized states, Irish politics, and foreign policy. This is a must watch/ listen for anyone interested in geopolitics, the balance of power and global stability.

Prof  Ó Beacháin latest book "Unfinished Empire" is available and I couldn't recommend it highly enough.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

There is a an kind of a theory in international relations or a notion of what they call the the Jucydides trap. It was formulated by Roy Allison. Essentially one of the dangerous times of any situation is when you have a rising power and a declining power. Both of them think that they can take the other. And certainly the US still thinks it's preeminent. China certainly is playing a long game but quietly thinking that it's going to be pre-eminent soon.

SPEAKER_00 0:27

Voice you just heard was Professor Dunica of Bakcoin. Donike is a professor of politics at Dublin City University, and we just finished taping an interview which is going to follow this very brief market update. Donike is an expert in everything to do with post-Soviet politics. He is a real expert because he lived in the region, lived in Georgia for a period, lived in Central Europe. Uzbekistan, fascinating interview. He has a new book out, Unfinished Empire. And we get into the weeds in relation to the motivations. Vladimir Putin. We talk about Donnik's trip to East and West Germany in 1989. He was actually in Dresden when Putin was in Dresden as a KGB operative as the former Soviet Union was collapsing. So really, really interesting and very, very timely. His comments there about to say that his trap is really interesting in the context that China is rising for sure, US in decline on many fronts, and this is a tricky period. This is this period to City's trap where competing powers, and this has been a dominant theme of the podcast so far. In terms of what's going on in the world, I'm coming to you on 24th, Friday, 24th of April. Middle East. He has said that as usual went very, very well. Everything is going very, very well, yet we've got uh no oil going through the Hormuz Strait. So Brent Cruz rose to 0.8 by 0.8% to $106 a barrel, so it's gone over that hundred dollar barrel again. So it's up and down, it's up and down, amid heightened naval tensions in the Gulf. Trump has ordered the US Navy to attack any boat laying mines in the strait. Aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush arrived in the Middle East on Thursday as Washington boast its military boost its military presence. He and you know it's almost laughable if it wasn't so serious. Trump ruled out using nuclear weapons on Iran, and his comments is why would I use a nuclear weapon when we've decimated them? Okay. So in the market weekly weekly market brief this week, I distinguish uh how important it is to see the forest for the trees, and a lot of people focusing on oh there's the attacks are way down, uh Iran is not attacking Israel, Israel is not attacking Iran, there's a ceasefire, great. Bottom line, no oil is moving, no tankers are moving through the Strait of Hormuz. So you know it's a it's it's still a serious, serious situation. It seems to be escalating. We saw the footage of the Iranians um attacking the tanker uh during the week. And this in the backdrop of all this, as we can see in the macro uh pulse, where I give a weekly update on all asset prices, main asset prices, anyway, that stocks are just going to all-time highs. Um, this morning it does look that European stocks set to open lower uh again because oil has traded above $105. Um so Asian stocks overnight, most markets outside Taiwan fell. India's nifty fifty and China's CSI 300 index shared 0.9% and 0.7% uh respectively. We also saw on Tuesday how Trump announced an indefinite extension of the ceasefire to allow additional time for negotiations. I think people were seeing through the you know it's on, it's off, it's on, it's off. So this indefinite ceasefire is interesting. To enforce security measures and assert control. Uh we know that shipping traffic uh through the strait seriously uh disrupted uh a handful of tankers uh going through uh only limited and highly coordinate transit. Reports of gunfire, vessel harassment, and the seizure of ships have uh deterred commercial traffic, preventing a meaningful recovery. Energy prices again, as I said, above $100 a barrel and remain volatile, reflecting renewed disruption uh risks in the strait. Key risks, I suppose, to monitor uh further escalation, US Iran naval escalation, despite the ceasefire, shift between stricter enforcement and more permissive control transit regimes, sustained or expanded restriction of passage through the strait uh or a resumption of Israeli military action against Iran and its proxies. So at the moment it's still uh not looking good. It's actually escalating, in my opinion, versus de-escalating. Hard to see a way out of this, uh, yet you wouldn't know that by looking at markets. So, in terms of the weekly market research report, I'm not going to go through this line by line. I would say to people is that go to www.dmitpodcast.com, register, uh, subscribe, and you'll get your weekly market research report. It's got some interesting topics in terms of chart of the week, the chart you can't ignore, the macro pulse, which is updated, weekly asset uh prices, performance, market insight, the voice of reason. Talking about the podcast interviewed this week. Uh, for example, you can see Pistol Pete there. Hegsit is the uh main man in my picture this week. He abruptly fired his US Navy Secretary John Phelan. Talk a bit about that. The uncomfortable truth about the Middle East. So go and check that out. It's an interesting read and keeps you up to date and informed of what's going on. So we had Dr. Anti Ilmanen on the podcast. You should check that out. I mean, it's a masterclass in expected returns. So Antie Ilmanen, who is a principal at AQR, one of the largest hedge funds in the world, I had the absolute privilege of interviewing Antie recently. This is Antie's book. So this is one of my favorite investing books of all time. It's Expected Returns, Risk Premia, an investor's guide to harvesting uh market rewards. Not the easiest read in the world if you're starting out, but very, very uh interesting nonetheless, and highly recommend anything that Anti Ilmanen produces. He has he's very generous in fairness, and he has produced a 10-part series on AQR's website. You should check it out, it's for free. You need to take time to read it, it's technical, but well worth reading that. So that was a great interview, and that's available on Spotify. You can view the videos on Spotify, by the way, you can just listen to them on Apple. People, a lot of people aren't aware of that, but you can actually watch the videos. And I put a bit of effort into charts and various things. So I think from a learning experience, watching on Spotify is the way to go. If you're in the car, obviously, uh, then it's Apple or whatever. The interview today it's Professor Donica O'Backwin, as I said, and really fascinating in terms of somebody that's been on the ground, is regularly uh in the region, uh, was in Uzbekistan recently, was in Taiwan, I think a week ago. So Donica is you know an expert. That's as simple as you can put it. I hope you enjoy uh this interview uh with Professor Donica O'Bakoin. As I said, check out uh the website, register for the market research report, it's free. Thank you. Okay, so I'm delighted to say that joining me now is uh Professor Dunica O'Baccoin. Donica is a professor of politics at Dublin City University, uh, one of Ireland's leading experts on post-Soviet politics and international conflict. His research spans all 15 former Soviet states with extensive time spent living and working across Central Asia, the South Caucus, and Moldova. He's a frequent media commentator on Russia, Ukraine, and European security. And his latest book, Unfinished Empire, examines Russian imperialism and the war uh in Ukraine. I've been following Donica's uh appearances on TV uh uh for over the last several years. It's always really insightful, and I'm really thrilled to have him on today, uh, especially given uh in the shadow of the Hungarian, recent Hungarian election and uh other uh geopolitical issues. So Donika, you're very, very welcome.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

Thanks. Thanks, Alan. Thanks for the invite.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

In in terms of we'll get into a range of issues in relation to obviously uh your your research and your your publications, your your book in terms of the uh Russian imperialism, some more topical issues today, uh relative issues for Europe is the recent Hungarian election. But I'd love to get some of your background as well. Your PhD was on Irish politics, but you had this interesting uh situation where you won an essay competition and ended up somewhere uh in in in in Eastern Europe. So maybe maybe start with that if if you can, please.

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Sure. Well that essay competition was uh while I was in secondary school, and uh it brought me uh they they selected essentially the best essay in each of the EU countries. There were far fewer EU countries then. In fact, it wasn't even called the European Union, it was the European Community. I think there were 12 of us, and uh so we were brought as a group, um, I representing Ireland to East Germany and West Germany. Uh there was then a a Bureau for uh intra-German affairs, and uh they we sent, I think it was six days in West Germany and four days in East Germany. Um what's remarkable, of course, in retrospect is that it was August 1989, uh, and we now know looking back that East Germany, the German Democratic Republic as it was officially called, was on its last legs. But it wasn't clear at the time. Um, they certainly had a confidence, they were celebrating 40 years. They were, by their own estimation, the most successful communist state in the world. I think when it came to gold medals at the Olympics, they were after the United States and the Soviet Union, they were third. Uh we now know, of course, that there was a lot of uh drugs being used to enhance the performance of those athletes. But still, you know, by a wide range of benchmarks, they were doing rather well. In fact, there was a tragic case of uh a young man 32 years of age who tried to create his own balloon to float over uh from West Germany to East Germany and uh he he went two kilometers into the sky and ultimately died. Um he died, I think it was in February or March of 1989. So, you know, if he had known, of course, that by the end of the year the Berlin Wall would be uh punctured and the East German regime uh collapsing, he of course would have postponed that initiative. He'd still be alive today. His his his wife of the time, who's still alive today actually, um, you know, was supposed to go with him and opt it out at the last minute. So I make that point to say that it was a fascinating time to go there, to see the very last months of this regime when it still had the confidence to project itself to an outside audience, but we can see now that it was very fragile and on the verge of collapse. Um, in terms of what I saw, it was very different from West Germany. It was very drab, the shops were you know empty. We were staying in what we were told was a top hotel. Uh, we were in places like Dresden, for example, in Erfurt, and and the food was inedible to us. Now, maybe it wasn't what we were used to. They also had this thing called Intershops, I remember, which you could visit. These were for for hard currency, which we brought some along, um, we could buy Western products and you know, simple things like Coca-Cola and and Mars bars and whatnot. And but that showed you that again there was this two-tier system, which is often a feature uh of these types of regimes. So a very interesting time, and I'm I'm I'm really happy uh in retrospect, considering as well that it it it aligned with my my uh academic interests as they were to become, that I managed to visit uh a Soviet satellite country um when they still existed. It's it's quite incredible, really. Like what age what age were you at that time? I would have been just I had just turned 18. It was August 1989.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

So no no no idea what you're gonna do, really, no idea of uh your future career prospects, and you end up in pre uh pre-fall Berlin Wall, uh, you know, and and right at the center, uh the core of probably you could argue defined the region for the next 40-50 years and is still defining what's going on at the moment. But in terms of just digging into that a little bit more, Donichel, in terms of what was your impression? You mentioned Drab kind of uh obviously uh the fool was inedible, that type of thing. But anything else that anything else that you remember specifically during your time there?

SPEAKER_01 13:47

Yeah, well, I obviously had some preconceived ideas. I I did some reading in advance, though books were hard to come by. I had to go to the local library to find some uh on East Germany. And uh two things in particular, perhaps. One is that uh it was as authoritarian as I kind of perceived it to be. We met with uh German communist youth leaders. I remember in particular a gentleman called Frank, who was in his early 30s, which struck me at the time as somewhat old to be a youth leader. And uh I remember when I was asking questions, as we were offered the opportunity to do, uh, he wouldn't continue answering my questions until I stopped calling uh East Germany East Germany. He insisted I call it the German Democratic Republic. Uh that was always a fetish, of course, and still is today among uh non-democratic regimes. They are either called democratic republics or people's republics. Um and so I had to abide by that uh particular requests for him to entertain my questions. I remember he was very skeptical about Gorbachev. Uh his attitude was that, you know, if Gorbachev was popular in the West, which he undoubtedly was, he couldn't be good for communism. Perhaps he was he was right in that respect. Um I also remember that when I tried to interview people, even back then I had this eagerness. I was traveling around with a little micro cassette um to record interviews. I I tried to meet people to interview. Uh anybody I managed to to talk to, uh, it was always through translation, because of course there was a a representative from Germany, and I remember a particular German uh representative from Luxembourg uh who could speak German, and she was often doing translations for me because I couldn't speak uh German and they couldn't speak English, but they wouldn't allow their own voices on the tape. Uh they would only allow the translation of that person from Luxembourg, Snasia, I remember was her name. Um and I still have those recordings and and they're fascinating to listen back to in many respects. But uh what struck me though was their inability or unwillingness to talk directly to me. You know, I was thinking if the reverse was the case, if we had, you know, students uh from Germany uh coming to visit us in Ireland, we would have been very eager to talk to them and happy to have our names uh you know attached to any interview. It wasn't the case in in East Germany. Even then, as I said, just months away from the inevitable collapse, you could you could feel that uh power of the the kind of coercive state. I do remember something as well which I didn't think was important at the time, and now of course we know is very important that on the streets of Dresden uh there there were people selling uh maps of Hungary. Um and I as I said didn't attach any significance at the time, but what we now know is that people were going to make a break uh to Austria uh via Hungary. Hungary ultimately opened its border uh with East Germany and of course the the the border with uh uh Austria as well, and that provided a route uh for people to travel, and that led to this hemorrhage, uh hemorrhaging of people uh from East Germany, and that precipitated the collapse. Um that's something that I said was only clear um afterwards. But I remember you know starting university that very semester in September, uh so the month after visiting East Germany, and I remember I had a poor lecturer, uh, Michael Holmes, uh, who was teaching us the politics of Central and Eastern Europe. And you know, you can imagine the challenge that he had in the autumn of 1989 to stick to his lecture notes, um, because you know, one after one those regimes collapsed. And by December, by the end of the semester, just a single university semester, we went from having the same regimes as they'd existed for decades, uh, you know, which seemed impenetrable in Central and Eastern Europe, to them all collapsing, with the final one, of course, being Shauchescu in Romania, uh, the only one to end violently, of course, uh on Christmas Day. So at at one point in the semester, really, it was just a matter of giving up on the lecture notes and watching what was happening on television. These were these were really exciting times. You might say we also live in very exciting geopolitical times now, but they were exciting for the right reasons. They we we lived in a uh in an era of optimism, very much the reverse of what we have today.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

I've heard you s you mentioned that uh in previous interviews, this era of optimism, because you referenced the nineties. Obviously in Ireland we had the the peace process uh that's probably started in you know in the 70s, and we took us a long time to get to the Decl the Downing Street Declaration '93, and then we had the Good Friday Agreement. And there was other periods. Obviously, the Oslo courts uh looks like a far, far away, distant dream now, but there was these movements towards peace. And as you say, here we are today where the world is in flux and the world is on fire. But going to a broader, bigger question, Donica, how consequential was, in your mind, the collapse of the Berlin Wall in relation to not so much what happened after immediately, but probably bringing us maybe even up to the present day?

SPEAKER_01 18:32

Well, it was hugely consequential, um, and I think was realized at the time, uh, you know, for one thing, it facilitated the the re-entry of so many countries who had been under the thumb of Moscow for decades, if not centuries. It allowed them to return to Europe. That's how they would put it, to exercise self-determination. It's something that we take for granted. Ireland is one of the oldest democracies now in the world. Um, but these were countries which had many of them experienced democracy between World War I and World War II and freedom and independence for the first time uh in centuries, only to be re-occupied uh as the Red Army moved through Europe uh in 1944 and 1945. So there there was that. So these are now our peers, these are our partners in the European Union. In fact, Article 42 of the European Union uh treaties kind of commits us to helping these countries in in their time of need. Um but when I was growing up, they were behind the Iron Curtain. The possibility that you could even talk directly to these people was considered almost an absurdity. Uh you could only read about what was going on in the newspapers. So the Europe as we know it, because we often use Europe and the European Union as interchangeable. I know that's not geographically or politically correct or institutionally correct, but we all sometimes do that. Uh, Europe became much larger. Um that line in the in it disappeared. Uh of course I would argue that one of Vladimir Putin's objectives uh with his um attempts to acquire additional territory in Ukraine and perhaps not only, is to create a new Iron Curtain in Europe. Of course, he he was in Dresden when I was in Dresden in 1989. Of course, uh I didn't know of his existence, he certainly didn't know of mine. He only became to prominence uh much later. But he was in Dresden at the very same time in 1989, and um, you know, his his his world was collapsing, uh the world that he knew. Um but it was for the people living there a time of great optimism. And I I I for example, I was in Helsinki in 1992 for the Conference of Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is now the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. And George Bush, uh sorry, yeah, George Bush Sr. was there, George Um H. W. Bush and Boris Yeltson. And uh it it um we we were there as part of a university forum. Um I was still in UCD at the time, and we took the liberty of going to Estonia for the day. Um we kind of sneaked off from the the conference sessions, and it was the decision I never regretted because we saw Estonia within the first few months of independence, summer of 1992, they'd just introduced their currency, the Kroon, which of now is the Euro. Uh, they'd just introduced their constitution, and this was a time that they'd never thought they'd see. They had grown up, as I said, as part of the Soviet Union. They were they they are today a small country. The population of Estonia is smaller than Dublin's. Um so that the idea that they were now a free country, back to where they were perhaps in the in the 1930s, uh, when they were a member of the League of Nations, now they could join the United Nations, this is what it was all about. You m you will remember, of course, Francis Fukiyama's favorite uh famous book, um The End of History, which of course the title is is always misinterpreted or frequently misinterpreted, that it wasn't, of course, the end of history in terms of um historical events. They of course continue. But the idea was that the ideological debate, which was at the heart of the Cold War, the Iron Curtain, of course, the physical manifestation of what was this ideological uh struggle between an authoritarian form of dictatorship and and And democracy, that that had now been solved, that that had been won uh decisively by the democratic forces, and that you know, all other alternatives to liberal democracy, fascism, you know, absolute monarchy, communism, they had all been tried, they had all been experiments, and they had failed. And liberal democracy was the only sustainable regime still standing, and the momentum was with democracy. So that was the significance of 1989. And you might say it was a significance for decades afterwards. It's only in relatively recent times that we've become, you know, it's become now common to question, you know, where we are uh post-war. We had a kind of a unipolar moment uh for maybe three decades. Um, and now that's coming to an end, and that's one of the reasons why the world is quite uncertain. But things things were very different back then. And you mentioned, of course, a number of optimistic things that were happening at the time, that the peace process in Northern Ireland, the um the Oslo Peace Accords, there was also, of course, apartheid ending in South Africa. You know, there was also even uh though it ended with bloodshed, Tiananmen Square in China, it seemed that even democracy was coming to China at the time, very different times.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

Yeah, uh you you you you mentioned unipolarity there, and and I presume what you you're talking about the US as the dominant power uh uh post the fall of the Berlin Wall uh and then the breakup of the the Soviet uh Union. But in terms of uh talking about Vladimir Putin, and I just again think it's fascinating that you were pulled in Dresden in 1989, um, and he was uh he was obviously a KGB operative at the time, and he had been moulded in you know in his in his lived experience. And there's a very famous documentary, uh my favourite documentary, it's called The Fog of War. I don't know if you saw it or remember.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

I've seen it many times, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:54

Yeah, and uh it's it's it's Robert Dark McNamara uh basically uh looking for forgiveness, I think maybe, and uh very and very contrite, and talking about perhaps uh some lessons that future leaders could learn. And his number one lesson really struck me, and I never forgot it, it's empathise with your enemy. And Kennedy did that when he was facing off against um Khrushchev. I think if to understand Putin, we really have to empathize uh with the situation. His world, as he's as you say, collapsed around him. How scarred was Putin from that experience?

SPEAKER_01 24:31

Oh, he was very scarred. Um he he in Dresden, you know, he was there was the Stasi, which was the East German secret police, and then there was the KGB element of which he was a part. And, you know, as the popular mobilization, the democratic impulse took hold, um, his instinct was, of course, as a man who had made his career hunting down dissidents, people essentially who were interested in democracy or overthrowing the regime, his instinct was to use force to suppress uh this popular mobilization. And he he contacted Moscow um looking for more or less the green light to do this. And uh this is also the title of an episode that was out recently on the Cold War. Um, the response that he got is Moscow is silent. Moscow isn't saying yes, Moscow isn't saying no, Moscow's just not responding. Because Moscow had been signaling um to the regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, those those dictatorships which had been established by the Kremlin, that you are economically and politically, and militarily most importantly, perhaps, you're on your own. Uh if you can't establish some degree of legitimacy, um then we're not going to militarily invade, as we did in 1956 with the Hungarians, when Imre Najt to introduce reforms, or in Czechoslovakia in 1968, when Dubczyk also tried to bring in uh socialism with a human face, or as was threatened, or certainly was perceived as a threat, in Poland in 1980 and the 1980s, when martial law was introduced by um Jarozelski because he feared that if he didn't introduce martial law, Soviet troops would come in and and suppress uh the communist government of Poland. Um so he knew that things were different now, and he had he you know unceremoniously had to pack his bags and go back to Moscow. So from his perspective, this was a betrayal, uh it was an abandonment of the Soviet uh objective, Soviet power, uh that loss of prestige. Uh and I think it did have a huge effect on his personality. Um in terms of that movie, uh that documentary, which I also like, The Fog of War, um I think it's interesting to note, though, that that empathy uh that Robert McNamara was talking about was demonstrated towards the Cuban regime. I mean, trying to get into the heads of Nikita Khrushchev. And there were a lot of hotheads, of course, in the cabinet, uh, people like Curtis LeMay, for example, who were arguing that Cuba should be seized militarily. Um, but Robert McNamara, for a long period and when it mattered, didn't show any empathy towards the Vietnamese, um you know, millions of whom died, of course, as a result of decisions made by successive US governments. So there's a large dollop, I think, of hindsight. He's an elderly man, I think of almost 90 when that documentary was made. So he had a lot of time perhaps to think about these things. But uh unfortunately when he had the power to do something, um you know, when it came to Vietnam in particular, uh, he was as hard line as anybody else. Um but I think yeah, the the I'm not sure empathizing with your enemy is perhaps the dictum, but definitely understanding, I think, is important. Uh and I think, yeah, to to go to your central point, um it's important to understand uh you know why Vladimir Putin came to be the person that he became. And a large part of that is of course is Russia in the 1990s and what happens after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the impoverishment uh of Russia, the looting of Russia um by the oligarchs in particular. Um and you know, it it's very difficult, I think, for us coming from a relatively stable uh society like Ireland to imagine what it would be like if everything you had been brought up to believe in and had invested in disappears overnight. And, you know, the pension system, you know, the the the the electricity and gas that you the the apartments that were being built and provided accommodation for people, that all those things could not be taken for granted. Um and that that was Russia in the 1990s, not only Russia, of course, and of course, you know, there are different trajectories for the countries of the former Soviet Union, um, but certainly the rise to Putin is inexplicable, really, without understanding the 1990s and the chaos uh and the the poverty uh that Russia endured during that decade.

SPEAKER_00 28:52

I'm always interested to to understand. So just just ten short years later, he emerges as Yeltsin's pick then. Uh 1999, uh that surprise announcement on TV, Boris Yeltsin comes on and says he has essentially it's a really uh I I was actually watching it in preparation for the the the the the footage of it and it's it's it's very interesting. People should go back and look at it. He's he's almost in tears uh explaining why he has failed and essentially announcing that Vladimir Putin, his prime minister at the time, is going to be is going to succeed. But I always curious, how did Putin uh position himself at that time to be the s to be the successor?

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Well, he had some lucky breaks, and a lot of it was just you might say, playing the long game. Um he has some superficial, I guess, comparisons with Joseph Stalin in this one respect, in that Stalin was always underestimated. Um people always thought it was going to be Leon Trotsky, for example, or other luminaries uh in the Politburo who would succeed Lenin. Stalin was seen as a predictable, reliable, but unimaginative apparatchik. And that was very much how Putin was perceived as well. He wasn't a guy that people noticed in the room when they entered it. Uh, and that makes his his rise all the more um, I think, illuminating and remarkable. He he he delivered for those he served under until he was serving under no one else but himself. Uh and of course the last person in that was Boris Yeltson. First, he was made head of the FSB. That was the big break that he got in the in the presidential administration. That is, of course, the successor to the KGB. And and Putin lionized uh Yuri Andropov, the former head of the KGB. So it was a great honor for him to succeed in that tradition of being head of the uh the security services. And um, you know, the Elson administration was notoriously corrupt. And uh Primakov, um the the Prime Minister, had launched this kind of corruption uh investigation into uh you know various quarters, including uh the Kremlin, and he was getting very close to uh uncovering a lot of the corruption that was there. And the man leading that uh uh investigation, the Prosecutor General Col Surikov, uh, he uh was found uh one uh evening to be in bed with uh two women in a hotel, neither of whom were his wife, um, and it was uh broadcast on Russian state television. Now, how was you know this arranged? How were the videos procured? How was the broadcast disseminated? That was very much the work of Vladimir Putin as head of the FSB. And of course, Surikov had to resign, uh, the pressure was taken off Yeltsin, and again, you know, Putin was able to demonstrate his reliability, his efficiency, his loyalty, because of course when Yeltsin handed over power, and this is the same problem that all dictators have, uh well, um it's perhaps unfair to call Yeltsin a dictator in the same way as Putin, but we'll say all figures who rule in an authoritarian fashion. The problem is to hand over power, because usually you've kept power uh through fair means and foul, and you've created enemies, and you're worried about what life will be like after you hand over power, after you retire. So Yelsen and Putin more or less made a pact. Uh Yeltsin more or less got an amnesty for any misdeeds, uh, and his his his enormous family wealth could be preserved, and Putin was nominated uh as as as you know Yeltsin's successor. I mean, Yelsen had gone through several prime ministers in quick succession, so it was a bit like musical chairs. I mean, Putin was the last guy sitting on the important chair as Yeltsin steps down. Now you mentioned that farewell, which is available on YouTube, and I also recommend that people see it. One thing that's clear is how how much in poor health uh Yelsen is. His speech is very slow, it's slurred. Um, it's a big change in one decade because he was a man standing on a tank defying the August coup in 1991. Um, but he was a notorious alcoholic, he wasn't particularly uh fit, um, and as I said, he was corrupt. So he kind of, I think when you compare Yelsen to Putin, I mean, Yeltsin was the man I think that many Russians saw when they looked in the mirror, but Putin was the man that they wanted to be. He was the ideal, he was everything that Yelts was not. He was young, he was in his late forties, he was uh athletic, remember, he's into judo, he was almost a non-drinker. He certainly never seemed to drink publicly. Uh he was disciplined, which is one thing that, of course, Boris Yelsen was not. You remember, of course, that infamous time when he couldn't get off the plane at Shannon Airport for that. Exactly. Albert Reynolds and Sean, it's it's best recounted in Sean Dignan's autobiography, once been round uh the Merry-Go-Round, and uh, you know, it's quite clear, to make a long story short, that despite what Yeltsin said afterwards, that his officials simply hadn't woken him up. Uh, of course, that's a classic uh authoritarian trick as well as to blame your subordinates. Um, he he was absolutely uh incapacitated uh through alcohol use, and that's why he didn't get off the plane. But that was emblematic of his ruling style and of the situation Russia was in. And it does help to explain uh again not only how Putin got to be where he was, um, but also his initial popularity uh within Russia and indeed outside of Russia.

SPEAKER_00 34:28

It's very interesting. Uh also uh Clinton was finishing up his term as US president at the time, and he went to visit uh Putin, and there's a famous scene where Putin is sitting uh opposite Clinton, and the body language is really, really interesting. It's uh, you know, legs spread out, back, head chair back, uh kind of sneering at Clinton. And Clinton had a had a quite a good relationship, it seems, with his with Yeltsin. Um and Clinton kind of hinted at, you know, have you sure you've are you sure you've picked the right uh fellow here, Boris? But I suppose we we fast forward a bit then, Dunegan, and we look at the first perhaps instance of Putin flexing, and we look at what happened in Chechnya. Um I know that you spent a lot of time, a lot of your career actually living in uh central Central Europe, uh in Georgia particularly and and other areas, but I mean, what's your what's your uh recollection of what was going on at that time?

SPEAKER_01 35:31

Well, yeah, Chechnya is now long forgotten. They were you know fighting for independence essentially. Um the cartography of Russia today and the Soviet Union before it was very arbitrary. Uh it's very much the legacy of Joseph Stalin, uh, who was not, as you know, a well-known Democrat. So this was done without consulting with the people. Uh as in any imperial uh imposed borders, um, they often don't follow ethnic lines, even geographical lines. Um, sometimes deliberately, indeed, ethnic minorities are left on the wrong side of borders. And there was always a an unwritten rule when you were drawing the borders of the Soviet Union, that you never um included uh countries that were within uh a certain proximity of Russia. So, for example, all the independent states, if you look at them, they're all kind of bordering Russia, like Kazakhstan and and and uh you know Georgia, of course. But Chechnya, if it was to be an independent state within uh the Soviet Union, would have been somewhat different. It would have been uh further inland, you might say. And of course it also has pipelines going through it. It's very small people, of course, the Chechens, only a million people. Many of them were forcibly uh moved to Central Asia uh during um a very short period of time in 1944, as were many other peoples, uh the Crimean Tatars, for example. One of the reasons that Crimea has so many Russians today is that during a weekend in 1944, Stalin ordered all Crimean Tatars to be moved to Uzbekistan. I lived in Uzbekistan for a year, I've just come back from there actually, and you know, I I've met over the years the the grandchildren of those Crimean Tatars who were forcibly moved by Stalin uh from Crimea to Central Asia. So the Chechens had the same fate. They they they did wander back after Stalin died, some of them, not all of them. And in the 1990s, like many other uh nations that had been trapped um in the Soviet Union, they saw an opportunity to go for independence. And for a couple of years they had de facto independence. And one of the first things that Putin did um on becoming president was to reignite uh the war on the Chechens, who are about a million strong as a people. So again, smaller than Dublin in terms of population. The Russians, of course, much more numerous, they had far better um uh artillery and they had an air force and everything like that. So it was a very asymmetrical war. But, you know, as it was in the 1990s with Bill Clinton, um, I think Bill Clinton, if I remember correctly, compared Boris Yeltsin to Abraham Lincoln, uh, said that this was uh essentially a civil war within within Russia, and therefore, you know, the obvious thing if Yeltsin is Abraham Lincoln is that uh the Kremlin is supported in suppressing the Chechens. Certainly uh the the they looked the other way when some of the worst atrocities were being committed. And similarly, uh with Vladimir Putin in the early 2000s, this was you know also around the time of 9-11. So, you know, there was an understanding that Russia was going to play a part in this war on terrorism, as George Bush had defined it. And and indeed initially Putin uh did prove his utility uh in some respects, and therefore again the Chechens were not supported in the way that they might otherwise have been. Um that's been a trend, by the way, um, because you know there is a victim narrative that sometimes comes out of the Kremlin that Russia's always underappreciated and uh not given a fair crack of the whip. Whereas if you're living as a neighbor of Russia, the experience is that Western states, not least the United States, have always prioritized Russia over the neighbors. Um and if Russia wants, you know, to have you know disproportionate influence in the neighborhood, that generally is treated as more important than supporting those countries which are at the at the receiving end of what that severe influence entails. Um and and that, as I said, go back to your question of Chechnya, you can trace that going back to the 1990s. I mean, supporting Russia uh was was the key focus of successive administrations, which is why, by the way, you see Ukraine giving up nuclear weapons, Kazakhstan giving up nuclear weapons, but Russia retains its nuclear weapons. In fact, they're handed over more or less uh to Russia. Uh Russia is still considered um a great power uh in the 1990s as a successor to the Soviet Union. The others are post-Soviet states, but they're not, of course, in the same league uh as Russia. I would argue, of course, that that is somewhat inflated because if you look at the Russian economy today, for example, it's it's smaller than than Italy's economy. I mean, it's it's its major, you might say, claim to be uh a great power is is it's its military. It has a huge military. But economically, uh for many years it hasn't been um anything above a mid-sized power.

SPEAKER_00 40:18

And you mentioned uh 9-11 and the aftermath there. Uh I know when we spoke before that it was always interesting to me. The first phone call uh between uh George Bush was was Putin's call, it seems uh they had a pretty good relationship, uh walking relationship as you you might describe it. But then just a very short six years later, I I I I remember the uh Munich security speech that Putin gave, I think it was 2007, John McCain sitting in the front row uh giving uh Putin the eye again. It's worth looking and watching that speech, because what Putin says is from his perspective uh he saw it as uh NATO expanding. Basically, you are encroaching on what he perceived as his territory and gave a warning. So he was becoming more bullish in that regard. But what what's your memory of that? Uh, because I I think that's a pivotal moment as well, Donika.

SPEAKER_01 41:15

Yeah, well, as I said, Russia felt underappreciated um and it felt that it deserved great power status. Obviously, it was the successor of a superpower. Now that wasn't matched by its economic prowess, as I've just outlined. Uh, and it was going through, it had gone through a very difficult kind of triple transition from dictatorship to something I wouldn't call it a democracy, but something less dictatorial, uh, from you know, rule of law to to or from rule by law, uh, which was the Soviet experience, again to something uh a little bit more uh legally based. Um and and then also, of course, the economic transition, which was the most painful from a planned kind of state economy, socialist economy, to something resembling a market economy. Um and and all of that was uh, as we've discussed, you know, a really difficult period. But you know, oil prices were rising in the early 2000s. Yeltsin had been very unlucky with that. Um and indeed one of the reasons the Soviet Union collapsed, uh was collapsing during the 1980s was again lowering oil prices. Because as is the case today, I mean the Kremlin really depends on the the value of fossil fuels uh to sustain its form of governance. It's not a normal economy uh in in many respects, at least not a normal uh European economy. So you're right, by by March 2007, um the Munich speech, you you have um the first signs we can see in retrospect of Putin articulating openly um a feeling that you know the rules aren't being made in a way that suit Russia, that Russia will somehow challenge these rules, perhaps. Um it's it's worth remembering that Russia wasn't invited into the the the G7, it became the G eight. Um, you know, Russia was included in in many discussions, but it wasn't to the extent that Russia felt it deserved. Uh there was that feeling of, I guess, the expectations not being being I didn't I I I visited Russia uh on many occasions uh over the years, and I I was there during those years in the early Putin years, and as I said, there was a lot of optimism. And I was there not just in places like Moscow and St. Petersburg, but you know, regional capitals like Yoshkorola, the capital of the Maoriel Republic, and uh Ulyanovsk, even indeed in Buryatia I've been to to many times. And and you know, he he did succeed with those oil prices rising to to kind of um create a renewed social contract with the Russian people, which had been broken with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Um and that social contract is kind of different from the one. I mean, there are some aspects that are always the same in any social contract with the state. The basic one is that you the state protects your life and liberty. Um but in in this in in in Russia it's generally been, you know, people are willing to give up what we would consider normal m civic rights and democratic rights in return for some economic benefits. And some stability. Stability is kind of the core thing. And under Putin, they were getting a form of that social contract back. So I think he had a renewed mandate, even if it wasn't entirely democratic, I think, when speaking to the world, which he didn't have at the beginning, because he was, again, as I've s said, an obscure, relatively obscure apparatus. In fact, he had to write an autobiography, or not even write it, it wasn't written, it was ghost-written for him based on interviews. He published an autobiography just after he came to power. It's translated into English as first person. And it was really explaining to the Russians and to the world who he was. I mean, remarkable. I mean, as you know, in a country like Ireland, a consolidated democracy takes decades before you can reach power after first starting out as a humble county councillor, perhaps, and making your way to being a Tishuk. And people certainly know who you are by the time you've got to the apex of power. In Russia, it's it's often been the case where it was always some back backroom discussion that produced a very powerful, all powerful indeed leader. And then people, you know, would get used to that leader and become aware of their pros and cons over time. But uh the familiarity came after the power had been achieved, not before. Um so and and in 2007, when that Munich speech was being made, I mean he was coming to the end of what should have been a two-term limit. There was a two-term limit in the Russian Constitution, but he was already devising a way, which we're all familiar with, of extending his rule, and here we are, you know, 26 years after he came to power first, and he's still uh the president of Russia.

SPEAKER_00 45:35

In terms of just playing devil's advocate for a little bit now, because I think it's important in the context of the wider discussion. So is there any sympathy there for Putin's perspective in relation to the argument that the US, because it's obvious that the US is his main uh nemesis, that the US was positioning defensive military equipment very, very close to uh Russia's border?

SPEAKER_01 46:05

Uh well, NATO enlargement is certainly uh one of the many reasons which is articulated by the Kremlin as to you know why we are where we are geopolitically, uh in terms of relations between Europe and Russia, and indeed Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Of course, there are many different justifications given, uh, but NATO enlargement is usually in the mix uh somewhere. Um, let's take it from a number of perspectives. I mean, there's a chicken and egg perhaps uh dilemma here. I mean, is NATO enlargement, as the Kremlin would maintain, is that the cause of Russia's imperial actions towards its neighbors, or is it Russian imperial uh actions towards its neighbors that leads to NATO enlargement? Because, you know, when Russia expands, it expands through invasion and occupation. When NATO or the EU enlarges, it does so usually because a country petitions to join. There is a a process, you have to get the consensus of all existing members, um, and it can take years in the case of the EU. Even with the case of uh Sweden, it took two years between the application and the actually joining NATO, the most recent uh duet, of course, Finland and Sweden joining. Um and and and therefore it's this is these are the actions of sovereign, independent, democratic states. And if anything, Russia generally and and Putin individually have been NATO's greatest salespeople. I mean, NATO was 16 members when the Cold War ended. Now it's 32. And virtually all of those countries that have joined uh since the end of the Cold War are former uh communist uh authoritarian states that used to be in some way or other uh under Kremlin indirect or direct control. So these are countries that have tried to escape the abusive cycle of history, which is something that I think uh we as a small country in Ireland should empathize with because most of those countries, or indeed I think about half of those countries that are members of NATO are around the same size as Ireland or smaller. Uh Finland, of course, as I said, joined recently about the same population as Ireland. And the three that joined previous to Finland and Sweden, uh North Macedonia, Albania, and uh Montenegro, their populations combined of those three countries is about the same as Ireland's. So these are small countries looking for protection. Because we're you know the whole idea about NATO enlargement is that Russia has security concerns. I would kind of throw it back and say, what about the security concerns of these very small countries? Russia has nuclear weapons, no one's going to invade Russia. You know, it is the largest uh nuclear stockpile in the world. You know, you would be mad to invade Russia when it has that red button that they can push at any time in any direction. Um, so Russian security is not at issue, in my view. What is at issue is the security of Russia's neighbors. And they have tried to resolve this historical dilemma when they could by joining NATO, because most of those, of course, joined in the 1990s, at the end of the 1990s or in the early 2000s. So from Putin's perspective, from Russia's perspective, they kind of got away when Russia was weak. They they they got out of Russia's orbit. Because why is Ukraine invaded uh now and not Estonia? Estonia is, you know, almost 40 times smaller than Ukraine's population, at least Ukraine's population as it was before uh the war. Um it's more or less one million compared to 40 as it was for Ukraine. Why did why did, you know, and there's there's there's about 25% of the population of Estonia are Russian-speaking. They live, you know, close to the borders of Russia, in, for example, the city of Narva. You know, so why would you not take the low-hanging fruit of Estonia instead of invading Ukraine, which is so much larger, um, because Estonia is in NATO and Ukraine is not. That's the simple reality. So we actually, I would argue, invite war uh by um allowing Russia to dictate the terms, the security packages that its neighbors has. I mean, we mentioned the Cuban missile crisis briefly when we were talking about Robert McNamara. Interesting how that ended, uh, because I I I heard some people when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022 arguing this point about, well, you know, America was upset with uh the Soviets when they put missiles in Cuba, so you know Russia's kind of upset, um, even though there are there are no US missiles in in Ukraine, um, but they're upset by the the prospect that there might be. It's worth remembering how the Cuban missile crisis ended. Firstly, the Americans gave a guarantee to the Cubans that they would never invade Cuba, and they have stuck to that agreement, despite the fact that Cuba's patron, the Soviet Union, collapsed many decades ago. That was a very important guarantee because you must remember that the year before the Cuban Missile Crisis, you had the Bay of Pigs, when there was a half-hearted, admittedly, attempt to overthrow uh the Castro regime in in Cuba. And secondly, they allowed Cuba to have whatever um economic and and security arrangements that they wanted. They they have never been part of the Western camp since then. They've always been, at least until the Soviet Union collapsed, they were part of the Soviet bloc, and since then they've maintained an socialist regime only under Trump, as we're seeing, or is there now a real attempt to perhaps overthrow the regime again? But uh but the agreement was that, that Cuba, despite the fact that it's 90 miles off the coast of Florida, could have its own uh political and economic system that was allied to the nemesis of the United States, um, which was the Soviet Union. Uh and if we were to give Ukraine and indeed other neighbors like Ukraine uh the same package, we would say to them uh, you know, you can maintain whatever you know uh alliances and geopolitical orientations that you want. Um, but Russia will not allow that to happen. Um that's that that is the big problem.

SPEAKER_00 51:59

Just before we get off the Cuban Missile Crisis, I I remember reading something very interesting uh in relation to Kennedy's performance during that period. Um and if the Bay of Pigs did not happen, it's unlikely that Kennedy would have pushed back as much on the likes of Curtis Lemay because they had hoodwinked uh Dulles and the CIA had hoodwinked uh Kennedy the Bale of Pigs, and he was more distrustful and he made up his own mind and got his counsel from his brother Robert as well, and he took a long time in deciding uh how he would uh respond. So that would I thought that was fascinating. So perhaps if the bay of pigs didn't happen, we would have had a different outcome uh in relation to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Um Justin just in terms of broadening out the conversation a bit, then Donica, in terms of we hear a lot about these uh multipolarity now, uh we're moving, transitioning away from uh a bipolar world where we see a decline in in the US for a whole range of reasons. Uh debt, uh trade, uh just societal issues, and we get into this kind of spheres of influence uh positioning where it seems that Putin has an ally in terms of that uh outlook with Donald Trump and perhaps Xi Jinping as as well, which is a bit worrying to say the least.

SPEAKER_01 53:32

Oh, absolutely, and I I think you hit the nail on the head there uh that you know all those three leaders that you mentioned, uh to varying degrees and with different tactics and strategies and perspectives and temperaments, uh converge on this desire for a sphere of influence. Um so Donald Trump has said, you know, he wants Canada to be the 51st state, he wants Greenland, and indeed has made all sorts of threats to Denmark and in indeed you might say Europe collectively and his NATO allies, uh, who he constantly refers to as them or they, it's not we. Um he talks about getting Panama back. Um, he is certainly looking for at least hemispheric in dominance, and you know, they constantly emphasize that they are the preeminent economy, they have the largest military, so that hemispheric dominance is a prerequisite for global dominance in many respects. And this comes, of course, at a time, as we know, when the US economy has been in relative decline for some years. So you might say this is a a desperate gamble on their part, uh alienating allies and adversaries at the same time. Um China is is the is the economy on the rise. Um there is a kind of a theory in international relations or a notion of what they call the the Thucydides trap. Uh it was formulated by Roy Allison. Essentially, one of the dangerous times uh of any situation is when you have a rising power and a declining power. Uh, both of them think that they can take the other. Um certainly the US still thinks it's preeminent. China certainly is playing a long game, but quietly thinking that it's uh going to be pre-eminent soon. And then you have Russia, which as I said is not a major economy, um, but is uh a major supplier, of course, of China fossil fuels. Uh in relative terms, I should add, because I'm old enough to remember when the Russian economy and the Soviet economy was greater than the Chinese one. In fact, during the Cold War, it was quite clear that China was the junior partner if indeed there was a partnership. Now China's economy is ten times greater than Russia's. Um and and so but Russia has, as I said, it's also an ambition, maybe a more clearly articulated ambition, of uh dominating its neighborhood. And of course, its full-scale invasion of Ukraine is just a clear illustration of that. But you know, there are other countries in the neighborhood who are also uh fearful. I mean, I I interviewed Maya Sandu, the president of Moldova, for example, and and she's adamant that were it not for Ukraine, uh, you know, Moldova would have been next. They would if they'd made their way to Odessa, for example, where uh you know they are on record as saying repeatedly they consider the Russians, I mean, they consider it to be a Russian city. If they made their way to Odessa, they were just two or three hours away from Kisinnao, the capital of Moldova, and they already have a separatist uh region in Moldova that they could have uh uh annexed as well. So, and then of course, with China you have, you know, Xi Jinping's regime, you know, muscling into the South China Sea, you know, uh the Vietnamese are worried, the Filipinos are worried, but of course, most importantly, perhaps the the Taiwanese are worried. I was in Taiwan uh in January of this year, and uh they they also see this as a very unpredictable time because of course the US was traditionally I mean it's the the level it was willing to support Taiwan has always been unclear, but I think it's it's I think they're less sure now than they ever were that the US would would would help if China were to invade. Uh that level of ambiguity perhaps is gone. Indeed, in many respects the Americans are blackmailing the Taiwanese, getting them to to invest more in America as a kind of a a way of um giving America vested interest in supporting Taiwan. Um and so yeah, I mean we we live with those kind of three major powers and and three leaders with, as I said, despite they having different temperaments, all willing to concede to a certain extent spheres of influence to others as long as their interests are acknowledged by their peers.

SPEAKER_00 57:26

So I hope you enjoyed part one of the interview with Professor Donica Blackline. I told you. Fascinating. Rare you get to talk to somebody that's actually lived and experienced the region as much as Donica has. Next week we will play part two. Hope you get up and enjoy that sunshine. It's been a fun winter. Take care.