We are now in the second Cold War, with only one difference from the first one: China has replaced the Soviet Union as the other pole to the United States. So says British historian Niall Ferguson, speaking at the Tipping Point conference in Lithuania in September.
He is also convinced that Western allies are not doing enough for Ukraine and unless they do, Ukraine will lose the war, with very serious consequences for Europe and the US.
In an exclusive interview with LRT.lt, Ferguson discusses why the West is not helping Ukraine as much as it could, Europe’s defence capabilities, and the future of countries like Lithuania.
In your presentation, you said that we are in the second Cold War and the biggest superpowers are the US and the PRC. Where does this leave Russia and Europe?
It’s important to understand that Cold War Two is not exactly the same as Cold War One, any more than World War Two was exactly the same as World War One. The big difference between Cold War One and Cold War Two is that the number one power on the other side is no longer Russia. It’s China. Back in the late 1940s and in the 1950s, it was the other way around. Russia, the Soviet Union, was clearly number one in the Communist world, and China was a clear number two. So that’s important.
It means that the geography is different too. Cold War One was a kind of transatlantic thing. The big issue was really the security of Western Europe, and probably Berlin was the main flashpoint. But Cold War Two is trans-Pacific and the real flashpoint is Taiwan. That means that in some ways, Europe matters less.
But if you remember, in Cold War One, the wars happened in Asia, in Korea, in Vietnam. The danger is that in Cold War Two, the wars happen in Europe.
Talking about the war in Europe, you said that you were in Kyiv recently and you’re very concerned. How would you judge the situation in Ukraine now? Are we doing enough? Where are we heading to?
It’s clear that the West, if you want to use that term, the United States, the European Union, Japan and the other countries supporting Ukraine are not doing enough. And the Ukrainians know it. They are fighting a heroic war of defence, they’ve even gone on the offensive by sending troops into the Kursk region of Russia. But they are outmanned and they are outgunned.
And the reason that they’re outmanned and outgunned is partly that Russia is just a much bigger economy and a much bigger population than Ukraine. But it’s also because Russia’s allies China, Iran, North Korea are supplying Russia with military hardware, including ammunition, including drones, whereas we in the West are supplying Ukraine with less than what Ukraine needs.
And that is, I think, a matter of political will. It’s not as if we’re poor, but we simply aren’t supplying the Ukrainians with sufficient air defences, with sufficient missiles, with sufficient tanks, with sufficient howitzers, with sufficient ammunition for them to be able to win this war.
At the moment they’re only just managing to hold the line in the Donbas. And it seems to me that the big risk is that over the coming weeks and months, if we don’t give Ukraine more, they’re going to find it very difficult to avoid being pushed further and further westwards in Luhansk and Donetsk. And the threats to cities like Kharkiv are very real.
So we’re not doing enough. And it’s time we realised that, because I think a lot of people in the West tell themselves a story: we’re doing so much for Ukraine. I’m sorry, it’s about half of what we did for Kuwait when it was invaded by Iraq in 1990, and if we do just half of what we did then, we shouldn’t be surprised if Ukraine ultimately loses this war. That’s the danger.
What are the reasons? Is it that some Western countries are afraid of Russia, that Vladimir Putin can actually use nuclear weapons? Or do you see some other reasons?
There are three reasons why we’re not doing enough. One is the one you mentioned. From the very outset of this conflict, the Biden-Harris administration has allowed itself to be intimidated by Russia’s threats of using nuclear weapons. They appear to have forgotten the big lesson of Cold War One. The key lesson of deterrence, which is that if one superpower threatens to use nuclear weapons, the other superpower should reply by saying: we have those, and if you use yours, we will very likely use ours in retaliation. So we’ve allowed ourselves to be intimidated.
But there are other reasons at work here. Number two, we enjoyed the peace dividend of the period after the Cold War far too much. European countries, in particular, cut their defence spending and cut their military capability drastically.
I mean, take Germany, which during the Cold War had a really substantial military capability and a large defence budget. Right now, the regular German defence budget is 1.2% of gross domestic product. The only reason that Germany meets its NATO target of 2% is the so-called Sondervermögen, which is just a special fund that is going to be over in just a matter of a few years.
So the second reason why we’re not doing enough is that European countries in particular are not spending enough on defence and have allowed their military industrial capability to degrade drastically over the last 20 years.
And the third reason – politics. Fundamentally, European politicians, and this is true of some Americans too, do not have the guts to persuade voters that they need to make a sacrifice not of their lives, not of their kids, but simply of money, to make sure that Ukraine is not defeated. And you can see this in every country.
Take Germany. Alternative für Deutschland, the far-right pro-Putin party, is winning elections at the state level in provinces like Thuringia and coming second in Saxony. And this scares the politicians in Berlin. It scares them into taking a tone that I think is more or less the tone of appeasement of Russia. So those three reasons, I think, explain why we’re not doing enough.
The problem is that over time that condemns Ukraine to defeat. And if we turn round one morning and realise that Russia won this war, the costs to Europeans will end up being much, much higher than it would be to pay now to help Ukraine win this war.
Some Western politicians constantly speak of red lines. Do you think Ukraine’s operation in Kursk and taking Russian land changed anything in how they perceive Moscow’s red lines?
I think that red lines are one of these terms that get used to the point that they cease to be meaningful. If you remember, Barack Obama had a red line, and that red line was about the use of chemical weapons in Syria. That line was crossed and there were no consequences. So I almost think the more people talk about red lines, the less credible those red lines are.
Now, in the case of the Kursk offensive, it's done a great deal to boost Ukrainian morale. The trouble is, if you take offensive action like that, you've got to be able to hold it. And I worry a lot that Ukraine is very overstretched in defending the Donbas, and this stretches Ukraine's military capabilities even further. So it's not clear yet if this is a strategic success or merely a tactical but short-lived success.
I think the critical question is not really sending Ukrainian troops into Russian territory. The critical question is can Ukraine hit air bases deep in Russia, from which Russia is launching air attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure and Ukrainian cities. I think Ukraine can do that without starting World War three.
The problem is people in Washington, perhaps also in Berlin, who've been convinced that if Ukraine hits those air bases, then Putin will go nuclear.
I think it's highly unlikely for two reasons. One: China has made it clear that it would not support Putin using nuclear weapons. Two: what would these nuclear weapons achieve, exactly? It's not obvious what target they would be directed against. Ukraine's forces are very dispersed over an enormously long front line. Would Putin hit Ukrainian city? He's already a pariah. But this would surely end any credibility that Russia has in the so-called global South.
So of course, there's some risk. There's always some risk. It's not a 0% probability, but I think it's a very low risk that Russia would use nuclear weapons if Ukraine was allowed to use Storm Shadow and other missiles against those Russian air bases.
And in a war, if your cities and your energy infrastructure are being degraded by air raids and missile strikes, and you're not allowed to counter those attacks, then it seems to me you're doomed to defeat.
So we have to decide, do we want Ukraine to win this war, or do we want it to lose? If we want it to win, it has to be able to retaliate against these airstrikes. And I don't believe that this is to risk World War three or nuclear Armageddon.
Sometimes it seems that we want Ukraine to win, but we don't want Russia to lose. Do you think that if Russia lost, it would have serious consequences on Europe?
I worry a lot less about the break-up of the Russian Federation than some people who almost make this seem like the nightmare scenario. I'm not sure why that would be the nightmare scenario. The Russian Federation is still, in many ways, Europe's last surviving empire. It's not a nation state. It's not clear to me that the Russian Federation should be the ruler of the Caucasus. That was an imperial acquisition of the 19th century. So let's stop pretending that Russia is a nation state. It's not. It's the last European empire. That's one of the reasons that it's able to wage this war with a partly colonial army.
I think the break-up of Russia would in many ways be a good outcome of this conflict, though I'm not so optimistic as to think that it's likely. In Kyiv, just a couple of days ago, I was in a panel discussion which had the title, Is the Break-Up of Russia the Ultimate Nightmare. And I said, the break-up of Russia is the ultimate dream. Would that it could come true?
But you think that there’s a low probability of that happening?
It's very unlikely for a couple of reasons. One, even if the Russian Federation shrank and lost control of non-Russian parts of the Russian Federation, it would still be pretty big. I mean, Russia is a large landmass with a pretty large population. And so the decolonisation of the Russian Empire still leaves you with a pretty big Russian nation state. So the question is not really the break-up of Russia. The question is, can Russia become a normal nation state?
France used to be an empire. Britain used to be an empire. Spain used to be an empire. The Dutch used to have an empire. And all of those countries went from being global empires to being normal nation states without the ambition to conquer their neighbours. Now, Russia hasn't yet done that. The question is, can Russia achieve that transformation into a normal nation state?
I don't ask the Russians to become liberal democrats. I don't ask them to adopt the attitudes of people in Scandinavia or in the British Isles, but they do need to become a normal nation state that is capable of living at peace with its neighbours. And that's the big transition that I hope will come if Ukraine can win this war.
Now, I don't think winning the war means that Ukraine annexes Kursk. Winning the war means that Ukraine remains a viable, stable, prosperous democracy. If that can be achieved, then it seems to me there is a hope that Russia too can evolve in that direction, because in the past, Russian military defeats have often been followed by periods of reform. And that's what we need now in what will one day be the post-Putin era.
It's very interesting that you mentioned what a Ukrainian victory would mean. And you didn't mention the borders of 1991. Why?
I think it's clear that under international law, Ukraine is entitled to have the borders of 1991 restored, just as Kuwait was entitled to have its borders restored in that very year.
But in the short run, it's not very easy to see how Ukraine, with this level of Western support, can get Russia out of Donbass, can get Russia out of southeastern Ukraine. My objective over the next 12 to 24 months is to see an end to the war, because I don't think Ukraine can keep fighting at this level with this rate of casualties and this rate of destruction for a lot longer.
So it's important that we get an armistice. And the analogy that I would use is with the Korean War, which had one year of very mobile warfare, then had two years of attrition and then not a peace, but an armistice. It leaves Korea in a very dangerous state, with a border that's highly hazardous. And it still is to this day.
But South Korea has gone on to be one of the most prosperous and successful economies of the last 50 years. And that is possible for Ukraine, even if it doesn't control Donbas in the short run, even if it can't get the Russians out of the southeast, it can still be a prosperous economy. Ultimately, I want to see Ukraine restored to its 1991 borders. But we've got to be realistic. That's not likely to happen in the next 1 or 2 years. So armistice, not peace. No final concessions of land, a temporary halt to the hostilities because I think Ukraine needs that.
And then a new security arrangement that will make it impossible for Russia to start this war again. That could involve membership of NATO, or it could involve the kind of treaties that Japan and the Philippines have with the United States. I don't mind which. The most important thing is a break in the fighting so that Ukraine can recover, and then a new security structure that will deter Russia from any future aggression.
Do you think that once Russia is done with Ukraine, it may attack NATO and, more specifically, the Baltic states?
I think it's reasonable to assume that Putin's ultimate goal is to break NATO, to expose Article Five as meaningless and to pick off one of the Baltic states. I think that is almost certainly his game plan.
But there are ways in which this game plan can fail, the most important of which is that we establish deterrence. That means that the other NATO countries have to commit themselves wholeheartedly to the defence of Lithuania and the other Baltic states. That is possible, but it means that all of NATO, including the United States, must rearm in a meaningful way.
Right now, the reality is that the European members of NATO do not spend enough on defence. And what they do spend, they do not spend efficiently. You need to modernise the armed forces of Germany, which currently are frankly a joke, but you need to do that kind of modernisation across the board. And this is not something that we have ten years to do. It may be that we only have ten months to get serious about this.
But when I go to Berlin and I talk to German politicians in the government and in the opposition, I worry that there is not the seriousness of intent that there needs to be. Germany has had a very pleasant 20 years, spending next to nothing on defence and running down its armed forces. It's over the idea of a defence budget that is 1.2% of GDP is outrageous under these circumstances.
The idea that the Sondervermögen formula and the special fund will simply run out in a few years, the idea that Germany can cut its aid to Ukraine, because the Russian assets are going to provide a new source of support. All of this is pure fiction, and therefore there needs to be a reality check in Berlin, but not only in Berlin. If I go to London and I look at the state of Britain's armed forces, Britain, which has for so long been a key member of NATO, it's shockingly bad too. Britain has run down the size of an army, run down the size of its navy, run down its capacity to be an effective source of deterrence.
So if we are to make sure that Putin is not only stopped in Ukraine, but stopped altogether so that he no longer poses a threat to Lithuania, there has to be a real and serious effort by the European members of NATO to step up, go not just to 2% of GDP, but in my view, to three and a half. If we do that, then Lithuania's future will be secure. If we don't do it, then I think it will be in danger.
But how do you explain to people, for example, in Spain that they are threatened by Russia?
I agree that it's difficult and it's very hard to make people in Western Europe generally take seriously the Russian threat, but they need to be reminded that if Russia is spending 7% of GDP on defence and building what will be ultimately the largest army in the world, modernising its nuclear forces, then Russia poses a threat not just to the Baltic states or Poland. It poses a threat to the entirety of Western Europe. So I think there needs to be some serious educational effort here to explain to people in Western Europe: these missiles have a range that directly threatens you.
Just as in the first Cold War, the Soviet Union posed a direct threat to the political stability and the security of all Western countries, including Britain, including any member at that point of NATO. So it's almost as if we've forgotten the lessons of the first Cold War. And part of my role as an historian is to remind people of the lessons of history.
And the most obvious lesson, really, the most obvious lesson of history since 1945 is that a heavily armed Russia poses a threat not just to its immediate neighbours, but to every part of Europe within range of its missiles.
You speak about cooperation among Russia, China, Iran, North Korea. Are authoritarian countries teaming up to challenge democracies? Which side do you think is winning at this moment?
I've called it the axis of ill will. There was no axis of evil, if you remember, what, 22 years ago, George W Bush said that Iran, Iraq and North Korea were an axis of evil. That was fiction. They were not cooperating or collaborating with one another, but the axis of ill will – China, Russia, Iran, North Korea – they are cooperating on an a large scale economically and militarily.
Russia's war effort would not be sustainable today without the cooperation of China, without the cooperation of Iran, without the support of North Korea. By comparison, Ukraine's allies talk a big game. They talk about their pledges of hundreds of billions of euros to Ukraine. But when you look behind those headline numbers, what do you find?
Let's look at the actual deliveries of weapon systems to Ukraine. They've declined over the last 12 months. Ukraine is, in fact in a weaker position in terms of military hardware than it was 12 months ago. And meanwhile, let's look at Russian production in every category of heavy weapons, in tanks, in howitzers in multiple launch rocket systems, Russian production has increased by a factor of 2 or 3, uh, by a factor of nearly ten in the case of drones.
So the gap between Russia and Ukraine is widening, not narrowing because Russia's producing more and Ukraine is struggling to keep going. And Russia's allies, the axis of ill will, are supplying more.
And I'm afraid the allies of weak will, which is really what we are for Ukraine, the allies of weak will are doing far too little.
Speaking of China, you’ve said that much will depend on what China does or becomes in five or ten years. Why is that? Why is China so important today?
China is the superpower in the way that the Soviet Union was the superpower in the first Cold War. It's China's economy that is close in size to that of the United States. It's China's economy that is producing competitive artificial intelligence. It's competing with the United States and quantum computing.
So we must understand that in Cold War Two, China is the enemy superpower, not Russia. Russia is an economy the size of what, Canada or Spain? It's really a much less important and much less formidable antagonist than the Soviet Union was. China's the superpower.
Now, a lot, therefore, depends on Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader. Do you think that Russia would have invaded Ukraine if Xi Jinping had met with Putin and said no? On the contrary, what he said was we have a partnership without limits. Go do it. I won't stop you. And in fact, if you do it, I'll support you and I will. And he did.
He supported Russia with a steady flow of so-called dual use equipment that can be used in military as well as civilian equipment. And now it's clear that China is actually supplying arms to Russia. And so I think we have to understand that China is the force, the superpower behind the Russian war machine.
One of the big shifts in thinking in the United States that I've seen in the last year is that Republicans who, frankly, did not care much about Ukraine, have understood that behind Russia stands China. And a win for Russia is a win for China. In the context of the global competition between the United States and China, it's therefore a terrible mistake to let Ukraine lose.
I think more and more people understand that, and it's helping shape the debate in the United States in a way that I think ultimately will lead to a stronger level of support from the US. And I hope also from Europe.
We are focusing on wars in Ukraine, in Gaza, and this is natural. But are there any other developments in the world that we should pay attention to?
From a purely humanitarian point of view, a life in Sudan or in Myanmar is the same as a life in Ukraine or in Gaza. And we should be concerned about the wars that are raging in Sudan, in Myanmar, that get no news coverage or next to no news coverage. They have less geopolitical significance, but nevertheless, it can't be a source of satisfaction that there are at least four conflicts in the world of this kind of scale. Why does it matter?
It matters because it destabilises neighbouring countries if there are large-scale outflows of refugees. Take Venezuela. There's no war in Venezuela, but there is a tyrannical regime that cynically has stolen an election that it clearly lost. And one of the great sources of instability in South America right now is the number of Venezuelans who've had to flee their country because of Nicolas Maduro's tyrannical regime. So the world as a whole is characterised by multiple areas of disorder, failed states and of tyrannies. And that's one of the reasons that so many millions of people have been forced to leave their homes.
You can't understand European politics if you don't understand the migration crisis, and you can't understand American politics if you don't understand the problem at the southern border of large-scale illegal migration, these things are connected.
And what they tell us is that the international order based on American leadership, based on international institutions and based on alliances, is in a much weaker state than it was 20 or 30 years ago.
What are we going to do? Let it collapse? Let China become number one? I really hope not.
What we have to do is repair that US-led international order, and that begins with re-establishing deterrence. We have to allow an increase in expenditure on our military to modernise it, so that there is deterrence in Europe so that the United States can project power. And we need to make sure that our allies, the democracies around the world that are on our side, that don't want a world ruled by China, have the support they need so that they can deliver prosperity and political stability to their peoples.
Having in mind those challenges, who would be better as the next US president: Kamala Harris or Donald Trump?
When I look at the US election, I sometimes feel just a little bit the way Henry Kissinger felt about the Iran-Iraq war. He famously said: it's a pity they both can't lose. These are not the best candidates that we should be choosing from, but they are the candidates we have.
Donald Trump won the primaries. He won against the cold contenders. Ron DeSantis didn't defeat him. Nikki Haley couldn't beat him. So there's no question that Donald Trump has earned the Republican nomination. And a substantial number of American Republican voters want to see the second term that he did not win in 2020.
On the other side, the Democratic establishment performed a very elegant bait and switch. They gave Joe Biden the nomination, and then they pulled the plug on him and handed it to Kamala Harris, who didn't have to contest a single primary.
These are the candidates we have to choose between. Nobody else. No third party candidate is worth discussion. Now, with Harris I think you have a certainty of continuity. It's highly unlikely to me that our national security strategy will look a whole lot different from Joe Biden's, and indeed, it may be the same people. I wouldn't be surprised if Jake Sullivan continues to be in a key position. I wouldn't be surprised if William Burns, currently director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has an important job under Kamala Harris, so we'll get more of the same.
The problem is that for Eastern Europe, that just means a slow and painful path to Ukrainian defeat. And then the next crisis, which almost certainly affects Lithuania directly.
With Trump it's a gamble. There is a possibility that Donald Trump says: my national security strategy is to leave NATO, abandon Ukraine, hand Ukraine to Putin, JD Vance is going to take control. And I'll also bring Tucker Carlson in for advice. That is not inconceivable. There is some probability of that outcome, but it's more likely that he puts into the key positions the kind of people who had key positions the last time around – Mike Pompeo, who was secretary of state, could be secretary of defence, Robert O'Brien, who was national security adviser, could be secretary of state.
And if you listen to those guys, and I heard Mike Pompeo speak in Kyiv just a couple of days ago, you will be reassured to hear that their commitment to Ukraine is stronger than the Biden-Harris commitment because they're prepared to give Ukraine what Ukraine needs to hurt Russia. Mike Pompeo said in Kyiv just the other day: right now, the costs of continuing this war are less to Putin than the benefit, we have to raise those costs. That would, I think, be what a Trump administration would do as soon as he was sworn in January of next year.
And in my view, the only way to get an end to the fighting and the kind of armistice that we just talked about is by applying really much greater military pressure on the Russians, so that the cost of this war goes up for Putin. That isn't going to come from Kamala Harris. The only possibility is that it comes from Trump.
Is it a risk? Yes. But frankly, I'm inclined to say it's better to take the risk than to vote for the certainty of a slow but inevitable defeat for Ukraine and an increase in the insecurity that all of European NATO countries feel.
You said that we should learn from history. Which year are we in if we look for an analogy?
Let me give you two possibilities, although there are many. Possibility number one, which is the kind of frightening one, is that we are, in fact, on the eve of World War Three, and the year is 1938 and Ukraine is Czechoslovakia. And the Western powers have to decide, are they going to allow Czechoslovakia to be broken up in the way that it was after Hitler reneged on the Munich agreements.
If we let Ukraine effectively be partitioned and we allow Vladimir Putin to annex a substantial chunk of that country, that will be 1938 and we know what followed. We know that that did not satisfy Hitler. We know that, in fact, within a year, the world was at war. So that's the worrying analogy.
And I think it's worth thinking about, because World War Three is the ultimate nightmare, not least because we have nuclear weapons today, which we didn't have in 1938–39. But I'm not sure that's the best analogy.
I prefer to think of us as being, as I've already said, in a second Cold War, and there's no one year of the Cold War that this perfectly matches, because we have, if you like, a Korean War in Ukraine. And we also have 1973, in the Middle East, a surprise attack on Israel. So in a sense, the events of Cold War One are replaying, but not necessarily in the same order and maybe at a higher pace.
Let me suggest that we're kind of 1960. That is to say, it's the eve of the Berlin crisis. It's the eve of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Those are the most dangerous moments of Cold War One, that is to say, the moments we came closest to World War Three.
And I think if you use that analogy, you can see that we really have to re-establish the credibility of American deterrence to make sure that China plus Russia, plus Iran, plus North Korea do not feel that they can take the kind of actions that would have caused World War Three had it happened in 1961 or 1962.
I prefer the Cold War analogy because I think it reminds us that we can avoid World War Three. We can avoid it through deterrence. We can achieve peace, but only through strength.
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