cycling, swimming and track events. now on bbc news... newscast. hello! throughout the summer, we've been bringing you interesting conversations with interesting people here on newscast. on a sunday. we've gone to the theatre, we've gone to the house of lords, we've gone into space. now we're going to go across the whole world in a geopolitical sense, because my guest is dr fiona hill, former white house advisor, former student at saint andrews university, now chancellor of durham university and a really interesting thinker on foreign policy who came to the world's attention when she was summoned as a witness in the impeachment trial of then—president donald trump. here is the conversation i had with her in the newscast studio. newscast. newscast from the bbc.

fiona, hello. hi there. how are you? i'm very well, thank you. and welcome back to newscast. thank you. but in previous, well, in previous episodes where we've had about 50 minutes, we've now got about a0 minutes. so good job. the world is quite chaotic at the moment. there's plenty of trouble spots that we can that we can look at. um, but before we go on a tour around the world, ijust wanted to do a bit of a bit of your, your kind of personal history. and so what was happening in county durham in the �*80s, when you were a teenager and you decided that russian was the thing that you wanted to get into? well, look, that was the period that actually it's the subject of a netflix series at the moment about the cold war and the bomb, where we had the war scares with the soviet union, the 1980s, you know, there were several. but the most memorable, at least from my perspective, was about 1983, when you just could palpably feel the sort of tension internationally, even, you know, as a kind of a kid, a teenager

in school in county durham. i mean, it was thanks to the bbc, you know, which we were watching religiously, you know, every day at teatime or the 9:00 news or, you know, kind of later episodes. you could really get that sense that things were happening geopolitically. and, you know, i was growing up, not that too far away from air force bases, is constant, you know, sorties of everything from harrierjumpjets to, you know, otherfighter planes that would kind of whiz, you know, kind of across the skies. and, um, you know, i was spending a lot of time in discussions at school with, you know, people basically feeling that there was no point to continuing, you know, studying towards our a—levels because we're all going to get blown up. and there's a memorable occasion where i met with one of my elderly relatives who we called uncle charlie. he was actually my dad's cousin. but in the north of england, you know, everyone's related to everyone else. you know, you just call them uncle or aunt, you know, kind of on the off chance that they are the most likely to be or at least, you know, a long standing,

multi—generational family friend. and we'd run into my uncle charlie down in the town in bishop auckland, where i grew up. we didn't have telephones. so, you know, it was all a kind of market days on wednesdays or saturdays where you banked on meeting your relatives. and he'd fought in world war two. he'd had some really crazy experiences as a young man, you know, being on a ship that was sunk and he was blown to the surface in the mediterranean by depth charges. he always had a fantastical tale to tell. on this particular day, he was kind of worrying about, you know, the whole situation you know, the whole situation with the soviet union. with the soviet union. and we had this long and we had this long conversation in the conversation in the marketplace, and he basically marketplace, and he basically said to me, hey, fiona, said to me, hey, fiona, you're good at languages. you're good at languages. you should go off and try to you should go off and try to figure out why the soviet union figure out why the soviet union is trying to bloody well is trying to bloody well blow us up. blow us up. and i thought to myself, and i thought to myself, well, maybe i could, well, maybe i could, which is a bit of a daft idea. which is a bit of a daft idea. you know, when you're, you know, when you're, you know, kind of a teenager you know, kind of a teenager north of england. north of england. first of all, there was first of all, there was russian, wasn't taught russian, wasn't taught in the local schools. in the local schools. and, you know, how do you get a job trying to figure that out? and i thought, well, maybe i could become a translator. i could work on, you know, i could work on, you know, arms control, um, negotiations arms control, um, negotiations somewhere or other. so i had that bee in my bonnet so i had that bee in my bonnet

and decided i would go out and decided i would go out and try to figure out how and try to figure out how to study russian eventually. to study russian eventually. and it seemed like a more and it seemed like a more practical thing than, you know, practical thing than, you know, sitting and panicking sitting and panicking and wondering, you know, and wondering, you know, whether we'd all fit whether we'd all fit into the closet, under into the closet, under the stairs, the cupboard under the stairs, the cupboard under the stairs, you know, the stairs, you know, time to unscrew the door kind of harry potter—esque, kind of harry potter—esque, you know, in the event you know, in the event of a nuclear war. of a nuclear war. because that's also, because that's also, i mean, it might be too i mean, it might be too young to remember this, young to remember this, but others were listening to this might remember but others were listening to this might remember where they would have these where they would have these basic public service announcements on the telly, basic public service and then they'd also send, because this is such primitive days, you know, these reel to reel films around to schools for assembly, you know, basically trying to inform you on what you should do in the event of a nuclear attack. and it seemed to be mostly kind of rolling into a ditch and hoping it would pass over announcements on the telly, or again crowding into the cupboard under the stairs. well, i always remember one where it was. russian might be helpful. well, i always remember one of those where it was like, oh, unscrew the door and use the door to turn it into like a little shelter

and then huddle under that. and i'm like, who's got

inchoate thinking that was kind of like going on in this, you know, kind of period. and my a—levels, you know, didn't really kind of set me up for this, but i was pretty determined that i would try to study russian. and, you know, because i was growing up in the north east of england, my dad was a former coal miner. by this time, she'd been working many decades in the local hospital as a porter. my uncle charlie had been a coal miner. pretty much every relative had been. uncle charlie, who had given me this idea in the first place actually also told my dad on a later occasion that this is, you know, fast forward a few years. uh, by the time of the miners strike, which was about when i was about to go to college, that the durham miners association had some scholarships and bursaries for the kids of miners. and he thought that that would be one way that i might be able to study russian. and indeed, you know, my dad and my sister and i went on a bus to durham to, um, the durham miners association headquarters, a place called red hills, which was a kind of a parliament that was built by the miners back in the day and is about to open again, by the way, hopefully

as a unesco type heritage site. and, you know, wejust went to a man in an office and gave him this kind of idea because i'd learned about, um, a language course that i could take at the university of east anglia. and, um, he, you know, kind of looked at my dad's work record, said, indeed, yes, sir. they gave this money. some of this money had been donated by the miners of donbas, of all things, in solidarity with the miners of county durham. they had links going back to the 1920s in exchanges. i mean, it's a bit mind boggling now to think about it, but... miners, miners, miners in ukraine, then in the soviet union, putting money in a tin that got then sent to the uk that you ended up being able to go to study russian with? exactly. and i got £100 out of this to pay for all of my, you know, my expenses. and it was given to me in an envelope and i was just about to come back and report and, you know, show my homework that i'd been, you know, studying russian. ijust, it was the most, you know, kind of amazing, you know, opportunity

and all because of, you know, these chance encounters with, you know, relatives in, you know, the marketplace in bishop auckland. but, you know, that's kind of it's because, as you said, what was happening at that time, everybody was really concerned, you know, about the whole prospects for nuclear war. i mean, this is the time when sting had his, you know, song about do the russians love their children, too? there was threads the day after all of these, you know, various, you know, series about nuclear armageddon. i mean, it was the perpetual concern. you know, you think of, you know, the famous song by nena, 99 red balloons. i mean, all of this is sort of coming back into kind of vogue again because sadly, you know, here we are, a0 odd years on. um, more than that, of course, which would make me feel old now. but we're back to the same kind of perspective. and you have, you know, other, you know, pop stars from the north east of england, the kind of sting's of their generation, sam fender singing about hypersonic missiles. you know, there are plenty of other young people, i think growing up in county durham and elsewhere who are thinking about the same dilemmas now because we see, you know, vladimir putin going rogue, you know, in terms of, you know, particular people around him in threatening

nuclear response to what's going on on the ground in ukraine. in a way, it's even more dangerous now than it was then, seemingly, because, you know, we don't have that kind of set piece of interactions that we did have back in the cold war. so i feel in many respects, weirdly enough, that everything has gone full circle from, you know, 1983, 1984 around to 2024 again. but the thing that makes it scarier now is kind of like the lack of off ramps or guardrails or kind of like an emergency press here, sort of institutions and structures that existed then. that's right. or at least, let's say, the lack of faith in those institutions. now, the way that they have eroded, because, i mean, that's one of the reasons why we have so much conflict now that we've simultaneously lost our confidence in the international system as well as into many of the domestic systems. and you've got, in the case of vladimir putin in russia, someone who's kind of unchecked, you know, in their power and in their, you know, ability to do things like declare war against ukraine and, you know,

invade back, you know, two years ago. whereas in the soviet period, you had a politburo of the secretary general of the communist party, who was also the kind of the head of state, you had a lot more checks and balances in the system. and ironically, you know, we knew better how to interact with them than perhaps, you know, we do today with you know, someone who's, you know, seemingly more of a rogue actor like vladimir putin. and we'll come on to lots of those issues in a second. butjust sticking with your cv, which ijust downloaded from the brookings institute website. it's five pages long. it does not have an extra wide margin like my cv does. and scrolling through it, obviously there's all the greats there of like going to saint andrews, working in the white house, being at the brookings institute, the eurasia foundation, studying at harvard, teaching at harvard. but the thing thatjumps out at me is my favourite entry on your cv. june to september 1989 and 1990. assistant to the international office of durham county council. indeed. was that your summer job? it was actually the best, you know, kind of summer job in many respects.

i mean, most of my summerjobs were working in restaurants, cleaning in, you know, the local hospital where my dad, you know, worked as a porter and, you know, various other, you know, grab bag of, you know, the typicaljobs that, you know, kind of most people, you know, in the north east of england have and sometimes people's permanentjobsjust to be, you know, very clear as well. and then it turned out that durham county council, which, um, you know, i have to say, they always kept trying to keep the international flag flying. i mentioned these 1920s, um, exchanges with the donbas region of the soviet union. now, of course, you know, one of the featured arenas forwarfare in ukraine, as you rightly mentioned earlier. but they were always very serious about exchanges, cultural exchanges. i'd gone on a whole host of them. and then, you know, they actually approached me and asked me if i wanted to kind of come, as you know, one of their participants previously in exchanges to germany and france and all over the place to work on an exchange that they had been building up with the costal margin of

the russian federation. and so i get this, you know, kind of great opportunity to work for that period of time. it's my first real russian job, uh, you know, helping durham county council think through, you know, kind of a series of exchanges with this town and region in russia, a kind of counterpart. and it was just pretty fascinating. i mean, it really gave me the bug, and i was really grateful to be approached with this. i can't say that it was perhaps, you know, kind of the best above board in terms of applications because it, you know, turned out that they approached me, which, you know, kind of has been a bit of a, you know, a theme in some other positions rather than me really applying for it. but, you know, iwas, you know, delighted to be able to, to do this. i mean, it really gave me a boost and a lot of insights into, you know, how these kinds of exchanges worked and, you know, all the difficulties in getting them in motion. it was all done without exchanging any money because, you know, at this point, um, you know, with the soviet

union and, you know, obviously didn't have, um, an exchange rate to kind of floating, um, currency. and so it was all kind of done on, you know, everybody sort of paying their own way, you know, setting up people for the visiting, uh soviet russian delegation to stay with. and we also tried to do a kind of a business event around this with the department for trade and industry, and that fell flat enormously because we actually thought that they were going to bring over some, you know, real, you know, kind of manufactured goods. this was actually an area where they were quite famous for their linen and also some of the, you know, the manufactured products. and everybody brought basically cardboard boxes of kind of russian trinkets, which didn't kind of quite pan out as, as people had anticipated, which also gave me, you know, again, some of the insight into the kind of the vagaries of, you know, working with russia and russian regions in that time. but what's interesting about all of that is all this effort going in to try and improve relations with the russian people,

and then the soviet union collapses and there's, what, a decade where relations are okayish, but then itjust goes downhill and downhill and downhill and downhill, like was it was all that worth it that the attempt to build a relationship. it's always worth it right? i mean, to try to build relationships and to, you know, kind of look for a more positive trajectory and it still will be worth it and would be worth it to, you know, try to think about what that might look like, you know, in the future here. i mean, it's hard sometimes to think beyond vladimir putin, but, you know, he won't be with us forever, just as, you know, nobody is, frankly, even if it seems to be the kind of permanent, you know, setup. um, as we look out to, to the future here of animosity and confrontation again, but, you know, there's people to people relationships, do, you know, eventually pan out? you know, eventually pan out. i personally believe i made a lot of really great contacts in that time,

got a lot of insights. but also, you know, i think russian history has shown us that, you know, there are lots of ups and downs of these relationships is always very rocky. but, you know, there can always be surprises. and, you know, behind the scenes in russia, there's a lot of people who would like to have a different set of relationships with the west. putin himself is still convinced he can make some grand bargain deal with the west on his own terms. obviously, and especially over ukraine and perhaps the division of europe again, in the same way that happened after world war two at yalta, when essentially churchill and stalin exchanged, you know, notes on bits of paper about, you know, divisions of, you know, europe during the cold war. i don't think that's, you know, likely to be the outcome. but i think, you know, things could change quite rapidly in russia in unexpected ways. and we have to be ready for that. and having those contacts, those relationships and that deeper understanding of the dynamics there is going to be very important. and look, we can learn a lot from the mistakes that were made. you know, there's a lot

of people casting blame here, there and everywhere for you know, how the relationships ruptured. i think fundamentally it comes down to the fact that we're on very different pages. we might have had those people to people ties and found, you know, bonds of friendship on a human level on you know, kind of basic life outcomes, but the structures of the systems were so different. the perspectives were very different, the worldviews were very different. and what we really kind of needed was more strategic empathy in the sense of really kind of understanding how putin worked and what makes him tick. i wrote a book about that with a colleague, you know, a few years ago when putin had already been in office for about ten plus years. i mean, he's been in there for a quarter of a century now, could be there, you know, longer. it's important to understand the worldview. he doesn't really understand ours either, to be frank. and so i think, you know, that's going to be, you know, very difficult. but it's always important to try to get a deeper understanding of where people are coming from and where they're likely to go, and to learn from the mistakes

that we've made in, you know, how we've managed those relationships. part of it gets down to the fact that, again, he's been in powerfor so long. and we keep, you know, obviously because we're democracies, we keep doing this. we keep changing. you know, our basically our political actors and, you know, many of the people who he interacts with, and we kind of lose his plot while he's always, you know, on plot. so but that's such an interesting but that's such an interesting point that you make about sides not understanding each other. i'm just wondering, in the modern era, how that can be, how that can be the case when there's so much information about everyone, how you can, or is it how we can be in a situation where people have got to the top of their respective systems, don't have enough strategic empathy to understand their adversaries? and it's notjust so much like their adversaries that they don't get each other. i'm not sure i even understand how that's even possible. well, ithink, you know, you've touched on it by the fact that there's almost too much information out there. and, you know, we've got all

these debates about al, right? which, um, you know, and how, you know, advanced ai is going to really change things in these, um, these massive kind of learning projects that al is engaged in. but what they're all doing is just trying to predict the next move based on the totality of information that they have. they're not necessarily fully understanding the context and the human dimensions of things. and i think that gets to the problem. you can have a lot of information but not really kind of understand the situational aspects of this. i mean, putin has lots of information, but he makes judgement based on his own worldview and the context in which he operates. and we don't always know what that is, right? um, i mean, part of the big problem that we see today from looking at somebody like vladimir putin is that, you know, we kind of assume that his setup is the same as our setup of leadership. so we think now of, you know, new prime minister of the uk, keir starmer, sitting in number ten and having the cabinet office and all of his advisers around him,

or, you know, in the case of biden, you know, currently sitting in the white house and future presidents doing that and having their advisors and what was passing, who those advisers would be. well, if you look at somebody like putin, the context is very critical. putin's not actually sitting in the kremlin. he actually has a multitude of offices that are clones, duplicates of his central office, and they're scattered all over the place. he's become notjust paranoid about, you know, his personal security, but he's always now kind of on the move among these different offices. he's not in the kremlin. he doesn't have those advisers around him. he has his security services around him at all times. those are the people that he's interacting with, his advisors, the kinds of people that, you know, we spent a lot of time looking into in kremlinology and thinking about what motivated them. don't get access to him on a frequent basis, and then you've got to wonder what kind of information is he getting? and then is how is he making the decisions? you know, during covid he was extraordinarily isolated. and a few people in there bending his ear off all

the time who might have been the people who eventually persuaded him or allowed him to persuade himself to invade ukraine. so it's a different, you know, context, a different setup. and you have to understand that. so if you're using the same set of information to predict what putin might do next, but you're not understanding the context in which he's operating, you're going to make mistakes. so i think, you know, that's kind of it. we sort of assume that we've all got the same universe of information, because it's all out there on the internet and, you know. etcetera. but actually we don't. and we all basically assess information in different ways based on our own context and our own worldviews and our own life experience. and so we have to really understand a lot about that experience and about, you know, what putin might know, what might, you know, shape his decision making. you know, just as a lot of people are spending an infinite amount of time trying to understand donald trump or kamala harris now, and, you know, all of the other, you know, kind of people who might, you know, be instrumental here in the united states

and what makes them tick. now, you mentioned sir keir starmer and you mentioned advisers. and i won't say that you're an adviser to keir starmer, but you are one of the reviewers that they've appointed for their review of security and defence policy. now, i won't try and get you to spill any beans about that because you want to keep that confidential. but what i never understand about these defence reviews and we have them every few years. that, and i don't mean this disrespectfully to anyone who reviews them, but i sometimes find as a journalist you read them and you're like, well, well, of course that's what the government has decided to do, because those are the threats in the world at the moment. what i never quite get is what were the other options and the choices that were that were rejected in these things. so can you just give us an idea of like some of the choices that that the new labour government will have to make about defence and security in kind of big terms? well, look, i can speak back to other reviews that i've done in the us and other contexts as well, because this review is just starting. yeah.

we don't want to get you fired already. well, and i think it's also because it's notjust going to be, you know, something that a handful of people you know, are going to be engaging in. but i think, you know, the way that we're talking right now, we have to understand that, you know, the world has changed and continues to change. and, you know, all all of these reviews. and i think, you know, part of the problem is, you know why they have to be done so frequently, is that any time that we try to project something right, as individuals — and i was again, i was talking about, you know, iam just trying to predict what's going to happen next. and we always do it from the vantage point that we're standing in, right? so, i mean, most of the things that we make projections ahead are reallyjust, um, assessing what would happen if everything stays the same, you know, out five, ten years. and the problem is that nothing ever does because, you know, the very famous comment about, you know, "events, dear boy, events," you know, coming from one of the previous,

you know, british prime ministers that throws everything on its head. and i think you have to be constantly nimble enough to keep reassessing the situation. and you have to make sure that you don't make choices that lock you in, you know, to certain kinds of pathways that may be changed and, you know, kind of disrupted. so, you know, i mentioned before vladimir putin, he's been in powerfor 25 years. um, he could be in powerfor... god, another, you know, decade plus. but he also might not be right. i mean, something might be happening just as we speak. uh, remember the death of stalin, the wonderful movie that, you know, kind of everybody, you know, kind of put their whole lives revolving around stalin one day literally just drops dead on the floor. nobody knows what to do. we have to position ourselves, you know, ourselves or at large, whoever we are in the us, the uk or elsewhere, to be able to respond and have the capacities to respond to a whole host of situations, some of which might be predictive, as in the ai predicting what the next step might be and others that might be, you know, completely thrown off by events.

and that's what the challenge is, is trying to see if you have the capacity for that. now, ithink, you know, part of the problem in all of these, um, you know, exercises is what about the general public? i mean, notjust the kind of people inside of the government. what do they really understand? or what do we as part of the general public as well? because frankly we all are part of that, understand about the way the world has changed. and there's many things from a uk perspective that have obviously changed. the united states isn't, you know, the reliable partner in the way that many might have seen it to be. um, you know, for, you know, the last 70, 75 years, things have changed quite dramatically in the united states. and i've been, you know, my various jobs here at the brookings institution, you know, and elsewhere trying to grapple with that dynamics of internal domestic change as well. just the international system, um, has changed. our domestic systems have changed, too. people have less faith in their domestic structures, and the united states is engaging in a massive civics lesson. it has a constitutional crisis,

frankly, going on and trying to kind of decide, you know, where it's going to head in the future and what kind of country it's going to be. so that's, you know, happening at the same time. so the uk, you know, can't rely on the united states to frame the defence structure. neither can the rest of europe or nato in the way that it could before. you've got a russia that seems to be on a totally different trajectory. but again, we don't really know how that's going to play out over time. you've got all kinds of tensions, you know, going on in the european context. i mean, post—brexit, the uk's relationships with european countries are very different. the uk has new relationships that's trying to form within the context of, um, of different, uh, arrangements, like, for example, aukus, you know, with the australia and the united states and trying to think about how it continues to play something of a role outside of the nato and european space. that's all we've got time for, for now.

but i recorded some extra material with fiona hill, which you can hear in the podcast edition of newscast, which is available wherever you get your podcasts. thanks for listening. bye bye. newscast. newscast from the bbc. hello there. wiggonholt in west sussex was the country's hot spot on sunday, with temperatures hitting 30 degrees celsius, making it the hottest day of september so far. not that we're very far into the month, of course. there was plenty of sunshine for east anglia and south east england, but rather cloudy skies for some turned quite murky here in mousehole in cornwall. we've also seen showers and thunderstorms break out. this clump of storms that went through the north west midlands earlier brought 14mm of rain in just the space of one hour, and over the next few hours, those heavy downpours will continue to drive northwards across northern england and into scotland as well. probably another batch of heavy rain then developing behind that

into parts of wales. all the while it will stay quite warm and muggy. well, that takes us into monday and monday is dominated by low pressure. we're expecting showers or some longer spells of rain. the heaviest downpours will be across northern england and scotland. probably some thunderstorms mixed in so there could be some localised surface water flooding. bit of rain crosses northern ireland, brighter from western counties later in the afternoon. probably quite murky around some of our irish sea coasts. maybe staying dry across east anglia and south east england, where it will continue to feel quite humid and very warm. now beyond that, as we head into tuesday, eventually we're going to start to get northwesterly winds moving back across the country, and they will bring fresher air and some slightly lower temperatures as well. now, tuesday will probably start off with some bits and pieces of rain, probably murky weather for some across eastern areas to clear out of the way. then some sunshine. a few showers followed to scotland, northern ireland and maybe one or 2 for the north—west of both england and wales. temperatures 18 to 21. feeling fresher, pleasant in the sunshine. from wednesday onwards, though, there's a lot of uncertainty

in the weather forecast. two scenarios. one is that we continue to see showers work into northwestern areas, with the driest weather across the south and east of the uk, where we've got a ridge of high pressure in this scenario. wednesday, thursday, friday temperatures wouldn't change very much. high teens to low 20s. a pleasant spell of weather for many. however, there is a different scenario where the weather patterns get completely flipped on their head in this second scenario. the driest weather would end up being to the north—west of the uk, and instead towards the southeast. we could end up seeing low pressure form and wet and windy weather moving in. so there's a lot of uncertainty. don't be surprised if the forecast changes then over the next few days.

but from london this is bbc news. tens of thousands take to the streets of israel demanding a hostage release deal with hamas without unions call a general strike on monday. the un says the first full day of a mass polio vaccination programme in gaza has been successful. germany is far—right party is on course to win its first regional election since the second world war. it's a gold or paralympics gp, their most successful single

day of the century. and the sinking of the titanic, exclusive footage reveals more about the rex slow dk. hello and welcome. the israeli trade union federation is ordered a general strike in an effort to force the government to reach a hostage release deal with hamas. the industrial action will see the airport and israel clear take—off and landing from 8am local time. the families of hostages had pushed for the strike after the israeli army found the bodies of six hostages. the military said they were killed by hamas shortly before troops arrive hamas officials say they were killed by israeli fire. thousands of israelis have been protesting in jerusalem thousands of israelis have been protesting injerusalem and tel aviv in an effort to put pressure on the israeli government to rank the remaining hostages home.