i know we want to talk about europe but the middle east is an extremely unpredictable area at the moment because you know everybody thought of the gulf was such a stable area and you know we have lots of very good relationships with the gulf and gulf governments but what happened recently as you know with the crown prince of saudi arabia and the. killing you know whatever whatever one concludes out of this means that the gulf and the kingdom of saudi arabia such an important country is somewhat unpredictable situation at the moment so i think um you know i think i think as far as the west goes ok so you want to talk about europe. it's true that things are very unpredictable now in the west and today we just got all this new stuff about the brakes it vote and as you say it's fundamentally based on this populist wave that we're facing now in one of your interviews you advise businesses to maintain a so-called horizon scan about trance that could potentially impact their business

if i'm an international investor thinking about investing in france the u.k. or the united states for that matter how clear and long is that horizon at this point. as we just said i think in every region pretty much every moment things are somewhat unpredictable based on perhaps to two areas one is this this feeling of this is unpredictability because of the populist wave that is that has struck us all the way from you know the midwest of the us through france through through england etc the other is the amazing speed of technological change and as you know whether we're talking about cyber security fake news junk news or whatever this is change the structure in the framework in so many different ways as far as europe and the west and the u.s. goes though i mean these are obviously very important markets and even if there are currently some you know difficult to say with in france with president i would say

that france as a whole is doing very well and germany is doing very well so so if you like the heart of the european union are still extremely prosperous and attractive places to invest and frankly the u.s. is still this enormous an important market well i do not want to exaggerate the extent of. difficulties as you put it that the west experiences but i think you would also agree with me that two three years ago something that we are seeing in many of those countries would have been unthinkable and i'm not only talking about the election of mr trump and his policies his every the world trade organization tariffs etc but also you know what we're seeing on the streets of france because to be honest with you it's not much different from what i saw on the streets of benghazi eight years ago well i wasn't i don't know take france the the the populist wave that brought in this incredibly stupid to my mind breaks it vote in the u.k.

or the brought in all sorts of different different political movements across as you call it the western world in fact brought in a very positive change in france because they brought in this young. pro pro reform . attractive leader emanuel macross president of france and personally i have an enormous respect for president mcgraw what he's been hit with at the moment is this same backlash against the forces of globalization the same people who've been left behind in this tremendously global wave of globalization which has changed the structure of society in many ways but i wouldn't say that it is the that what you're saying in france is as bad as benghazi well as of now people are not being leased on this streets are friends but i'm sure you know that there is a lot of looting and a lot of criminal activity in addition to the a protest exhibited that's going on there. i cannot help but ask you why do you think western media having such a different lance on on the events in france compared to the events let's see in

libya in the beginning because in the very beginning police brutality there wasn't comparable to what we are seeing in france and i really don't think you can about let me go out why not well i'll tell you because in libya you had an extraordinary government that had been through many different changes you had this dictatorship of gadhafi for four decades in france you have a very ordered well ordered democracy and i think that france is on a good trajectory and i would say that you're completely wrong there to compare that with libya but i would say that we must all in the west or throughout the industrialized world think about how to deal with the people who have been left behind in the great progress of globalization because who's lost in globalization the people who have lost are that what you call the working class the working class in in north america in france even in germany and certainly in england and they have made these voting decisions that frankly are going to hurt them in the long

run but they've done it out of protest so i would not compare it with libya but it is a serious phenomenon or to say well i just want to make clear for our viewers that when i was comparing this tradition in libya. in france i was comparing the levels of violence and the levels of criminal activity rather than the political systems which are clearly very different speaking of which in one of your articles you wrote that this expression of discontent whether through the ballot box or on the streets. was ultimately produced by this growing divide between the so-called establishment and the people do you think it's more political or economic in nature is it ultimately a crisis of representative democracy or is it a crisis of balance the konami system ok it's not all the people there is certainly a distrust or if you like a rejection of this stablish lot of institutions by some people not all the people the people who feel disenfranchised are the less economically advantaged white

working class or maybe what you want to call the middle class in the united states in england it is the northeast of england and the northern parts of england who felt that industrialization that they that was a big driver for the prosperity and in that part of the region and part of england fifty years ago is now completely collapsed the left without jobs the same thing in rural parts of france i would say so that is a feature of globalization which has indeed increased inequality caused problems for these people who feel left behind and cause them to make a protest vote they just wanted to protest they just wanted to say we're not doing well but what they've done is they voted in certain cases princes in the case of bricks it directly against their own interests let me ask you a question that very dear to my heart there's a russian in all these three countries that we mentioned this theme of the super rich versus the common man is very prominent and for me as a russian it's

a very loaded discourse because and the one hand income inequality is a real problem but on the other hand in this country the populous who exploited this narrative a century ago led the country down a very very good. pathan at that time a century ago russia was doing relatively well economically do you think history can repeat itself well that's an interesting question so you're saying will there be a bolshevik revolution in western europe one hundred years after the first one interesting i think not because the countries have gone on a very different path but it is true that the serious discontent and the other thing is that technology is making a difference because technology is vastly important and useful for the people who can handle it. for the elites if you like technology is another factor that is increasing the divide between the haves and the have nots so there and those who are not so familiar with technology who are worried about the progress of modern technology are the same people who are voting for these protests parties and

feeling again left behind so i think they are hit with if you like a double whammy of globalization and technology and the only answer in these countries that we're talking about in western europe and frankly north america is education much more money in education much more money in training to give people the chance to have that equality of opportunity on which the democracies in the western base but there are those kind of measures that you're advocating are going to take years if not decades i mean all the countries are stretched in terms of their budgets you wrote in one article that there is still a need for disruption in the west some need for a shake up of the ossified system how do you make sure that it's just disruption and not a catastrophic disruption where you can't can you and that's what we try and you know when i when i say that you know oxford analytical we do horizon scans we try our best to look across the horizons and seeing what disruptive technological or social or political forces are coming towards you and obviously you cannot in

a way predict that and into some extent technology is is so surely neutral i mean technology and science come of this without any kind of political baggage attached it depends high. we use them and you say it will take a long time but the only hope is to make sure that people are technologically competent to make sure that people understand and frankly when we talk about junk news or fake news which is such a problem in so many countries the only chance to deal with that is to have a well educated aware. civically conscious citizenry but with all due respect i think many of the people they take to the streets in france these days they think of themselves as educated citizenry they rely on technology to call less but they also at least some of them employ very very violent means i know that you don't like this comparison of mine between france and libya but i think for many people even in france it's a little bit nerve wracking t.

to see those events unfolding in their own country do you think present mccrone has any lessons at all to you to learn from the arab leaders on how to deal with that public discontent how to handle it no i don't think you're right to make those connections there's an enormous difference in culture in economy in history and society between those two parts of the world so i do not think you can say the present micro could learn from say arab leaders in india in dealing with this matter with no disrespect to the rulers in the gulf know that france has its own distinctive history and by the way france has a tradition of social action after all what you know what's the greatest revolution of bomb times were perhaps the russian revolution and the french revolution the french revolution was extremely extremely implied according to some estimates about one million people died as a consequence of that revolution haven't finished the point is that the french have a tradition of social activism and in sixty eight there was another there was another time when people took to the streets but the people who are upset in france

are the people who come from the less well off parts of the country and they feel that the changes that have been happening throughout the west have left them behind without much hope and perhaps less well off than. their parents and i'm sure that president macro does understand that i'm sure that president macro does understand that and is committed to changing absolutely but it's not only about what present mccrone understands but also about how police force behaves on the streets and i think we have seen some pictures of extremely troubling behavior on the part of police down being that no i don't agree with you i don't agree with you i think that inevitably when you have when you have protesters in the streets of paris at the after trade off of course the police are going to try and stop that is that inevitable only in france or would that also be inevitable in libya syria and moscow i'm not talking about libya or syria i'm talking about industrialized and dust allies countries with a long tradition of a relationship with institutions and i'm sure the same thing would happen in moscow

the same thing would happen in england the same thing would happen in france and i would not get too worked up about it and no i do not think that the police have been particularly brutal in france i disagree so are you you would disagree as well with with the analysis of a number of french experts who say that police currently stretched to its limit and it's no longer fully capable of responding to the looting and of a kinds of criminal activity perpetrated in protest areas i guess the question i'm asking is whether you believe that france has full capacity the skills billeted the technical capacity to deal with those kind of protests on its own absolutely i certainly do and i think that france will not i mean i don't think in a few months that we'll see we'll see much much sort of left of this particular protest movement frankly i think there's a protest movement that comes in the same way the same people who voted against bricks against the european union in the u.k. it's the same people who vote for these extremist parties it's

a sense of rejection of the establishment because there's a percentage of the population even in a country like sweden you know marvelously democratic country who feel left behind unable. to deal with the economy on able to get good jobs and politicians have got to find some way of reaching these people ok well mr selfridge we have to take a very short break now but we will be back in just a few moments stay tuned. to madge and six thirty five and you have a career and a career involves using your i phone in your computer and things like that in an office. perhaps you sort of things in excess circulars you could have to stop doing

all this in this kind of you lou the minutes must be for. my world became smaller and smaller and smaller until i ended up winning it in a box. or out at a very strong magnetic field on a card in my head. it's like a real hard pressure my skin burned and that wireless access point there just continues on saying with our students in the schools. we are just continually bathing our citizens in this microwave radiation it is certainly electro small and it's getting worse. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy confrontation let it be an arms race off and spearing dramatic development only personally i'm going to resist i don't see how that strategy will be successful

very critical time to sit down and talk. welcome back to worlds apart with michael stipe for the former deputy assistant secretary general for strategic communications at nato and currently managing director at oxford analytical mr stuff or at your stint as a top communications guy at nato client side it's been nato broadening its converse from the north atlantic region to really the entire globe given what we have already discussed the instability political instability and sometimes security instability in some of the presumably safest countries of this planet do you think

nato strategist may have miscalculated the major security challenges where you know when i was at nato there was a there was a tremendous focus on afghanistan and unfortunately that hasn't got a great deal but but there was a movement to look at what we called new and emerging security challenges and that included things like cyber security some nuclear issues and terrorism and i have to say oksana that in those days and it's only seven years ago there was a very good collaboration with the russian government in certain areas i worked on a science program and we had this great consortium called standing next to work very closely with excellent russian the bar trees and some petersburg etc and the french nuclear commission. and others and it was a time when there was much more collaboration on things like anti-terrorism so i regret that that isn't the case today i wanted to press you on that same question

once again let me reformulate that because i think nato for out very long time has been focusing on external threats do you think it may have underestimated the potential internal threats to security as somebody who used to work. for me to do you think you will ever see nato forces deployed to pacify crowds within the nato countries no i don't think that's even within the nato charter nato is by by its constitution externally facing and you know there's a famous article five of the nato of the nato alliance which says basically that it's a common common defense organization so no i don't think that but i do think that it is a pity that for instance in certain areas the recent more cause collaboration today between nato and countries outside including including with russia say you had a very brilliant ambassador the time who was excellent russian ambassador dmitri rigaud isn't there was a very good american ambassador could volcker and i think you know we need more of this collaboration rather less of it while it's good to see you say that because

both mature regards and volcker are still to some extent involved in the in the russian politics or in the case of mr volcker in to indirectly in the ukraine speaking of which there are many people in russia who believe that this current stage where there is almost no relationship between russia and nato very limited i mean very limited relationship. many russians believe it is the ukrainians who are sort of holding nato hostage and preventing it from developing better ties or at least more productive ties with russia given that the your former boss at need for us and now serves as a nonstop advisor to president bush and who do you think is the tail and the boss the tail and the dog there when it comes to ukraine on the. questions of very leading i mean are you trying to tell me that there is no and that there is no relationship between nato and ukraine and they do north koreans and they do their

policies in their politics that's not true they clearly do that well i mean it is true that you know there was a lot of discussion as you know about ukraine becoming a member of nato and it was decided at the highest levels of the north atlantic council. that ukraine would not be a member of nato for the you know for the time being or whatever i'm not totally up because i'm not at nato anymore to tell you exactly what the current relationships are that ukraine issue is a problem between russia nato and nato at the moment and i'm sure that people for instance like this excellent american ambassador cobol career is doing his very best to have people talk to each other now mr suffered that i asked you a couple of questions as a communications professional but let me also ask you a question as a strategy is because this is ultimately what you do this point of time when the you were working for nato war your colleagues planning preparing in any way for the course of events that we saw develop in ukraine did they foresee that as eventuality and did they take any measures to prepare for it well there's all sorts

of contingency planning and scenario planning in many different directions and i assume that people you know strategists think about all sorts of eventualities but all i can say at the moment is that i regret that in the aftermath of the georgia situation of the aftermath of the then later on what's happened in crane that there is not more open channels of discussion at the same time it's fair to say that you know the usual diplomatic relations continue between russia western capitals the united states as you know so i wouldn't pay things as a blackly as as as as you're putting them right now well from what i know there is almost no communication between russia and the united states at this point at least no formal communication there's three are of course but i'm not sure about how to relations anyway i want to ask you one more question on nato neda's current secretary general young stoltenberg issued

a statement the other day in which he dedicated seven paragraphs to describing russia as a major challenge to paragraph two terrorism and the other two paragraphs to the question of defense spending do you think that. it's reflective of how nato sees its biggest problems sixty five percent on russia and the rest split between terrorism and budgeting well as i say i'm not at nato any longer the last time i was in nato headquarters i went to see the people on the again the communications and public diplomacy side and i understood that there were some internal reforms happening and that nato was again thinking more about the whole range of international security threats so not focusing specifically on russia but on a range of emerging security threats across the board including general functional you know critical issues like cyber security it's true of course that there's a lot of focus on. on the way stern russia relationship at the moment but i do not think that that is exclusively what nato is thinking about. and i think

there are many other there are many other areas at the same time you know things go in waves there was the end of the cold war which was a much more promising time between nato and the countries of the former soviet union then there was then there was all the focus on afghanistan then things got a little bit better when i was there with this korea relationship working together on such things as antiterrorism at the moment with developments however you want to put it but for instance in ukraine things are now got and the and the issues around intermediate range missiles etc things more tense again but i get i think things go in waves in phases and i would see this is just going in one direction let me ask you one more question about defense spending because it's been present in need it's internal negotiations for decades and yet the only tangible progress in and the only tangible increase in on the u.s. spending occurred only after donald trump deployed he's very peculiar

form of persuasion should we as russians draw a conclusion from that that nato its generals its bruguera kratz only respond to hard bargains i think is a budgetary matter. president trump indeed has has his way of communicating but you have to hand it to him that sometimes it's better to try and shake up the established way of doing things in order to come to a different conclusion so you might say that in some ways he's been rather successful but the economic it's a purely economic we talked about the economic difficulties you said yourself that it'll take forever to train and educate people so that we can try and get away from this populist wave at the moment why because it's all about it's all about budgets budgets are stretched so if you spend more on defense that means you're going to spend relatively less on health and education doesn't it so no government wants to spend more on the fence necessarily because it means i have less money to spend on domestic social issues hence there's been a big pushback against reaching this famous two percent of spending on defense

matters which been a nato objective now speaking about president trump whether you love him or hate him you will have to agree that he's redefining both political and public discourse as a communications professional what do you find most striking about him there is something to be said for the advantages of going against conventional wisdom after all you know large government organizations tend to get stuck in iraq into a certain extent uncertain and international bureaucracies as well i was almost twenty years in the u.n. on the world bank before i started working for nato and i know that the way these large organizations move agent to move in one direction and then the same people tend to be in charge you know between government and international organizations and lobbying and cetera et cetera so what he what he has done is he's shaken things up and he's brought to some extent a new perspective so i would say that you know you can as you say whatever your particular views on one particular policy he's brought some fresh air into into

some into decision making so it so in that way i would say that you know he he's been he's brought some positive change but from a communications side i think what's worrying is. this focus on you know fake news and junk news because one of the foundations of a democracy has to be the trust in nudist facts and information and if that trust is fundamentally shaken and the independent media are criticized then i think that's a problem from a communications perspective well as long as those media are indeed indeed independent and not politically biased you know one of the things that has driven the russians of the wall about the westerners is that hypocrisy you know this extolling of principles in public and the betrayal of those principles in real life and i think trump to a large extent has abandoned the pretense is that a good or bad thing do you think it's bad or it's you have politicians pretend they are better than they are or come across for what they are even if that means ugly

well you know i mean why do people get into politics i think people get into politics for very good reasons and sometimes very selfish reasons and i wouldn't throw all the politicians under the bus as you just have there are obviously some very responsible and principle politicians on all sides of the spectrum i mean in the u.s. if you're talking about the us i mean look at look at the kennedy family with all their ups and downs they stood for values and they did some remarkable things or on the other side look at look at somebody like mccain who who really was you know a man of principle i love it let's not start a discussion on our how senator mccain because he was also very instrumental to funding the insurgency i never really knew us about politicians you were just trying to imply that you know they were all hopeless and we shouldn't have any trust of them i think there are good and unprincipled politicians just as there are selfish and corrupt ones as well in every country well this is not what i was trying to say i was asking your direct question of whether sometimes it's better to

tell the truth even if it's ugly or pretend. things are better than i think it would certainly be good to tell the truth ok we will have to agree and i really appreciate your time with us today thank you very much for sharing your with the. with us it's been a pleasure thank you so much examiner i encourage our viewers to keep this conversation going in our social media pages and hope to see you again same place same time here on worlds apart. good to see.

the losses. they will. take us back. to bush i. suppose but what's joined up when you go. to the filter. you know you know it's not cold as the kids of the day you know. your good fortune. preaching. christmas to play good cricket or some. book of. the customer because that. i've been saying the numbers mean something they matter to us is over twenty trillion dollars and more than ten white collar crime stampede each did. eighty

five percent of the global wealth you long for the ultra rich eight point six percent market saw thirty percent minus minus two years some with four hundred to five hundred three per second per second and bitcoin rose to twenty thousand dollars. china's building two point one billion dollars a i industrial plant but don't let the numbers overwhelm. the only number you need to remember is one one does not show you can afford to miss the one and only. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy to go on sunday shouldn't let it be an arms race is on often spearing drama. if i look at the only i'm going to resist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical. to sit down and talk.

other. feel. russia continues as a b.b.c. reporter asks a pretty lot so in france to find any forcible link between the kremlin. movement and she says her editors are demanding blood.