The Terrifying Parallels Between Today And The Outbreak Of WW1 | Arne Westad

Time is running out. It has all the hallmarks for me of a total catastrophe. Bosnia, Alsace and Belgium rolled into one, therefore creating a much more complex, much more unstable kind of situation. Great powers in decline in many ways can be even more dangerous than rising great powers. Arno, could you please introduce yourself and give me just a little bit of background about your life as an academic? So really good to be with you Alfie. I'm Arno Estad. I'm teaching history and international affairs at Yale. I started taking an interest in history when I was quite young, probably when I was during my undergraduate years. And then the big thing that happened that led me in the direction that I've been going in ever since was the end of the Cold War during the early 1990s, because that just flung open an enormous number of hitherto secret archives and materials that historians could start working in. So that was what really pushed me in the direction of starting to work on contemporary international history. And when you were approaching your next book, which is The Coming Storm, which has just come out, what sort of things were you seeing that kind of prompted you? What was the spark that prompted you to write this book? I think the best possible motivation, Alfie, sheer irritation. I was annoyed by the many times that you see the Cold War parallel or simile, call it whatever you would like, used for our own time. And I found, having spent a lot of my research career dealing with issues connected to the Cold War, that whatever we call the kind of confused situation that we're in at the moment, the one thing that it most certainly is not is a Cold War. So in typical historical fashion, I started thinking back in time, I started looking for other kinds of parallels, none of which of course will be exact, but some might be much more helpful than the Cold War parallel. That doesn't work out. And that's how I ended up with the situation in the early part of the 20th century that seems to be much more similar to today. So that is, I guess that's the basis of the book, is that idea that the conditions of the world today are very similar to that of 1914. Could you kind of just explain to me what your thesis is and who the key players are and maybe where the parallels are between 1914 and today? What's so frightening is that there are far too many parallels between the situation today and the period just before the outbreak of the First World War for us to feel in any way comfortable. So just like today, that time period was an era where globalization, economic, social, travel, integration on a global scale, where that had been going on for a very long time and then rather suddenly started to break down, very similar to what we have seen happening over the past decade or so. Back then, just like today, it was the establishment powers, including Great Britain, which was probably the most powerful country in the world at that point, that started becoming increasingly skeptical to these kinds of parallels that they had put in motion to begin with, with regard to globalization and economic integration. And then secondly, I think what really struck me is that today, just like then, we are living in a multipolar world, not a bipolar kind of US-Soviet Union like the Cold War, or the United States being the top dog on most things after the Cold War ended, but with many great powers contending against each other and therefore creating a much more complex, much more unstable kind of situation, which also seems to me to be a parallel to what we have today. And one of the points you make is that it's the regional conflicts which is where these flashpoints sort of reside. And can you sort of suggest to me any places that you see at the moment where there are sparks that could be lit that could have devastating consequences globally and drag those great powers into these localized conflicts? Well, this is another similarity with the situation in the early part of the 20th century, with a large number of regional, local conflicts that increasingly became more intense. And then when a real world-class crisis for the great powers came along, helped create that kind of global conflagration that the First World War was. And today, you have many more of these kinds of conflicts and crisis than what we had prior to 1914. I mean, obviously, the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Iran are good examples of this, because they so easily could pull in great powers, as long as the actual fighting is going on. But you also have, because of China's remarkable rise over the past generation, you have a lot of potential flashpoints within the East Asian region, very close to China itself, a little bit parallel to what you found with Germany before World War I, that easily could lead to a conflict. Taiwan is probably the one that worries me most at the moment, but there are many others in that region, Korea, South China Sea, relations between China and India. Lots of these potential flashpoints that you can see today. And if we could kind of focus in on that, the Taiwan conflict in the Indo-Pacific region, what is it specifically about Taiwan that worries you so much? So I think I say in the book that Taiwan, compared to the early 20th century, is a little bit like Bosnia, Alsace, and Belgium rolled into one. And what I mean by that is that it has baked into it, the Taiwan conflict has baked into it, many of the same kinds of structural tension that led to war in 1914. It has the nationalist aspects, unification aspects, that was the problem in the Balkans prior to 1914. It has the rivalry between great powers, United States and China, that was the biggest problem in the relationship between Germany and France, and to some extent Britain as well. And it has the strategic implications of Belgium. So what led to the war in Europe becoming a world war in the summer of 1914 was basically the German decision to invade Belgium, which was the trigger that brought Britain into the war, and thereby created a global war out of the Franco-German-Russian-Austrian conflict. So it has many of these same kind of characteristics as you found a hundred years ago. And that really worries me because it's so difficult to manage. Things could happen that were outside the control of the great powers themselves. Back in 1914, it was a terrorist act, the murder of the Austrian heir to the throne in Sarajevo. And, you know, there's plenty of opportunities for these kinds of things to come along in our situation today as well. And Taiwan is one of those places, perhaps the one that worries me most. But that kind of thing could happen and create a whole new kind of situation, which would make it much more difficult for great powers to hold back. And can you give me an example of what that so-called sort of Balkan spark could be in the Indo-Pacific region? So if we stick with Taiwan, I mean, one thing that I'm really afraid of is that China might attempt some kind of blockade, some kind of embargo with regard to Taiwan, just to prove that they are capable of doing it. And that this then would be seen on the Taiwan side as an attempt to take over the island by force, and therefore would be met with military countermeasures on the Taiwan side. But it could also be something that is entirely outside the military strategic scenario, some kind of attack coming from the Chinese mainland onto Taiwan that wasn't really sanctioned in Beijing, or vice versa, some kind of spectacular terrorist action in mainland China that the mainland leaders would blame the Taiwan authorities for being connected. So it's those kinds of scenarios that I'm most worried about. I'm not particularly worried about Chinese leader Xi Jinping waking up one morning saying, this is going to be the day that we're going to take over Taiwan. There has to be more than the sort of structural pressures for this. There has to be real causes for it. And very often, those causes, those immediate reasons are things that we can only with greatest difficulty foresee before they actually happen. And I guess within China, we're seeing the economy come in some issues. There's, you know, a property market, which isn't doing quite as well as it was expected to do. And there's a huge amount of debt. Those kind of economic factors, is that something that we could see drive, for example, a terror attack on mainland China, that then gets blamed on Taiwan? And, you know, we see that ball start rolling. It certainly makes the situation even more unstable than what it has been in the immediate past. And there are some parallels to what happened prior to 1914 with regard to Germany. I spent quite some time, as you know, in the book discussing parallels, never exact, but still illuminating between Germany's rise back in the 19th century and China's rise now. And there are some aspects of this that are remarkably similar. I mean, when the crisis came along in 1914, there were people in Germany who were saying, why not now? Why shouldn't we try to fulfill our aspirations, break out of what we see as the other powers' attempts to contain us in Europe, rather than waiting for another opportunity to come along, where we might not be, in relative terms, as strong as compared to our rivals, as we are at the moment? And I don't think that's a majority view in the People's Republic of China today. But I think it is a view. And I think it's a view held by some rather serious people, that if a crisis were to come along, where wars over Taiwan seem to be a possibility, there would be people who advise the top leadership, in the direction of what happened in 1914, maybe this is the moment when we fulfill our destiny, achieve the reunification of the country, that waiting might not be the best opportunity. I grew up in a time when it was kind of Pax Romana. You know, there was this idea that, you know, when I was younger, that all the institutions had a real grip on the world of politics. And those large cross-border incursions, such as Ukraine, was something of the past. World War I, World War II would never happen again. In recent years, we've seen that completely crumble. And we've seen institutions seemingly lose power or control over both the narrative and these kind of tyrannical world leaders. How has this happened? And how have these kind of great institutions, such as the UN and NATO, given license to someone like Vladimir Putin to persecute the war in Ukraine? Well, this was the big question in the early part of the 20th century as well. People had grown up, just like most of us have today, with a long period of great power peace, not absolute peace. I mean, just like in our own time and day, you know, there have been many wars that have been terrible for the people that have been hit by them. But there hadn't been any great power wars. These great power wars of the kind that earlier times had been so full of, for instance, the early part of the 20th century. And I think one of the things that's happened is that we are now so far removed in time. Almost no one who is alive today have experienced great power war. We are so far removed from that, that people do not really take in what are the differences between wars and great power wars. They do not understand that, if we use the First World War comparison, you know, as many soldiers were killed on the first two weeks of the Battle of the Somme in 1916, as were killed in all great power wars between 1815 and 1914. I mean, it's the dimension that we are not capable of understanding. And in addition to that, I do think that the withdrawal, the gradual unease that has developed, first and foremost in the United States, with the way that the international system that the United States itself was central to creating after the Second World War, has worked out for Americans. There's a lot of blaming of others that globalization hasn't really worked for us. It's worked for China and it's worked for India. It hasn't worked for the United States. And there is this general sense that what has been the most powerful country within the system, the creator of the system in many ways, has to look out for itself and its own interests. And I think that has been a tremendously destabilizing part of all of this. And it's been part of the reason, I think, why it's been possible for people like Putin, or for that matter, other authoritarian leaders, to act in the way that they have, that the cohesion within the US-led international system, the way it had existed prior to mid-2010s, is no longer there. And do you think that that world of the 90s and 2000s is gone and we're past it? Or do you think we can ever reclaim that kind of institutional control we once saw? I don't think we can go back there. In many ways, I would have liked it, because it would have created a more stable world, not a fair world and not a world without conflict and problems, but a more predictable, stable world than what we're looking at the moment. But the opportunities of ever recreating that, I think, are gone now quite some time ago. And I think we have to get used to a new world, which is more complex, which is more filled with conflict, which is more multipolar than what we have seen before. I think those kinds of rivalries are only going to intensify over the next few years. And, you know, middle powers and smaller countries then have to take that into consideration, that the world system has fundamentally changed. And I was speaking to someone who was an expert in African Islamic extremism recently, and he made the point to me that USAID and certain other global funding efforts for slightly poorer countries was what the withdrawal of that is what was actually driving Islamic extremism. And it was being met with bombs by Trump in northern Nigeria, for example. Do you think that the pulling of funding from those smaller, less developed countries is eventually going to be something that could come back to bite the US and actually spark conflicts far more serious than spending a few million a year on funding projects? Absolutely. I mean, I think we have to be able to think about two things here. I mean, the American withdrawal from that part of the world or any part of the world didn't create Islamist extremism. I mean, that was there from before and would probably have been significant under any circumstance. But does the withdrawal of American assistance to some of the poorest countries in Europe give further rise to some of the arguments put forward by Islamists and others who are out to challenge the international order, saying these people don't really care about us? You know, we have to build completely new kinds of systems that are built on different kinds of authority, be it religious or whatever, right? Because the opportunities that are connected with linking up to the West in general, not just the United States, seem to be gone. And that worries me, and it particularly worries me in Africa, because Africa is going to be really important for the future of the world for demographic reasons, but also for general growth reasons. I think Africa and what's been happening in Africa over the last half generation or so is one of the most underappreciated developments that we see in our own time. And I guess Africa is really fascinated by the fact that it's got a massively booming population across a lot of countries and an expanding middle class in places like Nigeria. Can you foresee a world in which potentially European countries are playing second fiddle to a lot of the African countries when it comes to global politics? So 2024 was the first year in human history when there was no natural population growth in any country outside of Africa. And the significance of that is enormous. What it means is that over time, and it will take some time to get there, young people and increasingly educated young people will only be there in large numbers on the African continent. And obviously the consequences of that with regard to the kind of stuff that young people do, production, innovation, all of the kinds of things that we have gotten used to belonged in the West and increasingly in Asia as well, will be redirected. There's actually no doubt about that. I'm not saying this because I'm not aware of the challenges that many African countries have, and they are massive. But if we look at the overall trend, these kinds of developments in a broad structural sense tend historically to mean more, to be more significant in terms of what the future will bring, than the kind of political troubles and conflicts that exist at the moment. When you see someone like Vladimir Putin sort of rattling the sabre and threatening nuclear strikes on Europe, which, you know, I guess prior to the Munich conference in 2007 was completely unheard of, would have been front page news, but now seems to happen all the time. Has the power of a nuclear weapon been diluted? Has the narrative around nuclear weapons been diluted? And how dangerous is it that nuclear sabre rattling has almost become part and parcel of modern geopolitics? Unfortunately, nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction do not have the absolute deterrent power that they had up to the last decade or so. And there are many reasons for that. I mean, nuclear proliferation is one. The creation of smaller nuclear weapons that are intended to be tactical weapons or battlefield weapons has something to do with it. But it's also, as you indicate, there is the relationship between the great powers. So within a multipolar system, trying to sabre rattle, trying to threaten the use of nuclear weapons is something that in many ways makes more sense than what it does in a bipolar international system. Because you can get more attention that way, and particularly you can get the opportunity of being more forward, putting more pressure on your immediate neighbours, both those who have nuclear weapons themselves and especially those that do not have nuclear weapons, to achieve what you want to achieve. And I think that's exactly what we are seeing at the moment with Putin. But we could also easily see that in other scenarios where you have nuclear-armed countries that have something that they feel is in their interest to achieve. And for example, you mentioned tactical nuclear weapons there. You know, Putin is making, obviously, battlefield gains in Ukraine, but we're seeing places like Crimea having huge fuel shortages and the war being brought home. It's not looking fantastic for him. In desperation, if he was to use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, how does NATO react to that without sparking that, having that Balkan spark and slowly spiralling into a wider war? I think if nuclear weapons were used in Ukraine or, for that matter, in any other conflict, it's almost certain that that would invoke some kind of nuclear-led response from other countries. Not necessarily the use of nuclear weapons by themselves, or at least so we should hope, but making use of very concrete threats in terms of what would happen if such an attack were to be repeated. And that in itself is, if both the political and the military situation for the power that then first used nuclear weapons is at a point where its survival is the question, you can imagine where that kind of gradual stepping up kind of scenario would lead to. So, you know, I mean, on nuclear weapons, it's very, very clear. The only way forward is to avoid those kinds of scenarios. And the only way of getting there is by restarting meaningful forms of arms control talks, which we have nothing of at the moment. And if there is one thing that really frightens me in the world that we live in today, is that we see constant references among great powers to the nuclear power status, but without any serious attempt, as we have seen in the past, of trying to deal with those kinds of scenarios through negotiations. How does AI play into that? Because we're looking at a global arms race that is including a massive amount of weaponized AI that could be more powerful than anything we've ever seen applied to a battlefield, potentially. Do we need some kind of global memorandum against artificial intelligence as well as nuclear weapons? I would hope that at some point we would be able to have meaningful conversations among great powers and others about the uses of AI in conflict terms. We're not having that at the moment. And we see that AI in terms of military conflict, just as for everything else, is going to change many of the scenarios that we thought that we knew. In ways that are worrisome. I mean, the first challenge, I think, is that the existence, even of the kind of AI models that we have at the moment, speeds up everything in terms of conflict to a degree that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. And then secondly, of course, there is the temptation, particularly for those countries that have weapons of mass destruction, first and foremost nuclear weapons, but do not have the same level of nuclear weapons, nuclear missiles, as other countries have, to put some kind of AI-driven decision-making process in place in order to assure that they have a second strike capability against anyone who attacks them. And I think that is really deadly dangerous. Taking humans out of the loop at all levels with regard to nuclear weapons decision-making has all the hallmarks for me of a total catastrophe. So we have to make sure that that is avoided. There have to be humans at all levels of decision-making when it comes to nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. Interesting. Is AI the accelerant in this whole situation? Do you think that's the number one factor essentially driving this fear amongst nations that, you know, there's a tension between them because no one knows exactly who is further down the line of having the most advanced AI tools? That's exactly right. I mean, this is the problem that again connects us to the early part of the 20th century, where there were also all of these new technological developments that drove countries, not as was expected, towards greater economic achievement, greater integration, greater knowledge, but towards fear. Towards fear that they would be attacked by others who had achieved better results in terms of the technological transformation of, you know, communications technology, telephone, telegraph, battleships, aircraft, all of these things that started to come in very quickly in the time period before 1914. I think AI, and where we are going from AI towards quantum computing and other forms of technological innovations, play much of the same role today. And it doesn't lead to people seeing more opportunities in terms of international affairs. It leads to more fear and more resentment against others that may have, at least in the eye of the beholder, been able to achieve more than what they themselves had. I wanted to talk to you about the population, because we've talked a lot about leaders, we've talked a lot about great powers, but sort of the politics behind those leaders and our future leaders and how they might come to power. One of the things that's driving a lot of tension at the moment in Europe is the far right and the far left and generally populism on both sides. What kind of role can populism play in leading to these sort of cataclysmic global events? And how can essentially Europe stop from tearing itself apart and ending up with highly polarized governments? I think that this is one of the things we really need to be aware of, because part of what led to the disaster 100 years ago was exactly this increase in populism, in nationalism, in racism, anti-Semitism of various sorts you saw at the beginning of the 20th century. These directions in themselves do not create wars, but they make the world more unstable, and therefore more unpredictable, and therefore create more fear among others for what their rivals would be able to do to them. So, I mean, this is something that is really striking with our world today, is just how much resentment against others there are in various population groups. I mean, Europe is one example of this with regard to the immigration issue first and foremost, but also in broader terms. I mean, there are more Americans today who believe that a war with China is likely than what was the case between any powers in terms of the population prior to 1914. Two-thirds of Russians believe that the West is out to destroy Russia. So, in these kinds of popular images, they do not need to become extreme right in order to have an influence on the direction that countries are going in. The level of populism that we see today, and sometimes populism that is not really connected to anything going on in the real world, are problematic enough that we easily, if a crisis were to come along, could be in a territory where it would be really difficult for political decision-makers to do what they know that they have to do, which is to de-escalate and reduce tension, and would rather be carried away by the kind of popular attitudes that exist at the time. And one of the great powers that we know loves to fund directly or indirectly populism is Russia. What is it about populism that destabilises Europe and benefits Russia? So, what Russia wants to do, and this is typical for a former KGB agent like Vladimir Putin, is to try to sow chaos, to create as much of a sense in Europe that democracy cannot handle the problems that are there, to set different groups of people against each other, whether for religious reasons, or race reasons, or political reasons. That's the aim. That's part of what I think rightly is called hybrid warfare. I mean, this is a kind of conflict that Europe is already, including Britain, is already in against Russia. The current Russian government is out to destabilise from within as many countries in Europe as they possibly can do that in. Now, again, one has to be careful here, because did the Russians create populism and nationalism in Europe? No, they didn't. I mean, that was there from before, and it has domestic reasons, and it's connected to, in my view, first and foremost, the greater insecurity that many people who grew up in a country, regard the country as theirs, face over the last generation or so, and which they then connect to issues such as immigration. It might be more sensible to connect it to, you know, underperforming economies and lack of domestic innovation. But be that as it may, those are the views that were there from before. What the Russians are doing is to maximise and further polarise through sowing false news stories, to try to send agents into situations where there already is a great deal of societal tension, in order to exacerbate these conflicts, because they think that that benefits Russia's interests. One of your skills which makes your work so fantastic is the fact that you read Russian and Mandarin. Can you sort of give us an idea of what the other side is saying? We get a lot of the news here that's pretty one-sided and doesn't actually fully assess Russian and Chinese sources. Can you just give me a sort of broad overview of what is Russia's view on emerging conflicts around the world, and what's China's view on emerging conflicts around the world? So the most important thing to say there, I think, is that they are quite different. I mean, these two countries that are allies of a sort in the current international setting, have very different backgrounds in terms of their politics. China is a communist state, led by a communist party, that has one main interest, which is to keep itself in power, and through that, increase the country's performance, both economically and militarily and strategically, the way they see it. Putin's role in Russia is very different. Putin is certainly not a communist. I would call him a deeply reactionary populist, a nationalist, someone who is preoccupied, first and foremost, with getting back at the West, and others, for what he saw as the disasters that befell the Soviet Union towards the end of the Cold War. He is opportunistic, just like the Chinese tend to be thinking long-term about their own positions and their own planning. So there are enormous differences. In terms of popular views, they also tend to be rather different from each other. I mean, in China, I think, the population sees itself as real rivals to the United States, and they're immensely proud, for good reasons, with the economic progress, including economic progress for them, that China's economic revolution has led to. In Russia, all of it is about cultural issues, it's about identity issues, it's about whether the country, as it has so far, would support Putin's direction, even if it basically takes the country to hell, both in terms of its future growth and its present economy and its present social affairs. So far, Russian nationalism has been strong enough to support that kind of policy from Putin's side. Whether that's going to last, I think, is a completely different question. I mean, and I say that mostly in respect of how the active phase of the war in Ukraine is going to come to that. Does the internal collapse of Russia actually benefit Europe, or could that actually cause more problems? This is one of the biggest questions, I think, for the future, that when this Russian regime goes, what will the transition be like? I don't think Europe has any strategic interest in a further destabilization or disintegration of the Russia that we see today. What we can hope for in that kind of situation is that it would give Europe, first and foremost, but also other countries, an opportunity to reach out to a new Russian leadership, help to negotiate, if that has not happened already, an end to the war in Ukraine, meaning a peace deal, not just a ceasefire. And then gradually, in connection with that, try to use the opportunities that are there on the side of the West to assist Russia in that kind of situation. Because the degree of decline in Russia domestically is something that I don't think many people in Britain or in Europe are able to see. I mean, this is not a great power that is rising, it's a great power in very steep decline. But what we know from history is, of course, that great powers in decline, in many ways, in terms of peace and stability, can be even more dangerous than rising great powers. So we really have to keep a very close eye on what happens there. And I just wanted to touch on one more of the great powers, India. How does India play a role in the next 20 years? India is in many ways the great power that is best placed to make use of many of the changes that we see today. I mean, it still has a very young population. It has a well-educated population. It has, to quite a high extent, an English-speaking population that can be integrated into international exchanges of various sorts. It has, in spite of Modi's attempts at undermining it, a relatively stable political system. Not all of the problems have been resolved, but they have been resolved to a much higher degree, I would say, than, for instance, in China, where the one-party dictatorship is still something that has been left to the future to deal with, to give people more of a say in how the country is actually run. So in those terms, India is incredibly well-placed. The difficulty for India is that the aims of its government now, and I think in the future, will be to be the predominant power within South Asia. And that's not unreasonable, given India's overall position, its growth, its population numbers, its history and background. But right next to India is, of course, Pakistan and all the nuclear-armed power with a very close alliance with China. And this is what worries me in terms of China's future. The one thing that China is worried about in this region is that India is going to get too much influence, too much control. That's the reason why they are backing up the Pakistani rivals. And this could easily lead to conflict. We've seen this already in terms of the high Himalayas, where India and China have overlapping territorial ambitions. And that's dangerous enough. But we could also see it with even greater danger, I think, in terms of the relationship between India and Pakistan. Any kind of conflict between those two now, large-scale conflict, I think the chances that China could get involved are pretty high. Just two more questions. Firstly, how does democracy combat or take on autocracy in this world that you're envisioning? How do the EU powers, democratic powers, powers that have traditionally relied on the rule of law, actually fight against an autocratic power such as China, which can make decisions faster, can get things done faster? But by reconnecting with their own populations. I mean, there is this enormous divide, I find now, I mean, certainly in the United States, but also to quite some extent in Britain and in Europe, between the political and financial elites, and how ordinary people see what's going on in their countries. And of course, you don't get very endeared to a political system that you do not think has really delivered for you, right? This works in the reverse as well, by the way. So I was just in China, and with a lot of people, reasonable people, younger people saying, why on earth should we aspire to have the kind of political system that you have in Britain or you have in the United States, when you see the levels of dysfunction that come out of that, right? So that, I think, is the first thing that needs to happen. It's about domestic rebuilding. It's about putting ordinary, middle-class, working-class people first, and being able to deliver on some of these promises that all of these governments that one has had over the last few years have all spoken about, but have not been able to act. And then secondly, I think it's also very, very important, and we are not always good enough on that, to highlight some of the real achievements that have come out of political pluralism and democratic governments. So far, I think, maybe especially in continental Europe, there is almost this excuse being set up for democratic dysfunction, rather than celebrating what democracy actually could be, which is something that I think a lot of people, including in the dictator states, would actually aspire to. So I think those are the responses. The first is more important than the second, but the second is also very important in order to get the message And finally, Arne, the million-dollar question, how do we get out of this mess? How do we defrost relations, sit down at the table, and stop the world from falling into World War III? First and foremost, through meaningful compromise. I mean, one thing that really worries me today, all across the world, is this unwillingness, this inability to think in terms of compromise, both short term, which most of these compromises, I think, would be, but also longer term. It's as if those kinds of negotiations, you know, it's almost become, as far as compromise is concerned, a dirty word. You shouldn't use that anymore, right? I think that's very, very dangerous. Then secondly, and related to that, we have a desperate need to get rid of the wars, the smaller wars, that are ongoing at the moment. Because if something else were to come along on a much bigger scale, these could be some of the sparks that could lead to a global catastrophe. And then if I could come up with a third one, I think it is really important for leaders to try to understand the strategic aims and aspirations of others. There's a lot of talking going on among great power leaders, and that's great. That's very important. But there isn't all that much understanding. And that reminds me very much of the situation before 1914. There was a lot of talking going on. I mean, some of the heads of state in Europe were closely related to each other. In Germany, and Russia, and Britain, the heads of state were cousins. They spoke with each other, but they didn't really understand the strategic motivations that came from the other side. And when time then started running out in July 1914, there was a lack of understanding, I think, at least as much as the other issues that I mentioned, that led to disaster. So the most important thing for me is that these are processes we need to get started on now. I do not like being the bearer of bad news, particularly on a beautiful summer's day in the English countryside. But it's necessary to say that time is running out, and that if we are not able to deal with some of these issues now, I think it will be much more difficult to deal with them in the future. Arne, thank you very much. Great conversation, Alfred. Thank you.