Shashank Joshi
Appearances
Global News Podcast
Israeli airstrikes have hit several targets inside Yemen
Still to come. It's a kind of a nostalgia, right? If we can see him performing live, that's amusing to me.
Global News Podcast
Israeli airstrikes have hit several targets inside Yemen
I must say, there are accidental cable cuttings. There's, you know, it's 100 cable faults each year on average. Many of those are anchor draggings, fishing vessels.
Global News Podcast
Israeli airstrikes have hit several targets inside Yemen
But what makes these cases more interesting is, of course, the year we've just had of continual Russian sabotage across Europe, the fact that these ships appear to be taking slightly irregular routes over these cables, and of course, the fact that in this particular case, the ship in question, the Eagle S, seems to have a connection to Russia's so-called shadow fleet of tankers.
Global News Podcast
Israeli airstrikes have hit several targets inside Yemen
All of that together means, I think, there will be strong grounds to suspect a degree of Russian involvement here.
Global News Podcast
Israeli airstrikes have hit several targets inside Yemen
That's the other thing. Yeah, we did see a case a few weeks ago, the Yipeng, the Chinese flagship, which was taken into Swedish waters. There were investigators on board, but they were highly constrained by what they could see by the permission of the Chinese. They didn't give full permissions. And they didn't board the ship in international waters in the way that's been done now.
Global News Podcast
Israeli airstrikes have hit several targets inside Yemen
So this is a clearly more aggressive approach by Finland, which thinks, hang on a minute, the ship has clearly done something we need to investigate. The problem, of course, is you can get on board, you can talk to the crew. It's very, very difficult to prove malign intent unless you have some kind of other intelligence indicating what the instructions given to the captain were.
Global News Podcast
Israeli airstrikes have hit several targets inside Yemen
It's very hard to prove that they dragged their anchor on purpose to cut the cable rather than by accident.
Global News Podcast
Israeli airstrikes have hit several targets inside Yemen
As vulnerable as others. Of course, the Baltic cables lie in different depths, different geographies. Russia has maybe an easier time there. But if you look at our geography, we have many, many energy, power, electricity, data cables connecting us not only to the continent, but also across the Atlantic.
Global News Podcast
Israeli airstrikes have hit several targets inside Yemen
Russian submarines, particularly a unit of the Russian Ministry of Defense called Gugi, a deep sea water activity unit, has been active in those areas as well, including with their submarines. It would be difficult to cut the UK off. There's far too many data cables connecting us to too many different places. But you could cause localised disruption to power or data with well-targeted action.
Global News Podcast
Israeli airstrikes have hit several targets inside Yemen
And of course, that's the point of this kind of sabotage. That was The Economist's defence editor, Shashank Joshi.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
There's no indication that has stopped right now, those things, intelligence or Starlink. But there is a concern, obviously, that that could be severed at some stage.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
Yeah. It means Ukraine's in trouble. It doesn't mean it's in immediate trouble. You know, there's enough stuff in the pipeline, enough stuff in their stockpiles in order to keep going, certainly through spring, probably through the summer. There's a lot, you know, the Biden administration gave them a ton of stuff just before they finished their time in office.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
And if you look at what Ukraine's defense industry is making, we must remember here, Ukraine had this huge defense industry in Soviet times, right? It was like the specialist maker of, I think, guidance systems for Soviet ballistic missiles in the Soviet Union. So it has this incredible engineering skill.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
It's building out huge numbers of strike drones that are now providing the lion's share of casualties in the war. The Ukrainian government says they can make about 40% of their battlefield needs. But anyway, all in all, that's great.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
But if the Americans cut everything and run, then we would be in a battlefield crisis probably by the end of this year, maybe early next year, where ammunition would be running dry, the Russian Air Force would be able to go over Ukraine more easily. And to answer your question directly, no, Ukraine would not be able to win. It would have to stay on the defensive.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
It would be eking out its position, probably falling back. And I think it would be in a very, very difficult place at that point.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
Well, at that stage, I suspect President Trump would have less interest in the war. He would have had to wash his hands of it at that point. But I also caution, you know, war is unpredictable. In early 2022, I was among the many people who thought that Ukraine was bound for defeat against these overwhelming odds.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
And I completely hold my hands up and acknowledge I was wrong because wars are unpredictable. Things happen. We saw a rebellion in Moscow with one of Vladimir Putin's most important mercenaries, Evgeny Progozhin, rising up and marching on the Capitol. So who knows what happens in a year? The Russian economy could blow up. We could see other developments inside Russia.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
You know, in some ways, the strategy on the Ukrainian side has been, look, keep it going, keep the Russians engaged, keep killing or wounding 1,200, 1,300 Russians a day, and something will turn up. At some point, they will just run out, they'll get exhausted. And so I'm always wary of saying... Ukraine will lose because we don't know all the other things that can happen in a conflict like this.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
And technologies change as well. You know, the drone revolution that Ukraine is exploiting right now to inflict these massive casualty rates, those kind of drones, they did not exist as usable battlefield weapons back in February 2022.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
I think there is, yes. I think we realize we're in a crisis here. And I know we've said that before. You may have heard that before. In Trump 1, you may have heard it before at other times. But this feels to me the most... a febrile, fluid moment in European security in my lifetime.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
And possibly since, you know, I think certainly since the end of the Cold War, possibly the most dramatic rupture in transatlantic relations, maybe since the 1950s. And I can see people finding new ways to spend more on defense. You can have a big 150 billion euro loan facility for European defence programmes.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
You could allow the EU's own budget to go on defence, get a European investment bank to put money into it. So I'm seeing all these new solutions to say, at the end of the day, whether it's for Ukraine, whether it's for us, if America walks away from NATO, we need more money. And I am seeing radical new ways to consider that that I haven't seen in the past.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
I think fundamentally the same reason it's been invested in Europe since 1945. It realized that a continent in which this authoritarian power is able to steamroller over a smaller power, change borders by force, that this begins to threaten NATO. And if you threaten NATO, you begin to threaten Ukraine.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
the basis of European security, the cohesion and peace and economic prosperity of Europe that America has benefited from by trading with Europe for so many years. But I think the larger picture is also that if you're in a world where a dictator can basically rewrite the borders by force and say, actually, this country doesn't exist. I'm going to take it.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
that this doesn't bode well for everyone else. This doesn't bode well for Taiwan. It doesn't bode well if you're kind of Japan or South Korea. It doesn't bode well if you're any American ally. And in turning that upside down, I'm seeing concern, profound concern, not just among Europeans. You know, you can accuse us of being whiny Europeans, and sometimes we are.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
But actually, I'm seeing a lot of concern among Taiwanese, among Japanese, among Australians who are looking at this and thinking, hey, this administration that is saying – I will no longer defend you. And in fact, I want you to give me $500 billion worth of minerals to pay me back. They're saying, what would this administration do if my country came under attack? And would they do anything?
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
Or would they turn on me and demand I hand over my resources in a kind of protection racket? I think that's provoking some serious questions about the reliability and integrity and the good faith of the United States government as we have known it for 80 years.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
I think that's a brilliant question. And my goodness, where do we begin, right? Look at Germany. The US has a lot of troops in Germany. Do we think they're all there just to sit there defending Germany against Putin? No, Germany is this huge hub for American military power projection. It has this huge military hospital. It's an air bridge to get your forces to the Middle East.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
And then what about this coalition to compete with China in technology? You know, do you think you're going to do this whilst the Europeans are hoovering up Chinese electric vehicles and building Huawei into their telephone systems? It's an alliance, a tech alliance in which alliances are critical. You need to work with partners.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
That's been the assumption of this last administration, the Biden administration. But even Trump won to some degree.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
If that's going away and allies are just viewed as these inferior powers who have to come to the Oval Office in a suit and pay tribute and grovel, then I think America is going to find itself in a world where stuff it has taken for granted, that allies just show up in Iraq and Afghanistan to fight alongside you, for instance, that that world is going to crumble and America will be on its own.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
And one of the big strengths it has that China doesn't and that Russia doesn't, which is real allies, that will ebb away.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
No, look, I mean, let me have a go, right? Because I think it is important to understand where an administration like this is coming from. I think there is a faction in the administration that says Europe is a side story. We're going to get out of Europe and send stuff to Asia, husband our resources. We're not going to spend 50 billion a year on Ukraine.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
We're going to spend it on Asia, confront China, put more stuff into Japan, put more stuff into South Korea. That kind of makes sense. I may not agree with that, but I see the internal logic of that. However, however, it's a big but. This assumes this is a normal administration that does strategy where people, you and I sit in a room and discuss strategy and produce documents.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
What happens when the president puts out a video saying, you know that strategy you said about pivoting to Asia? I just want to put this AI video out showing you a giant golden statue of myself in Gaza because I want to own Gaza. And Then at that point, there is no sense of strategy. It's a sense of whimsy. It's a kind of, you know, the Emperor Caligula making his horse the consul.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
It's a sense of governance by presidential impulse. And there, I think, I'm afraid I can't offer a coherent view of strategy other than a raw assertion of American power, regardless of the costs or consequences or benefits.
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
Well, the good news is that... There's already a lot of aid flowing to Ukraine from non-American sources. And then you can add into that Canada, Australia, and indeed even some other Asian countries, Japan and others. The bad news is that that 40% of American aid includes some stuff that is pretty significant. So that's things like...
Today, Explained
Breaking up with Ukraine
air defense systems that can take out big Russian ballistic missiles. It includes intelligence support to help Ukraine understand what's going on, where the Russians are, how to target their missiles. And it includes some commercial services provided by American companies The most famous one, of course, being Starlink, the communication systems provided by Elon Musk's SpaceX.