Behind The Lines with Arthur Snell (Arthur Snell)

In 2021, Paul Mason, a veteran journalist familiar to viewers of Newsnight and Channel 4 News, published a book called How to stop Fascism, History Ideology, Resistance. His book came in the aftermath of the January 6th insurrection in Washington DC and the spectre of rising authoritarian nationalism across the world. A year later, Paul found himself in Kyiv just 24 hours before Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, as 21st century fascism began to more literally imitate its 20th century forbear.

Since then, Paul has become an urgent advocate of the need to take this conflict seriously - for what it is - an existential threat to the post-Westphalian world order. I spoke to Paul about Fascism in its modern forms, about the need for Western countries to support Ukraine more forcefully and about the failure of some on the left to understand the threat. to Ukraine. It was a fascinating discussion, particularly as Paul is such a well-informed reader of history. His discussion takes a truly global vision and incredibly insightful, from Europe, to North America, to India. 

Paul Tweets at https://twitter.com/paulmasonnews. He mentioned a fascinating New York Times investigation which can be found here https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/05/world/europe/neville-roy-singham-china-propaganda.html 

You can find me here on Twitter and BlueSky as well as https://arthursnell.substack.com/.

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EMERGENCY PODCAST

We’re only 4 days after the stunning horror of Hamas’s attack on Israel. Much remains unclear, but we now know that a major Hamas operation completely blindsided Israel’s defences and nearly 1,000 Israelis, mostly civilians are dead, with several hundred taken as hostages to Gaza. Israel has regained control of the towns that were seized by Hamas fighters, but there remain gunmen at large in what is obviously a chaotic situation.

Israel has responded with a huge mobilisation of forces against Hamas, with 600 killed in Gaza, according to the BBC. Gaza is officially under siege with no access to supplies of water, electricity or food and Hamas are threatening to kill a hostage every time Israel carries out an air strike without warning Palestinian civilians.

To help us come to terms with these extraordinary events, I was joined by Jason Pack. Some of you may have heard him speak on Libya and the disordered world in episode 6 of this podcast. But Jason is very much a Middle East specialist: he lived 7 years in the Middle East, speaks Arabic and Hebrew and lived 3 years in East Jerusalem, 2 years in Syria, and 1 in Egypt... He is of course presenter of the Disorder podcast and Founder & Director, NATO & the Global Enduring Disorder Project. 

Some of you might have been surprised to hear Jason say that Israel had a hand in Hamas origins. There are various articles that describe this background, this in The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/07/30/how-israel-helped-create-hamas/ and particularly this detailed account in the Wall Street Journal (archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20090926212507/http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123275572295011847.html). The important point to make here is that Israel encouraged an Islamist charitable entity that was there to act as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of FATAH, also known as the PLO. The Israelis were not trying to create a militant terror group (this is a conspiracy theory that has flourished online), although one of the retired Israeli officers interviewed in the WSJ article acknowledges that he "had no illusions about [Hamas founder] Sheikh Yassin's long-term intentions or the perils of political Islam”. This is, as ever, a complex story.

Thanks for listening to Behind the Lines - please spread the word and give us a positive review if you find these episodes useful.

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Following Hamas’s horrific assault on Israel, attention turns to Israel’s reaction. Gaza is under siege and Israel has mobilised over 300,000 reservists. Israel claims that it plans to destroy Hamas. What does that mean in practice? And what does it mean for the civilians that live in Gaza? This sits in a wider context of regional relationships, Israel’s support in the West and the impact on the conflict in Ukraine.

To cover such a wide-ranging set of challenges and issues it was a huge privilege to be joined by The Economist’s Defence Editor Shashank Joshi, who is one of the best-informed journalists working in the defence space today. He is a visiting fellow at the department of War Studies at King’s College London and a familiar figure to those that follow the conflict in Ukraine. 

You can find Shashank on Twitter @shashj and his work is in the Economist www.economist.com

I Tweet @snellarthur and am increasingly on BlueSky @snellarthur.bsky.social

You can find my susbstack here https://arthursnell.substack.com/

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In this episode I wanted to go back to something that Paul Mason said in an earlier episode which struck a chord. He identified that the weakest link in International democratic politics is the world’s greatest democracy, the United States.

Here’s Paul’s line “the key to the international situation is America. we could wake up in November 2024 with Trump as president that is a legitimation of insurrectionary politics.” (Have a listen to that episode - number 7 - if you’ve not yet had the chance)

That challenge led me to this week’s interview. Greg Olear, whose name sounds Irish but is in fact Slovakian in origin is an American novelist, podcaster and commentator on political affairs. He has a substack and his podcast, Prevail, can be found in all the usual places.

Greg has focused heavily on the current crisis in American politics, as well as the complicated history of President Trump’s links to Russia and the degree to which that still matters. I hope you get as much from the discussion as I did.

Arthur Snell (@snellarthur.bsky.social)

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Arthur Snell (@SnellArthur) / X

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Not all doom | Arthur Snell | Substack

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Understanding the risks of a regional war between Israel and its antagonists feels like the most important issue at the present time. I was able to speak to Michael Stephens, former head of the Middle East programme at RUSI, the Royal United Services Institute, about the complex diplomatic and strategic relations that exist across the region. We covered Iran and its proxies, the Arab Gulf states and Egypt, as well as discussing Israel's own policy choices.

Michael is on Twitter here MikeRStephens

You can find me @snellarthur on Twitter and Bluesky.

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Dr Mike Martin, former soldier, military strategist and author of How to Fight a War joined me to discuss how Israel and Hamas are fighting their war. Our discussion took us into a wider exploration of conflict in the modern age and the risk of escalation and agglomeration of individual conflicts into global ones.

Mike can be found on Twitter where he writes fascinating threads on what is happening in Ukraine and wider global conflict issues. He also has a website here: https://www.threshedthought.com/

I am, as ever, on Twitter @snellarthur also more often these days on BlueSky and also on substack https://arthursnell.substack.com/

I hope you get something from this episode. Please subscribe, share and generally spread the word!

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This week we’re covering arguably the most important question in British foreign policy: our relationship with Europe and, specifically - what the circumstances and process might be for Britain to rejoin the EU.

Nobody thinks this is an easy issue, or something that can be achieved quickly. But it’s something that everyone with any sense of a European identity must see as a fundamental priority that Britain needs to get started with. And it’s something that almost no mainstream national politician wants to talk about.

• How would the Long March back into the EU be achieved?
• What would be the steps, the obstacles, the challenges?

These are all questions that I want to examine in a series of episodes of Behind the Lines - Rejoiniacs

For The first of these, who better to speak to than the leader of the European Movement itself, Dr Mike Galsworthy - a scientist, campaigner and passionate European. We cover a lot of ground and we started with the impact of Brexit on science - Mike’s professional calling, before moving on to discuss the future and how Britain might think about reversing Brexit and rejoining the EU.

You can follow Mike on Twitter https://twitter.com/mikegalsworthy and BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/mikegalsworthy.bsky.social

The European Movement can be found here: https://www.europeanmovement.co.uk/

I'm on https://twitter.com/SnellArthur and https://bsky.app/profile/snellarthur.bsky.social as well as https://arthursnell.substack.com/

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When I worked at the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Helmand Province, I was largely based at the Forward Operating Base in Lashkar Gah - the main city of Helmand. There, amid the dust and noise of an active military campaign, there was a small, beautifully tended garden inside the base. I’m going to be honest and say that I was too preoccupied with my own job ever to ask myself who was responsible for its upkeep- even as I enjoyed that little slice of tranquility and beauty almost every day. 

Had I stopped to find out, I would have learned that the gardener was Shaista Gul, a local Afghan citizen whose hard work created a beautiful garden in the most unlikely place. By talking on this job, Shaista, and the thousands of Afghans, many of them interpreters, that served Britain during its involvement in the NATO mission, became enemies of the Taliban, facing constant threats, and worse, including murder. 

After the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August 2021, some lucky Afghans were able to escape on evacuation flights from Kabul. But most were left behind and thousands made their way to Pakistan, including many that had been assured of resettlement in the UK. This month, the government of Pakistan has decided to expel all undocumented Afghans in the country believed to be around 1.5 million people. Of these, around 2,000 have been accepted as eligible to come to Britain in recognition of their past service with our forces. But thanks to a cost-saving policy made by Rishi Sunak last year, these people were kept in Pakistan in preference to bringing them to the UK where the migration system is under acute strain. Now these people, who risked their lives serving our country, find themselves threatened with being returned to Afghanistan by the Pakistani government. 

The story of Britain’s treatment of those Afghans that worked with us during our involvement in that country is the subject of Larisa Brown’s book, the Gardener of Lashkar Gah. Larisa is a defence correspondent, currently with The Times and previously working for the Daily Mail. She joined me, just as Pakistan was preparing to start its campaign of expulsions, to talk about Shaista Gul and the wider history of Britain’s betrayal of its Afghan friends.

You can find Larisa’s book here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/gardener-of-lashkar-gah-9781399411028/ 

I am on https://arthursnell.substack.com/

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After months of fierce fighting, mostly in the Donbas region, Ukraine's attempt to push through Russia occupation zone to reach the Sea of Azov appears to have failed. Russia's incredibly dense minefields, its increasingly sophisticated use of drones, and its willingness to weather extraordinary casualties have all contributed to a lack of Ukrainian progress. But the West's failure to supply Ukraine with the weapons it needs, whether artillery, tanks or fighter jets, have all contributed to these setbacks. Now, as winter sets in, Ukrainians are braced for intense Russian aerial bombardment. Alongside this grim prospect, western attention is now more focused on events in Israel and Palestine. According to President Zelensky, this has resulted in fewer artillery shells reaching Ukraine. Underlying all of this is the fact that the US is no longer continuing supplying Ukraine - as a result of congressional gridlock and a Republican Party that appears closer to Moscow than to Kyiv.

Who better to discuss these difficulties with than the man in the lucky orange hat, John Sweeney - joining me from Kyiv. John can be found on Twitter @johnsweeneyroar and also has a very worthwhile Patreon https://www.patreon.com/JohnSweeneyRoar/posts

As ever, you can find me on https://arthursnell.substack.com/

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James O'Brien is often described as the voice of liberal England. With this regular radio slot on LBC and his huge online following, he is a reminder that popular doesn’t have to be populism. His patient, forensic but totally accessible unpicking of cynical political dishonsesty, particularly of the Brexist variety, has been a beacon of sanity for literally millions of people - at a time when so many other media outlets, including the BBC, no longer seem prepared to call out deliberately misleading public messaging. O’Brien sometimes feels like a lone voice of reason and that points to a profound change in our society. Politicians have always tried to avoid answering difficult questions and portray their own actions as virtuous and ingenious, but the kind of profound dishonesty characterised by Boris Johnson coupled with the refusal to take responsibility for your own failings, perhaps best epitomised by Liz Truss, feels like a newer phenomenon. This plays into a wider prospect, of a country that now feels broken, its media, its politics and perhaps most importantly its public services, all deeply dysfunctional. The roots and causes of that malaise are the subject of James OBrien’s new book, How they Broke Britain. In the excellent introduction, O’Brien talks of the boiling frog metaphor and succinctly explains the premise of his book: it is “the story of slowly boiled water from which an entire country failed to escape”.

Like anyone who has been profoundly distressed by that boiling water, I have been a big admirer of O’Brien’s work, both on LBC and on Twitter. This was particularly the case as his book has a similar title to my own, How Britain Broke the World. I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest they are companion volumes, but I was to some extent attempting in my work to look at some of the similar effects of Britain’s internal politics on the wider world. So it was a huge pleasure and privilege to have James on the podcast. He is, as you’d expect for a consummate radio presenter, an excellent guest and I really hope you get as much from listening to him as I did from interviewing him.

Thanks for listening and please subscribe to this show if you haven’t already. You can follow my work at https://arthursnell.substack.com/ as well as on Twitter and Bluesky. 

Finally, a link to the Disorder Podcast which I mentioned at the top of the show: https://www.goalhangerpodcasts.com/disorder

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The sense that our politics isn’t working might be familiar to listeners of this podcast. If you heard last week’s episode you’ll know that I had James O’Brien discussing his book “How they Broke Britain”, which gets to the heart of these questions. But one area that James and I didn’t touch on is our parliament. Britain’s parliament, sometimes self-importantly calling itself the Mother of Parliaments, isn’t working properly. Its members aren’t scrutinising legislation properly, its regulations and procedures are largely broken and it contributes to a wider sense of cynicism around our politics. Two seasoned parliamentarians, Nick Harvey and Paul Tyler, have focused in on the way parliament currently works and how it should work and have produced a short, easily readable book which contains a set of clear proposals, around elections, parliamentary procedure, reform of the upper house and standards in public life. Although it’s just about parliament, this book could be titled How to Fix Britain, because if its recommendations where followed, our national life would be improved immeasurably. It’s actually called Can Parliament Take Back Control ? And comes with strong endorsements from the Institute for Government, the Constitution Unit at University College London and the Former Clerk of the House of Commons, Lord Lisvane.

I was lucky to be able to speak to Paul and Nick and draw on their combined several decades of political experience to hear their recommendations for how to fix our politics. Here they are

You can find Paul and Nick on Twitter and in the usual places. I am @snellarthur on most social media and my Substack is https://arthursnell.substack.com/ 

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The crisis in Israel - Palestine continues, currently unfolding with the Israeli attack on Gaza, immediately preceded by the Hamas-led massacre in Southern Israel. Unpicking the history and origins of these events remains a particularly difficult task, with history used and abused by people with points to prove on all sides. For that reason I was particularly happy to be able to conduct an extended interview with the historian James Barr, whose books on the history of the Middle East, including A Line in the Sand and Lords of the Desert are some of the best regarded guides to the region, particularly in the early years of the twentieth century.

With James, in this first episode, we got to the bottom of famous moments in the Levant region in the early twentieth century, including the Sykes-Picot agreement and the Balfour Declaration, as well as the underlying colonial tensions, notably between Britain and France that drove much of these events. In a subsequent episode we will talk about Jewish militancy in the mid-twentieth century, the events of 1948 including the Nakba and the establishment of the State of Israel. 

You can follow James via his website https://www.historythatmatters.org/ as well as on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/jamesbarr.bsky.social

I am on Twitter @snellarthur, Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/snellarthur.bsky.social and arthursnell.substack.com 

If you’ve enjoyed this podcast why not subscribe, and give us a positive review.

Also, please check out the podcast Disorder, featuring Jason Pack and Alex Hall Hall

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As the Israeli assault on Gaza, immediately preceded by the Hamas-led massacre in Southern Israel, continues, we return to the history of this conflict. This is the second part of my extended interview with the historian James Barr, author of several books on the history of the Middle East including A Line in the Sand and Lords of the Desert, some of the best regarded guides to the region, particularly in the early years of the twentieth century. If you have not yet heard the preceding episode 18, where James starts this story, I recommend that you listen to that first.

In this episode we start at the aftermath of World War II and the horrific events of the Holocaust, as Jews are trying to emigrate to what will become the State of Israel and the British colonial authorities are trying to stop them.

You can follow James via his website https://www.historythatmatters.org/ as well as on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/jamesbarr.bsky.social

I am on Twitter @snellarthur, Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/snellarthur.bsky.social and arthursnell.substack.com

If you’ve enjoyed this podcast why not subscribe, and give us a positive review.

Also, don't forget to check out the Disorder Podcast https://www.goalhangerpodcasts.com/disorder

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With all the pressure of the Christmas season I held off from putting out a 'geopolitical review of the year' or something like that: there's a lot going on and people need some space. Instead, I wanted to finish the year with an episode that is in some ways completely different, but also relevant to the issues we have covered in the podcast earlier. Shane O'Mara is a professor of experimental brain psychology at Trinity College, Dublin and the author of numerous books and studies. He also has a brilliant Substack called Brain Pizza which I can highly recommend.

Recently, Shane published a book called Talking Heads which explains the unexpected link between human conversation, which of course depends on human memory, and nations. At a time when nationalism in its most pernicious and dangerous form is an increasing phenomenon, understanding that it is a function of human memory, not some inherent feature of Englishness, Germanness, Russianess or whatever, feels like an important insight and worth talking about.

Thank you all for listening to this and other episodes of the podcast. I hope you have enjoyed it and hope that you will continue to listen into 2024.

You can follow me https://twitter.com/SnellArthur also more often on BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/snellarthur.bsky.social. I write at https://arthursnell.substack.com/

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After a tough year in 2023 and a lack of major progress in regaining territory from the Russians, this year promises to be another challenging one for Ukraine. Looming over all of what Ukraine does is the question of Western support. Will the USA be able to overcome its political turmoil and continue to provide the Ukrainians with the weapons and aid they desperately need? Will Europe be able to step up its weapons production? And perhaps the biggest question of all: will Donald Trump return to the presidency, thereby ending American support to Ukraine?

Luke Harding, Guardian foreign correspondent and author of the book Invasion, has spent most of 2023 in Ukraine, reporting from the frontlines of that conflict. He joined me to discuss the war so far and the war to come.

Thank you for listening to this podcast. Please check out my substack Not All Doom https://arthursnell.substack.com/ and don't forget to give us a positive review if you have enjoyed this episode.

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EMERGENCY EPISODE

On 11 January US and UK airforces struck targets in Yemen associated with the Huthi militia which has been targeting international shipping in the Red Sea, purportedly in solidarity with the plight of the Palestinians.

To try to understand the bewildering background to these worrying events I was privileged to be joined by Hannah Porter, Senior Research Officer for Yemen at ARK Group and a particular expert on Yemens Huthis.

Hannah can be followed on Twitter @Hannaheporter

You can find me in the usual places, including a recent Substack piece I wrote about Yemen's Huthis here: https://arthursnell.substack.com/p/what-do-the-houthis-want

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BONUS EPISODE

In conversation with Jason Pack of the Disorder Podcast about Yemen. This is a joint episode with Disorder, so if you are already listening to that show, you won't find too much different between these two.

There are some links that were referenced during the show.

https://time.com/6555947/houthi-airstrike-history/

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/01/12/houthis-red-sea-british-royal-navy-is-back/

And my substack articles on Yemen can be found here https://arthursnell.substack.com/

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Repeated airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen do not appear to have dampened their willingness or their ability to continue strikes against shipping. What are the appropriate responses to this determined and dangerous group? To get a better understanding of their role in Yemen, the wider political context and the regional factors in play, I spoke to Laura Cretney, scholar, researcher and social entrepreneur based in the region.

You can find Laura on Instagram:Laura.Cretney and on Twitter @LauraCretney1

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At the heart of much of the discussion of the multiple crises facing the Middle East is Iran, whose proxies are active across the region. But what is it that Iran itself wants? What is it trying to achieve and and what considerations does it bring to these questions?

To try to answer these complicated questions I was fortunate to be joined by Charlie Gammell, historian, Iran expert and former UK diplomat, to talk through Iran's recent history, it's current preoccupations and its possible futures.

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Is Democracy for Sale? The degree to which dark money, powerful interests and political power intersects in this country is startling and depressing. One of the most dogged chroniclers of this phenomenon is the investigative journalist Peter Geoghegan whose book, published articles and substack are all essential reading for people that take an interest in this question.

I spoke to Peter about his work and what it means for our politics. You can find Peter's substack here https://democracyforsale.substack.com/ and he is on Twitter here https://twitter.com/PeterKGeoghegan

I'm, as always, at https://twitter.com/SnellArthur and https://arthursnell.substack.com/ as well as on BlueSky for those that celebrate.

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I spoke to Christina Keßler of the Centre for European Reform (CER) about the current EU elections and the possibility of Europe taking a turn to the right.

You can find Christina's work at the CER here: https://www.cer.eu/personnel/christina-kessler

Separately, I appeared on the new podcast Quiet Riot. Find the episode here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6RGol2iYEkToCCrYjFUwkm?si=4FDTU1NaTgOaRfGf_Y2Qog

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I spoke to Jason Pack about the fallout from President Joseph Biden's poor debate performance on 27 June. Jason has written about this in his substack and also recorded his own podcast on the subject, both available here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-146086715?source=queue

We covered: does the poor debate even matter? What is the process (if one exists) for replacing Biden as the presidential nominee? Who are the likely candidates? What is at stake if Biden doesn't stand down and Trump wins?

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James Dorsey is a writer and journalist and author of the new book The Battle for

the Soul of Islam - Defining the Muslim Faith in the 21st Century, published by Macmillan.

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Veteran foreign correspondent Jonathan Rugman is the author of The Killing in the Consulate about the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. More recently he has produced a fascinating two-part documentary about MBS and his rise to power. You can find it on BBC Iplayer here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001zprq/the-kingdom-the-worlds-most-powerful-prince-series-1-1-game-of-thrones and you can find Jonathan's enlightening article about MBS here https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gz8934wrro

Jonathan is on Twitter at https://x.com/jrug

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I spoke to Professor James Crossland about the extraordinary life of diplomat, secret agent and journalist Robert Bruce Lockhart.

You can find James's book on the subject here: https://eandtbooks.com/books/rogue-agent/

James is on Twitter @drjcrossland

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In July this year, the well entrenched autocratic regime that ruled Bangladesh, a country of nearly 200 million people, was toppled entirely unexpectedly by a student-led democracy movement, ushering in an interim government led by a Nobel prize-winning peace and development activist. How the Bangladesh Spring happened and whether it is likely to succeed is the subject of this episode. I spoke to Dhaka-based expert David Bergman about the extraordinary events and their political background. Bergman also covers the surprising role played by supporters of Bangladesh's ruling party in British politics.

https://www.channel4.com/news/tulip-siddiq-uk-wing-of-bangladeshs-ruling-party-appear-to-be-campaigning-for-labour-candidate

You can find David's work here: thedavidbergman

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Veteran China correspondent Michael Sheridan has published a biography of Xi Jinping, China's leader, entitled The Red Emperor, published by Headline. You can find details of his book here:

https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/michael-sheridan-2/the-red-emperor/9781035413478/

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A special episode in support of the Vladimir Putin Do F*ck Off - #VPDFO - festival. This event, held in Kyiv earlier in October brought together soldiers, journalists, activists and politicians with the primary purpose of raising funds for a group of charities doing essential work on the ground in Ukraine. Go to VDPFO.org to find more details of the charities involved and please donate using the link below:

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/ukraine-can-win-vpdfo-2024

This is a straightforward way to get funds to some incredibly valuable organisations. Everything you donate goes direct to the charities.

The festival ran for two days and there were several sessions. This episode contains highlights of the first day and you'll get to hear from day two in a subsequent episode.

During the recording you'll hear from Mariia Chepa, Vlad Demchenko, Paul Conroy, Caolan Robertson, Paul Niland, Liudmyla Buimister and Dima Kovalchuk . The event was of course moderated by John Sweeney.

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In the chaotic world we inhabit, the smartphone has become a key element of warfare, even in societies where we might imagine that connectivity is limited by reduced technological sophistication. I was privileged to be able to discuss this rapidly evolving landscape with three brilliant scholars:

Professor Mirjam de Bruijn (https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/mirjam-de-bruijn#tab-1)

Dr Jethro Norman (https://www.diis.dk/en/experts/jethro-norman)

Professor Matthew Ford (https://www.fhs.se/sc/profile-page.html?identity=400.78d9ed61181920a3a625796c

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I spoke to the Swedish journalist Axel Gordh Humlesjö about his work investigating Russian dirty money in Sweden, especially in relation to Swedbank, Sweden's largest bank, whose CEO has been imprisoned on money-laundering charges.

https://x.com/axelhumlesjo?lang=en

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In this episode I spoke to Jason Pack of the excellent Disorder podcast (https://x.com/DisorderShow) about conspiracy theories and how they are affecting the 2024 US presidential election. We also spoke about the state of the race which remains on a knife edge.

You’ll be interested to look at Jason’s article in The New European on conspiracy theories here https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/a-lizard-persons-guide-to-us-election-conspiracy-theories/

and also an article Jason mentioned by Jonathan Winer on how Trump’s people might try a coup in this election https://washingtonspectator.org/endgame-the-risk-of-a-trump-coup-and-how-to-prevent-it/

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I spoke to Mike Martin, military expert, writer, former soldier and now Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Tunbridge Wells about the new world (dis)order that lies before us under a Trump presidency.

Mike can be found here: https://x.com/ThreshedThought and here https://mike-martin.co.uk/ and his book How to Fight a War is available in all the usual places.

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The extraordinary turn of events in Syria in recent days saw the city of Aleppo, once Syria's largest and a key part of the earlier story of Syria's revolution, fall to Syria's rebels, with the soldiers of the Assad regime in chaotic retreat. I spoke to Thomas van Linge, one of the few journalist who has been covering the story, about what has happened and the reasons why.

You can support Thomas's work here https://ko-fi.com/thomasvlinge and he is active on Twitter and Bluesky.

If you'd like to support this podcast the easiest way to do that is becoming a paid subscriber of my Substack: arthursnell.substack.com

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With bewildering events unfolding all over the place, I wanted to give some coverage to the Republic of Georgia, where the pro-Western political movement is responding to a rigged election and the decision of the illegitimate Moscow-aligned 'Georgian Dream' to block negotiations to join the EU, in spite of the fervent wish of most Georgians to join the bloc. Huge demonstrations have broken out all over the country, in spite of intimidation and violence from police and security forces, some of whom may be Russian imports.

I was privileged to be able to speak to Marika Mariashvili, a politician and academic who has been active at the heart of the democracy movement in the country. You can (and should!) follow Marika on BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/marikamikiashvili.bsky.social or Twitter https://x.com/Mikiashvili_M. This is genuinely a transitional moment in this country's story.

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I spoke to the brilliant historian James Barr about the history of Syria from the Pharaohs to the present day. You can find James on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/jamesbarr.bsky.social and his books in all the good book places.

Please check out my susbtack and - if you feel like supporting this podcast and are able to - take out a paid subscription which is enormously appreciated. https://arthursnell.substack.com

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There are literally a tiny number of people in this world who can speak with authority and insight on Hay'at Tahrir Al-Sham - or HTS - the militant group that swept into Damascus a week ago. One of those people is Orwa Ajjoub, a Sweden-based academic of Syrian origin who has been studying this group for several years and who has direct contacts inside the group.

I feel incredibly privileged to have had an extensive conversation with Orwa about HTS's origins, their evolving relationship with jihadism, their intentions and ambitions now in power and whether Al-Jolani is genuinely no longer part of a terrorist network. I found the whole discussion absolutely fascinating and I hope that you do too.

You can follow Orwa's work here: https://x.com/OAjjoub and here https://www.mei.edu/profile/orwa-ajjoub and here https://bsky.app/profile/orwaajjoub.bsky.social

If you feel able, please support the work of this podcast by becoming a paid subscriber of my substack arthursnell.substack.com

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Miguel Delaney, Chief Football Writer at the Independent is the author of states of play, a book about the geopolitics of football. You can find him on Bluesky and Twitter.

migueldelaney

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The idea that people can change weather has a long history - both as part of mythology and as part of modern day conspiracy theory. But the science of geoengineering is one that some scientists think could be an important opportunity to give the world space to make progress on reducing CO2 emissions. But geoengineering, including stratospheric aerosol injection, remains very controversial and little understood. Alistair Duffey is a scientist at University College London and one of a small number of researchers looking into solar geoengineering. He spoke about his work, the risks and potentialities that go with it, and whether it might be something we can expect in the near future.

Alistair Duffey mentions a novel about this subject, Termination Shock.

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Gaia Vince is a writer, journalist and fascinating thinker on issues relating to the crossover between humanity and the planet we inhabit. Her book Nomad Century looks at how climate change affects the liveability of large areas of the planet and the likely impact that will have.

You can find her work here https://wanderinggaia.com/ and on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/wanderinggaia.bsky.social

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I spoke to the man in the lucky orange hat, everyone's favourite war correspondent John Sweeney about the latest developments from Kyiv in this week of extraordinary events relating to Ukraine. Find John's work at x.com/johnsweeneyroar

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The role of disinformation in our current world, whether feeding the false allegations put out by Trump, the lies spread online by Elon Musk, or the over-reliance on social media for news coverage, is feeding the rise of extremism and dysfunction in democratic systems, to the detriment of liberal and progressive political movements. To help us understand this better, I was delighted to be joined by Amil Khan, CEO of Valent Technologies and a disinformation expert.

Many thanks to Assistant Producer Japji Oberoi

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For the past 4 years, Myanmar has experienced an ever more serious civil war, which now threatens the ruling military junta in Naypyitaw. I spoke to Ronan Lee about this little-reported conflict.

You can find Ronan's work here: https://ronanlee.com/

And my writing here: arthursnell.substack.com

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Every year, tens of thousands of labourers in the wealth countries of the Gulf, most of them migrants from South Asia, die in unsafe working conditions on construction sites. As the GCC states pour enormous resources into developing their infrastructure, little attention is paid to the plight of the people doing the actual building work. I spoke to James Lynch of FairSquare, a UK-based non-profit that researches and advocates for the rights of labourers in the Gulf.

https://fairsq.org/

Assistant Producer: Japji Oberoi

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Behind the Lines with Arthur Snell is a new geopolitics podcast. Every week we give the listener access to the best informed people to help you understand this turbulent world and get a feel for the things that will matter in the future.

This week, for our first episode, we have an emergency podcast in the light of the apparent assassination of Wagner mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose private jet fell out of the sky on a flight from Moscow to St Petersburg on 23 August 2023. I was delighted to be joined by Owen Matthews, former Moscow bureau chief for Newsweek and author of "Overreach the inside story of Putin's war on Ukraine", just out in paperback. Owen is a native Russian speaker and knows more about the country than almost any other British journalist. Owen now sees Russia as a "failed state”, but this does not mean, in his view, that Putin is at risk of being toppled.

You can follow Owen on Twitter here @owenmatth and see his article on the Prigozhin killing here https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/yevgeny-prigozhin-dead-man-walking/

I am on Twitter @snellarthur and you can read some of my thoughts on world affairs here https://arthursnell.substack.com/

If you enjoyed this podcast please spread the word and give us a positive review - as a brand new title it makes all the difference!"

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Ukraine’s Radical War

Thanks to all of you that have listened to the first episode of Behind the Lines and to all of those of you that are joining this new podcast for the first time. We are taking a weekly look at a different aspect of current geopolitics. This week, it’s how the information age has transformed warfare, and particularly how it has transformed warfare in Ukraine.

Russia's war on Ukraine is the most online in history. The smartphone has become the way the war is recorded and transmitted, and it is the way we consume news of the war. But it is also a weapon. The smartphone has become part of the kill-chain, with Ukrainian civilians uploading targeting information via secure servers that are used by Ukrainian military to direct their artillery fires against the Russians. How do we understand this new kind of radical warfare?

Dr Matthew Ford, an Associate Professor of War Studies at the Swedish Defence University, is currently writing the book War in the age of the Smartphone to be published by Hurst in 2024. Matthew is co author with Andrew Hoskins of Glasgow University of the book Radical War about how the digital age has revolutionised modern warfare. He used to be a strategic analyst at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) and has recently been undertaking Open Source Intelligence work for the UK government on the Ukraine war. We discussed what is different about the Ukraine war, how the smartphone enlists civilians, both inside and outside Ukraine, and how it shapes how we talk about and understand that war.

Matthew can be found on Twitter @warmatters and his book is available here: https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/radical-war/

You can find me on Twitter @snellarthur and you can find my Substack on some of these, and related issues here https://arthursnell.substack.com/

Thanks again for listening to Behind the Lines. If you are enjoying it, please spread the word and give us a positive review. See you next time!

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Since independence in 1980, Zimbabwe has been controlled by one political movement - ZANU-PF. Outside the country this was often seen as the personal fiefdom of one man, Robert Mugabe. Undoubtedly he was the key figure, but after his removal from power in 2017, the party has continued to control Zimbabwe’s politics and its institutions. So it is a fair question whether there has ever been a legitimate election held in the country.

Last week on 4 September president Emmerson Mnangagwa, formerly seen as one of Mugabe’s most ruthless henchmen, was sworn in for a second presidential term after another election marred by serious allegations of election irregularities, violence and targeting of opposition supporters. But this time there were differences: election monitors from Zimbabwe’s neighbouring countries, which have a history of turning a blind eye to such irregularities, on this occasion chose to spell out in highly critical detail the problems with the poll. Another big difference was the way that opposition activists were able to use their smartphones and modern tech to run a highly credible vote tally, clearly demonstrating that the officially declared results were questionable at best.

To discuss these elections I was joined by Dr Sara Dorman (Twitter: @afr_pol), a Zimbabwe specialist from the University of Edinburgh and author of Understanding Zimbabwe, published by Hurst. https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/understanding-zimbabwe/ I also spoke to Makomborero Haruzivishe

(Twitter: @MakomboreroH) who is a Zimbabwean political activist now based in the UK after a year as a political prisoner in Zimbabwe.

If you are enjoying this podcast please subscribe via whichever platform you use and give us a positive review. Thanks for listening!

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On the 30th August a military coup took place in Gabon in West Africa, dislodging the president Ali Bongo, whose family has controlled the country for nearly 60 years. That military takeover in Gabon followed swiftly on the heels of a coup in Niger, one month earlier. There seems to have been a spate of these in the Sahel region of Africa. Indeed, within a period of just over two years, every country in a 5000km line from Conakry on Africa’s West Coast to Port Sudan on the East, has experienced a military coup.

And there’s a bigger picture here: democracy around the world isn’t doing very well. In the United States, Donald Trump’s chaotic rule ended in rejected election results and a violent insurrection. In Britain, we have had multiple prime ministers without a general election. Across Europe authoritarian populists contest - and sometimes win - elections. In Hungary, Poland, Israel and turkey, we see independent institutions under threat and in some cases entirely circumscribed.  And of course in Ukraine, democracy is fighting for its life against a militarised fascist regime.

So this week I wanted to get the big picture, to understand what is the health of global democracy and what are its prospects. And who better to talk to about this than Brian Klaas, who is an expert on African coups, a politics professor at UCL, and author of the brilliant book Corruptible, who gets power and how it changes us. I hope you’ll find our conversation interesting - it was, and this surprised me - a lot more encouraging than I’d expected.

You can find Brian’s book here: https://brianpklaas.com/corruptible He is on Twitter @brianklaas and his Substack https://www.forkingpaths.co/ is also worth a read.

Thanks again for listening to this podcast. Please subscribe and spread the word. You can leave comments and thoughts on my Substack here https://arthursnell.substack.com/ I’m also on Twitter @snellarthur and now on Bluesky @snellarthur.bsky.social

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Storm Daniel passed through the Mediterranean in early September,  one of a bewildering number of extreme weather events in recent months. When it hit Libya on 10 September, torrential rainfall led to catastrophic floods in the Town of Derna. At the time of recording as many as 20,000 people are missing, feared dead. It was an example of the terrifying new reality of the climate crisis where entire cities can be wiped out by wildfires or floods, literally in a matter of hours.

But everything has a context, and the context in Derna is a city that is located in one of the most chaotic countries on earth, where government services barely function and the concept of government itself is contested between different rulers in rival areas of the territory. To get a fuller understanding of the situation in Derna and Libya, I was delighted to be able to speak to Jason Pack, Libya expert and author of the book Libya and the Global Enduring Disorder. As we covered in our discussion, what happens in Libya is in some respects a microcosm of a much bigger global crisis, which is also the subject of a new podcast that Jason is bringing out, called Disorder.

You can find Jason’s book here: https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/libya-and-the-global-enduring-disorder/

His new podcast is here: https://linktr.ee/disorderpod

And his website is here: https://www.jasonpack.org/

Thanks for listening to Behind the Lines. We are at https://behindthelineswitharthursnell.buzzsprout.com/

I tweet @snellarthur and am now on BlueSky @snellarthur.bsky.social 

And you can read my thoughts on geopolitics at arthursnell.substack.com 

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We’re living in an age of the self-confident autocrat: China is rising, President Erdogan coasted to a managed re-election and in the Gulf, the Arab monarchies are riding high on oil prices boosted by Putin’s war in Ukraine. And what do the autocrats do with their money? They use it to buy influence. And one of the ways that they can do this is through football, the most popular sport on the planet.

In 2003 Roman Abramovich, the now-sanctioned Russian billionaire, bought Chelsea football club, setting into a motion a process of flooding the English game with colossal amounts of money. As we know now, and as many suspected for years, Abramovitrch owed his wealth directly to President Putin - so the money that infused English football from this point was effectively looted from the coffers of the Russian state. Russia would not be alone in seeking to use football to burnish its image - in 2008 Abu Dhabi bought Manchester City and Qatar bought Paris Saint Germain three years later. In both cases these small Gulf emirates successfully used football to increase their global reputation and influence. This process appears to have continued, with Qatar’s hosting of the World Cup and the purchase by Saudi Arabia’s public investment fund of Newcastle United as well as the establishment of a new Saudi Pro League, drawing in top players from all over the world. As part of the Newcastle deal, the Premier League appeared to have been given assurances that the Saudi Public Inverstment Fund was separate to the Saudi state, which is patently untrue. What this appears to show is that the English football authorities will believe what they want if it brings in the cash, with little thought for the consequences.

To discuss the geopolitical and sporting implications of these changes I was honoured to be joined by Miguel Delaney, chief football writer at the Independent, who has been researching and writing about the geopolitics of football for several years.

You find Miguel on Twitter @MiguelDelaney and at the Independent https://www.independent.co.uk/author/miguel-delaney

Thank you for listening to this podcast - please subscribe if you haven’t already and give us a positive review if you enjoyed it.

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