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Anderson is joined by Professor John Gray, probably the world’s foremost political philosopher. They discuss the state of the world in May 2022. Russia, Ukraine, Europe, China, America; Putin, Macron, Biden. His knowledge of history is deep and wide and so his perspective on current events is imposing. We learn about the history of ideas, geo-politics, trans-humanism and more. This is an episode not to be missed.

Today, another highlight from ‘Conversations with John Anderson’, a channel I commend to all who love to think through some of the big issues. Anderson’s guests always seem to lift my spirit even while dissecting some tragic challenges within society, even when I don’t agree with their worldview or some of their conclusions.

Perhaps this talk was the hardest I have listened to from John’s ‘Conversations’, because it was clear from the outset, that John Gray’s worldview was so different from my own. On reflection, I think this is one of the great things about this talk, as I have found it so important to stand back and entertain an objective view of my own preconceived perspectives. However, I don’t feel that my viewpoints were threatened in any way – rather they were sharpened.

John Gray is a great admirer of former British Prime Minster, Margaret Thatcher, particularly for her militant anti-communist stance, when many around her were subtly accommodating or downplaying the threat.

I have written at length about the communist threat in the aftermath of World War II, in my piece called “Armageddon – Lessons from the Cold War”. The overriding theme of this conversation with Emeritus Professor John Gray is that society today is making a grave mistake in glossing over the hard lessons from history. Children are not being taught these lessons in schools and teachers don’t want to teach them.

One telling example John Gray cites is that very little study has been done on the Russian Civil War (1917–1923) with the loss of up to 10 million lives. Many of these losses occurred in Ukraine which will not have been forgotten by the Ukrainians of today and will go a long way to explain their extraordinary resilience against the onslaught of Putin’s forces across their border.

Another theme from this talk is that America is no longer equally matched with Russia. For example, the Americans have 200 tactical nuclear weapons for use in a regional war compared with Russia’s 2000 tactical nuclear weapons. And further, John Gray believes that with the dual threat to world peace from Russia and China, America will focus on their western flank and seek to defend itself from China while abandoning Europe to stand alone against Russia. In this context, he sees both France and Germany as weak vessels when threatened by Russia.

John Gray is not predicting a nuclear escalation of the Ukraine War, but he feels that many in the West are naive in their thinking that, since a nuclear deterrent has worked so well since 1945, it is bound to continue. He believes this thinking is dangerously flawed.

Perhaps the loudest warning from this conversation is that the West has believed that world trade would begin to soften the worst excess of communism in both Russia and China. This thinking is far too short-term and misguided, whereas the communist ideology is playing the long game. John Gray believes that the West has not been aware of the disdain for them from Russians and Chinese. In fact, Putin’s war strategy says it all – a mixture of terrorism and deceitful diplomacy. We should not expect him, or China to wage war by the Geneva Conventions. Putin’s approach is simply to target civilians whereas the West’s approach is to target the Russian troops.

For me, this conversation has highlighted the imperative to think deeply about the communist threat. It’s not a continuation of post-war Europe at all, nor is it as simplistic as much of our media seeks to portray. It is deeply complex and deserves close, careful, analytical attention rather than glib soundbites.

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Photo: Screenshot via Conversations with John Anderson/Youtube.