“Really important Punctuation Point in History”

From the depths of the universe, the James Webb telescope opened a view 13.5 billion years back to the dawn of time. For the first time, researchers succeeded in transplanting a pig's heart into a human patient. And after two years of COVID plague, the face masks finally came off; bitterly missed freedom returned to our lives.

Despite all the outstanding qualities that characterize human beings, one of their most evil traits dominated the year 2022: the tendency towards mutual destruction, exemplified in the war over Ukraine.

For our review of 2022, we reached out to a historian who not only shines through his expertise, but also lifts the spirit through his exquisite storytelling. “History is like the air we breathe to quench our curiosity,” says British author and television presenter, Dominic Sandbrook.

Critics called Sandbrook’s work “absolutely breathtaking” with a “Thucydidean coolness, balance and wisdom.”

Sandbrook's brilliance as a storyteller is crystallised in his podcast, “The Rest is History.”  Together with fellow historian and Weltwoche columnist Tom Holland, he presents anecdotes from world history, nutritious as energy bars, opulently served like a three-star menu. From witches, eunuchs, and courtesans to the death rituals of exotic peoples and the escapades of rulers such as Tutankhamun and Putin, he is “interrogating the past, and attempting to de-tangle the present.”

We reach Dominic Sandbrook in his study in England.

Weltwoche: On February 24th, the world witnessed how the “Russian bear” sunk its claws into Ukrainian prey. In his speech before the war, President Vladimir Putin warned “those who might be tempted to interfere” that Russia would “react immediately, and the consequences will be like nothing you have ever seen in your entire history.” In other words, Putin blatantly threatened with nuclear weapons. Was this a turning point in history?

Dominic Sandbrook: Yes. Although, of course, it was a bluff, as events have shown. Putin thought that he would frighten the West into not supporting Ukraine, with a nuclear threat. He also thought, of course, that Ukraine would fall immediately, which it didn't. Lots of people don't agree with this, but my own view is that Putin was always bluffing about the nuclear weapons.

However, back to your question. History doesn't have many turning points. It has the ends and beginnings of chapters. But I do think (this war) absolutely was a really important punctuation point in history.

Weltwoche: What ended at this point in history?

Sandbrook: This was the moment that ended the immediate post-Cold War world — a world in which we thought that a land war in Europe was effectively unthinkable and that it would never happen again. It banished, at least for a generation, the post-Cold War idealism — the idea that democracy, free markets, all of those things would sweep across the world and that age of nationalism and imperialism was over.

Weltwoche: How would you describe the new era that we are entering now?

Sandbrook: It is not a return to the Cold War so much as it's a return to something older, maybe in 19th century gray power politics and unashamed imperialism. It is a return to an older world of naked aggression, territorial ambitions, and aggrandizement.

Weltwoche: The Russian invasion came, for most people, as a surprise. And it was followed by yet another surprise: that Putin's army proved to be much weaker than anyone expected. What surprised you, personally, most about this war?

Sandbrook: The biggest surprise for me is the strength of Ukrainian national identity and Ukrainian patriotism. Probably, like a lot of people, I had slightly swallowed the idea that Ukraine was a corrupt failing state and that it was full of people who spoke Russian and, therefore, would be sympathetic to the idea of becoming part of a greater Russia. That, obviously, has been proved completely wrong.

Weltwoche: Another surprise, certainly to Vladimir Putin, was the unity that the West showed, vis-à-vis Russia, despite the threat of nuclear weapons and its dependency on Russian oil.

Sandbrook: Indeed, it was something very heartening that the Western alliance was so united and strong. That really surprised me, because the last few years had been awful for NATO. Donald Trump had said, basically, that he didn't really believe in it. What Putin did was he united the Western alliance and made it stronger. Even Finland and Sweden, who had a long history of being independent from a defense alliance, joined.

Weltwoche: Do you think this unity is going to last?

Sandbrook: No, because unity never lasts. Of course, it will come under tremendous strain. NATO is a coalition and, in any coalition, there are differences of opinion. I don't think there's any doubt that the Americans and the British are much more keen on the war than the Germans are. Lots of people in Germany would happily see it end tomorrow and Ukraine do a deal.

However, if we come through this winter and we haven't frozen to death, I think the world will want to see Ukraine win next year. The West will continue to send aid and continue to send arms.

Now that the Western powers have established their position, to retreat from that would be a humiliation to some extent. That's true for Putin, too, of course. I think certainly the Biden Administration and the British government, maybe France as well, said very publicly that they'll be in it to the end until Putin is beaten.

Weltwoche: What we have been seeing for quite some time, now, is a war of attrition. Neither side seems to be able to gain substantial territory. Should the West try to convince Ukraine to do a deal with Putin?

Sandbrook: I personally think it would be monstrous for the Western NATO powers to put pressure on Ukraine to do a deal with somebody that they know cannot be trusted and has made an unprovoked attack. I think it would be unforgivable.

Weltwoche: What would the message to the world be?

Sandbrook: I think it would send a terrible message to China, for example. It would send a terrible message to Putin. Why would he not come back in a couple of years for more? I just think the Ukrainians have fought and sacrificed so much already to keep their territory. It would be a terrible thing for us to say, "You know what? We don't like paying so much money for our gas so you have to sacrifice your national integrity."

Weltwoche: All wars eventually end. Why not make a deal rather soon than later, before many more lives are lost?

Sandbrook: You can't do a deal with an aggressor who you absolutely know cannot be trusted. You can't do a deal and think that will be the end of the story. Of course, it wouldn't be. I think Putin has to be seen defeated, and the Russians have to suffer as a result of the aggression. It's sad to say so, but the world has to see that such aggression cannot and will not pay.

Weltwoche: Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is widely praised for his leadership. Time Magazine just declared him “Person of the Year.” He is often hailed as a new Churchill, whereas some critics call him a folksy actor and public relations Zampano.

Sandbrook: I don't understand why those two things are contradictory. Churchill wasn't an actor, (but he was) a public performer, a man of enormous ambition who a lot of people found extremely irritating. Like Zelensky, Ronald Reagan, too, was an actor. Being an actor is excellent preparation for presidential politics. Anybody who thinks that actors should not go into politics is a fool. So much of politics is, actually, about performance.

Weltwoche: How would you classify Zelensky, historically?

Sandbrook: He captured the world's imagination as nobody really had done since, maybe, Nelson Mandela or Gorbachev. The Churchill analogy does matter because, like Churchill, he's become identified with the spirit of national resistance against invasion.

To me, he's a tremendous figure. Those early days of the invasion, when it looked as though Kyiv would fall and he would probably be killed, he stayed. There are videos of him on his phone in the streets saying, “We're still here.” I think he's a very inspiring figure. Of course, he's not a saint. I'm sure there are things that can be written about his flaws or about his compromises or his contradictions, but that's true of every single character who ever lived. So, that doesn't really bother me.

Weltwoche: Let’s turn the globe and look at China. After Russia’s seizure and annexation of eastern Ukrainian territory, are the Chinese more tempted to invade Taiwan to unify it with mainland China?

Sandbrook: No, they're much less likely to do it, I think, for two reasons. One, they've seen NATO can respond in a united way they might not have thought a year ago. Secondly, if the Chinese have any sense, they will see just how difficult these operations are. Attacking Taiwan would be immeasurably more difficult than Russia attacking Ukraine because you'd be having to do amphibious landings, which are always so tricky.

You'd be fighting against a population that is implacably opposed to you. I definitely think it's possible you could see great tension in that area — the Chinese blockading Taiwan, possibly, or something like that. I don’t say that a full scale invasion is impossible. They could do it, and maybe they'd win. But it's less likely as a result of what's happened in Ukraine.

Weltwoche: What the world witnessed in Beijing, mid-October, was quite remarkable. At the Communist Party Congress meeting, President Xi was elected for a third, five-year term, breaking the succession norms established to prevent the return of a military-style dictatorship. Soon after, there were demonstrations across China against the regime’s zero-COVID policy. Xi proved that he has a firm grip on his party, but the question, now, is: does he have a firm grip on his country?

Sandbrook: Up until the COVID protests, most of us in the West would've said Xi was the most autocratic Chinese leader since the 1970s, the most powerful, and that, basically, he was unchallenged. The COVID protests are a reminder that all autocrats have weaknesses. Maybe the Chinese regime has more than we thought. However, the COVID protests died down.

Weltwoche: The Chinese government was forced to make some compromise and eased its COVID regime.

Sandbrook: Xi is still there. I don't think he's going to be overthrown anytime soon. Of course, what happens in China depends on the economy continuing to deliver for its people, and, at some point, you would think there'll be some downturn. History suggests it will happen at some point this century. There'll be a point at which people's expectations are not being met. That's when a regime has become too rigid and inflexible. Then, that poses real problems for the rulers. Whether that will happen before Xi vacates the stage, I don't know.

Weltwoche: For the moment, Xi is acting emboldened. There was a remarkable section in his speech at the Communist Party Congress. Xi championed China’s political system as a counterweight to Western liberal democracy. Are we about to witness a clash of the systems?

Sandbrook: I think there's already a clash of systems, to some degree, because liberal democracy has always been associated with economic growth and with ever growing prosperity. Liberal democracy has flourished for the last 150 years, starting slowly and then, eventually, sweeping all before it. That's also been a period of enormous urbanization, literature, mass literacy, massive rise in living standards and in life expectancy. What we've seen this century, particularly since the financial crisis of 2008, is that those things have stagnated or even gone into reverse for younger people, in particular. For example, in Britain, young people now find it very hard to buy a house. They feel they can't start a life themselves as their parents or grandparents did.

People feel that democracy isn't delivering, that politicians spend too much time arguing with each other. Their policies are too short term. They don't plan ahead. That is quite worrying.

Weltwoche: Is it particularly young people who are losing faith in democracy?

Sandbrook: Opinion polls say, indeed, that young people have less confidence in democracy than their elders do. This poses big problems for governments in the West. Autocrats — like Modi in India, Xi in China, Erdogan in Turkey — use power to, basically, consolidate themselves in office for the long term.

Autocrats say, “We are more effective. We are more efficient than democracies. We can plan long term.” Actually, the test is now for liberal democracy to prove that it can plan ahead, that it can deliver benefits. Of course, that's all the more difficult when you're living in an age of very high energy prices and, of course, climate change.

Weltwoche: Great Britain has gone through three prime ministers within only a couple of weeks. We have witnessed further polarization in Western societies. In Sweden, Italy, France, and Spain, populist right wing parties have emerged stronger than ever. In Germany, tension are rising since the war in Ukraine started. In our hemisphere, “It is now in vogue to celebrate non-Western cultures and disparage Western ones,” writes Douglas Murray in his recent best-seller, “War on the West. “ How stable are our Western democracies?

Sandbrook: I think we like to think that in the West we've built resilient institutions that inoculate us against violence. I think in recent years we have, perhaps, come to realize that democracy is more fragile than we thought. There are two obvious examples. One is the Ukrainian war. A few years ago, we wouldn't have envisaged that we would see such a colossal conflict on the soil of Europe. The other example is America, the disorder in the United States and the reality of rising violence.

Politics always has the potential for violence because politics is about conflict, and it's about the clash of competing interests. If you have a society where both sides think that they have too much to lose by conceding defeat, then, you can end up in a spiral of ever greater partisanship and polarization — then, something like a coup, an assassination, a violent transfer of power becomes more plausible.

Weltwoche: Could something like this happen in Western Europe?

Sandbrook: I think this is very unlikely. Could it happen in the United States, a heavily armed society where there are millions of people who genuinely believe that their opponents want to destroy the republic? I think it's depressingly likely.

Weltwoche: A few weeks ago, former President Donald Trump officially announced that he wants to run again for president. Despite of having lost in four consecutives elections: the midterms in 2018; his reelection for president in 2020; the runoff elections in Georgia 2021 where the Republicans lost the majority in the Senate; and in the midterms 2022 where his candidates lost in all the key states. Is Donald Trump’s time up? Is he an “albatross around the Republican neck”?

Sandbrook: Yes, I think he probably is. You're right; he has lost. He only very narrowly won that first presidential election in 2016. His base has always been limited. His extremely polarizing partisan politics mean that it's always been hard for him to win over the middle ground. I think that the real issue, actually, is that Republicans seem to have found a candidate who offers Trumpism without Trump, which is Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida. He had a massive success winning his re-election this year. He's extremely popular among Republican conservatives. I suspect a lot of Republicans think, “We don't need Donald Trump anymore. We have his message, we have his formula, and DeSantis can deliver that.” DeSantis is younger. He's less divisive than Trump. He's more competent than Trump. I would guess Trump’s time has passed.

Weltwoche: Many people say the United States of America is a power in decline. You have studied the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. What are the signs that an empire is crumbling?

Sandbrook: I think it is when an empire starts to doubt itself and its mission in the world, it loses some of its self-confidence, and particularly when it's distracted by internal dissension. Obviously, that was the case in the Roman Empire. Historians talk about the crisis of the third century when you had a new emperor every few months, a succession of generals generally chosen by the Pretorian Guard, and then they are executed or toppled.

Weltwoche: You see parallels between the fall of Rome and the situation in the US, today?

Sandbrook: There's a sense of the empire turning in on itself in the United States. There is an obsession with enemies within. Emperors need an outside adversary to define themselves against. Right now, a lot of Americans define themselves against other Americans. I think that's a very unhealthy sign.

During the Cold War, the United States was the beacon of freedom and democracy, and it was leading the free world. I don't know how many Americans would say that, now. Clearly, they feel very pessimistic and divided about their country. Many contrast that with China. China has a tremendous sense of its own confidence.

The United States is still an extremely powerful nation with a hugely powerful military, but its economy is probably being overtaken. They spend so much time arguing with one another about their own history.

The other thing, of course, is that political systems can become blocked, they become stuck, they are no longer organic or evolving. I think that's also the case with the United States. It’s politics are stuck, and presidents can't change much. Congress is often divided. That all bodes very ill for the US.

Weltwoche: A person who has emerged as a key player of global politics is Elon Musk. His Starlink Satellite Internet Service has largely kept Ukraine online. He sketched a possible peace plan for Ukraine. Then, he bought Twitter for $44 billion and revealed in the “Twitter Files” the political manipulations and collusion of his predecessors at Twitter with the Deep State. Is Elon Musk the new Musketeer of free speech and liberalism, or is it just a hugely rich man using his wealth to buy influence?

Sandbrook: The latter, I suppose. I think he's bought a new toy. He, obviously, does believe in this free speech principle. But most people are not on Twitter, and I don't think the general public could give a damn about Elon Musk, frankly. I don't think that Elon Musk is as massively important as he clearly thinks he is.

Weltwoche: As long as books have existed, there have been people trying to stop other people from reading them. As early as 213 BC , the great Chinese emperor, Qin Shi Huang, buried 460 scholars alive before burning all the books in his kingdom so he could control how history would remember his reign. In 2022, woke cancel culture has been on the rise. Will wokeism eventually kill history writing?

Sandbrook: No, because it won't be as popular. I think the potential audience for that kind of history, for apologetic history, if you like, will necessarily be limited. For one thing, there are only so many books you can write about the slave trade, let's say.

Weltwoche: You have written a series of fascinating books for children. Most of them are prone with violence. Have you been confronted by woke guardians of morality?

Sandbrook: In my own children's books, such as Alexander the Great, Cleopatra, or on the Vikings which I've just finished writing, there is enormous amount of conflict and violence. I would sometimes have discussions with the publishers where some of them were a bit uneasy. Then, I would say, "Listen. My son, his friends, they've read this. They love this! Eyes being gouged out, head's being cut off, great armies crashing on the battlefield, hideous executions." I think younger children have an enormous appetite for violent stories. There's lots of violence in Harry Potter, and think how many people die in James Bond or the Marvel movies. They're all violent, and that's because conflict is obviously the heart of narrative. A 10-year-old boy or girl will not be interested in the story that has no jeopardy, has no tension. I think woke is on trend and will fall away eventually.

Weltwoche: On November 16th, the world population reached eight billion. Meanwhile, we have witnessed signs of erosion of the human species. In January, there was the first successful heart transplant from pig to a human. You might think, "Are we going to live with pig's hearts now?" There are robots increasingly replacing humans. Then, there were studies showing that semen quality and other markers of male reproductive health are declining. Are we witnessing the beginning of the end of the human species as we've known it for 300,000 years?

Sandbrook: Wow, that's a good question. I think we've created a lot of challenges for ourselves and that sense of what it is to be human. A generation ago, the idea that you could change your sex would've seemed nonsensical. Now, of course, transgender people are a huge issue in the newspapers, every day. I don't think that's going to go away. Of course, that does pose a challenge to the conventional view of what humanity is. You mentioned robots. Obviously, Artificial Intelligence is another great challenge. I think there's a good case that AI will make an awful lot of professional jobs redundant, and that will be a real shock. I'm not convinced that's something we should welcome. If AI does your job better than you do, that's quite worrying.

Weltwoche: This year, war, crime, and catastrophes have dominated the headlines, but what catches the attention of people is often something entirely different. Among the most Googled words in 2022 were “World Cup” and “iPhone 14.” The top searched word, globally was “Wordle.” It's an online word game that exploded in popularity sometime in February. What does that tell us about the human species in the year of 2022 after Christ?

Sandbrook: It confirms something that I've often written about. In my more scholarly books, which are about post-War Britain, I often wrote about how, at any given moment, most people are not interested in politics. They're not even aware what's happening. They haven't bought the best-selling single of the day, the Beatles or whatever. They're not watching the most popular shows, because they're doing other things. That fact that “Wordle” is the most Googled word in 2022 is a healthy sign. In the midst of wars and crisis, people are getting on with their lives, spending time with their family, playing word games. It's better than Googling “fascism.” That's a little bit of reassurance.

Dominic Sandbrook, 48, is a British historian, author, columnist, and television presenter. The former senior fellow of the Roghermere American Institute at Oxford and visiting professor at King’s College London has published several history books for children and a mini series on Britain since the Second World War. His most recent work, “Who Dares Wins,” was chosen as “book of the year” by many British publications. Sandbrook is a regular writer for the Daily Mail and Sunday Times and has written and presented documentaries for the BBC.
https://dominicsandbrook.com