Paul Mason Artsnight

This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

The biggest mass migrations since... A Republican candidate determined to

build a wall between the USA and Mexico. Can the mature secular

democracies adapt to their institutions or will they be

eclipsed by chaos, despotism? The big question is, can the West

survive? Hay Castle was built by Norman

knight to keep the Welsh out of newly conquered England. Today, it

is part of the site of the Hay Festival, one of the most

prestigious book festivals in the world and a great bondage point from

which to survey modern geopolitical conflict. -- a great plant each

point. In this episode, I will be examining the crisis facing the

West, as seen through the pages of six new books featured at the

festival. I will be looking at the past, how am I is formed, and at the

future, how technology is preparing us for the New World ahead. First,

the present, and it is not looking good. During his military career,

General Sir Richard Sheriff became one of the highest ranking soldiers

and until recently was deputy head of Nato. He is a man who speaks his

mind, was famously threatened with court martial when he criticised

David Cameron's defence cuts. His first book, 2017: War with Russia:

An Urgent Warning from Senior Military Command, brings us and

urgent warning. Russia is our strategic adversary

and has said itself on a collision course for the West. It is enhancing

its military capability, it has thrown away the rule book on which

the post-war settlement of Europe was based. The president has started

a dynamic which can only be halted at the West wakes up to the real

possibility of war and takes action. Sir Richard, your book contains a

fictional scenario of war with Russia. How real and how possible of

the events? Very real and very possible. If we don't take the

necessary measures to make it a unreal and impossible. If there is a

threat to the West, what is the biggest threat? The biggest threat

is the potential for nuclear war. We need to remember, and this is

something that comes out of the book, that nuclear thinking is hard

wired into Russian military thinking. They have nuclear bombs. A

standard Russian major exercise involving Russian troops that has

happened recently, could see the Baltic states and session as the

scenario and the final phase is what they call rather chillingly nuclear

de-escalation. In other works, they have taken what they want and if we

try and come back and get it, they will nuke us. We have taken our eye

off the ball and we have forgotten the lessons of the Cold War in which

Nato maintained peace with effective deterrence. We have been lucky, we

have had peace, but it is not necessarily the default setting in

international relations. If you look at the suite of history, war is all

too often the default setting. Peace is precious, it needs to be worked

and paid for. Yes, defence is expensive, but you should try the

costs of war. Much worse. This is an incredibly serious scenario. Why did

you do your book as fiction? It is fact braced prediction and out of

other story because I hope people will read it and will find it an

interesting read. Above all, I have contributed in recent months to two

think tank report highlighting the dangers of the ball states. Not many

people read think tank reports, unless they are in the business. I

want people who know nothing about defence to read this and think, this

is serious, we need to do something. Too many ordinary people in Britain,

it would be unthinkable that we would ever go once again into even

an intense rivalry with Russia, let alone a shooting war. Do David have

to make that mindset change? They do, and this is my point. It is

something we send our professional soldiers and sailors and marines and

airmen along way away to Iraq, Afghanistan, but they are

professional soldiers, that is what they do. The notion of a national

war of survival is inconceivable. But people need to understand that

the defence of Britain doesn't start at the Straits of Dover or the white

cliffs or on the Murray Firth but it actually starts in the forests of

the Lithuanian of a Latvian border. If war with Russia is just a fiction

for now, the war in Syria is a harsh reality.

The thing about being in war zones is the unexpected always happens.

Janine di Giovanni lived alongside the Syrian people documenting life

in the middle of a jihadist war. One of the most brutal struggles in

recent history. The very experienced reporters don't want to do it. Her

book, The Morning They Came For Us, is an uncompromising account of the

nation on the brink of disintegration. Ordinarily people,

war starts with a jolt. One day, you are busy with dentist appointments

or ballet lessons, and then the curtain draws. One moment, the daily

routine grinds on, ATMs work and mobile phones function. Then,

suddenly, everything stops. Barricades go up, soldiers are

recruited and neighbours work to form their own defences. Ministers

are assassinated and the country falls into chaos. Fathers disappear.

The banks close and money and culture and life as people knew it

vanishes. Janine di Giovanni, your book describes the horror of the

Syrian war. Do you think ordinary people in the West even know or

understand the depths of what has been happening there? Probably not.

It is an incredibly compact is war. It is a proxy war, there are many

components, many stakeholders involved in it. But I think on a

very small micro level, what actually is happening to the people

I think it's very underreported. The starvation being used as a tool of

war, torture, rape, enforced detention, people are simply

vanishing. What would go West do if we did understand how bad it is for

ordinarily Syrian people? I think if we could put ourselves in the place

of ordinarily Syrian people, we would have acted. I think we have to

step up the humanitarian aid. There are many seized areas where people

are starving to death. I think if we have the means to attack Isis, we

have the means to drop food onto starving people with airdrops.

Protecting humanitarian quarters. As a journalist who covered Iraq, I

never thought I would hear myself saying that intervention is

necessary but in the case of Serbia which is destabilising the whole

region and written is to be a long-term conflict, I think

long-term intervention should be an option.

# In the case of Syria. What should we be doing? It shouldn't be a

surprise to anyone that 4 million people are fleeing war, fleeing

political turmoil, they are trying to save their lives. What can we do?

In my view, we have to have more compassion. I am the child of an

immigrant. My father came from Italy and went to America and I think most

people have roots that stretch back. World War II was not so long ago and

in many ways, the crisis, the humanitarian crisis that is

unleashing an Europe right now is a result of our nonchalance, our

policy of looking away a look -- getting the war in Syria fester. Do

you think journalism can have any effect? You have done the

journalism, in your book, there are unflinching descriptions of violence

and sexual violence and yet nothing changes. I do think journalism has

an impact. I think my colleagues and I in Bosnia refused to let the story

guy and we try to avert what would become the genocide at chevron eats,

we didn't do that but we did continue to report on war crimes and

we try to make the case that we should never let this happen on our

watch. We know that in 1994 in grander, there was a genocide. There

have been subsequent horrific humanitarian catastrophes.

Absolutely, journalism has a real place, not just as one of the

pillars of democracy, with free speech and if we bring to light the

horrors that are happening inside Syria, people can galvanise. The

pressure that that public can put on their government is crucial. It is

really our job to continue to do that.

Can the West survive the threat of a nuclear apocalypse other rarities of

the humanitarian tragedy that is unfolding all around us? If the

present is uncertain, what can we learn from the past? Is that history

shows, the seeds of the catastrophe are often sown from within. The

Romanovs were the most successful dynasty of modern times, ruling six

of the world's surface. Simon Sebag Montefiore's book is an intimate

story of 20 czars and czarina is, some touched by genius, some touched

by madness. The Romanovs inhabit a world of family rivalry, imperial

ambition, Lou Reed glamour, sexual excess and depravity. Lesbian men

trois, and an Emperor who wrote the most erotic correspondence ever

written by a head of state. Yet, this is also an empire, a

civilisation of towering culture and exquisite beauty. Simon Sebag

Montefiore, it is almost like the question, what did the Romanovs do

for us? What did they do for Russia? They've a lot. They were immensely

successful. Actually, they made Russia the biggest empire in modern

times. The most successful empire builders since Genghis Kahn. They

also made colossal mistakes. One of them was to try and promote a narrow

nationalistic state which alienate it all the ethnic peoples, the

polls, the Jews, the Finns, the Tartars, in their empire. Another

one was to stick to a very narrow ideology, it was just as daft and at

the third as Marxism and Leninism became. What are the parallels with

what Putin is trying to do? Blood amid Putin has this greater Russia

as a stated objective. The parallels are direct. The

dilemma of Russian power is to try to justify autocracy by providing

security at home, prosperity at home, and also spectacular imperial

prestige abroad. But that costs money. And ultimately, if you are

pursuing this kind of fantastic adventure abroad but you cannot

afford it at home, you will fall. And that is basically what happened

to the Romanovs. And Vladimir Putin is in danger of that happening to

him since he is now pursuing this incredibly expensive rearmament,

adventures in Syria and Ukraine and so on, which are incredibly

spectacular, great on television, crowd pleasing, but if he does not

reform his economy he will fight you cannot afford it, just as the

Soviets could not afford it, just as the Imperial Romanovs could not

afford it. And what the Romanovs were doing is to make Russia great

again, and that is a slogan that is now familiar as Donald Trump's

slogan. Ironically, although we think about our democracies as

superior to those of Russia, in some ways we are pursuing similar

aspirations to them, and similarly dangerous ones. Do you think we in

the West have to learn how to make some kind of accommodation to

Russia? It has revived as an economic power, whatever you think

of the current leadership. Have we got it wrong? We have certainly had

to learn the hard way that in the Middle East, for example, we cannot

do anything without Russia. Russia is there. It is dominating now,

Syria. In Palmeiro, for example, in the temple there, the Russians have

set up, and it shows that there are concept of the spectacular

showmanship and projection of imperial power is way beyond what we

understand, and so Syrian peace is now impossible without Russia. It

has already happened. We now have to acknowledge that Russia is once

again a great hour. How long for is another question. But they are back.

The year before the Romanov dynasty finally came to an end, seven men

change the course of history much closer to home. On Easter Sunday

1916, the seven signed their names to the proclamation of the Irish

Republic. This challenge to imperial rule triggered a six-day battle with

British troops in the centre of Dublin which left almost 500 dead.

Ruth Dudley Edwards new book, the Seven, asked whether Ireland's

founding fathers had a coherent vision or whether they were just a

collection of fanatics, misfits and failures. The Troubles could make. I

am, not least and mighty 93, as a journalist. I was fascinated with

the preoccupation with the seamers lineage of heroes and martyrs who

have been used to inspire generation after generation to kill and die for

Ireland without any regard to the wishes of the people. Ruth Dudley

Edwards, what was unique about the men who made the Easter rising

happened? They had a supremely gifted, can best among them, partly

airport, also headmaster, he was worth his weight in gold as a

propagandist. And deconstructed in narrative of repeated attempts of

the Irish people to get rid of the British York. He proclamation of the

Irish Republic that they produced in 1916 day that narrative. It was very

cleverly done. There was no support for the Revolutionary started. Their

plans were preposterous. Some of them wanted to die, some of them

hoped to win. We all had these different needs and visions of it.

But my big contention about this is that because of the violence of 1916

every other person who came along and decided he was right in the

Irish people wrong now believe he would get retrospective

justification. So you have what was called the War of Independence, and

you have a Civil War, and ever since then we have had the provisional IRA

say no they were right and everybody else was wrong, and they are trying

to legitimise what they did in 30 years destroying Northern Ireland in

the same way that 1916 happened. It has been a frightful precedent for

violence. And for you, the seven men who signed the proclamation, have a

huge responsibility in other words for what you see as the negative

legacy? I think they have enormous responsibility. I don't think they

had a clear view of what they were doing, except in some cases just to

get at the Brits. To get clear of an emotional turmoil or to be a great

marker, a great Catholic martyr. To be the Christ of Irish nationalists.

He can be consulted Christ, dying for his people. They had all sorts

of mixed ideas. But in the end they were doing what they wanted to do,

more for themselves and for anyone else. It was narcissism. Do you

think we in the West can learn anything from that period for the

way we confront and deal with this huge challenge from jihadist

terrorism? I am loved to draw the parallels myself, but do you think

there are any parallels in the way that... What can we learn from this

challenge? Certainly there are. For a long time anybody who died for

Ireland was de facto a good person. A self-sacrificing person. The

Reggie had these! And that has been -- you were in jihad. They got what

they wanted, in your eyes. And with the hunger strikers now in Sinn Fein

land being compared with 1916, they starve themselves to death. They

committed suicide for Ireland. And were elected to the British

Parliament in the process. Absolutely. I'm in favour of brutal

truths. And I'm very proud that Ireland has got to the stage where

in public arenas you can argue this out, and on the whole people don't

anymore call you a traitor for suggesting that these people were

complicated but not necessarily right. Whatever we learn from the

past has to feed into a more positive plan for the future. There

is a growing global population, and the very fabric of the planet is

under threat. The ecosystem is changing irrevocably. The reminder

question can the West survive, can the world survives? We live in

Epoque making times, literally. The changes that humans have made in

recent decades have been on such a scale that they have altered the

world beyond anything it has experienced in its 4.5 billion year

history. It is a thrilling but uncertain time to be alive. Welcome

to the anthropocene, the age of humans. Gaia Vince is a journalist

specialising in environmental and social issues. To write her book,

Adventures in the Anthropocene: A Journey to the Heart of the Planet

We Made, she visited 40 countries to document our climate and ecological

changes caused by humans affect the indigenous communities of the

planet. This is all that's left of the world's highest ski resort. Gaia

Vince, explain to me what the anthropocene actually means. The

anthropocene really means the age of humans. And it is a geological idea,

the idea that humans are fundamentally changing our planet,

changing the course of rivers, the temperature of the atmosphere, the

chemistry of the oceans, etc, and we have experienced geological changes

like this before. You may know of the Jurassic, the time of the

dinosaurs. But normally they are caused by something massive,

something extraterrestrials like an asteroid impact of organic eruption.

And now scientists are saying it is us, we're changing the planet at

such a fast rate that we are actually putting lives in danger. We

are facing certain crises, of food and water. As I read your book I

thought it is amazing how much the human species is able to actually

adapt to change, but do you think ultimately the planet can adapt to

this species that has kind of expanded beyond control and changed

it so much already? There is no threat to the planet. The planet has

been over 4.5 billion years and will continue we go extinct or do not.

We're quite a recent species. I'm very interested in humans, in us and

I come at all these environmental issues I think slightly differently

from a lot of people in that I'm interested in, how does it affect

us? I love tigers. If Tigers go extinct, is that the problem for us?

Does it matter? They are great and charismatic species, but we're not

going to starve to death. Doesn't matter if we extinct? Because some

deep Green would rather we went extinct plants survive. I am not one

of them, I am on the side of humans! I would be very sad if humans go

extinct. As I have travelled around the world, I have been humbled, I

think, by how people who have so little can be so generous. And I see

this side to humanity, I think we are a very cooperative, a very

empathetic species. Something is definitely going to change. A social

structure that we have globally at the moment, where there are a

handful of nations that are much wealthier and have a much heavier

resource use and other nations, I think that is going to have to

change if we are going to see, all of us, a global population, humanity

itself surviving and living comfortable it in the decades to

come. In Europe there is an imaginary scene at the turn of the

next century where everything is kind of OK, we have adapted. -- in

your book. There are walkways and bicycle lanes, there is no traffic!

Can our political system really make that kind of change? I think we are

going to witness enormous changes. That was quite a fun chapter to

write because it is completely imaginary, I had to think of what

possible scenarios we might undertake in the coming decades. But

I am an optimist. I think we are going to do... I think we're going

to do well, I think we're going to survive this and adapt. Part of that

future will be governed by artificial intelligence, which is no

longer just science fiction, but a central part of our culture. It is

written into search engines, robotics, video games, and touches

most every aspect of contemporary technology. Professor Margaret

Boden's new book, AI, Its Nature and Future, discusses whether artificial

intelligence could ever truly be intelligent, creative or even

conscious. The apocalyptic visions of AI's future are usury, but partly

because of them, the AI community and policymakers and the general

public as well I waking up to some very real dangers. And it is not

before time. Professor Margaret Boden, what do you think the impact

of artificial intelligence will be by the mid-century honour Society

and on our way of life? I think a lot of things will be running much

more efficiently. Child support, health care, even in medicine.

Really every profession. There is a pretty broad concern now that

artificial intelligence plus machine learning plus robotics will flatten

a lot of jobs that we currently have, and not replace them. I think

that is certainly true. And a lot of jobs that even if they don't

disappear they will be very much downsized. There are a lot of

professional jobs at the moment, a lot of professions where people are

already starting to use AI as advisory systems. It won't have to

get all that much better... Lawyers? Lawyers, accountants... The thing

that worries me most, but there are many things I could mention, is the

idea of using AI systems as carers are companions for old people. I

think there's absolutely no way that AI is going to be good enough to be

able to do that well. Probably ever. Certainly not in the next century.

And I think we would be really taking away people's committee and

really giving them the rough end of the stick to do that. If we wanted

to resist AI, would we just be Luddites, or would there be a

justification for it? If you mean get rid of it, forget it. It is

impossible. And also I don't think it would be a good thing, but anyway

it is impossible. What I think we should do is resist AI taking over

in essentially human to human situations where firstly we cannot

get it to take over any reasonable fashion, and secondly, we shouldn't.

My example of the care homes is just one example of that. Another one

would be one-to-one education. And even though some of these

educational AI systems can adapt to some extent the individual student,

they cannot do it as well as a good teacher can. I think the greatest

lesson that AI has taught us is the amazing power and subtlety and

richness of human minds. And to equal that is a very big ask. In

this programme I have been asking can the West survive? It probably

can, but with wars and razor wire around its borders, with a big

question over what it stands for, and the lingering suspicion that

like all dominating societies, this just might be its sunset.

# It's the end of the world as we know it

# It's the end of the world as we know it

# It's the end of the world as we know it

# And I feel fine. # It's the end of the world as we

know it # It's the end of the world as we

know it # It's the end of the world as we

know it # And I feel fine #.