Summary
The icy winds from the East have been an apt meteorological metaphor for UK-Russia relations. Since the Salisbury spy incident, and the immediate pointing of blame at the Kremlin, diplomats have been kicked out of both countries. But that's unlikely to be the end of the matter. All eyes are on what happens next. What would be the most moral course of action to take? Should the UK pursue the strongest possible sanctions and perhaps even refuse to compete in this year's World Cup in Russia? Some believe that unless we take a firm moral stand we put our own citizens at risk and we let down the Russian people. Others urge caution, believing sanctions will mostly hurt ordinary people and will do little to change the regime's behaviour. Aside from tit-for-tat punishment, it has been suggested that Putin's alleged antics with chemical weapons are bringing us closer to a "Cold War 2.0". After the Berlin Wall fell almost thirty years ago, we hoped for progress towards a more peaceful world. Was that a delusion? It could be argued that the world is more dangerous now than it was when power-blocs followed the rules of realpolitik, and everyone knew where they stood. Even then, we came perilously close to mutual destruction - so should we press on now with the search for a new and better kind of international moral order? Witnesses are Simon Jenkins, Dr Rebecca Johnson, Mark Rice-Oxley and Prof Robert Service.
Producer: Dan Tierney.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a programme from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:04.0 | Good evening, Salisbury is an unlikely place to be the possible cockpit of a second Cold War, |
| 0:08.7 | a quintessentially English country town, immortalised by Trollope, painted by constable, |
| 0:13.2 | a city only by virtue of its cathedral, certainly the tallest, arguably the prettiest in England. |
| 0:18.1 | The attempted murder of a Russian double agent and his daughter, |
| 0:25.8 | in the shadow of that high cathedral spire, has created a crisis in Anglo-Russian relations, |
| 0:30.7 | a new tension between Moscow and the West that echoes the nuclear standoff generations ago and a moral dilemma for us in how best to respond. That Moscow was behind the attack, |
| 0:36.4 | though unproven, seems highly likely given the |
| 0:39.1 | method and the ambiguous half-denials from Russian officials. There are unanswered questions. |
| 0:44.7 | Why target an ex-spy so long after his betrayal? Why use a military-grade nerve agent when a |
| 0:50.1 | sandbag and a quick push into the River Avon would have been so much more discreet, so much |
| 0:54.3 | easier to disown. Somebody clearly wanted to make a point. So what do we do? We've chucked out |
| 1:00.0 | their more dubious diplomats. They've chucked out ours. What now? Stop the Royals going to |
| 1:04.9 | the Russian World Cup. That'll show them, I suppose. But in deterrence terms, it's a few |
| 1:09.3 | steps short of mutually assured destruction. |
| 1:11.7 | We could impose more sanctions, target leading Russians, their interest, their money. |
| 1:16.4 | In the Cold War, at least we knew where we stood. |
| 1:18.6 | Thirty years on, what's the right way to stand up to aggression without going back to it? |
| 1:23.4 | That's our moral maze tonight. |
| 1:24.7 | Our panel, Anne McElvoy, senior editor at The Economist, |
| 1:27.3 | the former Conservative Cabinet Minister Michael Portillo, |
| 1:30.0 | the chief executive of the RSA, Matthew Taylor, |
... |
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