Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the show. We've got a very, very important show today.

Tensions are rising between the West and China have been for a considerable amount of time,

but also tensions emerging in pretty stark terms between members of the Western Alliance.

Following a new pact struck between Australia, the United States and Britain,

France has recalled its ambassadors to the US and Australia. This is a protest at Australia

cancelling an order for French-built submarines and the security package existed. We're going to talk

about, obviously, the emergence of China as a great power is a story which has been happening

for a very, very long time. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the US

broadly speaking, a global hegemon, but there were trends already existing, the US

share of the global economy shrinking, and despite that boost, we've seen the emergence

particularly of China as a great power, increasingly asserting its own role.

So we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the tensions that exist.

Is a Cold War? This is a term, obviously, often thrown around. I think about the Cold War,

I think it's worth noting, because I've seen a discussion which has been taking place on social

media, which is that a Cold War is not that pleasant in lots of ways. You get nuclear

armed powers having a standoff, but it's not the same as a hot war. But of course, in the actual

Cold War, there were hot wars, not least in, for example, South East Asia, Afghanistan, most

strikingly, large parts of Africa, Asia, and so on. So as well as dictatorships, coups,

and other proxy wars in Latin America, so is the comparison valid because we've not seen anything

on those terms yet. But is it possible that these tensions could escalate, not least as China

continues its ascent? And obviously, we've seen the financial crash and arguably COVID accelerate

existing trends in terms of power from West East. Now, before bringing that brilliant guess,

...