I'm Arthur Snell, a major war is taking place on the European continent with Russia's

invasion of Ukraine. Bringing you a series of special episodes to help you understand

the crisis as it unfolds. This is Doomsday Watch.

Welcome back to Doomsday Watch. We hope you're finding these war bulletins valuable. A quick

reminder that you can support our work on the crowdfunding app Patreon from as little

as £3 per month. Just search Patreon Doomsday Watch or follow the link in the show notes.

In the week that the US Congress voted through an unprecedented massive aid package to

Ukraine of $40 billion, we wanted to discuss the state of the NATO alliance and wider global

relations. To do that, I'm delighted to be joined by Lord Ricketts, Peter Ricketts. Peter

is one of the preeminent national security officials in this country. He was Britain's

ambassador to France, he was our permanent representative to NATO, he was chairman of

the Joint Intelligence Committee, the National Security Advisor and he was also head of the

foreign office. So he brings almost unrivaled experience to this question. Peter, welcome.

Thank you very much, Arthur. Peter, there's a lot we could talk about, but I wanted

to start with NATO, if we may, and we're recording this at a time when a remarkable series

of developments has occurred in the past week, Sweden and Finland, both neutral countries

for decades in Finland's case and for hundreds of years in Sweden's case, they've both applied

to join their alliance. What is the significance of this development?

Well, first of all, it's a huge turnaround for NATO. Two or three years ago, if you remember,

we had President Macron saying it was brain dead and we had Donald Trump openly dismissive

of the value of NATO. Putin's war has obviously made it clear that NATO is absolutely front

and center for the security of all its members, including the UK. Finland and Sweden,

...