Hello and welcome to when diplomacy fails.

Thank you so much for joining me, my history or political friend.

I hope you had a good time with the previous

episode looking at foreign policy and maybe you're eager to sink your teeth into more.

In this episode, I'm going to let Tom have more of the floor because, to be honest, I kind of

took up most of that floor in the previous episode, and I wanted to give him room

to actually talk about things that he has more knowledge of and more expertise in.

I really enjoyed this conversation.

It was intense.

It is long, as you can see, we were both quite tired by the end of it, or at least I was

quite tired and also, of course, sweaty because it's me.

But it's worth it.

It was something I felt very passionate about giving a platform to, because that's the thing.

As I said before in the last intro, I am in a unique position in many respects.

Not only am I sufficiently educated and safe enough to be

able to know about these things and be able to talk about them, but I also have the platform

where it can reach thousands of people, and I would be really irresponsible and immoral

to my view if I didn't do something with that and leverage the tools I have at my disposal

to speak truth to power and to speak up for those who have no voices or whose voices have been

suppressed. This conversation can occasionally get a bit dark. If you're looking for solutions, if you're looking for like, say,

reassurance, you may not find it here. What you will find is to like-minded people talking about

things that you also find value in. And sometimes that in itself is its own reward and has its own

...