Hi everyone, welcome. My name is Glenn Deeson and I'm joined today by Alexander Mercuris and Alistair Crook,

a very famous, well-known top British as well as EU diplomats.

And, well, the topic today is, well, more or less if war is unavoidable, based on an article written

by Alster Crook.

So this, of course, focused mainly then on Israel's war, now also with Hezbollah and the

possibility of the prospect of unavoidable war with Iran.

But in terms of the whole idea of war becoming unavoidable, one could always extend this

towards Russia as well.

Because I guess what was unique there was for years and years, we seemed to reject all

possible peaceful solution or peace agreements.

And meanwhile, pushing towards war becoming the only solution.

But again, we really wanted to focus on the Middle East first.

But perhaps we could begin with this article you wrote, because I found that to be very fascinating.

You wrote more or less the image of the world being pushed as being either liberal democracy

or all this bad actors, which is seemingly in cahoots.

And I guess the main problem is if you see your adversary as being pure evil, all the bad intentions, no legitimate security interests, it's very easy to end up in a situation where war becomes solving this problem.

But again, I was hoping you could elaborate a bit on this article, especially this concept of the whole of society.

The whole of society, yeah, I found that to be fascinating, because it reminded me a bit about totalitarianism when politics intrude in all aspects of public and private life.

When even civil society, NGO, media, corporations.

So.

Okay.

Well, yes.

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