This Is Not A Drill with Gavin Esler
Exploring threats to global stability from Ukraine to China to the Middle East with host Gavin Esler – former BBC News presenter, Washington correspondent and host of Newsnight – plus Ukraine-based war reporter Oz Katerji and independent conflict analyst Emma Beals. This Is Not A Drill dives deep into the dangers, corruption, conflicts, disinformation, rivalries and ruthless realpolitik that are making our world ever more dangerous. Support This Is Not A Drill on Patreon from just £3 per month to get each episode early plus bonus material and exclusive merchandise. From Podmasters, the team behind Oh God, What Now?, Paper Cuts and The Bunker.
Episodes
May 15, 2024 • 43 mins
In 2024 four billion people will vote in the biggest election year in history, which will see existential tests for democracy in the US, India and elsewhere. What is shaping the battle between democracy and autocracy? And who is winning?
Ellection-distorting technology is outpacing governments’ ability to regulate it. Can democracy survive the uncontrolled spread of A.I., deepfakes and disinformation technology?
Emma Beals talks t...
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May 8, 2024 • 34 mins
The new Cold War between China and the US isn’t just fought on the digital plane. China is supplying equipment to Russia, intimidating Taiwan, bringing countries across Africa and Asia into its orbit – and, according to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, attempting to influence the US Presidential Election. What does Xi Jinping really want? Can he square China’s goal of being the “workshop of the world” with its foreign policy?...
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May 1, 2024 • 39 mins
America’s war to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein in 1991 was supposed to inaugurate a New World Order. President George HW Bush spoke of protecting ‘“peace, security, freedom and the rule of law… such is a world worthy of our children’s future.” But the failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the 2000s, China’s resurgence and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have left the idea of a coherent, US-led world order in tatters.
In a spec...
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April 24, 2024 • 45 mins
The world has responded with stunning cynicism to the wave of coups d’etat across Central Africa – either ignoring the violence, suffering and the rise of military strongmen, or exploiting it for their own ends.
From Mali, Guinea and Burkina Faso to the bloody civil war and mass displacement in Sudan, Oz Katerji finds that the Sahel region isn’t only threatened by war, drought and Islamist terror. The “Africa Corps” wing of Russia’...
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April 15, 2024 • 25 mins
Iran’s drone attacks on Israel, in retaliation for an Israeli strike on its embassy in Damascus, shocked the world this weekend. Israel’s divided war cabinet is considering a response, the US has warned it will not take part in a counteroffensive, and world leaders fear an escalation into regional war. But will it really happen?
Gavin Esler speaks to expert on the Iranian regime Prof Ali Ansari of the University of St Andrews about...
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April 10, 2024 • 37 mins
Why does the militarily weaker side lose many battles but often win the war? In the 21st Century the David-vs-Goliath threat of asymmetric warfare – where small non-state militias and terror groups defeat vastly better armed nation states in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere – is back. Now armed groups including Yemen’s Houthi, Hamas and Islamic State are growing and re-energised by a vast new funding sources: the global drugs trade,...
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April 3, 2024 • 39 mins
Houthi attacks on shipping have thrown global supply lines into turmoil, and led 20 countries to intervene militarily. But the Red Sea logistics crisis is just the latest in series of shocks to the world trade system, from the Pandemic to Ukraine and beyond. What does it mean when any pirate with a missile and a TikTok account can hold domestic supplies to ransom? And who wants to take advantage?
Emma Beals speaks to Elisabeth Braw...
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March 28, 2024 • 14 mins
Special edition: On Friday March 22, Islamic State gunmen murdered more than 130 people in Moscow’s Crocus City Hall concert venue, just 12 miles from the Kremlin. Putin tried to direct the blame towards Ukraine, but it has emerged that Russia’s FSB had ignored plausible warnings of an impending terror attack from Western security services.
Gavin Esler speaks to Russian investigative journalist and security services expert Andrei...
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March 27, 2024 • 41 mins
The spying game was supposed to fade into history with the Cold War. But Vladimir Putin’s historic grievances, obsession with Ukraine and need to placate his own intelligence agencies have sent a new wave of espionage across the world. The West thinks we’re at peace. The Russians know we’re at war. So what are Western intelligence agencies going to do about it?
Gavin Esler speaks to Russian investigative journalist and security se...
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March 20, 2024 • 43 mins
Putin has used digital disinformation against Ukraine and the West since long before the Russian invasion, undermining US and EU support for Kyiv by smearing Ukrainians as Nazis and denying Russia’s many atrocities. Are we already in an information war? And how do we win it?
Gavin Esler talks to longterm Putin-watcher and post-truth analyst Peter Pomerantsev, author of How To Win An Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted ...
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March 13, 2024 • 42 mins
Iran – America’s arch-enemy and the Middle East’s malign “mini-Imperial power” – fans conflicts from Ukraine to Israel to Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon, and is said to be only weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon. But the Islamic Revolution is under sustained attack from within, under the banner of ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’. Can Iran maintain its hardline power in the Muslim world? What do its second- and third-generation revolutiona...
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March 7, 2024 • 33 mins
Russia’s war on Ukraine two years on. This time: How is Ukraine’s defence of its territory holding up under Putin’s onslaught? How do Ukrainians see the Trump Right’s obstruction of $60bn of aid to Kyiv? Is the loss of Avdiivka to Russia really what it seems? And how could the War end?
Ukrainian journalist and Chatham House fellow Olga Tokariuk tells Oz Katerji how the war is going… and why Ukrainians have reason to be optimistic a...
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February 28, 2024 • 47 mins
The first of two specials covering Russia’s war on Ukraine two years on. This time: Inside Russia. Avdiivka has fallen, Alexei Navalny is dead, and pro-Russia Republicans are starving Kyiv of ammunition. Putin finally feels the war could turn in his direction. Is he right? And how does the Russian tyrant keep control of a country where a restive mood is growing… and even fake elections can matter?
Oz Katerji talks to Mark Galeotti...
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February 21, 2024 • 38 mins
From Cop28 to Manchester City to the attempted purchase of the Telegraph newspaper, the United Arab Emirates are suddenly flexing power and prestige across the Gulf. Behind it all is Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, known as MBZ, who mixes a show of modernisation with an iron will, especially regarding human rights. Who is MBZ? How has his tiny state become such a global player? And are the UAE a friend or a foe of democracies?
...
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February 14, 2024 • 36 mins
The fear that a re-elected Trump would pull the US out of NATO haunts European leaders. Now he says he’d actively encourage Putin to attack European countries who haven’t “paid their bills”. Could a second Trump presidency really open the door for war in Europe? What contingency plans is NATO making? Has Europe really underspent on defence? And is Putin exploiting cracks in the European hard right and left for his own ends?
Gavin ...
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February 7, 2024 • 33 mins
Could the belligerence of North Korea – enigma, dynastic dictatorship, nuclear-armed regional menace – be coming to a violent head? Leader Kim Jong Un has torn up his country’s long-cherished goal of reunifying with the South; is ordering provocative missile launches; and ratcheting up tensions with the United States. Could he take the final step into war?
Gavin Esler talks to DPRK expert and nuclear analyst Rachel Minyoung Lee and...
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January 31, 2024 • 41 mins
The world’s future is darkening. Ukraine’s defence is in peril, the Red Sea and Israel/Hamas conflicts threaten to join hands, the US is stationing nuclear weapons in England again, and even conscription is back on the agenda. Where are these multiple crises in Ukraine and the Middle East heading?
The This Is Not A Drill team of Gavin Esler, Kyiv-based conflict journalist Oz Katerji and independent consultant and senior adviser at ...
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January 24, 2024 • 47 mins
Is peace with Putin even possible? In the early days of Russia’s war on Ukraine, negotiations seemed viable. Then came Bucha and the revelations of Russian atrocities on Ukrainian soil. Now Russia is again “putting out feelers” for peace talks – but would negotiation simply give Putin a chance to consolidate his gains and regroup for more?
Oz Katerji tells the story of the “missed chance” of peace talks in Istanbul in October 2022,...
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January 17, 2024 • 35 mins
Tensions are rising across the Taiwan Strait. China is enraged that the Taiwanese people have chosen a man Beijing calls a “troublemaker”, William Lai, as their President. Now Xi Jinping has become personally invested in regaining the territory. While a hot military conflict would be disastrous far beyond the region, China has many other options from trade blockades to naval harassment. So how far will Beijing go to achieve what it...
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January 13, 2024 • 9 mins
Gavin Esler talks with Yemen expert Helen Lackner after a night of yet more conflict in the Middle East.
Within hours of our recording with Yemen expert and author Helen Lackner analysing the Houthi militia’s attacks on Red Sea shipping vessels , the United States, supported by a coalition of the UK and eight other countries, led airstrikes on Houthi facilities in Yemen.
The reaction from the Houthis has been to threaten reprisals ...
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