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Odd Arne Westad

lines on the record: 52
first: 2026-06-07
most recent: 2026-06-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“That's a happy note to start from Ellis. I'm afraid that you at least halfway right in assuming that we might be in that kind of situation. I mean, as you correctly indicate, the problem here is in many ways that if you compare to 1914 for sure, but also a lot of other wars that's happened in the past, international tensions are now at a much higher level than what they were back then. And not just tensions in a sort of broad sense, but tensions also in terms of how great powers deal with each other and generally fail at finding any kind of compromise or any kind of stability in those relationships. So I think in overall terms, what I'm most worried about is not, as you will have seen from the book, these issues in and by themselves leading to war, but it's some kind of world-class crisis that we cannot foresee at the moment would come along and then we wouldn't be able to handle it and we'd end up in war.”
2026-06-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 192. Are We On The Brink Of World War III? (Odd Arne Westad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“International tensions are now at a much higher level. What I'm most worried about is some kind of world-class crisis that we cannot foresee at the moment would come along and then we wouldn't be able to handle it and we'd end up in whoa. We are facing a world very similar to 1914 where leaders at events run away with it. China and India are locked in a conflict that is really, really difficult to resolve. I don't think United States or China are particularly well placed to become the predominant great powers of the future. If you look at a country like India, I think they are much better placed if we don't start acting now on these kinds of issues. Then we could get into really dicy territory very soon.”
2026-06-07 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 192. Are We On The Brink Of World War III? (Odd Arne Westad) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source