Transcript: Is the balance tilting towards Russia in Ukraine?

This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: ‘Is the balance tilting towards Russia in Ukraine?’

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Gideon Rachman
Hello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I’m Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times. This week’s podcast is about the war in Ukraine. My guest is Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute here in London. He’s a frequent visitor both to Kyiv and to the battlefront in Ukraine. Six months ago, there were high hopes in both Ukraine and the west that the Ukrainian army was poised to make big gains on the battlefield. But its counteroffensive failed to break through. So what happens now?

News clip
This is Avdiivka, the Ukrainian-controlled city just 10km from Donetsk. After months on the defensive, Russian forces are going all out against Ukrainian positions. Let’s hear, the fighting is most intense. (Sound of explosions)

Gideon Rachman
In eastern Ukraine, the fighting is still intense, with many casualties on both sides. But the battle lines have not moved much. Recently, General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, called the war a stalemate. But in a recent interview with NBC News, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine made it clear in blunt language that his government intends to keep fighting.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy in news clip
The war takes the best of us — the best heroes, the best men, women, children. That’s it. But we are not ready to give our freedom to this (bleep) terrorist, Putin. That’s it. That’s why we are fighting.

Gideon Rachman
Jack Watling is one of the most astute analysts of the war that I know. And I began my conversation with him by asking him about the word that General Zaluzhnyi had used: stalemate. Does that represent an accurate description of what’s going on?

Jack Watling
It doesn’t. It strikes me as a description which is overly focused on terrain. And when you look at the rates of attrition on both sides and what is being lost and consumed, it’s a position that can’t be maintained indefinitely. Stalemate would suggest that if we just left things as they were, it would remain the same. That’s not the case. It will remain the same for a period, and then you see non-linear progression as one side gains advantage or loses it.

Gideon Rachman
And the side that’s gaining advantage is Russian.

Jack Watling
At the moment, it would be Russia. Yes.

Gideon Rachman
So why? Why is the rate of attrition sustainable for Russia? They’ve lost, what do people say now, 150,000 people dead and wounded?

Jack Watling
Exact numbers are pretty hard to pin down, but it’s slightly higher than that. But, yes, they’ve lost a huge number of people. But it is a loss rate that they feel they can sustain.

Gideon Rachman
So just give us a picture of both sides then. Sort of why is it the Russians are in a better position in terms of resources, men, materiel than Ukraine?

Jack Watling
Essentially, both sides are in a position where they are struggling to train and form units that can conduct defensive operations. And that’s about equipment. It’s also about training and the skills of their troops.

Now for Ukraine, they have many troops, but they are fixed along the entire front. They have a limited capacity to train more because their training areas are struck, they’re under attack, and they are in a particularly difficult position with regards to training officers at field-grade level to be able to command larger operations. It’s worth noting that the divisional echelon, which is where most armies see offensive operations being controlled from, was eliminated in Ukraine as a savings measure some time ago. They’ve had to try and bring back those sorts of structures, but they’re trying to build it while also needing to staff many, many units.

Now the Russians do have their training bases intact. They were lacking trainers, but they’ve largely fixed that problem. And so while they’re not able to generate a huge number of additional troops over time, they are able to keep adding to their formations, which means that over time the picture gets tougher for the Ukrainians. And then you overlay the equipment situation and Russia has moved onto a war footing. It is receiving significant amounts of equipment from Iran and North Korea and others. And it has turned a corner in terms of production of war materiel, whereas Nato has been somewhat complacent because it has been giving to Ukraine materiel that was in storage without moving industry onto a war footing. And what we are finding now is that there are increasing constraints on the availability of critical materiels, munitions being the main one.

Gideon Rachman
So give me an example of the kinds of things that Ukraine is running short of. People talk about artillery shells in particular. Is that the key thing?

Jack Watling
Artillery shells, also barrels is a key requirement as well, and that will reduce the accuracy of your equipment. But also, they were given a massive range of equipment by the west. They’re operating about 17 different artillery systems and many of those systems are obsolete. They’re no longer in production. And so there was a finite number of spare parts for them. Take, for example, the Challenger tanks that Britain gave. There are a finite number of spare packs. And so the longer you try and use those and the more you go through those spares, you get to a point where either obsolete things need to be made again, or that capability is no longer usable and you lose the value of the training that went into the troops who operate them.

Gideon Rachman
And of course, there’s been a big blow to Ukrainian morale. I don’t think there’s much doubt about that by the fact that the much-anticipated counteroffensive has not gained much ground. What do you think went wrong there?

Jack Watling
So I think the first thing we have to be very clear about is the offensive could have worked. There were a range of issues. One of them was the dispersal of effort and materiel into multiple axes, too many axes.

The second was that there was an overestimation of the cohesion, shall we say, of Ukrainian brigades. So western planners looked at a brigade and thought, we know what a brigade is that will operate in such and such a way. The reality was that because of a lack of staff officers and the fact that these brigades had not had the opportunity to train as brigades on the whole, they actually fought as company groups enabled by the brigades, hence the scale at which the Ukrainians were operating was much smaller than anticipated. And it’s worth noting that the Russians put up a very stiff resistance. They also fought the battle rather differently than their doctrine would have suggested. Rather than falling back and defending in depth and trying to attrit the enemy in depth, they instead counterattacked and defended forward. They lost a lot of people and materiel in that process. But the Russians took the view that Ukraine has a finite number of troops, and so Ukraine is not in a position to be able to absorb the losses, whereas Russia is.

Gideon Rachman
And do you think that calculation, grim as it is, is broadly accurate? I’ve seen estimates that the average age of Ukrainian troops on the frontline is now approaching 40. Is that right?

Jack Watling
That is correct, although it’s very important to bear in mind that that is not a reflection of the Ukrainians working their way up the generations. So when Ukraine was on the defence, they prioritised mobilisation for people who needed less training, ie had previous military experience, and they also prioritised people who would be steady, essentially. And the people who had previously been through conscription were disproportionately older and it made sense to target that group. And so actually Ukraine has not mobilised a large number of its younger people. So the average age of Ukrainian units is not so much a reflection of them running out of people.

But the thing I would emphasise here is that you could double the size of the Ukrainian armed forces. You could conscript twice as many people into it and it wouldn’t actually make any difference because unless you have the ability to command those troops, to provide the artillery, the enablers and so on, then they’re not usable, especially for offensive operations. So the critical thing here is not just how many troops can you have in the field, but it’s how many functional units of action and what scale are they operating at. If I can only move 120 people at you at a time, because that’s how many people I can conduct the command and control for, that is a much smaller problem that you’re presenting to me than if you can move a whole brigade of 3,000 people at me across multiple directions. But that requires a lot of synchronisation and planning and therefore trained officers.

And if you scale a military from 150,000 ground forces to 700,000 ground forces, then the number of people who’ve been through staff training and who are practised in the organisation and synchronisation of that military activity is going to be too few. You know, it’s worth noting that in the second world war, British troops had a minimum of 20 weeks training — more in most cases — before they were considered basically proficient. Most Ukrainian soldiers are lucky if they’ve had five. And so we need to now shift from the rapid mobilisation of personnel to be able to defend to a more deliberate training process to make sure that the troops are properly prepared for attack.

Gideon Rachman
To come back to the question I started with, you said stalemate is not sustainable. And the implication of most of what you’re saying is that the next phase then might be that Russia goes on the attack and begins to make substantial gains. Is that a real danger?

Jack Watling
Well, we’re very fortunate that Russia keeps going on the attack prematurely. Every time that the Russians start getting themselves into a position where they have an opportunity, they end up making quite serious blunders. We’re seeing that in Avdiivka at the moment where their troops haven’t had the opportunity to train properly. And so they are taking very heavy losses. However, the fact they are forming new units like this shows what happens when the pressure comes off and the Ukrainians are in this slight challenge where on the one hand they need to, as I say, train more deliberately to be able to take the offensive themselves, but at the same time, if they withdraw troops and start training and they’re not attacking, then the pressure comes off the Russians and they can also start training at scale. So 2024 is going to be quite difficult, I think, especially with the decline in available munitions; making sure that you keep up the rate of attrition against Russian forces will be difficult. And if their attrition rate diminishes and the number . . . 

Gideon Rachman
By attrition, basically that’s killing . . . 

Jack Watling
Killed Russians, yes, killed and seriously wounded. Then the number of troops that the Russians have to train and equip goes up. So we have to be really, really cautious and deliberate now in formulating a long-term plan that carries us through 2024 and into 2025. What I’m saying sounds very pessimistic, but you could draw a very pessimistic picture throughout this entire conflict. And every time the worst outcome has been averted, right, because of careful planning and decisions that have been made. We have a huge amount of agency in where this goes from here. So there’s no room for complacency.

But there is also the capacity, as I say, to fix the training issue, to make the investment into the industrial base and to put Ukraine on a position where actually, they can beat the Russians. It’s doable. But the idea that this is just gonna die down in some sort of stalemate is wishful thinking. It’s a complacency that kind of says, oh, this will just become a manageable problem. No, it won’t. It will go one way or the other.

Gideon Rachman
And if it went the wrong way, I mean, do you think Putin’s original ambition, which was clearly to take Kyiv, might even come back on the table?

Jack Watling
It’s still on the table. What do we mean by take Kyiv, right? There’s the military occupation of Kyiv, which at this point is beyond Russia’s capacity. But the Russians are talking about fighting for three more years. And if they exhaust Ukraine and put Ukraine in a position where it can’t join Nato because its land is occupied and Nato isn’t comfortable with essentially being put in a position where it’s automatically being challenged on Article 5, it is having to keep up this fight. Then the Russians could get Kyiv into a position where it is essentially subservient and then pressure comes off, ceasefire is achieved, Russia can rebuild. And then you are in a position where the occupation of Kyiv is a viable second bite, as it were, as we saw in Chechnya, right? Bad outcome the first time, but the Russians salvaged their position through pressure and negotiations and then they came back. And so, yes, this isn’t a threat that’s going away. And Russia has not diminished its goals.

Gideon Rachman
And do you see, I mean, obviously you go to Ukraine a lot and you know that side. Do you have any sense of Russian thinking? I mean, a Russian acquaintance of mine said that his impression was that they’re getting much more confident.

Jack Watling
They are getting much more confident, yes. Firstly, as I say, from an industrial point of view, they were really feeling shortages. There are still bottlenecks. Barrels are also an issue for them. But that situation is easing and is likely to ease further over the next few months as basically, supply starts to correlate more closely with demand. There is no longer on the Russian side the sense that there is a big punch that the Ukrainians are holding back, that they’re anticipating. And so they are feeling like they have more opportunity or initiative and they are sensing, you know, sniffing in the wind a sense of frustration in the west, which in Russia feeds an overly optimistic, I think, but very persistent belief that essentially the west is gonna throw in the towel. I don’t think that’s the case.

Gideon Rachman
Even with Donald Trump in the background?

Jack Watling
Well, that’s their big hope, you know, and it’s the hope that they tell themselves. Even then, I don’t see most European countries throwing in the towel. But the point is, is that just continuing is not enough, right? You actually need to invest pretty substantially in your own military-industrial capacity if you are to lead to a positive outcome here.

Gideon Rachman
If that’s the key, though, is there any sign that the west is doing that, that it’s ramping up military production and is prepared to, you know, make the changes to the economy and things as mundane as planning law to actually get it done?

Jack Watling
There’s definitely a sense of urgency in defence ministries. But if we think about it in a cross-government sense, most of the ministries don’t think that they’re at war or that they’re in a prewar situation and they are still following peacetime procedures. And so we see significant reluctance to do things efficiently or quickly outside of ministries of defence, and that’s becoming a real bottleneck. You know, there are . . . 

Gideon Rachman
And is this right across the west? It’s the same in the US, the same in Europe?

Jack Watling
The US, it’s slightly different. The US is significantly expanding capacity and is mobilising its defence industry, you know, if you look at the increased rates of missile production and so on, but that is overwhelmingly driven by the requirement to deter China in the Indo-Pacific. And so other than artillery ammunition, what they’re investing in is primarily not related to the European theatre. And I think the politics in the US is going to increasingly be one in which they say, look, if China goes for Taiwan or some other scenario, it is catastrophic for the global economy. We are managing that risk.

Nato is an alliance, and given that this is a European security threat, we expect Europeans to pull their weight. And if we look at ammunition supply as quite a good example, Europe has provided about, I think, 300,000 rounds of 155 to Ukraine. The US has provided around 2mn. So Europe has provided a lot of financial aid and other things. But in the defence-industrial side, there is a real lack of capacity in Europe.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah, and I think I once heard you say that Britain produces as many of those shells in a year as Ukraine uses in less than 24 hours. Is that right?

Jack Watling
That was the case, yes. That’s what the UK was doing at the beginning of the conflict. It has increased production. But one of the issues is that each European state is essentially going to arms companies and saying, could you produce a little bit more? And those arms companies look at the numbers and they say, well, there’s no guarantee that there’s gonna be follow-on orders. And it’s actually quite a small increase. And so it’s not worth us investing in the infrastructure manufacturing capacity to be able to make more rounds. So what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna add your order on to the end of our existing orders and we’ll fulfil it when we get round to it. But if you put the orders together around Europe, then it really does start to add up to quite a substantial amount and most companies in order to fulfil that would need to increase capacity, and the financial equation would start justifying that. And so either individual countries need to order more or make the orders over the longer term, or they need to make those orders together.

Gideon Rachman
Sounds like we’re still in the thinking stage. And as you say, we’re in a crucial year coming up. And I mean, what’s one sign of Ukraine’s shortages of munitions that America decided to give them cluster munitions, which are quite controversial because there wasn’t enough in the cupboard?

Jack Watling
Absolutely. I mean, cluster munitions made sense in their own right in terms of them being a very useful military capability. They were literally designed for how they were employed. But the release of cluster munitions, DPICM specifically, also alleviated the strain on stockpile availability and so extended the runway or the amount of time by which Ukraine could maintain fire superiority at the front. Every time we’ve done that, released a new capability to buy us time, the question becomes, well, what are you gonna do with the time you’ve bought? And far too often the answer is people use that as a justification for delaying decisions rather than as an opportunity to get ahead of the curve.

Gideon Rachman
I mean, it’s a fairly downbeat discussion so far. Some optimists say well, it’s not all bleak, that Ukraine has done well in the Black Sea and that it’s forced the Russian navy to, I don’t know, whether it’s take a backward step is the appropriate way of doing it. But that on the naval front they’re doing well. Is that correct?

Jack Watling
It is correct. And throughout this, Ukraine has had many tactical successes. If you look at its long-range strike campaign, knocking out a Russian submarine in its berth, you know, the number of Black Sea fleet assets that have been degraded and not just the ships, but the physical infrastructure, its dry docks, for example, its headquarters, and just pushing back the fleet from being able to maintain a presence off Ukraine’s coast is a very substantial achievement.

The question becomes, and this is the issue when people sort of say, well, we are making progress, look at these other things. Most of these other lines of effort create opportunity. That’s what they do. So pushing back the Black Sea fleet may enable more goods to flow in and out of Odesa and thereby reopen the Ukrainian economy.

What did the Russians do? Firstly, they used aircraft to drop sea mines to deter commercial actors from thinking that it was worthwhile. And secondly, they use long-range strike to damage the port facilities. And so the opportunity is not one that we can capitalise on necessarily. The isolation of Crimea logistically by denying resupply by sea and then potential of future strikes on the Kerch Bridge and the threats to the neck of Crimea would create a real strategic problem for the Russians. But you need to synchronise those things and follow through. Just denying resupply into Sevastopol is no good if there can be resupply over the Kerch Strait and over the neck.

And so the real question with these lines of efforts is are we putting in place what we need to enable the reclamation of Ukrainian territory? Because if we’re not doing that, then the window of opportunity that we have created through the disruption to the Black Sea fleet and so on will close. And that’s where we need, as I say, longer-term planning that synchronises these things rather than just the celebration of very impressive tactical feats but without the necessary exploitation.

Gideon Rachman
You’re a frequent visitor to Ukraine, to Kyiv and to the frontline. What’s your sense of the Ukrainian mood now?

Jack Watling
I think there was a real turning point this time last year with the civilian population, which was towards weariness, and that didn’t necessarily affect the military at the time because the offensive was in the offing. But I would say that caught up with the military in July, and that weariness was essentially a realisation that this is going to be a very long, costly war, that there isn’t going to be a rapid conclusion.

Weariness, however, is not the same thing as despair. And it is not the same thing as a lack of will to fight. And I think we have to be very clear that morale is not the same thing as happiness. For Ukrainians, when they look at what’s happening on the occupied territories, when they look at what Russia does when it takes over places, defeat is not just a change of who’s in charge and essentially you can carry on with your life. Defeat means the evisceration of their culture and identity, their freedoms, their ability to travel inside their own country, let alone abroad, the disappearance of their friends and family, the risk that their family will be detained and tortured. And so when you are facing an existential threat like that, defeat is unacceptable. And so I don’t get any sense that Ukrainians are any less determined to defend their country or indeed liberate their country. But their perception of risk, their perception of how you achieve that is now being shaped by the expectation that they need to conserve their resources, conserve their force, and dig in for what might be a protracted and difficult fight.

Gideon Rachman
And what are relations like between Kyiv and the key western capitals, particularly Washington? I sort of get flashes — and you follow it much more closely than I do — of tensions every now and then and stray comments here and there.

Jack Watling
There’s always tensions because firstly, we don’t have skin in the game, you know; we’re not taking casualties. But the Ukrainians are critically dependent upon their western partners. And so dependency is not a nice position to be in. Frankly, it’s an uncomfortable position to be in. And at the same time, when western partners are offering advice and so on, they don’t necessarily have the clearest picture of what’s happening forward or why things are the way they are because they’re not there. So there’s always tensions. Very often those tensions are resolved when people are able to meet in person at the border or elsewhere. And that’s why it’s really important that those meetings take place so that trust can be built, personal relationships can be built. There is a shared view of tactical objectives, certainly. And I think that the relationship is one that will endure.

Where we are right now is in a slight chicken-and-egg position where most of Ukraine’s partners are wanting the Ukrainians to explain what the plan is. Ukrainian position is that that’s slightly difficult because unless they know what equipment they’re going to have and what equipment is assured, then it’s difficult to come up with a plan.

And then you have another issue, which is a political one in Ukraine about who’s responsible for the failure of the offensive. Now I think that’s largely an unhelpful conversation. I think that lessons learned are important. But there is this element where success has many, many parents but failure is an orphan. And of course, it’s usually wrong and unfair whoever gets singled out and blamed — and it is usually singled out. And, you know, lots of people have varying levels of responsibility for how things unfolded.

So the important thing is that we get beyond this kind of looking for an explanation and resolve the problems. The problems are fairly evident, but that’s a process which is generating, I would suggest, some conflicting messages from inside Ukraine. And we saw that recently with General Zaluzhnyi putting out his thinking and then a spokesperson for the presidential office essentially criticising General Zaluzhnyi for what he said.

Gideon Rachman
What was it that he said that they particularly didn’t like?

Jack Watling
That it was a stalemate. But, you know, if we think about how that’s viewed among allies, it means that there’s questions that are raised about, well, when a plan is proposed, is this actually the plan? Who’s responsible for the plan? So I think the Ukrainians are very cognisant of that. But the conversations that need to happen quite quickly are ones in which a plan is formulated and the resourcing for it is worked out. And that needs to be a plan which is not just about a campaign season, but, as I say, reflects the fact that the industrial base will take some time to spin up and so more opportunity will become available over the course of 2024. And you need to plan over the course of that year.

Gideon Rachman
You said that it’s crucial that the west maintains its focus, maintains the meetings, but obviously the international situation has changed dramatically with the Israel-Gaza war and the continuing tensions in Taiwan. I mean, you’re just back, I gather, from Taiwan. How much of those developments, particularly the Israel-Gaza stuff, changed what is happening in Ukraine or the overall picture for Ukraine?

Jack Watling
In some ways, I think — I hate to use these words because it suggests that I’m implying that what’s happening is a good thing, which is not, you know; it’s a catastrophe what’s happening in the Middle East. But I think it does actually benefit Ukraine in some ways if it’s exploited properly. The primary benefit is that there has been a dynamic in Ukraine where the media has been laser-focused. And when you’re conducting offensive operations, you really can’t tell the media very much. You know, there’s stuff that’s being planned and prepared and you can’t brief the media on it. And because you need to misdirect and because you can’t explain what’s being prepared without risking its viability, you end up with people who are either not involved in the planning sort of speculating and that being taken up as the truth because you’re not prepared to contradict it, or you have to come up with something that’s not really accurate. And so you get trapped in this dynamic where there is an insatiable demand by the international press for an explanation of what is going to happen. But because the answer is, by definition arbitrary, you then get trapped with false expectations.

And I can think of a number of instances during the war where Ukraine has been pushed into some fairly bad decision-making by essentially the expectation of the international community, because it’s needed to play to the gallery in order to get the resources that it needs. It needs to be perceived to be succeeding in order to win the resources to be able to succeed, which is not a comfortable position to be in. And so the diminished focus and attention might actually create the space where they can thrash out some of the more difficult questions with their partners without that sort of laser, eye-of-Sauron scrutiny that has been slightly unhelpful, I think, in the past.

Gideon Rachman
I think they’re gonna be put in the position where they’re competing for the same munitions. I mean, somebody said to me that some of these shells that they need were pre-positioned in Israel, might have been moved out to Ukraine and now won’t be.

Jack Watling
There has been some munitions that have been pushed into Israel. But fundamentally, unless Israel ends up in a war in Lebanon, 155mm ammunition is not going to be the main thing that they’re consuming because the Israelis have complete control of the air and they have a significant air force and they’re delivering most of their effects with air-delivered bombs, which is something that Ukraine doesn’t require.

There is a question about air defence interceptors, but the interesting thing there is that air defence interceptors are critical for a Taiwan contingency, they’re critical for Ukraine and they may become critical for Israel. We’re not making enough of them. We need to make more of them for our own defence and for our deterrence posture. And so there is absolutely no reason not to invest in that as a capability. And then where they go is dependent upon where they’re needed. So at the moment, I don’t think there is an issue where resources are being diverted. If we start seeing a wider escalation in the Middle East and US logistical capacity, for example, airlift and other things, that’s being pulled away. That’s where European partners may well need to step up on Ukraine.

Gideon Rachman
Last question. I mean, talking to some of the political people in the west and even a few kind of very senior military figures, I’ve sort of sensed the shift that they’re now, partly in response to the perceived failure of the counteroffensive, saying, well, we need to reframe this whole thing and say, actually, if you look at the big picture, Ukraine’s done incredibly well and maybe it’s time to call a halt and we’ll have a political negotiation. And yeah, they’ll have to give up a little bit of territory but, you know, overall it’ll be good and this will happen sometime the middle of next year. Is that a fantasy or is that possible? Have you heard similar?

Jack Watling
Oh, I mean, throughout the entire conflict, people have thrown out these sorts of ideas at various times, and it very much reeks of retreating into the world that you wished existed rather than the one that’s actually in front of you. Because the Russians, you know, yeah, they’ll take a ceasefire. They’ll take a ceasefire and they’ll prepare and they’ll go again. And if we get into a position where Ukraine is forced to make some sort of concession, Russia will bank it and then exploit. They will capitalise on weakness. If we’re in a position where our view is, well, look, actually, we need this to go away because we’re not able to keep it up, then Russia has no incentive not to push further.

And the other thing is, is that we’ve been pushing around this sort of information narrative for a long time that oh, the Russians aren’t that scary. They have an economy the size of Italy, you know, and you say, right. And yet they’re what, outproducing the entire of Nato. What deterrence message does that send the Iranians or the Chinese or the Russians if your response to this is, oh dear, it’s all a bit difficult, can we make this problem go away?

So I don’t think that the negotiated position that is being proposed is a realistic one. It’s signalling weakness and you’ll get the opposite of what you want. It’s always interesting that people who raised this start from the position of asking, well, what concessions should Ukraine make rather than asking, well, if we want a lasting peace, what is required? And Ukraine, I think, would be very comfortable, actually, making concessions. They would be very pragmatic in making concessions if they thought that those concessions bought them a lasting peace and a future as an independent country with, you know, a democracy and their rights. But if they have to make concessions and it doesn’t buy them anything, then there is absolutely no reason for the Ukrainian government to negotiate or to stop fighting. So I find the way that this desire for the whole problem to go away is sort of framed as deeply unrealistic. And it portrays a shallowness in political strategy, because ultimately you need to convince the Russians that a lasting peace is better than the alternative for them. Otherwise they’re not gonna come to the negotiating table in good faith.

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Gideon Rachman
That was Jack Watling of the Royal United Services Institute here in London, ending this edition of the Rachman Review. Please join me again next week.

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