Around the World in 80 Minutes

A discussion with Alexandra Hall Hall, the former diplomat in the British Foreign Office and current co-host of Disorder podcast.

For more than 30 years, Alexandra Hall Hall, my guest on today’s PREVAIL podcast, worked as a diplomat in the British Foreign Office, with postings in Bangkok, Delhi, Bogota, Tbilisi, and her craziest destination, Washington. Unable to represent the Government’s position on Brexit with integrity, she resigned in December 2019, during the peak Boris Johnson era. She is now the co-host, with Jason Pack, of the invaluable Disorder podcast.

Here are three takeaways from our far-ranging discussion:

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Georgia is vulnerable to further Russian incursion.

The small nation in the Caucasus, where Hall Hall was ambassador from 2013-16, was not long ago the most democratic country in the region. Georgia “was the one country in the post-Soviet space that had successfully had an election and a democratic transition peacefully,” she tells me. “It had a relatively open society. It had a free press. It had ambitions to join the European Union and NATO. And as a result of its war in 2008 when Russia invaded and grabbed 20 percent of Georgia’s territory, it had got the attention of the world and it had strong support from the EU, from NATO and from the US. So it was a very stirring and encouraging time to be there. . . .So Georgia was really the beacon in the region. It was a really great time to be there. Sadly, that has changed.”

The Georgian Dream party, which won the election against President Mikheil Saakashvili in 2012, has been less than dreamy. But then, Georgia is in a precarious position: a small, vulnerable country close to a vast and bellicose Russia, and largely forgotten by the West. And there is a shared history with Russia, not least of which the fact that Joseph Stalin is from Georgia.

Hall Hall continues:

Georgia gets beamed a lot of propaganda from Russia and Russia under Vladimir Putin is playing up Russia’s, the Soviet Union’s, heroics during World War II. It’s part of Putin’s own propaganda narrative about the heroics of the Soviet Union. So some of that infiltrates into Georgia. And so I think there are older generations that have that certain memory of when Georgia was kind of a treasured place within the Soviet Union. If you are a younger Georgian, you’re looking far more towards the EU and the West, and Stalin is a memory of an older repressive time. So there are sort of ambivalent attitudes. When I was ambassador, I used to go to Europe Day celebrations and commemorations of World War II, and there would always be a handful of people who would be carrying pictures of Stalin or putting flowers on monuments, Soviet monuments. So there is a legacy there.

In Tbilisi, they watch the war in Ukraine—and the West’s response to it—with great interest. If the West won’t come to the aid of Ukraine, a much larger and strategically important country, it is likely they would let Georgia twist in the wind. She tells me:

My worry was that if Putin got really pushed back and defeated in Ukraine, there was a soft target where it could tighten its grip in Georgia. It could formally recognize the independence of the breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, or it could formally annex them as part of Russia. The issue was whether this would be done with the tacit acceptance of the current Georgian government or not. Under Saakashvili there was absolutely no way that this would be accepted. Under the current Georgian Dream government, I do worry that they feel if Ukraine is not going to win, and if the EU and NATO ultimately are never going to let [Georgia] become members of these bodies, [they will] have to reconcile [themselves] to the neighborhood and reconcile with Russia. And so the hedging of bets is partly as a result of a sense how strong and how deep is EU and NATO support . . . . I mean, when push comes to shove, will they really defend us?

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Brexit, as implemented by the conservative government, is still negatively impacting British politics.

I have always thought Brexit was a Russian op—the British prong of the two-prong op that gave us Trump. But unlike with Donald in the White House, Britain leaving the EU didn’t have to be an unmitigated disaster. The succession of prime ministers after the vote, and their bungling of the transition, has exacerbated the issue.

“The fact [is] that the UK has always been a slightly awkward, reluctant member of the EU,” Hall Hall explains. “One could make a case that we would rather be out and sovereign, but you have to be honest with your own people, as well as your allies, about the consequences of that. And it was the dishonesty of it that got me. And it’s the continuing dishonesty of it. We are still in a situation where prime ministers, they don’t want to admit some of the negative consequences of Brexit. So they are still trying to say it’s a success. And it’s warping all British government policy ever since we left the EU because we are trying to put lipstick on a pig and say it’s a success. It’s cascading dishonesty through our system.” The messaging, and the stubborn refusal to take ownership of mistakes, has “had way more damaging effects beyond the actual fact of leaving the EU.”

No prime minister, no matter how talented or well-intentioned, can square this circle. As Hall Hall puts it, Brexit is an albatross around the neck. Rishi Sunak is no exception. She continues:

[I]f they admit that Brexit was a mistake, they instantly…discredit the basis on which they’ve built their entire political project for the last 10 years, and they also alienate a vast amount of their constituency. So they can’t own up to it. So prime minister after prime minister has had to just sort of adopt the narrative. ‘We just need to find the right form of Brexit, the sort of purer form of Brexit.’ It’s like Communism; it can never be pure enough. And Sunak, like all his predecessors, is now being accused from the right of the party that he just hasn’t believed in it enough, delivered it enough, pursued an ideologically coherent version of Brexit enough.

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The assassination of Alexei Navalny, while horrible and tragic, is unlikely to sway world opinion to action.

When I spoke with Hall Hall three weeks ago, Navalny had just been murdered. I asked if this might be the event that galvanizes world opinion against Putin once and for all. She replied, “I’m horrified to say I don’t think anything’s going to change. I think it’s yet another red line. And Putin has crossed red line after red line after red line after red line. And we express outrage, we condemn, we wring our hands, we say this is awful, we’re not going to put up with it—and yet again we’re not going to apply sufficient consequences.”

Navalny has been dead since February 16. Unfortunately, so far, Hall Hall’s prediction has been proven right.

“The guy obviously feels he can get away with it,” she says. “I mean, he invaded an entire country. And what’s so sad to me is a year ago, the Munich Security Conference, a year ago, it felt like we were at a turning point in a really strong direction.…And I thought a year ago, despite the darkness of the invasion of Ukraine, I felt really optimistic. It’s like, Wow, there’s juice in us, and we’ve rediscovered our mojo. And I can’t believe it. Now I feel we’re at a dangerous turning point the other way.”

She continues:

We’re at a unhinging point where we have the front runner for the Republican nomination openly saying that he would not support other members in NATO if they continue to fail to contribute at least two percent of GDP towards their defense. That is undoing the cornerstone of what has provided our security for 75 years, which is ‘An attack on one is an attack on all.’ And it is giving a green light to Putin that America may not come to the aid of a NATO country if it’s invaded. If I was a Baltic country, I would be shitting bricks right now, because he has basically just been given a green light. Then you have the killing of Navalny. Putin obviously thinks he can do that.”

The death of Navalny, sadly and predictably, has had zero effect on the MAGA wing of the House GOP, including feckless Speaker Mike Johnson, in terms of compelling them to pass legislation to arm Ukraine.

“The only thing I hope is it finally gets the stupid House of Representatives to get their act together and pass that damn act. And I also hope it galvanizes this administration to send Ukraine the ATACMS that it needs, the high intensity weapons that it’s needed,” Hall Hall says. “Get your damn act together! Get those weapons to Ukraine! That’s the best thing we can do to respond to the death of Navalny is get that damn money and that damn weaponry to Ukraine. And if we don’t, it will confirm my worst fear that we’ve lost our mojo.

“It’s awful.”

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST.

Follow Alex:
https://twitter.com/alexhallhall

Read her columns at Byline Times:
https://bylinetimes.com/author/alexandrahallhall/

Listen to Disorder Podcast:
 https://linktr.ee/disorderpod

Her piece about the decision to resign:
https://tnsr.org/2021/10/should-i-stay-or-should-i-go-the-dilemma-of-a-conflicted-civil-servant/

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Photo credit: BATUMI, Georgia (March 17, 2018) The skyline of Batumi, Georgia, from aboard the Harpers Ferry-class dock landing ship USS Oak Hill (LSD 51) as the ship arrives for a scheduled port visit March 17, 2018. Oak Hill, homeported in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit are conducting naval operations in the 6th Fleet area of operations. (Marine Corps Photo by Staff Sgt. Dengrier M. Baez/Released)