Fiona Hill: The World in 2026 (Part One)

Welcome to Intelligent Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Cerenty. Today's episode is part one of our recent live event with Fiona Hill. Fiona Hill is one of the most authoritative voices on the forces reshaping global politics today. Born in County Durham from 2017 to 2019, she was a senior advisor on European and Russian affairs at the White House. And in October 2019, she was a key witness in President Trump's first impeachment inquiry. In 2024 and 2025, she co-led the British Government Strategic Defence Review, which sets out how the UK should scale up its response to risks from an emboldened Russia and a less predictable United States. Hill joined us at Union Chapel, live on stage with John Soeple, to share her insights on the world in 2026. Let's join them now, live on stage in London. Well, thank you all so much for coming and for queuing up in the drizzly rain. It was a perfect London evening out there for you all. I could spend probably the next 20 minutes just talking about the prodigious achievements of Fiona, the extraordinary backstory, but I'm not because if you want that, read her wonderful memoir. There is nothing for you here, which I think may well be on sale at the back. Afterwards, as well as a book called, I'm Presidented, which, no, actually, it's called something else. It's called Strangeland. And it's, anyway, I won't talk about the author. Look, you're grupping the North East. It's an amazing story. We're going to, we won't come to that, but I want to concentrate on the world that we're living in right now because you are, perhaps among the most authoritative voices, on global security. And of course, from 2017 to 2019, you are the deputy assistant to the president of the United States. You are in charge of sort of European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council. We were both in Helsinki in June 2018 when the Trump Putin summit happened. I was in the room obviously with the other journalists waiting for the news conference to happen. You were in the room. And I think one of the enduring mysteries for me all the time I was in the North America editor and since is to try to understand Donald Trump's relationship with Vladimir Putin. And I wonder whether we can start there because I think for many people, the fact that Donald Trump never, ever seems able to criticize Vladimir Putin over anything is bewildering. Well, I think the first thing to disavow everybody of is the idea that there is a relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. I think that's part of the problem because Trump would like a relationship with Putin. And that's exactly why he doesn't criticize him. It's a kind of unrequited love of some description. You know, everyone keeps talking about it a bro man. He hasn't even got there. And you know Putin is very good at playing hard to get. Incredibly hard to get. And this is I think it drives Trump mad because he never gets what he wants off Putin, which is really a deletion respect. And you know, in the case of the situation we're dealing with now is Putin actually giving something up, making some kind of concession so that Trump can get his peace in Ukraine and his Nobel prize. And Putin is both denying him the ability to have a real relationship with him, lead a leader, and the ability to get these accolades for solving the war in Ukraine. And all the way leading up until this, there's just really this dynamic where Trump has tried to get his sit down with Putin, to get this breakthrough, to have the two of them all together. And it's inevitably being thwarted. I mean, that explains some of it. So I was struck. I would love to know what happened behind the scenes because I was struck in the news conference. And I, you know, as North America had gone around the world with Trump at these various press conferences that he had. And he was always the giant silverback guerrilla in the room. And he was beating up anyone else. And with Putin, he was like a little pussycat. And he was just absolutely enthralled to Vladimir Putin, it seemed. What was it like where we weren't in that sort of conference room in Helsinki in June 2018? Well to be honest, it's a little sad to have to relate this because it wasn't anything like everybody expected. I mean, really where everything went wrong was in the press conference and everybody who was watching that got to see it in real time. What Trump really wanted to do was to sit down with Putin one-on-one. And he can't do it one-on-one because he doesn't speak Russian, so we need to have an interpreter there. And in this case, they had an American interpreter as well as a Russian interpreter. And Putin tends to speak in not just complete sentences, but entire paragraphs, you know, he'll go on and on and on. So Trump has to wait and wait until that gets interpreted. And Putin has an advantage because he actually speaks English. He's been working on his English. You can always be in several steps ahead. So by the time Trump has sat all the way through waiting for the transition to come through, Putin's already off to the next kind of phase of his sparring with Trump. And what Trump really wanted out of Helsinki was to do a Gorbachev Reagan. He wanted to come out of there, and that's what he thought you were all going to be praising him for when he got to the press conference. And if you might recall at the very beginning, he's actually saying, look, we had this great meeting. You know, the world is a lot of a safer place because we've sat down because he thought he was going to come away with the beginnings of some kind of big arms control negotiation and some agreements. So remember that the big nuclear deal that has just expired is start. And what Trump wanted was the super-Trump arms regulation treaty. So I kind of a Trump-- It would have to have his name in it. He would have to have his name in it. And that's what he thought he was doing. But because everybody else just wanted to know, well, hang on, what went on with that meeting with Vladimir Putin behind the scenes because he was there with the interpreters. But we knew what had happened because our interpreter, the US interpreter came out and gave everybody a quick debrief. And she essentially said it was just like two guys chatting because Trump was just so thrilled to be talking to Putin. And he did try to move the conversation along. But what he did was really leave all of the meat to the conversation till the lunch where he had with his teams and basically asked Putin to repeat what he'd set in the other room because he obviously wasn't taking notes. So let me give you three theories that can explain this relationship. Because I think it-- I mean, we'll come to all the today's stuff of what's happening in Ukraine and what's happening in our relationship with Russia and the United States of America. But one theory I've had expressed to me by a very senior diplomat who served as an ambassador in Washington is that you have to understand that Donald Trump is a product of the post-war generation. He has an absolute terror of nuclear weapons and, therefore, he gives Putin more importance than maybe economically he should because of the terror of a nuclear war. Second theory is it's the Monroe doctrine rich large or the Donro doctrine as they're now calling it, which is everyone's got spheres of influence and Russia's got its backyard. Ukraine is part of that. America's got its backyard. Latin America is part of that. And China's got its backyard. And that's theory number two. Theory number three and it has been put to me by a senior diplomat is that Trump is a Russian asset. Is that ridiculous? Well, that isn't ridiculous because as far as Putin is concerned, everyone's potentially an asset. It doesn't mean that they're witting. So that's kind of part of the problem here. Because you can be pretty certain that Putin and the Russians have been spending an enormous amount of time, not just trying to penetrate the inner circles of Donald Trump, which isn't that difficult, to be honest, because all kinds of people, if people are going to see Anthony Scaramucci later, they'll hear about that as well. I mean, Trump has an open door to anybody who praises him and wants to get close to him. It's in Mar-a-Lago, it's wherever he is. So that's actually not all that difficult. And I think the Russians are pretty savvy about figuring out who someone is. And it's not just Trump. It's pretty much anybody who's ever come into the oil-based or visited Russia, keeping files in everybody. I think the second element you're saying about sphere of influence is probably the lesser of all of these rationales for why Trump is so enamored. I mean, yes, he certainly thinks the Western hemisphere is his, but he's not really going to let everybody else be unchecked anywhere else either. I mean, if Trump can get away with it, he will exert his influence wherever it is, be this in Asia or Latin America, obviously, or Europe or anywhere else. You just see everything we've seen him doing at the moment. But I do think there is something in the whole idea of him being shaped by his experiences growing up during the Cold War. How many was he a young kid really? I'm in a teenager during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And that would have probably scared him, you know, I think for sure it would have done. And then in the 1980s, the Euro Missile Crisis, which, you know, many of us, you know, when I will remember that and many others, you know, here in the audience, will, that was when Trump was really trying to put himself out there on the national stage. He was already a celebrity business man. And many of you will have read about Trump's efforts to pretty much stock Gorbachev. I mean, he wanted to become the arms negotiator. This is why it was such a big deal for him in Helsinki to sit down with Vladimir Putin. He'd been trying since the 1980s and since he first visited the Soviet Union, not just to make business deals. Sheenill iddi gwahan a gwasos ddoedd間 gwy Lloyd Beirnoen AM ti'n meddwl wedi g.� papodditau wetag OFFIC seed wrong sydd byddiaui da Twitterir Dewelostosfaiyw krydd dimol pyogloen Wedzły'ad heř� 구독olol felawd hon, yma swydd i credu a'u tagar thewnaos yn werfod yw ym'r ucyfno fel gy himself yn gylef yr anoddraglad yn ei mappedu sydd ym arwedod. 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Dwi'n iawn y gallwydus, mae modi yw 'чноad anbydd whoem neu fel gwerd gael consel caendeiddóch? E'n gwneud mwy caelไดwego nhw. Nghyw mewn sef Pra-feat wrthwll apocalypse ro Chancellor Hedeith Fewy, ac Skisney Nol unwdoraod ac ro chooses na wedyn gwa'n gw Traveler hypothesis Derek Scheded, ob tablespoonill yw maedig couldadol yn rhoi gwild yw erahau ac i'w 'kwy' i'n gwa'n gwneud gwneud iawn ni'n gwa'r 'explanatio' yn gwneud. Yn gwa'r 'ex'n gwneud yw 'cwyr yw'r 'ex'n gwneud yw'r 'ex'n gwneud yw erahau'r 'ex'n gwneud. Gynol 'mattis' yw'r 'ex'n gwneud yw erahau'r 'ex'n gwneud yw erahau'r 'ex'n gwneud. Mae'n gwneud yw erahau'r 'explanatio' yn gwneud yw erahau'r 'explanatio' yn gwneud. Mae'n gwneud yw erahau'r 'explanatio' yn gwneud yw erahau'r 'explanatio' yn gwneud yw erahau'r 'explanatio' yn gwneud yw erahau'r 'explanatio' yn gwneud yw erahau'r 'explanatio' yn gwneud yw erahau'r 'explanatio' yn gwneud. Mae hyn i hyn, ddim ho fyddiarodd, yn cyhanio ac ffordd i nid eion ni ffordd sy'n llong i beth dwi'n bod受 attis oedd fel syniadfan. Roeddiones yn gw今回'riodd initi allan. Find gyd add morel fel fel oeddwn yr bot i chi��ion i cl打及ar sy'n drwy sfiddoden. Ondd yn Dafwch yn Aedig n Matthew Lyna uswch y Dwi'r drwyche, qué Chylfodol yn diolch ar bryd arrow disabilityu'rwedd. Mae yw Uncle Victoria但, callwyn yn ffordd, Cath cynnaud wrthos gweld ffordd, ac sydd wedi hollol hyfordd, leif roeg, fun Applause going through this and it moving on with many occasions and he had likes created with lots of money and they had just heard of some failures if someone hadn't fallen in love with all of those. He had been in the fotos existed, he was 왜냐하면 but nobody could tell him that. He was a Oscar at the time and many of you will remember John Huntsman's business man, he had been a presidential candidate himself former governor of Utah and when he came to the Oval Office, all Trump wanted to talk about was John Huntsman's daughter who was on Fox and Friends. We didn't ever get to talk about Putin. That was a dud and then we got out to Helsinki and before that he had gone to play golf at his golf club so he wasn't really, nobody was running around little golf cart trying to say Mr President, "Get away to the second, let's talk about Mr Putin." We get to Helsinki and he still hasn't had the briefing. Ambassador Bolton, who was the NSA, the Times National Security Advisor, he tried, Pompeo at that point was the Secretary of State, he tried, the BFA tried to add some extra in, it didn't work at all. We ended up asking the Finnish President to seed his time at a breakfast where they were supposed to talk about Finland and US relations to actually tell him what it was like meeting Putin. The Finnish President had met with Putin more times than pretty much any other European leader so that's what we had to do. I'm told that when he Trump had the meeting with Kim Jong Un in Singapore, the first meeting, the only thing that Trump was interested in is the angle of the cameras and where the handshake would take place. The way to think about Trump as if you ever read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or saw the film version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is to think of him as Mike TV. So, nothing exists unless it's on television or inside television and that's how he thinks all the time. Because it's often he's watching television the entire time until he's having a meeting and sometimes if people come in to talk to him, he asks them if they were watching the same program, most likely they weren't because they were trying to get through security to get to see him. And he's saying, "Did you just see that?" And of course they didn't. And it's all about the optics, it's all about how it presents. And he's very clever that way. We can all laugh about it, but it's all about the performance. So this is a highly performative presidency. And the reason things went so badly in Helsinki in the press conference is that everybody didn't indulge him in the performance. He wanted the prayers for what was going on in the background. If you remember, all the screens were playing showing Gorbachev and Reagan or George H. W. Bush, first President Bush and Gorbachev and all these in various pictures. And he wanted to be seen as the peacemaker president, which he still wants to be in this case on nuclear weapons saving the world from Armageddon. So you've mentioned John Bolton there, who is now facing prosecution in America from the DOJ, from the Justice Department. Donald Trump has gone after other people who have said "disabliging things". You didn't hilt, do you ever worry that you speaking your mind as you're doing before us now could lead to legal jeopardy? Because the thing that strikes me, the main difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0, is the sense of intimidation and fear that people have and you gave evidence at the first impeachment investigation. Sure, and I got plenty of, you know, all kinds of nasty phone calls and things on the internet. I mean, I'm not on the internet anymore, I'm on LinkedIn, but you know, there's only limits to what people actually do on LinkedIn. I'm not encouraging you all to write me rude leises up by the way, on LinkedIn. I just want, you know, befriend you or whatever you do on LinkedIn, kind of click accept or whatever contact or anything. But I mean, it's just that he will try to intimidate people, you know, whichever way he can. In my case, I along with many, many other people, hundreds of people, were put on a list to have security clearances stripped away. I mean, to be honest, mine wasn't current, but it actually has a huge impact on many people who their livelihoods were linked to the fact that they could do consulting because they still had security clearances. He tries to, you know, kind of hit people, he does try to intimidate them and, you know, Putin does the same thing. I'm also on the Russian list of people who can't go to Russia, so, you know, it's all, I'm just waiting for it to happen here next. You know, it's just basically there, but they think that that will be sufficient. And look, there are an awful lot of people pushing back because that's what people like Trump unput in and many other people bank on. They bank on people being intimidated. And I think, you know, once you experience some of this, you know, and you get through it, you got your backup. And I think that that's, you're starting to see that. John Bolton, Ambassador Bolton, hasn't been cowed. He's up there every single day with another rockhead taking Trump on this, that's in the other, I mean, he's speaking out on CNN and all over the place at the moment and so a lot of other people. Just going back to my first question about the psychological relationship. I mean, does Trump just love the tough guy image, the sort of macho man of Vladimir Putin? And if you've ever seen any of Vladimir Putin's annual calendars that he produces, they are really, you know, it's him riding bareback without a shirt on. It's him fishing kind of in the rivers, you know, in overalls. I mean, is that what Trump wants to be seen as? Yes, he does. I think you'll notice that Putin doesn't do that quite so much anymore, but he's quite so attractive as you know, what's in the past. I mean, he's just more in these, you know, very still, monthly, steely, you know, bad asses, you know, kind of poses all the time. And that's, I mean, I don't know if any of you've been, you know, recent DC. I mean, I just flew over yesterday, but outside of the Justice Department now, there is a massive blue banner on most of the doorways. And it's Trump, you know, with all kinds of lighting looking down, gloweringly. And it says justice. I mean, this is just, it's only going to be a matter of time before there are pictures in schools in all kinds of, you know, official buildings. You know, he's going full on cult of personality vibe. And if you've looked at the White House website, it's full of memes. It's not anything about, you know, kind of what the United States is doing. And this is exactly that. And for Putin, that was very effective. I mean, I would actually say that Putin's the first real populist president of the 21st century in terms of just trying to make connections with all kinds of constituents. You know, everything from flying a micro light with endangered crayons to diving, not very far down, literally about 10 feet or, you know, something to go. ľw i wall Innheim ¿Qine vä andsegu heta diu y dry lata sy'n dgy travellingi o ei沸 a Athullaen I like? jorig o mide o Confemiadu Adroặt Reg Cycl Country, a sy'n dded장 sefytmau assume fre wavelength ac hyr果 drems mens порi Boyóll naau energ! Ten bacteri rwyndio cym дyddi i gif���, s胳�? mwyn greuz昭as ondителas o'r dyna fel enffalternablen; Titranglech ó ŵbeileud a greu dondwe neu. Bolewis wneud g</หchyd winef deriormol (gwynt sięter Child hahyddydo stoneados) F mae'r gwyth yn was內ny ohech a wrth gynd Lovelyb. Siol rydyda'n gyffir ond desig ar hyfonau. Ym a'r gwe our levelanohawren o feblio. Ja nhw'n Reif sy'n nryddwl gwnewh all стан jifnud, 2018 eraill yn ameilwn greg reゴ'n am hyoft yn bwllfa mewn'r cyflwyn o finn nhw i'l i raddi fan beth yn tellybwy ecosystem yn gydw gwai sylfa. Ddi byn deuxîd a'l agau roedd, dim yci dimnfelly y gallw i hyn yn cefron a'r mewn gydda sans yn yr ble i wedi allimb ac yw'g sthough bwllfa nou ei heb ham traff i do堁u sylfa, jysfynor a gwasana dw'r complain a nis eibl ni'n i edryl. Ym nihau rutiaeth yn'm foetwch yr hubua o'r fe집ngrun a'u was Zenti drawings obetijdi weithlu a'u sdyn nhw'n gwaith ym yn ffynor, ac yw'r ffynor ym yn ysgwyrddio a'u sdyn nhw'n ym yn yna, a'u sdyn nhw'n yna, a'u sdyn nhw'n yna, a'u sdyn nhw'n yna, a'u sdyn nhw'n yna, a'u sdyn nhw, a'u sdyn nhw, a'u sdyn nhw, a'u sdyn nhw, a'u cranean, syrendda, a'u sdyn nhw, a'u sdyn nhw, a'u sdyn nhw, oeddwn i'n gweithio? Is there anything that Europe can do? Is there anything that orders the pressure have to come from within his own inner circle? It has to come from Congress again and send it. I mean, I'm sorry to say, but Congress have been asleep at the wheel, not even asleep at the wheel. I think they've run out of the car and taken off somewhere else. And in fact, I mean, one of the interpretations from the recent Supreme Court overturning his tariffs was that Neil Gorsuch, one of the Supreme Court justices who's a bit of an originalist going back to the constitution. Who Trump appointed? Who Trump appointed has actually been making a case to Congress to say, "You are supposed to be the first sprung of government, and as an originalist, I'm actually trying to remind you of this," which Trump obviously hasn't liked at all. Everybody is basically saying, "Look, hello, members of Congress, be Republican, and Democrat, you basically need to do something here, because when you're actually looking at support for, you know, essentially, some kind of fair settlement for Ukraine, it's quite high in the United States. It doesn't mean to say that Americans think they should be doing it all. They certainly think that Europe and the UK and other countries should be really stepping up here and taking much more of the lead for support of Ukraine, but it's not that they want Trump to hand Ukraine over on a placitive, like you may put in. You know, it's all about certainly over 50 percent and closer to 60 percent depending on the pole of Americans, and most members of Congress, their staffs and members of the Senate are in the same position as well. So it's really this is all about, you know, getting back to where we started again, Trump is on fascination with Putin, but it also, his own cult of the strongman. He wants to be a strongman. He's only pears in the world are other strongmen, and there are only two of them, as far as he's concerned, one is Vladimir Putin, and the other is President Xi of China. And, you know, kind of there's really nobody else there. I mean, he might, you know, kind of pump up here and there, Victor Robyn on Nigel Farage, but they're just lesser mortals as far as he's concerned. It's all really about how he is perceived. And so he thinks that Russia is strong. It's not just about, as you were pointing out before the nuclear weapons, he's still got a view of Russia's the successor state to the Soviet Union, therefore, is the other superpower. Even though for many other countries, Russia is very much a declining force, especially as a result of the war in Ukraine. With a GDP smaller than Italy's? Yeah, and he sees Ukraine as basically a weak state. So his view all the time is that Ukraine is a loser. I mean, it's losing, you know, it's losing ground, it's not, you know, a big state, it's actually a very large state, to be told. And so, you know, Ukraine should just give in to Russia, that's what he's saying all over the time. Thanks for listening to Intelligent Squared. This episode was produced by Hannah K, and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings, you can become a member over at IntelligentSquared.com/membership. And if you'd like to join us at future events, you can see our full program over at IntelligentSquared.com/tend. You've been listening to Intelligent Squared. Thanks for joining us.