Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at breaking points, are already thinking of
Speaker 1: ways we can up our game for this critical election.
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Speaker 2: the absolute world to have your support.
Speaker 4: But enough with that, let's get to the show. Ukraine
Speaker 4: is losing this war.
Speaker 1: They are not going to drive Russia out of PRIMEA,
Speaker 1: They're not going to drive Russia out of many of.
Speaker 4: The territories that they've taken.
Speaker 1: Right now, we should be working toward a deal, a
Speaker 1: peaceful solution, which has been on the table several times
Speaker 1: throughout this war, and it's been the West who has
Speaker 1: been trying to squash it.
Speaker 3: Ukraine hasn't been losing. Both countries have been stalling. I
Speaker 3: don't want this conflict to end in a way that's
Speaker 3: going to guarantee the conflict reemerges in two years. If
Speaker 3: the line just freezes where it is right now, are
Speaker 3: we not guaranteeing another conflict in a few years.
Speaker 1: The United States of America holds all of the chips.
Speaker 1: We could offer Vladimir Putin something that would probably get
Speaker 1: him to do whatever we wanted him to do. And
Speaker 1: you know that is the ultimate crowning jewel for heavy
Speaker 1: How about we leave Nata.
Speaker 5: All right, welcome to Counterpoints Today. We're going to be
Speaker 5: talking about the Ukraine Russia war. Emily, who are going
Speaker 5: to have.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Well, we have two great guests joining us. We
Speaker 6: were joined by YouTuber live streamer Vash and we are
Speaker 6: joined by comedian podcast hosts Dave Smith Vous Dave welcome,
Speaker 6: Thanks for joining.
Speaker 4: Us, my pleasure, Thanks for having us.
Speaker 6: Well. Ukraine is a timely subject to debate right now.
Speaker 6: Obviously we're two plus years into the war, but there
Speaker 6: have been recent escalations and that makes it important, I
Speaker 6: think to sort of go through some of those recent developments.
Speaker 6: For example, the US recently greenld as many people know,
Speaker 6: strikes with US weapons inside of Russia. There was the
Speaker 6: strike that the Russia is blaming the US for in
Speaker 6: CRIMEA just over the last couple of days. So I
Speaker 6: think probably a good way to begin is to give
Speaker 6: you both kind of an opening statement here, and I'll
Speaker 6: start with you, Bosh. Should the US continue funding this war,
Speaker 6: and then we'll go to Dave on the same question,
Speaker 6: but go ahead first, Bosh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I don't like the idea on a
Speaker 3: systemic level of rewarding Russia for invading a neighbor. I
Speaker 3: just think generally speaking, that's bad for global relations, very destabilizing.
Speaker 3: I think it's important that we support any system that
Speaker 3: prevents that from happening. And not exactly a novel position
Speaker 3: with regards to the recent development and strikes inside Russian territory,
Speaker 3: I actually think that this is in the long run
Speaker 3: going to be a good move for peace, just because
Speaker 3: the previous US doctrine, which seemed to be provide just
Speaker 3: enough weapons to stall the war but not like decisively concluded.
Speaker 3: I think that was actually like the worst possible decision.
Speaker 3: You know, if Russia did a sort of like early conquest,
Speaker 3: or if Ukraine decisively held its territory, those both and
Speaker 3: the war relatively quickly, but just in perminably stalling it
Speaker 3: right at the river, you know, I don't think that
Speaker 3: would have been good in the long run. Hopefully, these
Speaker 3: increased attacks inside Russian territory, mostly of course the refineries
Speaker 3: that they're using to sort of get up their war economy.
Speaker 3: Hopefully that serves as an effective long term deterrent. I
Speaker 3: don't want this conflict to continue. I don't want civilians
Speaker 3: to die. Yeah, I mean, obviously we'll have to see
Speaker 3: how things play out.
Speaker 6: Dave, go ahead.
Speaker 1: Well, of course, we should stop funding this. We never
Speaker 1: should have been funding this war to begin with. I
Speaker 1: think that in the original Cold War, which I still
Speaker 1: regard as one of the worst US policies in modern
Speaker 1: American history, that did so much to ruin our country
Speaker 1: and not to mention, you know, like things like the
Speaker 1: Vietnam War and the millions of people who died in it,
Speaker 1: but at least in the original Cold War, I think
Speaker 1: there was always a healthy respect for the risks involved
Speaker 1: and that all of us should all same people should
Speaker 1: recognize that the greatest priority in human history is that
Speaker 1: the United States of America and Russia do not go
Speaker 1: to war. And this something that people in the old
Speaker 1: Cold War were very respectful of and aware of. The
Speaker 1: Difference in this new Cold War environment is that no
Speaker 1: one in the upper rechilants of power in America seems
Speaker 1: to have any respect for this threat and any respect
Speaker 1: for you know, you could think to yourself, Well, maybe
Speaker 1: this will work out in a positive way that the
Speaker 1: US is green lighting attacks inside of Russia, or perhaps
Speaker 1: it could be an absolute disaster and we're playing with
Speaker 1: When I say we're playing with fire, it's an understatement
Speaker 1: where we're flirting with potentially the most disastrous thing that
Speaker 1: could happen to the human species. If America is to
Speaker 1: have any role in this conflict, it should be working
Speaker 1: toward a peaceful negotiation, and in fact, the American role
Speaker 1: in the Western role has been to kill peaceful negotiations
Speaker 1: from the beginning of this war and to prolong the fighting.
Speaker 1: I think that as John Meerscheimer said back in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: the West is leading Ukraine down the Primrose path has
Speaker 1: turned out to be the most accurate prediction on this
Speaker 1: entire conflict. And essentially, I think since the fall of
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, American foreign policy, and just keep in
Speaker 1: mind American foreign policy in the Clinton administration, in the w.
Speaker 1: Bush administration, in Obama's administration, those are the same people
Speaker 1: who are in charge of the Middle East. And in fact,
Speaker 1: the neo Conservatives were very focused on NATO expansion back
Speaker 1: in the nineties. You can go read the project for
Speaker 1: New American Century Documents. And the same people who totally
Speaker 1: blundered foreign policy in the Middle East have totally blundered
Speaker 1: foreign policy in Europe, provoking Vladimir Putin and the Russians
Speaker 1: at every turn, leading to this awful place.
Speaker 4: That we're in.
Speaker 1: That is, certainly, if you care about the Ukrainians at all,
Speaker 1: has been more of a disaster for the Ukrainian people
Speaker 1: than anyone else.
Speaker 7: And Dave Vash made a point that I think you
Speaker 7: hear a lot.
Speaker 5: From defenders of US support for the Ukrainian war, and
Speaker 5: that is, you can't allow other countries. No, you can't
Speaker 5: reward other countries for invading other countries.
Speaker 7: You just can't do that. We can't have that. What's
Speaker 7: the response to that we can't have that argument?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, first I would just point out how
Speaker 1: absurd it is that after the last twenty years of
Speaker 1: terror wars, somehow the United States of America still gets
Speaker 1: to put itself in the position of global peacemaker, as
Speaker 1: if our major concern is that bigger nations can bully
Speaker 1: smaller nations. I mean, over the last twenty years, there's
Speaker 1: been no greater purveyor of violence than the United States
Speaker 1: of America, who has imposed its will on tiny, helpless
Speaker 1: nations across the world.
Speaker 4: As far as.
Speaker 1: That, yeah, it's not good that Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine,
Speaker 1: and yes, certainly that's something we don't want to see,
Speaker 1: my argument would be that America and the West more
Speaker 1: broadly had many opportunities, many off ramps to put this
Speaker 1: fire out or at least calm it down, and at
Speaker 1: every single turn forward more gasoline on this fire that
Speaker 1: ultimately resulted in the invasion in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so bosh, how can the US say with a
Speaker 5: straight face that it's not okay for other countries to
Speaker 5: invade smaller countries.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's kind of a cowardly non argument
Speaker 3: because I'm not arguing in favor of the moral superiority
Speaker 3: of the United States. That'd be a ridiculous position for
Speaker 3: me to take. It's not football. We're not taking sides
Speaker 3: like you know, waving banners. There are two levels to
Speaker 3: this when it comes to agency. We're concerned about the
Speaker 3: broader socioeconomic and geopolitical context that led to where we
Speaker 3: are now, and that goes back to the Cold War
Speaker 3: and even earlier. You know, if we listened to Putin's
Speaker 3: justifications for the invasion, it goes back to the borders
Speaker 3: of the Russian Empire, you know, and then there's like
Speaker 3: the immediate decision making. We mustn't remove agency from the equation.
Speaker 3: Russia invaded, by Putin's own words, in a sort of
Speaker 3: territorial land grab. The idea that it was entirely because
Speaker 3: of response to Western aggression or oposturing is ridiculous and
Speaker 3: a historical but that doesn't mean the West isn't responsible
Speaker 3: for helping to create the situation where it now. We
Speaker 3: have to balance These two justifications are arrogance after the
Speaker 3: end of the Cold War, the fact that rather than
Speaker 3: reaching out to Russia as a potential future ally, we ostracized,
Speaker 3: you know, with the shock therapy, the sort of economic
Speaker 3: devastation of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet states. These
Speaker 3: contributed to an environment in which future conflict was inevitable.
Speaker 3: It was reprehensible in the part of the Western governments
Speaker 3: to participate in this. Look today at the divide between
Speaker 3: former West and Eastern Germany. I mean, the reason that
Speaker 3: East Germany is voting so heavily for the AfD is
Speaker 3: in large part because they see it as a rejection
Speaker 3: of the doctrine of the West that left them behind
Speaker 3: after reunification. These should all be taken into account, and
Speaker 3: we must acknowledge that Putin is a fascist who did
Speaker 3: a territorial landgrap Those two facts don't contradict each other.
Speaker 3: They work together to create a complete narrative with regards
Speaker 3: to the invasion. Now, I agree we have to take
Speaker 3: the threat from Russia seriously, and by that I mean
Speaker 3: we don't want this to scale out infinitely. We don't
Speaker 3: want this to turn into a global war. That's something
Speaker 3: we have to take seriously. At the same time, we
Speaker 3: have to acknowledge Russia does too, and they're constant threats
Speaker 3: of nuclear war. The fact that they started this invasion,
Speaker 3: the fact that they have been posturing and acting aggressive
Speaker 3: towards Finland, towards the Baltic States, even like ramping up
Speaker 3: aggression towards the rest of Western Europe. We must consider
Speaker 3: again their agency. Now I think that in the long
Speaker 3: run there is a very deleterious consequence to creating an
Speaker 3: incentive structure where Putain gets to boost his national rep
Speaker 3: his prestige with a successful land grab in Ukraine. I
Speaker 3: think it would have been disastrous if he could have
Speaker 3: just marched west and taken the territory, because it would
Speaker 3: have reaffirmed and rewarded all the worst possible behaviors from him.
Speaker 3: That doesn't mean I think that we should sort of
Speaker 3: do a victory lap around Russia, you know, Cold War two.
Speaker 3: Let's win, let's let's let's trounce them in Ukraine. I
Speaker 3: do think that we're in a tough situation because we
Speaker 3: can't just like magically make Russia a democracy or a
Speaker 3: country less incentivized to invaded staples or reclaim historical territory.
Speaker 3: It's a difficult question, which is why I don't like
Speaker 3: simple answers.
Speaker 6: So, Dave, actually, here's an interesting point that Vauschist raised
Speaker 6: about the beginning of the war, and if we may
Speaker 6: all agree, correct me if I'm wrong, that we all
Speaker 6: think it would have been bad if Putin had indeed
Speaker 6: marched into Kiev and took all of Ukraine, et cetera.
Speaker 6: But that leads us to the question, Dave, of how
Speaker 6: much US involvement, if any, was just if we agreed
Speaker 6: that it was good for the US to perhaps prevent
Speaker 6: the Russian capture of Kiev, et cetera. At what point
Speaker 6: did it become too much? At what point is the
Speaker 6: support no longer just or moral? How do you respond
Speaker 6: to that, Dave.
Speaker 1: I think that the point that it, I mean, you
Speaker 1: could start at a lot of different points. I think
Speaker 1: the first round of NATO expansion was unjust and was
Speaker 1: unnecessarily provocative of the Russians. I'm not exactly sure what
Speaker 1: vash is referring to as like a cowardly non argument.
Speaker 4: I simply was directly responding to Ryan's point.
Speaker 1: If you have a serial killer who's killed far more
Speaker 1: people than another serial killer, and they claim that they're
Speaker 1: trying to stop a serial killer because they're so against killing,
Speaker 1: it's reasonable to point out that no, this is in
Speaker 1: fact not what's motivating US foreign policy. That know, the
Speaker 1: butcherers of Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and Somalia and
Speaker 1: Libya and Yemen are not actually motivated by some sense
Speaker 1: of we can't let big guys pick on little guys.
Speaker 1: Let's have an honest conversation about what's really motivating this policy.
Speaker 1: And it has been since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: To increase the power of the American empire, and Russia
Speaker 1: has always been seen as a force that's outside of
Speaker 1: the American Empire. That's what's been motivating American foreign policy.
Speaker 1: This is what we're living through here is largely the
Speaker 1: neo conservative doctrine. It is the worst thing that ever
Speaker 1: happened in the history of our country is that after
Speaker 1: we became probably the first ever true global superpower, about
Speaker 1: ten years later, the neo conservatives got control of our
Speaker 1: foreign policy, and this was their plan from the very beginning.
Speaker 4: So no, I don't think America should have been.
Speaker 1: Involved in Ukraine at all, and I certainly don't think
Speaker 1: that that anything we've done has done anything except make
Speaker 1: this situation much worse and much much more dangerous, because
Speaker 1: now you are experiencing a proxy war with the two
Speaker 1: biggest nuclear superpowers. I don't think saying any of that
Speaker 1: is reducing things down to simplistic, simplistic worldview, And of course,
Speaker 1: you know, you kind of snuck a straw man in there.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say that this conflict is entirely because of
Speaker 1: NATO expansion, but to pretend like that's not a major
Speaker 1: driving factor in this conflict is to not be dealing
Speaker 1: with reality. And this has been admitted by all of
Speaker 1: the top people on both sides, and this was why
Speaker 1: so many peopeople within the national security apparatus in the
Speaker 1: nineties opposed the first round of NATO expansion explicitly because
Speaker 1: this will provoke a reaction from the Russians. Through the years,
Speaker 1: the Russians have been crystal clear that Ukraine was their
Speaker 1: red line. Thanks to the greatest journalist of the twenty
Speaker 1: first century, the hero Julian Assan, who is thankfully now
Speaker 1: a free man, we know that the current head of
Speaker 1: the CIA, Burns told Condaleza writes this explicitly that this
Speaker 1: was a red line, and not a red line in
Speaker 1: the way that America makes up red lines, like Obama
Speaker 1: will say if Asad uses a certain type of weapon
Speaker 1: on his people, that's a red line for us.
Speaker 4: It's all just ridiculous.
Speaker 1: This is a red line in a true sense, in
Speaker 1: the sense that Jack Kennedy said, putting nuclear missiles in
Speaker 1: Cuba is a red line for us.
Speaker 4: We will blow up the world if you try to
Speaker 4: do that.
Speaker 1: Vladimir Putin, and as Burns pointed out, not just Vladimir Putin,
Speaker 1: the entire Russian establishment has been unanimous on this that
Speaker 1: they will not tolerate Ukraine and jury to NATO. And look,
Speaker 1: it was not it's not justified or reasonable for Vladimir
Speaker 1: Putin to have launched this war, But on the scale
Speaker 1: of geopolitical demands, the demand that Ukraine cannot be a
Speaker 1: part of the American Empire's military alliance was a fairly
Speaker 1: reasonable one, and we could have avoided this whole war
Speaker 1: by just committing to that.
Speaker 6: I have a quick follow up on that, Dave, So
Speaker 6: sure all things, you know, we're dealing in the reality
Speaker 6: that we did push for the NATO expansion and twenty
Speaker 6: fourteen and all of that considered. Is your position that
Speaker 6: there should have been like basically zero aid, military, whatever
Speaker 6: else a government aid to Ukraine after the invasion a
Speaker 6: couple of years back, like basically just none.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, if there was any role for the Americans to play,
Speaker 1: it would have been trying to negotiate an end to
Speaker 1: the war. Unfortunately, you know, if you're putting me in
Speaker 1: the hypothetical of like, you can't change anything before this,
Speaker 1: but you're already here, we had probably blown all of
Speaker 1: that good will and there were better parties who would
Speaker 1: have been more suited for that. You know, for example,
Speaker 1: going back to even the Bootgres summit in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, into the beginning of the Maydan Revolution, Germany
Speaker 1: was much more hesitant to get to go down this path.
Speaker 1: There were other European countries who were kind of like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's not provoke the Russians. It's part of the reason
Speaker 1: why Ukraine didn't get a full map invitation in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight. It's the objection of the Germans. So
Speaker 1: probably someone else would have been better at it. Yes, Essentially,
Speaker 1: what I'm saying is that the greatest purveyor of violence in.
Speaker 4: The world, the most war hungry country in the world, the.
Speaker 1: United States of America, shouldn't have been the ones at
Speaker 1: the table at all, and there might have been some
Speaker 1: goodwill from other parties who had more of an interest
Speaker 1: to avoid this catastrophe, if I may.
Speaker 3: I just there are elements of this that I guess
Speaker 3: don't make sense to me. First of all, the claim
Speaker 3: that America's decision making is based on it tried to
Speaker 3: expand its own geopolitical power rather than any altruistic interest.
Speaker 3: That's true, but that's also the case for all countries.
Speaker 3: That's basic ir theory. So the idea of like, well,
Speaker 3: this Neokon theory of America expanding it's interest.
Speaker 4: That's just nation states.
Speaker 3: Russia's doing that right now, India's doing that, China's doing that.
Speaker 4: Everyone's doing that.
Speaker 3: We're better at it because we're a superpower, of course,
Speaker 3: but that's like a fundamental rule of national exchange. I
Speaker 3: don't think that it's really a moral question. It's a
Speaker 3: matter of material conditions. In a basic Marxist sense. Who's
Speaker 3: motivated by what and where they are In the modern world,
Speaker 3: you know, the imperial sphere of influence extends to the
Speaker 3: entire planet. You know, American jets can reach any part
Speaker 3: of the world in twenty four hours. Everyone's can if
Speaker 3: they have jets. There's no we get the nation next
Speaker 3: to us, Which makes me think the idea that like
Speaker 3: Ukraine is more innately in the Russian sphere of influence
Speaker 3: is I think it's a little bit old hat. At
Speaker 3: the end of the day, the people in Ukraine were
Speaker 3: interested in closer relations with the EU, and that is
Speaker 3: ultimately what triggered everything from Euromi on Yuonokovich fleeing, the
Speaker 3: annexation of Crimea, the invasion of the Dunbass following the
Speaker 3: invasion of Ukraine. Broadly, this is again a complicated situation.
Speaker 3: I don't mean to detract from the influence that Western
Speaker 3: arrogance hadn't I would never never try to do that.
Speaker 3: But I do think that, like your roadmap for how
Speaker 3: things should have progressed from American perspective following the twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two invasion is misguided, because I don't think the
Speaker 3: world would be any farther from annihilation if Russia had
Speaker 3: simply marched westward, taken give and we had a bunch
Speaker 3: of ginned up Russian soldiers right up against the border
Speaker 3: of Poland, you know, having just successfully annexed former Soviet
Speaker 3: slash Russian imperial territory. You could imagine the propaganda coming
Speaker 3: out of the Kremlin about how they're reuniting their people.
Speaker 3: They're sort of like expanding the Russian interest in like
Speaker 3: a diaganist ethnic sense, you know, reclaiming the empire. I
Speaker 3: think that like the incentive structure behind that would be
Speaker 3: really bad. Like that you're basically getting You're like you're
Speaker 3: throwing chum into the water for you know, Putin is expansionist.
Speaker 3: He's been sort of like preempting this for a long
Speaker 3: time with Georgia, you know, his behavior with the Chechens.
Speaker 3: I don't think that that would bring us any closer
Speaker 3: to peace now. Is the current path we're on right
Speaker 3: now the best possible road? Obviously not nothing we ever
Speaker 3: do is the best possible road, But I think it's
Speaker 3: closer to threading that line than just letting them march
Speaker 3: westward with them. What I'm interested in, I guess, is
Speaker 3: practical solutions now outside of just letting Ukraine get annexed,
Speaker 3: which I really don't think would have been good for
Speaker 3: world peace in the long run, even if it would
Speaker 3: have quickly ended the conflicts. How do we incentivize Ukraine
Speaker 3: and Russia to come to the table and bring it
Speaker 3: into this war? Can Ukraine regain its lost territory? I
Speaker 3: think morally it should be able to, because I don't
Speaker 3: like nations being rewarded for annexing adjacent territory. But logistically
Speaker 3: can they Would it be possible to end things where
Speaker 3: they are now? Would Russia keep crimea and that just
Speaker 3: be seen as a kind of like dull historical injustice
Speaker 3: to fade away over time At one hundred years from now,
Speaker 3: people would be like, did you know CRIMEA used to
Speaker 3: be Ukraine.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I just there's so much dogmatism, and whenever you bring
Speaker 3: up like modern solutions, people go back to I don't know,
Speaker 3: the end of the Cold War. I know, I mean,
Speaker 3: I understand NATO is not exactly a global force for good,
Speaker 3: But what can we do now? I mean, I so
Speaker 3: rarely hear answers that are contextualized in the current moment.
Speaker 1: I want to answer your question at the end there,
Speaker 1: but just like a few things I want to point out,
Speaker 1: number one, I think this is almost like bigger than
Speaker 1: just any political debate. There's kind of it's a broader
Speaker 1: theme in life in general. I think anybody who's married,
Speaker 1: who's on the show or listening to the show, knows
Speaker 1: this is true in personal relationships. There's a tendency if
Speaker 1: you're in an argument with your wife or your husband
Speaker 1: or something like that, to focus on what they did
Speaker 1: and what they did that's bothering you. But a much
Speaker 1: more healthy posture if you're in a successful relationship is
Speaker 1: that you also add in, like, Okay, well what am
Speaker 1: I doing, how am I participating in this?
Speaker 4: What have I done?
Speaker 1: That's kind of led to this situation generally speaking, I
Speaker 1: think that if you look at the corporate media, you're
Speaker 1: going to hear all of this talk about what Putin's done,
Speaker 1: and I don't think. I think a lot of times
Speaker 1: in these debates people can kind of claim to be like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm adding I have a more nuanced position. I'm not
Speaker 1: simplifying things. I think the point of saying that, like, well,
Speaker 1: all governments are expansionist by nature, so there's no difference
Speaker 1: between the neo conservatives and say, other groups of people,
Speaker 1: it's I don't know, it's I'm not saying they're the same,
Speaker 1: but like a logical analogy, it's like, oh, well, all
Speaker 1: governments kill people. So like what Adolf Hitler's doing is
Speaker 1: just kind of the same as other governments. It's not
Speaker 1: exactly true. It's kind of different in scale and in kind.
Speaker 1: To sit here and say and look, if we have time,
Speaker 1: we could go through the history of Chechnya and Georgia
Speaker 1: and all this stuff, but to zoom out a little bit.
Speaker 1: During the Cold War, we drew the line at the
Speaker 1: Elbe River halfway through Germany. On one side was the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union, on the other side was NATO, and we're now,
Speaker 1: you know, We're now talking about Ukraine, and you could
Speaker 1: sit here with a straight face and say Putin is expansionist. Okay,
Speaker 1: I mean, if that's how you want to look at it,
Speaker 1: It's like, let's just look at the actual reality of
Speaker 1: what's happening here. It's not that Putin has been this
Speaker 1: expansionist force. Putin has been almost at every turn reaction
Speaker 1: reacting to the expansion of the American Empire and Ukraine.
Speaker 1: That's not Listen, that's just not true. It's not denying
Speaker 1: someone agency to say that they're responding to something that
Speaker 1: does doesn't everything to everything.
Speaker 4: That's all life. Sue just acts without it. You didn't
Speaker 4: gi just a cop out. That's just a cop out.
Speaker 4: That's not the one. You're the one providing the cop out.
Speaker 3: You're saying that, like, it's not possible for Putin to
Speaker 3: have like a distinctly expansionist element to his rule because
Speaker 3: everyone's responding to so it's not possibility the expansionist element
Speaker 3: to his rule.
Speaker 4: Okay, there's no, that's not a binary one. Is it's not?
Speaker 1: Hi, Instead of just interrupting me, let me make the
Speaker 1: point you just laid out by a binary between is
Speaker 1: it possible he has expansionist intentions and does he have
Speaker 1: expansionist intentions.
Speaker 4: That's not a binary.
Speaker 1: There are some expansionist desires that he has no In fact,
Speaker 1: if you actually like educate yourself on this topic, it
Speaker 1: was our CIA director who said, and then yet means
Speaker 1: yet memo leaked by Julian Assang that it verbatim, this
Speaker 1: was a choice that Vladimir Putin did not want to
Speaker 1: have to make. This was a choice that Russia did
Speaker 1: not want to get involved in this war.
Speaker 3: And if he made the choice, he made the choice
Speaker 3: to invade, to bring troops down to the Ukrainian border,
Speaker 3: to commit to multiple years of like, come on, you
Speaker 3: know this is again, this is the thing I ask
Speaker 3: you for, Like what can we do now? And immediately
Speaker 3: it's it's back to the iron girl.
Speaker 1: Hold on, hold on, there's what happens.
Speaker 4: I just want to know in the modern I get.
Speaker 1: Actually, what happened was you made a long statement and
Speaker 1: ended with that question, and I said, let me answer
Speaker 1: that question, but first let me deal with what you
Speaker 1: said at the beginning of your statement, and then you
Speaker 1: started interrupting me. So no, it's not that I'm not
Speaker 1: willing to answer that question. It's that I had to
Speaker 1: point out I think a lot of the errors that
Speaker 1: you're making.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: If you want just to say, what could we do
Speaker 1: right now, well, look, we're going to have to be
Speaker 1: realists about this situation and admit that Ukraine is losing
Speaker 1: this war and that they're not going to drive Russia
Speaker 1: out of Crimea. That's a joke. They're not going to
Speaker 1: drive Russia out of many of the territories that they've taken.
Speaker 1: Right now, we should be working toward a deal, a
Speaker 1: peaceful solution, which has been on the table several times
Speaker 1: throughout this war, and it's been the West who has
Speaker 1: been trying to squash it.
Speaker 4: Well, that's what we should do.
Speaker 3: True at all, though you've seen, I assume you've read
Speaker 3: the deals that Putin has put through, Zelensky hasn't been
Speaker 3: particularly amenable to them himself. The narrative that the West
Speaker 3: is squashing the deals, which is blown up largely because
Speaker 3: of what that one Boris Johnson visit early on in
Speaker 3: the conflict. Don't get me wrong, Okay, the West is
Speaker 3: its own interests. There are plenty of Western leaders who
Speaker 3: would like to see the Russian armories depleted, but that
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that Ukraine would have been jumping in the
Speaker 3: bit for any of the deals Putin's been offering since
Speaker 3: the war began, and Ukraine hasn't been losing. Both countries
Speaker 3: have been stalling. This has been like a slog and
Speaker 3: it has been since the first like or after the
Speaker 3: first like three months of the war. I don't like
Speaker 3: the narrative that Ukraine's losing because the fact that they
Speaker 3: exist at all at this point, considering the Russian armaments
Speaker 3: aligned against them, is pretty impressive.
Speaker 6: Guys off the streets to ye fight.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, but like and and Russian has, Russia has
Speaker 3: like their penal colony forces with the Wagner group, like
Speaker 3: pulling from from their multiple rounds of like really unpopular
Speaker 3: conscriptions waves of immigration out of Russia people.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, of course not.
Speaker 3: I'm not arguing that, like it's a matter of our
Speaker 3: investment or whether or not it's moral. You know, war
Speaker 3: makes unfortunately unethical decision making of every side, including the
Speaker 3: good ones. The Allies did plenty of bad stuff during
Speaker 3: World War Two. I'm only saying that it's been a
Speaker 3: slug for both sides. I don't want to see this
Speaker 3: out in like I don't want this conflict to end
Speaker 3: in a way that's going to guarantee the conflict reemerges
Speaker 3: in two years. If you end up just setting the
Speaker 3: border right where the fighting lines are right now, we're
Speaker 3: going to be exactly where we were back in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 3: We're going to have a combination of like paid separatists
Speaker 3: and Russian soldiers like moving around in the Dawn Bass.
Speaker 3: There's going to be constant exchanges of fire across the border.
Speaker 3: This needs like a real international solution. I don't know
Speaker 3: whether that means like a proper DMZ. I don't know
Speaker 3: whether that means like genuine reconciliation. Ideally, for me, it
Speaker 3: would be some kind of like Hail Mary, where Ukraine
Speaker 3: gets its borders back and there's like a massive like
Speaker 3: coming together between Russia and the West and we like
Speaker 3: reopen trade and negotiations. But that's a little bit, a
Speaker 3: little bit of a pipe dream. I just we do
Speaker 3: agree that at least let's agree on this. If the
Speaker 3: line just freezes where it is right now, are we
Speaker 3: not guaranteeing another inflicted in a few years.
Speaker 1: I don't know that that's possible to say, to be honest,
Speaker 1: people to be pretty mad.
Speaker 4: It's not guaranteeing. It's not guaranteeing it.
Speaker 3: I don't know, especially at the front, are not positively
Speaker 3: disposed to each other. I feel like we need to
Speaker 3: give them something solid, a solid piece, not just like, oh,
Speaker 3: we've decided now this slug has gone on for two
Speaker 3: long they'd be throwing rocks at each other across the border.
Speaker 3: You know, you could get a five mile wide DMZ
Speaker 3: and those they'd still be like sending drones over with
Speaker 3: bricks to drop at each other's heads.
Speaker 4: Maybe this is all be rough with the case of.
Speaker 1: In general, with all of the war hawks that everybody
Speaker 1: who's supported every single war over the last twenty years,
Speaker 1: it always kind of relies on this unfalsifiable counterfactual like, oh,
Speaker 1: if we didn't do this, then Vladimir Putin would be
Speaker 1: invading Poland right now, or if the lines were drawn
Speaker 1: where they are, they'd they'd be throwing.
Speaker 4: Rocks at each other. It's very hard to say.
Speaker 1: I think the one thing that like, I think it's
Speaker 1: again just to rely on a counter factual, if that's
Speaker 1: what we're doing. I think the truth is that there
Speaker 1: were a lot of much better options. There were off
Speaker 1: ramps all throughout the path to get here. And the
Speaker 1: truth is that, if you want to go back to
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, the West should not have gotten involved the
Speaker 1: way that it did. That it was it was such
Speaker 1: a provocation to back the overthrow of a democratically elected government.
Speaker 1: If I mean, all you have to do is think
Speaker 1: to yourself and just be honest here.
Speaker 4: Past what's talk about. Let me just finish my point.
Speaker 1: If Russia or China had backed the overthrow of the
Speaker 1: government in Mexico or Canada because they opted to sign
Speaker 1: a trade deal with US rather than the one that
Speaker 1: they wanted them to side to sign, what do you
Speaker 1: think DC would do? And we all know the answer
Speaker 1: to that, they overthrow that government in a second. And
Speaker 1: we have a Monroe doctrine for a reason. And you
Speaker 1: can say that it's it's like some relic of the
Speaker 1: past that faraway superpowers ought not intervene in the region
Speaker 1: of other large nations. But we certainly wouldn't feel that way.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't think it was a relic of the past.
Speaker 1: If anybody tried to come over here and set up
Speaker 1: a military alliance with Mexico or with Canada, tell me
Speaker 1: how much DC would go, oh, yes, the Monroe doctrine
Speaker 1: is just a relic of the past.
Speaker 4: Do you think debate of pigs invasion was justified? No?
Speaker 3: Because the Soviets invested economically and militarily into a country
Speaker 3: that is just off our coast during a time of
Speaker 3: heightened international conflict. They knew that it would antagonize us.
Speaker 3: We already had strained relationship with Castro, even though we
Speaker 3: didn't initially of course, because we recognize that he was
Speaker 3: a much litter better leader for the Cuban people than
Speaker 3: the man he replaced. Do you not think the Soviets
Speaker 3: antagonized us in a way much comparable to what we
Speaker 3: have done with NATO and Ukraine?
Speaker 4: Like I did? Oh they did?
Speaker 3: Okay, So do you think then picked well, well, this isn't
Speaker 3: a gotcha, this is gotcha. I think it's an interesting
Speaker 3: question because I do think the Soviets were a little
Speaker 3: bit wacky with how they handle Cuba. But I feel
Speaker 3: like in retrospect, we don't talk about the Bay of
Speaker 3: Pigs invasion as an inevitable consequence of expansion, as Soviet
Speaker 3: investment in like in spite of our national interest? What
Speaker 3: you do think about it as like Kennedy's mistake, you know.
Speaker 1: Right, okay, but see a lot of the reason why
Speaker 1: we think of it as Kennedy's mistake as the logistics
Speaker 1: of it. By the way, if you really want to
Speaker 1: get into it, wasn't Kennedy's mistake as much as the
Speaker 1: right the previous administration.
Speaker 4: But regardless of any of that.
Speaker 1: See what you asked me is if I thought the
Speaker 1: Bay of Pigs was justified, and I would also say that, no,
Speaker 1: I don't think Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine was justified.
Speaker 4: Do I think that the Soviets.
Speaker 1: And the Cubans were taking a provocative stance against the
Speaker 1: United States of America? Of course did there. Did those
Speaker 1: provocations lead to the Bay of Pigs? I think that's undeniable.
Speaker 1: And the truth is that from Vladimir Putin's got a
Speaker 1: much stronger case of out the provocations of the United
Speaker 1: States of America because it's not just one little island
Speaker 1: or one economic deal. It's been a steady push eastward
Speaker 1: since since the late nineties.
Speaker 5: Now that we are where we are, oh no, before
Speaker 5: we go too far, I just want to stand up
Speaker 5: for the dignity of the Cuban revolution for just a moment.
Speaker 6: Please, it was surprising development.
Speaker 7: I mean it was not. It was not a Soviet project.
Speaker 5: This was this was a This was an organic Cuban
Speaker 5: project against the corrupt elites in Cuba. Fidel Castro in
Speaker 5: the beginning, I thought he could maintain some decent relations
Speaker 5: with the United States.
Speaker 7: It was Shai Guwara who witnessed.
Speaker 5: In nineteen fifty four he was in Guatemala when the
Speaker 5: US overthrew our Benz and he was the one always
Speaker 5: saying to Fidel Castro, You're not gonna be able to
Speaker 5: work with the Yankees, like, it's not possible. Castro wanted
Speaker 5: to like, he was like, look, no, these jazz are
Speaker 5: corrupt you. I'm just I'm George Washington here. It was
Speaker 5: only when it became in possible for the Cubans to
Speaker 5: work for the Cuban revolutionaries to work with the US
Speaker 5: that they went.
Speaker 7: They went in the Soviet direction.
Speaker 4: And in fact Ryan but ahead. Correct if I'm wrong,
Speaker 4: all correct, Correct me if I'm wrong about this.
Speaker 1: But I also believe that Castro had been rejecting communism
Speaker 1: up to the point that the US started putting embargoes
Speaker 1: on him before he then said Oh yeah, I'm a communist,
Speaker 1: and so you could certainly argue that we drove him
Speaker 1: into the hands of the of the Soviets.
Speaker 3: Right, And I think it plays further into the broader
Speaker 3: dynamic where basically everybody acts as a reaction of previous acts.
Speaker 3: Very rarely does something you know, sort of come up
Speaker 3: whole cloth. You almost always, even even for the United States.
Speaker 3: I mean, with all of our power, it might we
Speaker 3: are still responding to you know, the the the actions
Speaker 3: and decision making of agents that are of themselves responding
Speaker 3: to others in the world today where we are now,
Speaker 3: because there are a million places that I would have turned,
Speaker 3: I could have turned the clocks back and like changed history.
Speaker 3: It brought us to a different point. For me personally,
Speaker 3: the big line wasn't with NATO. It was with economic
Speaker 3: investment in Russia and the shock therapy, you know, I
Speaker 3: think that was the real line where we like lost
Speaker 3: the post Cold War world, where we arrogantly decided that,
Speaker 3: you know, having like one over the Soviets, we would
Speaker 3: do a victory lap by annihilating their economies, you know,
Speaker 3: arrogantly like pillaging them and leading them to the oligarchs
Speaker 3: who had worked with us in like in a business
Speaker 3: relation sense. If there was anything I could go back
Speaker 3: and change, it would be that. You know, I'm not
Speaker 3: really particularly fussed about NATO in particular. Military alliances are
Speaker 3: always going to carry with them, let's say, problematic elements.
Speaker 3: NATO is just the Western military alliance everything that insinuates
Speaker 3: and carries. If we got along with Russia properly, maybe
Speaker 3: all of this could have been avoided. I mean, hell,
Speaker 3: it could have extended far enough east. We could be
Speaker 3: on better relationship with China. We wouldn't have people like
Speaker 3: Trump trying to constantly push for a second Cold War
Speaker 3: with like the tariff, and well Biden did that too
Speaker 3: recently with the electric vehicle, So I guess everybody wants
Speaker 3: the Cold War with China.
Speaker 4: Things could have really started with Obama.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's we all because we need a foreign threat.
Speaker 3: We need a foreign threat exactly. Wasn't doing it for us,
Speaker 3: and they're certainly not going to be doing it now.
Speaker 1: So let me just say, because I think there's something
Speaker 1: almost being lost here where. Look that technically speaking, you
Speaker 1: are right that everybody is reacting, and you are right
Speaker 1: that every nation is you know, like I'm a radical libertarian.
Speaker 1: I think basically essentially all governments are criminal organizations, so
Speaker 1: you don't have to like convince me on that. The
Speaker 1: thing here that separates things is that after nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: America became the first global superpower.
Speaker 4: The level of power.
Speaker 1: It's funny I have to explain this to a leftist,
Speaker 1: but the level of power that America had was totally
Speaker 1: asymmetrical to anything else.
Speaker 4: And here, yes, the first kids, right.
Speaker 1: And so so yes, it is like, it is true
Speaker 1: that there are all of these different nations that are
Speaker 1: reacting to different things. However, if you actually look at
Speaker 1: the role that the United States of America played and
Speaker 1: then think about it from say the Russian personective that
Speaker 1: this is not something that you and you may say
Speaker 1: from your perspective that you know, the NATO military alliance
Speaker 1: isn't your biggest concern, okay, but it is the Russians,
Speaker 1: and you have to see from their perspective that they
Speaker 1: would see this as a threat that they cannot live with.
Speaker 1: And the fact is that the idea of Ukraine, the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian entry into NATO was something that was floated out
Speaker 1: for years, and not just in two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: at the Bucharest Summit where they announced that Ukraine and
Speaker 1: Georgia would be joining NATO, but for years after that
Speaker 1: and then more and more involvement, especially after the coup
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen, joint military exercises with NATO and the
Speaker 1: Ukrainian military, which is part of the reason why Vladimir
Speaker 1: Putin did not have such a quick, decisive victory right
Speaker 1: away as he probably would have before that time period.
Speaker 1: But that from the Russian perspective, you have the global Empire,
Speaker 1: the most war hungry country in the world, very clearly
Speaker 1: committed to encirclement. Obviously, this is going to be a
Speaker 1: recipe for disaster.
Speaker 3: And yet Ukraine's desire to be protected by NATO has
Speaker 3: been validated by Russia's expansionism. Well, I just a couple oh,
Speaker 3: I just want to finish that point, if I may
Speaker 3: like again. You say, Russia's greatest fear is NATO. Ukraine's
Speaker 3: greatest fear is Russia, who ended up being more justifle.
Speaker 4: Ok.
Speaker 3: NATO hasn't invaded Russia. Russia did invade Ukraine. There's no
Speaker 3: getting away from it. At the end of the fear,
Speaker 3: this powder keg was ignited by Russia, and here we
Speaker 3: are now today, with the gunpowder having already left the blaze,
Speaker 3: where do we move forward? Because I keep asking, I
Speaker 3: feel like we're always It's always, like I said before
Speaker 3: we started the show. You may recall, whenever I debate Israel,
Speaker 3: you say it's wrong to genocide these thirty thousand such
Speaker 3: and such Palestinians, And then the people you argue with
Speaker 3: the Zionist they'll go, oh, but what about Camp David?
Speaker 4: What about the accords?
Speaker 3: They draw back into history because they want to avoid
Speaker 3: the question today. They want to avoid and turn their
Speaker 3: eyes away.
Speaker 4: But I'm certainly not avoiding that question.
Speaker 1: And as I just said a couple of minutes ago,
Speaker 1: it was wrong for Vladimir Putin to invade and killing people,
Speaker 1: right right?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 4: I also answered that.
Speaker 1: But look this idea that, first of all, the concern
Speaker 1: from Vladimir Putin was never not even Vladimir Putin, the
Speaker 1: Russians in general. The concern was never as simple as
Speaker 1: is NATO going to invade us? The concern was moving
Speaker 1: military hardware closer and closer to Russia's borders. Okay, so
Speaker 1: the concern is more akin to the Cuban missile crisis,
Speaker 1: not that we were ever worried Cuba was going to
Speaker 1: invade US, but moving military hardware that close to our
Speaker 1: borders was a legitimate concern and one that Jack Kennedy
Speaker 1: said he would blow up the world over. Most Americans, however,
Speaker 1: they feel about the Bay of Pigs, look at that
Speaker 1: is fairly justified.
Speaker 4: That that was a threat. We couldn't live with a
Speaker 4: knife to our neck.
Speaker 1: Now to your point that Ukraine's biggest fear was Russia
Speaker 1: and that they just wanted to join NATO because they
Speaker 1: had this fear of Russia, that's not exactly true. Like,
Speaker 1: if you know the history of this situation, it was
Speaker 1: in two thousand man, I think it's two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: so it might have been two thousand and six, but
Speaker 1: there was The State Department admitted that one of the
Speaker 1: big problems they had is that Ukrainian entry into NATO
Speaker 1: was just not popular in Ukraine. They estimated that it
Speaker 1: was about thirty percent, and so they embarked on a campaign.
Speaker 1: They literally said, we need the NED and we need
Speaker 1: the USAID to intervene more to get this support up
Speaker 1: for NATO membership amongst the Ukrainians. It's not look, Yanikovich
Speaker 1: was elected in twenty ten. And this is these elections
Speaker 1: were verified by the EU because we're all, you know,
Speaker 1: neo conservatives are such believers in democracy, but only in
Speaker 1: the places where we feel like we need to import
Speaker 1: democracy too. I don't think not necessarily in Ukraine as
Speaker 1: results well, okay, but I'm saying it's not as simple
Speaker 1: as saying that overwhelmingly the Ukrainian people just wanted to
Speaker 1: join NATO and DC was just you know, respecting the.
Speaker 4: Ukrainian vassals.
Speaker 3: I'm never saying that the West is acting out of altruism.
Speaker 3: I would never be that silly, and I'm not.
Speaker 1: That's not I'm saying that you're in Ukraine just wanted.
Speaker 4: To Russia wanted.
Speaker 3: But let's turn the clock forward, right, The Russian economy
Speaker 3: was stalling, the EU's economy was booming. The Ukrainian people
Speaker 3: were more interested in economic ties with the EU than
Speaker 3: they were with Russia. Yanokovich against the will of the people,
Speaker 3: and yes, he was democratically elected. Democratically elected leaders can
Speaker 3: do on popular things. That's life. He then turned towards
Speaker 3: Russian and said, because Yanokovich wasn't, we don't have to
Speaker 3: get into it. Let's say compromised by Russian interest. Uh,
Speaker 3: the people revolted. America supported the Euromaidan revolt because we
Speaker 3: were interested, of course in Ukraine having closer ties to us.
Speaker 3: But nonetheless, and you can take a look at polling
Speaker 3: from the time the Ukrainian discussed with Yuanokovic's decision was
Speaker 3: authentic and widely reflected. Yanokovich fled, of course, fearing for
Speaker 3: his life and well being. They took his little wealthy
Speaker 3: boy palace. And then after that, of course you have
Speaker 3: the annexation of Crimea and the separatist movement in the Donbass,
Speaker 3: which was of course heavily supported by Russia. And then
Speaker 3: of course after that they want to join NATO because
Speaker 3: they realized that the moment they do anything that Russia
Speaker 3: doesn't like, Russia's just going to turn the military on them.
Speaker 4: Do you have to keep moving the clock forward?
Speaker 6: Let me just interject there and ask, So we're one
Speaker 6: hundred and seventy five billion dollars into this as the
Speaker 6: United States, the Ukrainian deathel is at least thirty one
Speaker 6: thousand people. It's probably much much higher than that. Both
Speaker 6: sides minimum around one hundred thousand, but again probably according
Speaker 6: to a lot of analysts, much much higher than that.
Speaker 6: So to what extent can the United States? This is
Speaker 6: like higher than the NASA budget last year? The amount
Speaker 6: of foreign aid we're sending to Ukraine? Is that just
Speaker 6: the United States? It's spending that much US taxpayer money
Speaker 6: to protect every inch of the don boss with no
Speaker 6: plan perceived as of right now, ostensibly no serious plan
Speaker 6: as to what a peace process would look like going forward.
Speaker 6: Is that a just outcome for the American tax pay Oh?
Speaker 3: Look, every dollar we give to you Ukraine, we don't
Speaker 3: give the Israel. Okay, So it's like it's like convince
Speaker 3: your friends.
Speaker 4: That's the best argument I've heard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, it's like convincing your friend has put me
Speaker 3: own cigarettes, not fentanyl. But I agree that Washington should
Speaker 3: have a more decisive plan. The lack of a plan,
Speaker 3: which is a common pattern by the way, with both
Speaker 3: the United States and alsodent in Yahoo. So not a
Speaker 3: fan of that tendency on all sides is problematic to me.
Speaker 3: Like I said, now, if we just froze the war
Speaker 3: where it is, because of course Russia, like Putin's peace
Speaker 3: deals are basically just like forfeit the territory you've lost
Speaker 3: up until this. They're not like real conciliatory deals, right, which,
Speaker 3: of course Putin wants to keep the territory that he's stained.
Speaker 3: I think that if we just took that, if we
Speaker 3: pressured Ukraine into taking that, a war would break out
Speaker 3: again within a year two years maybe because you would
Speaker 3: have like the military build up on either side of
Speaker 3: the DMC would be like the greatest Oh sorry.
Speaker 5: Sorry, yeah, you started the conversation talking about not wanting
Speaker 5: this to be a stalemate that goes on forever. So
Speaker 5: you know, last year we had this much vaunted counter offensive.
Speaker 5: At the time, there were tens of thousands of younger
Speaker 5: Ukrainian troops who were alive and were well trained, they
Speaker 5: were well equipped. They launched this massive, much anticipated counter offensive.
Speaker 5: It was a complete disaster, led to an enormous loss
Speaker 5: of life and a loss of equipment. And so to
Speaker 5: your question of what do we do next, like why
Speaker 5: is it the case that a new counter offensive with older,
Speaker 5: less well trained Ukrainian troops and less well equipped troops
Speaker 5: would be able to succeed against a more fortified Russian
Speaker 5: military while the.
Speaker 7: Previous one failed.
Speaker 5: In other words, like what is this hail Mary that
Speaker 5: you're talking about, that could change the calculation on the
Speaker 5: ground to such an extent that it's worth it to
Speaker 5: continue throwing Ukrainian men and women into.
Speaker 7: The maw of this war.
Speaker 4: Well, they don't.
Speaker 3: I don't like the term throwing only because like they are,
Speaker 3: of course, you know, engaged in it, right, They're not
Speaker 3: just being.
Speaker 5: They're being grabbed in many cases and literally throw forty
Speaker 5: five year old men well literally threw.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yes, Ukrainian morale are at least interesting continuing the
Speaker 3: war is still high. But that sort of nitpick aside,
Speaker 3: I would only say, I look, the hail Mary is
Speaker 3: something that I hope for. It's not something that I
Speaker 3: think is guaranteed. With the introduction of attackers and other
Speaker 3: relatively long ranged, you know, munitions, we have the ability
Speaker 3: to sort of provide Ukraine the option to strike at depots,
Speaker 3: refineries and like facilities that are closer to the sort
Speaker 3: of back lines of the conflict, and that has had
Speaker 3: like a massive effect in the past four or five
Speaker 3: months since that was introduced. I don't know whether that's
Speaker 3: going to be a game changer in the war in
Speaker 3: the long run. I hope that it is, because ultimately
Speaker 3: I do think that a conciliatory position from Russia would
Speaker 3: be a better way of ending this conflict than one
Speaker 3: in which things just freeze as they are now. The
Speaker 3: DMZ build up along the line that people settled on
Speaker 3: right now would be catastrophic, and I think it would
Speaker 3: just guarantee further war. My hope, and this is I know,
Speaker 3: perhaps a little naive of me, but I still have
Speaker 3: a little bit in me that hopes for this. My
Speaker 3: hope is that eventually, following the expansion of Ukraine's ability
Speaker 3: to strike it further back targets, this becomes increasingly economically
Speaker 3: untenable for Russia. There's pressure from both sides. Hey, this
Speaker 3: has gone on long enough. We literally can't keep this
Speaker 3: going anymore. We're both on fumes, and like two exhausted
Speaker 3: boxers on the fourteenth round, they both clapsed into each
Speaker 3: other's arms, and you know, they have a Christmas Day
Speaker 3: in World War One, you know, there's a moment where,
Speaker 3: for for a second, things get rough enough long enough
Speaker 3: that they collapse and they just can't do it anymore,
Speaker 3: and maybe the world like breaks a sigh of peace
Speaker 3: as they finally do subtle on whatever line they're at.
Speaker 4: At that point, I think it's quite a dangerous game
Speaker 4: to play, man.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know it was the all dangerous right well, sure,
Speaker 1: but I'm just saying, you know, it was the neo
Speaker 1: Kon's hope that if you overthrew Saddam Hussein, democracy would
Speaker 1: sweep the region.
Speaker 4: And you know that would have been nice, I guess, but.
Speaker 1: You know, the hope that, oh, if they strike inside
Speaker 1: of Russia, that will make Russia realize that, you know,
Speaker 1: this war just has cost us a little bit too
Speaker 1: much and we sure should knock off this war business.
Speaker 4: That's quite a quite a risky game to play. There's
Speaker 4: a couple of things that I want to eat.
Speaker 1: So let me let me just respond to a couple
Speaker 1: of things you said there, because the things that I
Speaker 1: think are pretty interesting. So number one, just a couple
Speaker 1: points of correction. I mean, I know I said it
Speaker 1: was a good point in Jess, but now it's not
Speaker 1: true that you know, the every dollar that goes to
Speaker 1: Ukraine is a dollar that doesn't go to Israel.
Speaker 4: I mean, as you know, we print.
Speaker 1: Money out of thin air, and the US government is
Speaker 1: quite fine to spend well beyond its means. So no,
Speaker 1: they can they can deficit finance through fiat currency both
Speaker 1: of these wars at.
Speaker 4: The same time. Now, what I was gonna do to
Speaker 4: our dollar equipment to not just money? Sure?
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, no, Mostly we're just bribing the military industrial
Speaker 1: complex and sending old weapons over there. However, you know,
Speaker 1: there is as you brought up the talk of agency before,
Speaker 1: it is true that individuals have agency. It's also true
Speaker 1: that there's such a thing as moral hazard. So if
Speaker 1: I were to just say I'll start giving a Ryan,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start giving you a million dollars a month,
Speaker 1: and then you quit your job and you sit at home,
Speaker 1: and I go, look, he doesn't want to work.
Speaker 4: It doesn't want to work. He wants to stay home.
Speaker 1: It doesn't want to It's like, well, yeah, okay, there
Speaker 1: is some truth to that, but might that have you know,
Speaker 1: the Ukrainians just want to fight, okay, but might that
Speaker 1: have something to do with the blank check that they've
Speaker 1: received from the world. So the whole point here, right,
Speaker 1: is that and this is true with Israel and with Ukraine.
Speaker 1: What happens is that when the biggest bully in the
Speaker 1: history of the world, the US Empire, says we got
Speaker 1: your back, people get a lot braver than they otherwise would.
Speaker 1: If Israel didn't have unconditional support from the United States
Speaker 1: of America, they'd be forced to make a deal with
Speaker 1: some of their neighbors.
Speaker 4: And same with Ukraine.
Speaker 1: You know, you say, like, oh, if the war ended,
Speaker 1: Ukraine would just be ready to fight Russia again in
Speaker 1: a few years without our backing, without US arming them,
Speaker 1: without all of Europe behind them. No, they wouldn't because
Speaker 1: they know they couldn't possibly win.
Speaker 6: Dave, what's a riskier game to play? I mean, I
Speaker 6: think I know what your answer would be to this,
Speaker 6: But what's a riskier game to play? Is it, you know,
Speaker 6: allowing Putin to expand unchecked, just to go back to
Speaker 6: the argument that Vash made earlier, or is it, you know,
Speaker 6: escalating the war. It seems as though there are risks
Speaker 6: in both scenarios, and why is one riskier than the
Speaker 6: other at this point?
Speaker 1: Well, look, I mean, okay, so the biggest risk that, again,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned at the beginning, we should all be
Speaker 1: concerned about, is the potential of nuclear war. And what's
Speaker 1: prevented the nuclear war in the past has been private negotiations,
Speaker 1: handshake agreements and mutually assured destruction, the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: nobody really wants to get into a nuclear exchange because
Speaker 1: we all lose the only time, especially now, because the
Speaker 1: current administration isn't doing handshake deals or even having conversations
Speaker 1: behind the scenes with the Russians, the only thing that
Speaker 1: could lead to a nuclear exchange. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: the worst case scenario is that Vladimir Putin actually thinks
Speaker 1: he's going to die. He thinks he's going to end
Speaker 1: up like Momar Kadafi, And that's this scenario where you
Speaker 1: might end up launching nukes because you know, screw it,
Speaker 1: bring everybody down with you. In terms of the risk
Speaker 1: of Russian expansion, I do think that Vous made a
Speaker 1: somewhat fair point where look between the mix of this
Speaker 1: is my point, not yours, but resulting in yours, between
Speaker 1: the mix of NATO joint military exercises with the Ukrainian government,
Speaker 1: the massive amounts of foreign aid, the weapons shipments that
Speaker 1: Ukraine has got going back to before the invasion of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, but certainly since twenty twenty two, it
Speaker 1: has made Ukraine a tougher adversary than they otherwise would
Speaker 1: have been. Vladimir Putin famously said back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight when he was warning Burns, who was the
Speaker 1: ambassador of Rush at the time, but I could be
Speaker 1: in Kiev in two weeks. Well, I don't think that's
Speaker 1: true anymore. I think it's a tougher battle for him
Speaker 1: than that. But then also you think, because he ends
Speaker 1: up getting the eastern part of Ukraine that what he's
Speaker 1: moving on Poland after that. I just think there's absolutely
Speaker 1: no reason to think that that's the situation.
Speaker 4: I don't think the bottom line.
Speaker 6: Is that right next to Poland, it seems like, given
Speaker 6: the history of NATO and everything else, that's pretty dangerous too.
Speaker 4: Well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, the whole argument that all of the people
Speaker 1: who wanted to bring Ukraine into NATO made was that, well,
Speaker 1: he won't attack them if they're in NATO country. Now
Speaker 1: he's going to go after Poland. I just don't see
Speaker 1: it as being very likely. I don't think the guy's
Speaker 1: on a suicide mission. I think, as Burns told Condaliza
Speaker 1: Rice that it wasn't for a suicide mission. It was
Speaker 1: a choice they didn't want to have to make. That's
Speaker 1: what our intelligence was saying at the time, and so no,
Speaker 1: I don't think that there is to pretend. Look, I
Speaker 1: think American expansionism has been more of a threat to
Speaker 1: the American Republic than anything else. The idea that uten
Speaker 1: is somehow some type of existential threat to America, I
Speaker 1: think is aside from the nuclear question, just not true.
Speaker 1: I think that there has been an effort for many
Speaker 1: years now by the entire political class and the entire
Speaker 1: corporate media to demonize Vladimir Putin in oftentimes the most cartoonish,
Speaker 1: ridiculous ways. He stole the election in twenty sixteen, he's
Speaker 1: got bounties on US soldiers heads in Afghanistan. Now, from
Speaker 1: our perspective here right, people like insay this alternative media
Speaker 1: space like Breaking Points is in, we all kind of
Speaker 1: laugh and mock this stuff, like, oh, it's so ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Look at how the cias lie in everybody and they
Speaker 1: actually fell for it, and look how it's been. But
Speaker 1: from Vladimir Putin's perspective, all of the most powerful people
Speaker 1: in the most war hungry, powerful country in the world
Speaker 1: have essentially been saying over and over again that he
Speaker 1: declared war on us. I mean, you guys, you tell me,
Speaker 1: because I know you guys have covered this stuff a lot.
Speaker 4: How many people in the corporate.
Speaker 1: Media and in the intelligence apparatus said that the fake
Speaker 1: overthrowing of the elections in twenty sixteen was worse than
Speaker 1: Pearl Harbor. They were saying out loud for years that
Speaker 1: he's declared war on US. Now, if you're Vladimir Putin,
Speaker 1: you can't just laugh at that.
Speaker 4: You have to take that seriously.
Speaker 1: It was William Perry, Bill Clinton's Defense secretary, who said
Speaker 1: that Vladimir Putin believes that it is the that the
Speaker 1: US policy is to overthrow Vladimir Putin. I don't know
Speaker 1: for sure whether he's right about that or wrong. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't surprise me if he was right. That does sound
Speaker 1: a lot like my government. But that's the perspective that
Speaker 1: he's got to come to this from. And I think
Speaker 1: all it takes is as I believe, it was John
Speaker 1: Meherscheimer who coined the term strategic empathy, and that's all
Speaker 1: you kind of need in this In this scenario, it's
Speaker 1: not empathy for its own sake.
Speaker 4: It's strategic empathy.
Speaker 1: The same thing that you need to understand the Palestinians,
Speaker 1: the same thing you need to understand al Qaeda is
Speaker 1: that these I'm not saying they're good groups. Some of
Speaker 1: them are, you know, some of the Palestinians are good people,
Speaker 1: but some of them are are terrorist organizations.
Speaker 4: Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization. Vladimir Putin is a death.
Speaker 1: Spot, but they also can have legitimate grievances, and we
Speaker 1: ought to if if we want to ignore those, then okay,
Speaker 1: but we ignore those at our own peril.
Speaker 3: I just I just want to say, if I may like, respectfully, again,
Speaker 3: no talking about the present or what to do now.
Speaker 4: And this is my frustration firstation. I mean, oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: I promise I'll be very very quick on this.
Speaker 1: But the other point that I just did want to
Speaker 1: make to you, as you bring that up again, it's
Speaker 1: actually not the case that when I have all of
Speaker 1: these Israel Palestine debates, that I want to talk about
Speaker 1: what's going on right now and they want to talk
Speaker 1: about all of the history that led to this point.
Speaker 4: It's actually quite the opposite.
Speaker 1: Sagar made this point when he moderated a debate recently
Speaker 1: for me on breaking Points.
Speaker 4: When he was recapping it the next day.
Speaker 1: The truth is that all of the pro Israel supporters
Speaker 1: want to just talk about October seventh to today, and
Speaker 1: everybody who's critical of Israel actually wants to go back
Speaker 1: through the history and talk about all of it, because yeah,
Speaker 1: it's important to understand the history to understand what position
Speaker 1: we're in.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 5: Let me let me bring you up to this week,
Speaker 5: says you want to want to talk about today. So
Speaker 5: this is from earlier, earlier this week from Zelenski's top advisor.
Speaker 5: You probably saw this quote. He's got a couple others
Speaker 5: out there publicly. He's saying this in English, so we
Speaker 5: don't even have to hit the translate button, So very
Speaker 5: nice of him. After the attack on the beach in Crimea,
Speaker 5: he said quote, there are not and cannot be any
Speaker 5: beaches Taurus zones. Those are his quotes and other fictitious
Speaker 5: signs of quote peaceful life in Crimea. Crimea is definitely
Speaker 5: a foreign territory occupied by Russia where there are hostilities
Speaker 5: and a full scale war, the very war that Russia
Speaker 5: unleashed for genocidal and invasive purposes only. Crimea is also
Speaker 5: a large military camp and warehouse with hundreds of direct
Speaker 5: military targets which the Russians are cynically trying to hide
Speaker 5: and cover up with their own civilians, which in turn
Speaker 5: are considered to be civilian occupiers. So he said this
Speaker 5: after Ukraine killed civilians on the beach. So are we
Speaker 5: the batties here?
Speaker 3: I mean, it's almost a perfect mirror of rhetoric employed
Speaker 3: in the Hamas versus Israel conflict actually, where you know,
Speaker 3: when Hamas killed civilians on October seventh, the argument was
Speaker 3: that the civilians were settlers who were occupying stolen land,
Speaker 3: and therefore you can't like reasonably argue their civilians. And
Speaker 3: then on the other hand, of course you have like
Speaker 3: Israelis who say that like Hamas uses the palace in
Speaker 3: people as human shields in the West Bank, you of
Speaker 3: the argument. It's remarkable, actually how many parallels there are
Speaker 3: and how these are employed. Are we the baddies, Yes,
Speaker 3: we're all the batties. Nation states the batties. That sounds reductive,
Speaker 3: but that is just the way the game is played.
Speaker 3: You will never find the nations.
Speaker 5: There are ways to play the game without explicitly justifying
Speaker 5: the slaughter of civilians on a beach.
Speaker 3: But in practice, if you go back to basically any
Speaker 3: military conflict where existential threat was on the line, which
Speaker 3: it certainly is for Ukraine or is in the Israel
Speaker 3: Hamas conflict. You will see that this rhetoric and these
Speaker 3: standards are employed. This is not me arguing that it's justified.
Speaker 3: It's morally important because war demands abhorrence of the people
Speaker 3: who participate in it. You're not going to find any
Speaker 3: large scale conflict where stuff like this doesn't happen, which
Speaker 3: is why to me.
Speaker 5: The interesting question is it's not even a large scale
Speaker 5: conflict in Crimea like why part of the broader Ukraine.
Speaker 5: Why is the American public supposed to care all of
Speaker 5: a sudden that Russia controls Crimea like four years ago
Speaker 5: you would have been laughed at if you suggested that
Speaker 5: Ukraine ought to go to war to kick Russia out
Speaker 5: of Ukraine.
Speaker 4: Well, that's a separate question.
Speaker 3: The first one about like the abhorrence of this rhetoric,
Speaker 3: which by the way, I agree with. I just want
Speaker 3: to be clear that this is a consequence of like
Speaker 3: these heightened tensions, which is why I'm interested in what
Speaker 3: can be done to bring an end to this war,
Speaker 3: a permanent end, not some middling ceasefire that gets broken
Speaker 3: almost immediately. In terms of whether or not America should care.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: The average American couldn't find Kabul on a map. You know,
Speaker 3: the average American doesn't care about anything outside of their
Speaker 3: own tax breaks. My interest in what the average American
Speaker 3: cares about is nil. The average American doesn't care about
Speaker 3: the homeless. Why should I care about what they care about?
Speaker 4: What I care about? Nuclear? What's good? They sometimes they do.
Speaker 3: I don't know the average American with the state of
Speaker 3: our education, I care about what's good. Nuclear war's bad.
Speaker 3: By the way, that's where I land in that particular
Speaker 3: moral equivalence. I think that if we settle with an
Speaker 3: unjust tense quiet with the Russia Ukraine conflict, we guarantee future.
Speaker 3: If you look, why would the history of expansionist empires.
Speaker 3: If you take a look at what Russia is doing
Speaker 3: now and compare it to the rhetoric employed by other
Speaker 3: nations that have annexed adjacent territory, you will find they
Speaker 3: tend not to quit while they're ahead. There's a pattern
Speaker 3: of over extension.
Speaker 5: Let me ask you so on on this piece. You
Speaker 5: know you hoped that, you know, if there's enough fighting,
Speaker 5: that eventually these two fighters will become exhausted and kind
Speaker 5: of peace will break out. But you've also said that
Speaker 5: if we get a peace deal, then war will eventually
Speaker 5: break out.
Speaker 7: So why would the peace from.
Speaker 5: Exhaustion not just lead to your your fear that two
Speaker 5: years later war would break out again, Because I think
Speaker 5: it means only war is the only logical endpoint of
Speaker 5: your position.
Speaker 3: Heretion, I think it needs to be a peace deal
Speaker 3: that the Russian and Ukrainian people are happy with. Right now,
Speaker 3: we haven't even gotten close to finding that point, which
Speaker 3: means the only real end to the conflict would be
Speaker 3: the complete annexation of Ukraine and the annihilation of all
Speaker 3: the militias and insurgency groups within it, which would be
Speaker 3: very difficult considering the fact that Russia has logistical breakdowns
Speaker 3: fifty miles out of their border, or Ukraine retaking all
Speaker 3: of its territory, which is at the moment basically unthinkable.
Speaker 3: It doesn't seem like there's any end to the conflict
Speaker 3: right now outside of something that could be imposed by
Speaker 3: a kind of international move to sort of like solidify
Speaker 3: the line where it is now, and I do think
Speaker 3: that would just lead to more peace in the future.
Speaker 3: That's my question, and I don't come to this with
Speaker 3: a solution. By the way, if I had a solution,
Speaker 3: or if anyone did, I think you'd be hearing them
Speaker 3: preaching it a lot more often. I don't like the
Speaker 3: idea of treating this like team sports or like you know,
Speaker 3: well in actuality, like we could have prevented this if
Speaker 3: we went back twenty thirty forty years. I know there's
Speaker 3: a lot of other cool stuff we could have done.
Speaker 3: We could have invested in, like Apple early too.
Speaker 6: Let's say it. Let's say the US tripled the NASA
Speaker 6: budget and sent it all to Ukraine. Do you think
Speaker 6: that would be too much US support?
Speaker 3: I mean, if we oversupport Ukraine, if we commit to
Speaker 3: it so hard that Ukraine starts pushing back further. My
Speaker 3: concern would be that the the brass in Ukraine would
Speaker 3: get arrogant and start pushing into Russia. I don't think
Speaker 3: that's especially likely. Certainly, Ukraine doesn't have the same sort
Speaker 3: of legacy and cultural pretext of expansionist sentiment the way
Speaker 3: that Putin does, but it's possible. I also disagree, by
Speaker 3: the way, with the strike they did on some of
Speaker 3: those early warning systems. You showed an article with that
Speaker 3: headline a little bit ago. I think that's dangerous territory.
Speaker 3: I don't think that Ukraine has been particularly irresponsible in
Speaker 3: this conflict, as military conflicts go, and that's a pretty
Speaker 3: low bar. I do think that there's a risk the
Speaker 3: more we gin them up, the more gung ho they get,
Speaker 3: and I think that risk increases the longer this goes
Speaker 3: on too. So again, we either let Ukraine get washed entirely.
Speaker 3: I don't even know if Russia could do that at
Speaker 3: this point, even if we divested from Ukraine, we sort
Speaker 3: of pressure Ukraine to accept the Russian peace steel as
Speaker 3: it is now, or we overinvest to the point where
Speaker 3: they can reclaim their borders, which, given enough time and
Speaker 3: enough money, you know, we unleash Area fifty one on
Speaker 3: the Russia, and sure maybe Ukraine could do it. Of
Speaker 3: these three options, which is the most likely to bring
Speaker 3: about the fewest deaths the lowest likelihood of long term
Speaker 3: nuclear conflict. In my opinion, the path will get clearer
Speaker 3: the more time goes on, because we will increasingly test
Speaker 3: the willingness of the Russian people to support this ongoing engagement.
Speaker 3: That sounds horrible. I think this is a horrible situation.
Speaker 3: That's not me blaming anyone involved, the Pentagon, the Kremlin,
Speaker 3: whatever else. It's a horrible humanitarian nightmare, but it's also
Speaker 3: a pretty difficult one to manage. You know. You look
Speaker 3: back at history and there are empires that we're clashing
Speaker 3: with each other for centuries, over and over again, borders
Speaker 3: barely changing with each successive war. I don't want that
Speaker 3: to happen here, not just because we've got nuclear powers involved,
Speaker 3: but because, like it is a collective drain on these spiritual,
Speaker 3: financial and military collective of humanity. I just don't want
Speaker 3: to come at it from a dogmatic position, because I
Speaker 3: don't want to blind myself to avenues of peace that
Speaker 3: might be unintuitive.
Speaker 5: Were running up against our time limit here. But Dave
Speaker 5: any kind of final thoughts you'd want to have on
Speaker 5: how this ought to end, like from your perspective to
Speaker 5: Vosh's question, what do we do now?
Speaker 4: Sure? Okay?
Speaker 1: Well, first of all, I would just say that I
Speaker 1: don't think Ukraine has been very responsible throughout this whole thing,
Speaker 1: and certainly when their missiles hit Poland and Zelensky immediately
Speaker 1: called for preemptive attacks on Russia by the West, either
Speaker 1: either lying through his teeth and claiming it was Russia
Speaker 1: who attacked Poland, or being so clueless that he hadn't
Speaker 1: even done any investigation to figure out whether it was
Speaker 1: them or not.
Speaker 4: Either way, it seems pretty irresponsible to me.
Speaker 1: But look, without even going back into ancient history, like
Speaker 1: just going back to very recent history.
Speaker 4: It was Jens Straltenburg. I apologize to the Norwegians.
Speaker 1: I know I'm butchering that he gave the whole game
Speaker 1: away last year, but he admitted that Vladimir And actually
Speaker 1: sent them a draft treaty and said, if you just
Speaker 1: promised to not bring Ukraine into NATO, I won't invade.
Speaker 1: And he brags that they said, no, we won't sign that. Haha.
Speaker 1: You didn't want NATO expansion and look at you. Now
Speaker 1: you're getting more NATO expansion. It's like yeah, and hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of Ukrainians dead, Like, could we at least
Speaker 1: all agree that we should have just signed that treaty?
Speaker 1: Why is it a vital strategic interest to the United
Speaker 1: States of America that we have a war guarantee with Ukraine?
Speaker 4: Like what how many people in America?
Speaker 1: It's like George Kennon said back in the first round
Speaker 1: of NATO expansion. We have neither the political will nor
Speaker 1: the resources to actually defend these countries. How many people
Speaker 1: in America actually would be willing to sacrifice themselves or
Speaker 1: their children to make sure that the Donbass region is
Speaker 1: ruled by Kiev? Would you guys be willing to sacrifice
Speaker 1: your kids?
Speaker 4: This is that ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Anyone here The average American wouldn't sacrifice their lives to
Speaker 3: protect East German or Poland either. Do you think the
Speaker 3: average American would fight for warsaw? This report doesn't. That's fencing,
Speaker 3: but it's empty.
Speaker 4: Now, let me explain.
Speaker 3: What you will explain to me. I'm what you want
Speaker 3: today too. I'm gonna finish.
Speaker 4: I keep talking about it today, and then you keep
Speaker 4: talking about NATO, NATO, NATO.
Speaker 3: We know I addressed and acknowledged and agreed with.
Speaker 1: You're interrupting me and then claiming I'm not addressing something.
Speaker 1: So first, I was just saying, could we at least
Speaker 1: all agree that a couple of years ago we should
Speaker 1: have just signed that deal and committed to not bringing
Speaker 1: Ukraine into NATO and avoided this war.
Speaker 4: Couldn't invaded anyway? Huh? Couldn't Russia have just invaded anyway.
Speaker 1: Sure, I guess in the worst case scenario it would
Speaker 1: be as bad as it's not that you're laughing, but
Speaker 1: there's no point to that. Yes, in the worst area,
Speaker 1: we could have still ended talk about what we can Okay,
Speaker 1: let me please, okay, okay, fsh let me just make
Speaker 1: my point instead of this constant interrupting listen. Yes, in
Speaker 1: the worst case scenario, I suppose it could have gone
Speaker 1: as bad as it did in this scenario, but obviously
Speaker 1: the overwhelming odds or that it wouldn't have come to this.
Speaker 1: Now in terms of your point of saying, like, well,
Speaker 1: the average American isn't willing to go die for Germany
Speaker 1: or Poland, Okay, but so why are we adding more
Speaker 1: of these countries, especially when our own intelligence community is
Speaker 1: telling us that the risk of adding this other nation
Speaker 1: that American's carabout even less, the risk of it could
Speaker 1: result in this war very explicitly blatantly saying that. Now,
Speaker 1: look again, I do think I actually answered this question
Speaker 1: pretty clearly pretty early on in this But right now,
Speaker 1: what we should do, being educated by what's happened in
Speaker 1: the very recent past, is to go, hey, America is
Speaker 1: going to announce that we will pull all of our
Speaker 1: support for Ukraine in this war under the condition that
Speaker 1: Vladimir Putin accepts some type of peace proposal. That's going
Speaker 1: to look like not quite as good as Ukraine would
Speaker 1: have gotten if they had taken the deal at Boris
Speaker 1: Johnson broke up. But it's going to look like Vladimir
Speaker 1: Putin obviously keeping Primea, obviously keeping some of the part
Speaker 1: some of the territories that he's he already has control of,
Speaker 1: and in exchange for him ending the war, we promised
Speaker 1: that Ukraine will not be admitted into NATO.
Speaker 4: That deal is still possible.
Speaker 1: Listen, let me just add one final point to this,
Speaker 1: and then we could you can respond however you want.
Speaker 1: Understand something here, the United States of America holds all
Speaker 1: of the chips. We could offer Vladimir Putin something that
Speaker 1: would probably get him to do whatever we wanted him
Speaker 1: to do. And you know what, that is the ultimate
Speaker 1: crowning jewel for him. How about we leave NATO if
Speaker 1: you end this war right now, America will withdraw from NATO.
Speaker 4: Why not internet rhetoric that it's not.
Speaker 3: We're you know this is this is like this is
Speaker 3: like you know, like literally, what if we left the
Speaker 3: key military alliance on the planet to incentivize a desperate
Speaker 3: on the other side of the world to not invade
Speaker 3: the country they unjustly. No, no, no, no, it's it's good
Speaker 3: for Twitter likes, it's great for like the ultra libertarians
Speaker 3: who are all like keenly interested in you Knowkovic's like
Speaker 3: electoral legitimacy. Uh, it's not reality. You suggest that you
Speaker 3: pointested that we offered a poll. Uh, there was support
Speaker 3: from Ukraine in exchange for a peace deal. Okay, fine,
Speaker 3: so let's finally talk about that. Then what happens then
Speaker 3: if that divestment occurs naturally there's a DMZ of course
Speaker 3: there would be, right, and then you have a build
Speaker 3: up of the remaining Ukrainian troops and Russia's troops on
Speaker 3: both sides. Don't you think it's likely that given a
Speaker 3: piece deal that takes place under those circumstances, eventually like
Speaker 3: the conflict would spark again. And this time, what are
Speaker 3: we going to do provide a to Ukraine again when
Speaker 3: Russia again.
Speaker 6: Respond to conflict like the ongoing slog for another couple
Speaker 6: of years, I mean.
Speaker 3: To the path through that allows the peace feal to
Speaker 3: take place in a way that doesn't guarantee an immediate
Speaker 3: future conflict. So if we pursue an unjust piece that
Speaker 3: is immediately broken, it will have been for nothing and
Speaker 3: will be in a worse position than we were before.
Speaker 3: Because nobody's going to want to stop the second version
Speaker 3: of the conflict five days after it starts. We need
Speaker 3: to be careful with this.
Speaker 6: So first of all, let me just say that will
Speaker 6: close with a response from you.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I think that Vousch's response of like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is just what internet libertarians care about or something
Speaker 1: like that. I just think there was a lot of
Speaker 1: words without you actually saying anything there. NATO was created
Speaker 1: after World War Two because we had the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: controlling half of Europe and the West and Western Europe
Speaker 1: had been destroyed. It was in utter ruins, and so
Speaker 1: we felt like we had to subsidize the defense of
Speaker 1: Western Europe to make sure that this very clearly expansion
Speaker 1: has powered the Soviet Union didn't expand into Western Europe
Speaker 1: at this point. Today, Western Europe is rich and we
Speaker 1: are thirty four trillion dollars in debt. It makes absolutely
Speaker 1: no sense. And by the way, Soviet Union doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 1: There is no reason for NATO to exist. There's no
Speaker 1: reason for the US to be a part of it.
Speaker 1: The former president of the United States of America and
Speaker 1: the current front runner to be President of the United
Speaker 1: States of America again has made this point many, many times.
Speaker 1: This is not just something for Internet libertarians to be
Speaker 1: interested in. This is something that should be a serious
Speaker 1: conversation amongst the American people. And by the way, during
Speaker 1: the fall when the Soviet Union collapsed, there were many
Speaker 1: of the wisest gray bears in the American security establishment
Speaker 1: who felt the same way, who felt that, okay, the mission.
Speaker 4: Of NATO is over.
Speaker 1: Anyway, to your next point, again, this is just an
Speaker 1: empty argument. You could say this about any peace deal.
Speaker 1: Well what if war breaks out again? Well okay, but
Speaker 1: if your worst case scenario is war breaks out, your
Speaker 1: solution is to continue supporting the war. We want to
Speaker 1: continue the war because we're afraid of war. Listen, if
Speaker 1: we actually as I just mentioned, which is a serious proposal,
Speaker 1: we have the ultimate chip here. We have the chip
Speaker 1: that could allow Vladimir Putin to claim, hey, I won,
Speaker 1: which is what you want. In these situations, you want
Speaker 1: to let everyone save face. You want to allow the
Speaker 1: Ukrainians to say, hey, we thought and we kept this
Speaker 1: part of our territory. You want to allow the Russians
Speaker 1: to say, hey, we were pushed into this, but we
Speaker 1: were victorious. You want to let everybody save face and
Speaker 1: come up with some type of deal. And yes, Vosh,
Speaker 1: you can make the point that it's never one million
Speaker 1: percent guaranteed that it'll hold in another war won't break out,
Speaker 1: but it's a hell of a lot more likely than
Speaker 1: continuing the war. So the point is you want to
Speaker 1: come up with a deal that's realistic that could maybe hold.
Speaker 1: And I do think that America is all the leverage
Speaker 1: in the world to make that happen.
Speaker 3: And if I may, I'll just say that, like, no,
Speaker 3: the idea of holding out for a good piece, one
Speaker 3: that actually incentivizes both parties to hand like keep their
Speaker 3: hands off, rather than just the first piece that comes up,
Speaker 3: is a good instinct. The idea that there is no
Speaker 3: difference between a piece deal that immediately breaks down and like,
Speaker 3: you know, a war that continues until a good piece
Speaker 3: is found. There is a massive difference between these. You know,
Speaker 3: look at the multiple attempts at securing peace between the
Speaker 3: Ukrainians and the Russians over the twenty fourteen invasion of
Speaker 3: the Dunbass. Right, you know, terms are set, conditions are
Speaker 3: then not met by either side, and then nothing changes,
Speaker 3: cementing a course of action that continued down eight years
Speaker 3: until the proper invasion by Russia began.
Speaker 4: You need to find a good piece.
Speaker 3: I don't know where that path lies, which means that
Speaker 3: I don't have the convenient, simple answer of saying, what
Speaker 3: if we just divested, left NATO and the hope that
Speaker 3: Putin never invaded the remains of Ukraine again. I think
Speaker 3: that's a very easy thing to say. I think that
Speaker 3: it's good for like getting up populist fervor. I think
Speaker 3: it sounds compelling. I think it would do nothing. I
Speaker 3: think it's a virtue signal. After all, America is in
Speaker 3: NATO as a formality, Like most many nations that are
Speaker 3: in NATO don't even meet the required two point five
Speaker 3: percent GDP millilitary expenditure that they need to be there.
Speaker 3: NATO is just a cementing of existing alliances. Do you
Speaker 3: think we still wouldn't go to war with the interests
Speaker 3: of say Britain or Germany or France. Of course we would,
Speaker 3: because we're still allies. NATO's just the framework built around it.
Speaker 3: The real, true underlying force, which has shared geopolitical interest persists. Nonetheless,
Speaker 3: what would keep Putin from invading again? In my mind
Speaker 3: it would be promises from the West, but not promises
Speaker 3: of devestment. We shouldn't just leave Ukraine weak and open
Speaker 3: to being invaded again, because again, if they just break
Speaker 3: the peace and conquer the rest of Ukraine after giving
Speaker 3: it a year or two to rearm on the Russian front,
Speaker 3: what do we get then? Well, obviously the Ukrainian people
Speaker 3: are conquered and they are subject to a great many.
Speaker 4: Violences and humiliations.
Speaker 3: But in addition to that, of course, we continue to
Speaker 3: sort of throw fuel into the fire of an expansionist empire.
Speaker 3: Putin's intentions on this are not subtle. He was invoking
Speaker 3: the borders of the Russian Empire when he began the
Speaker 3: invasion of Ukraine. I do not think there's any reason
Speaker 3: to believe that he would be like sated after he
Speaker 3: made his way all the way over to Poland. What
Speaker 3: I want is real reconciliation, not just between Ukraine and Russia,
Speaker 3: but the West in Russia. Russia has been, let's be
Speaker 3: real here, a nuclear missile ridden backwater since the end
Speaker 3: of the Soviet Union. Prostitution skyrocketed, child sex trafficking skyrocketed
Speaker 3: after the end of the Soviet Union. Their economy in shambles.
Speaker 3: Oligarchs effectively rule the country. There are many many Russians
Speaker 3: who don't even have indoor plumbing. I think that a
Speaker 3: promise of shared investment the thing we never did after
Speaker 3: the end of the Cold War, and not just business investment,
Speaker 3: not just Coca Cola opening up a factory.
Speaker 4: I mean real.
Speaker 3: You don't want the American taxpayer spending money on Ukrainian weapons, Okay,
Speaker 3: I got a better idea for you, three times as
Speaker 3: much money on Russian economic.
Speaker 4: You know, reinvestment.
Speaker 3: Give it, Give it to them to work with build
Speaker 3: real economic bonds. One of the reasons Taiwan hasn't been
Speaker 3: invaded yet is because China and America are so integrated economic.
Speaker 3: We don't have that with Russia. That's one of the
Speaker 3: reasons they're able to persist in spite of all the
Speaker 3: sanctions on them, because they rely on a pretty primitive
Speaker 3: oil coal, natural gas kind of you know, extraction economy.
Speaker 3: I think that if we take Russia seriously as a
Speaker 3: foreign power and as a people, we invest in them
Speaker 3: and we care about them in the long run, we
Speaker 3: could secure a better piece that both sides feel better about,
Speaker 3: and we could build a world where there is no
Speaker 3: longer any incentive for the West or for Russia to
Speaker 3: get angry at each other.
Speaker 4: And that's my hope naive it.
Speaker 5: Maybe and probably cheaper if we just reached a piece
Speaker 5: deal and lifted the sanctions and then kept dollar in gemony.
Speaker 6: Anyway, well, this is a good place to leave it.
Speaker 6: And this has been super super interesting. Thank you guys
Speaker 6: both for being game to talk some of this out.
Speaker 6: We really appreciate it. Boush and Dave Smith, thanks so
Speaker 6: much for joining us on counterpoints.
Speaker 4: I have a good week you guys. Thank you Dave,
Speaker 4: Thanks guys. Thanks Bash