WEBVTT - Anne Applebaum explains why Putin is rooting for Trump & democracy's decline 0:00:04.640 --> 0:00:07.760 Very pleased to be joined by the historian and author 0:00:08.160 --> 0:00:12.560 and apple Bomb, one of the most insightful commentators on 0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:19.000 domestic and global affairs, and particularly this revanist movement we 0:00:19.079 --> 0:00:24.160 see in the United States across Europe that is hostile 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:29.680 to the liberal democratic values and the systems that emerged 0:00:29.720 --> 0:00:33.360 in the aftermath of the Second World War, and though imperfect, 0:00:34.040 --> 0:00:38.360 have largely kept global peace for eighty years and have 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:44.400 certainly advanced human progress at a level that I think 0:00:44.479 --> 0:00:50.800 sometimes both Beggar's imagination and is not widely known. But 0:00:51.400 --> 0:00:52.560 welcome an apple. 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:54.920 Bomb, Thanks, thanks, glad to be here. 0:00:58.000 --> 0:01:02.640 There is a person that you remind me of historically 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:05.839 who I've never met, but who I've read a great 0:01:05.920 --> 0:01:11.959 deal of, and that's Dorothy Thompson. And she had the 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:15.440 distinction of being the first journalist an American kicked out 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:20.160 of Hitler's Germany, out of the Reich. I think, wrote 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:27.520 the greatest column explaining fascism and the affinity of people 0:01:27.640 --> 0:01:32.880 towards it in a New Yorker column You know speculated 0:01:32.959 --> 0:01:37.280 guess who the Nazi is as a dinner and parlor game. 0:01:39.600 --> 0:01:44.400 She talked about the collapse of democracies as an eyewitness 0:01:44.560 --> 0:01:49.040 before Senate testimony in nineteen thirty seven. She was an 0:01:49.160 --> 0:01:54.400 FDR New dealer, but was absolutely opposed to his court 0:01:54.480 --> 0:02:01.320 packing scheme and deeply worried about it. When she talked 0:02:01.360 --> 0:02:07.720 about the collapse of democracy, her main point was that 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:14.400 people just are not willing to fight for a concept 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:20.440 and an idea that they think has failed them with 0:02:20.560 --> 0:02:26.839 regard to their life, their economic prosperity, but they are 0:02:26.880 --> 0:02:32.280 willing to fight for that economic prosperity at the expense 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:36.560 of their democracy. And so as we stand at this 0:02:36.760 --> 0:02:40.320 moment in the United States where Biden, if the election 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:44.200 were tomorrow, by all accounts and all the polls, would 0:02:44.240 --> 0:02:46.680 lose the election to Trump. I don't think we're faded 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:50.959 to that. We have at least dephonic on national television 0:02:51.040 --> 0:02:55.280 talking about the January sixth perpetrators three years later, or hostages, 0:02:55.919 --> 0:02:59.560 so on and so forth. How do you see all 0:02:59.639 --> 0:03:05.600 of them in its totality in the highest lens. 0:03:08.360 --> 0:03:12.639 So let me unpick a little bit what you just said. 0:03:13.480 --> 0:03:16.840 You know, one is the question of are people willing 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:20.360 to fight for an idea as opposed to fighting for 0:03:20.400 --> 0:03:25.480 their own economic interests? And you know, I know that 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:30.000 it's it's quite fashionable to say that, you know, democracy 0:03:30.040 --> 0:03:33.720 is too complicated a concept people. You know, people don't 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:37.240 understand these questions a rule of law and justice and 0:03:38.160 --> 0:03:40.280 you know, it all takes place on a higher level, 0:03:40.400 --> 0:03:42.760 and everybody just wants to know where their next meal 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:47.240 is coming from. I actually disagree with that, and I 0:03:47.280 --> 0:03:51.080 think there is quite a lot of proof of that 0:03:51.480 --> 0:03:54.840 over time, both in our country but also in other countries. 0:03:54.840 --> 0:04:00.080 And we can come back to that as well. I 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:02.120 do think that we live in a moment when the 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:07.960 ideas have become muddied and you know, and have ben 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:11.839 and we we we lack people who clearly explain them 0:04:12.040 --> 0:04:15.040 or people who are able to organize movements around them, 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:19.000 and I think that's you know, that's a that's a 0:04:19.040 --> 0:04:21.559 part of the problem that we're seeing now. I would 0:04:21.560 --> 0:04:24.240 say that the third thing I would say is that 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:30.000 we you know, way the way you started your statement, 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:33.640 you know, you talked about this eighty years of relative 0:04:33.720 --> 0:04:38.919 peace and prosperity, rules of international order that at least 0:04:39.080 --> 0:04:41.320 kept the peace in some parts of the world. You know, 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:43.599 it meant that we didn't have another big war in Europe. 0:04:44.680 --> 0:04:48.520 It meant that conflicts were contained, even if they weren't 0:04:48.560 --> 0:04:54.440 always prevented. You know, we took a lot of that 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:58.640 for granted, we were all you and me and you know, 0:04:58.800 --> 0:05:01.520 people our age and years older and ten years younger. 0:05:02.040 --> 0:05:04.840 We're very, very lucky to live at a particular moment 0:05:04.920 --> 0:05:09.000 in history when it was just assumed that peace was 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:13.880 the norm and democracy was the ultimate aspiration. And we're 0:05:13.920 --> 0:05:20.080 now returning to something that's more normal historically speaking, or 0:05:20.160 --> 0:05:24.240 more you know, closer to what Dorothy Thompson was describing 0:05:24.240 --> 0:05:27.200 in the you know, in the nineteen thirties nineteen forties, 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:31.039 were returning to a time when democracy is a thing 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:34.719 that has to be fought for against different kinds of 0:05:34.760 --> 0:05:40.000 forces that want to undo it. And preparing again to 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:43.400 do that, and beginning to think about how to do that, 0:05:43.440 --> 0:05:46.159 and how to mobilize people again in a way that 0:05:46.200 --> 0:05:48.279 we haven't had to mobilize them in a long time. 0:05:48.960 --> 0:05:52.200 Is the challenge of the current moment. You know, I 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:56.360 like to a good metaphor for a way to think 0:05:56.400 --> 0:05:59.200 about how we're where we where we are right now 0:05:59.839 --> 0:06:02.839 is is actually the metaphor of running water. You know, 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:05.440 we all live in a society now where we just 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:07.400 assume that water comes out of the tap. 0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:08.080 Right. 0:06:08.160 --> 0:06:10.919 We don't think about where the water comes from. We 0:06:10.960 --> 0:06:13.840 don't worry about the pipes, we don't know really how 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:15.960 the technology works. We don't care about it. We just 0:06:16.000 --> 0:06:19.200 turn the tap on and we get water. We are 0:06:19.240 --> 0:06:22.800 now returning to an era before that, when we had 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:24.640 to think about water. You might have to go to 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:28.080 the well to get the water, or think about buckets 0:06:28.240 --> 0:06:31.640 or prepared during the day to assume you have enough on. 0:06:31.680 --> 0:06:34.840 In other words, something that was automatic to us and 0:06:34.880 --> 0:06:38.279 didn't require that much thought, which was the existence of 0:06:38.279 --> 0:06:41.560 democracy and the rule of law. We're now going to 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:44.120 have to begin to fight for, to think about, to 0:06:44.200 --> 0:06:47.839 go back to basics, to understand it. Better to talk 0:06:47.880 --> 0:06:51.280 about it more if we want it to continue, if 0:06:51.320 --> 0:06:53.800 we want to if we want to have that sense 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:57.479 of automaticity. You know that this is automatically where we live, 0:06:57.600 --> 0:06:59.840 then you know, in the society that we live in, 0:06:59.880 --> 0:07:02.240 we may have to do more about it. You know, 0:07:02.360 --> 0:07:04.520 all of us got used to this idea that democracy 0:07:04.560 --> 0:07:08.720 was something that was done by specialists, you know, political 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:12.760 consultants or politicians or people who live in Washington and 0:07:12.840 --> 0:07:14.400 the rest of us. All we had to do was 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:16.640 show up every four years and vote, or maybe not 0:07:16.800 --> 0:07:21.160 vote because it wasn't that important, and then the system 0:07:21.200 --> 0:07:24.640 would keep going. Actually, it turns out that it might 0:07:24.720 --> 0:07:26.640 be a system that we have to be involved in. 0:07:26.720 --> 0:07:28.840 We have to think about, we have to care about it, 0:07:29.440 --> 0:07:31.680 you know, it has to be part of our lives. 0:07:31.920 --> 0:07:33.640 We have to worry about it in ways that we 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:37.520 didn't before. And so I think that's the that's the 0:07:37.760 --> 0:07:39.520 that's the change that we're living through. 0:07:40.680 --> 0:07:40.800 You know. 0:07:40.880 --> 0:07:43.400 It's it's not so much that people won't fight for it, 0:07:43.520 --> 0:07:47.520 or don't care about it, or prefer their own economic interests. 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:51.680 It's that we have to have to think harder about 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:53.960 how to mobilize around it, how to push it, and 0:07:54.040 --> 0:07:56.960 how to make sure that it remains real. You know, 0:07:57.040 --> 0:08:00.080 it's a it's not a and it's not like a 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:02.320 battle that will be won and then it's over and 0:08:02.360 --> 0:08:04.760 we can all go back to making money or painting 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:07.800 paintings or doing whatever we were doing before. It's a 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:10.480 struggle and it's going to go on, probably for the 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:11.480 rest of our lives. 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:12.160 You know. 0:08:12.360 --> 0:08:17.600 If we want to maintain a political system where you know, 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:20.640 freedom and the rule of law and you know, a 0:08:20.680 --> 0:08:25.080 certain tolerance for you know, for political and other kinds 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:29.000 of minorities is the norm. Then we will have to 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:31.280 many more of us will have to be engaged than 0:08:31.280 --> 0:08:31.840 we ever were. 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:39.439 It's shocking to watch Trump or at least Stephonic or 0:08:39.640 --> 0:08:43.360 there's fifty other examples I could give you where somebody 0:08:43.400 --> 0:08:47.200 looks into a television camera and says the red chairs 0:08:47.240 --> 0:08:51.520 blue right, that the convicted Falons are now hostages. And 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:57.600 you're sitting there saying, what are people conceivably going to 0:08:57.800 --> 0:09:00.480 believe this? Is it possible that they could leave this? 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:04.319 And you kind of step back in the historical perspective 0:09:04.360 --> 0:09:06.120 and you say, you know, we live in a country 0:09:07.040 --> 0:09:11.360 where the casualty estimates of the Civil War were revised 0:09:11.520 --> 0:09:15.880 upwards about ten years ago after a really deep analysis, 0:09:15.960 --> 0:09:19.360 and so had you had a nation of thirty four 0:09:19.480 --> 0:09:23.640 million people where there were somewhere between seven hundred and 0:09:23.640 --> 0:09:29.360 fifty thousand to eight hundred fifty thousand casualties in eighteen 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:34.040 eighty five the political era of Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses Grant 0:09:34.520 --> 0:09:37.600 dies and he's the most famous American in the world, 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:41.040 and he's revered. You get to the beginning of the 0:09:41.160 --> 0:09:45.920 twentieth century, Grant is routinely mentioned in the same breath 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:50.560 as Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln, and by nineteen thirty 0:09:50.600 --> 0:09:56.319 he's gone. And by nineteen thirty, in fact, a military 0:09:56.480 --> 0:10:02.880 genius was a butcher, Harry genius was a drunk, a 0:10:05.600 --> 0:10:13.040 near great president was corrupt, and all of the noble 0:10:13.200 --> 0:10:18.600 virtues are assigned to the loser, a trader Robert E. 0:10:18.679 --> 0:10:23.000 Lee the myth of the lost cause. If you could 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:27.280 come out of the American Civil War within a few 0:10:27.440 --> 0:10:30.199 decades or maybe a few more. On top of that, 0:10:31.160 --> 0:10:36.120 with the entire narrative of what happened topsy turvyed I 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:40.160 think Taitasi Coach speaks about this. The North won the war, 0:10:40.360 --> 0:10:45.480 the South won the myth, then certainly it's possible. And 0:10:45.920 --> 0:10:49.240 this is the lesson, I suppose of all dictatorships, is 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:53.640 to invent and manufacture their own reality and their own 0:10:53.760 --> 0:10:58.880 truth under the velocity of their under the velocity of 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:03.880 their lives. And so when you look at the propaganda 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:10.400 element of this, the streme of invective and vitriol that's 0:11:10.480 --> 0:11:17.280 directed at Biden, at the pro democracy forces, the and 0:11:17.320 --> 0:11:21.840 from my perspective, the incapacity for a number of different reasons, 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:26.400 some structural, not to be able to respond to it. 0:11:26.920 --> 0:11:32.319 How do you think about that as central to being 0:11:32.400 --> 0:11:42.520 able to communicate about the exigent threat, the existential threat ahead. 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:47.960 When I think of the explanation, despite all the technology, 0:11:48.080 --> 0:11:52.760 all the advances in filmography, I'm not sure that there's 0:11:52.800 --> 0:11:57.480 a better explanation of who the fascists are and who 0:11:57.520 --> 0:12:01.480 we are than Frank Capra's nineteen forty two film, which 0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:05.640 was Why we Fight and how the country got right 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:09.800 into World War Tip. How do you think about that? 0:12:12.320 --> 0:12:19.760 So you're right that creating myths and you know, coding 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:24.440 the past with lies and reconstructing what happened, you know, 0:12:24.679 --> 0:12:28.400 is a is a trade of every dictatorshipt you know, 0:12:28.679 --> 0:12:31.080 probably going back to Rome, but certainly the ones of 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:35.640 the twentieth century. You know, we're famous for doing that. 0:12:35.800 --> 0:12:38.800 You know. The the construction of a of a historical 0:12:38.840 --> 0:12:42.400 mythology and a kind of series of events that justify 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:47.600 the present is, you know, is as old as autocracy. 0:12:48.920 --> 0:12:51.160 You know, the the you know, there was a communist 0:12:51.240 --> 0:12:54.920 mythology about the heroism of Stalin. You know that that 0:12:55.240 --> 0:13:00.360 was entirely false, based on a completely fake account of 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:03.120 the of the Bolshevik Revolution and the and the and 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:07.320 the nineteen twenty wars. You know, Hitler had had a 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:10.920 fake story about his own life and his own trajectory. 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:11.880 You know. 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:15.440 And you know, once again, I would I would stress 0:13:15.480 --> 0:13:18.800 the idea that I think for a long time Americans 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:22.160 half convinced themselves. Certainly, I mean that I was convinced 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:26.760 when I was growing up that this this quality didn't 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:29.400 really apply to us. You know, that we had a 0:13:29.480 --> 0:13:32.199 we had a better and clearer understanding of history and 0:13:32.320 --> 0:13:35.520 uh and uh, you know, and there and the and 0:13:35.559 --> 0:13:41.040 the narrative of progress was was was somehow solid, you 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:43.920 know that okay, where there was the revolution and then 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:46.520 this the Civil War kind of corrected the revolution, and 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:49.280 then we had the civil rights movement that corrected that, 0:13:49.400 --> 0:13:52.160 and you know, now we were on to something, to 0:13:52.240 --> 0:13:56.000 something better. And I think what we forgot was that 0:13:57.320 --> 0:14:02.440 bad ideas never die, you know, they they don't go away, 0:14:02.520 --> 0:14:04.480 you know, just because they've been defeated. You know, just 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:07.480 because Nazism was defeated doesn't mean that it doesn't come 0:14:07.520 --> 0:14:11.960 back in different forms. Just because you know, white supremacy 0:14:12.040 --> 0:14:14.360 was defeated in the in the Civil War, doesn't mean 0:14:14.400 --> 0:14:19.920 it doesn't re arise, and being vigilant about the return 0:14:20.000 --> 0:14:24.640 of bad ideas and constantly being aware that they can 0:14:24.720 --> 0:14:27.760 and will come back, and not being complacent. I think 0:14:27.840 --> 0:14:32.640 Americans became very complacent in the twentieth century because of 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:35.360 you know, we enjoyed so much success. We forgot that, 0:14:36.520 --> 0:14:40.160 we forgot what could lead to failure. You know, is 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:43.760 a you know again, something that needs to be done now, 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:47.760 I mean almost constant reminder of of you know, what 0:14:47.960 --> 0:14:50.400 happened in our history and how we have to continue 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:53.280 to overcome it is important. But your other point is 0:14:53.320 --> 0:15:00.880 about truth and untruth, which is you know again, Autocracies 0:15:00.920 --> 0:15:04.640 are always based upon, you know, an attempt to discover 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:10.040 or ascempt sorry, an attempt to distort or rearrange reality. 0:15:10.640 --> 0:15:13.840 And another element that we have to contend with now 0:15:14.080 --> 0:15:16.440 is that there are many more ways to do that 0:15:17.080 --> 0:15:19.000 than there used to be. You know, it's not just 0:15:20.240 --> 0:15:23.560 the dictator telling a story. You know, the dictator can 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:27.640 now have you know, hundreds of trolls, you know, paid 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:31.160 and unpaid, who can echo and repeat that story for him. 0:15:32.040 --> 0:15:36.760 The dictator can you know, can use you know, other 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:39.120 forms of technology. I mean, we haven't we haven't seen 0:15:39.160 --> 0:15:42.080 the full impact of AI yet, but I'm sure that 0:15:42.120 --> 0:15:46.320 we will in the coming election campaign. You know, the 0:15:47.000 --> 0:15:50.080 you know, there there are lessons that have been learned 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:53.200 over the over the last several decades. You know, if 0:15:53.240 --> 0:15:58.160 you repeat lies enough, if you provide a constant stream 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:00.840 of them, you know, if you confuse people, if you 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:04.720 produce this. You know, the famous expression is firehood of falsehoods. 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:06.440 This is the kind of Russian invention. You know, if 0:16:06.480 --> 0:16:11.000 you continually put out lies one after the next, you know, 0:16:11.080 --> 0:16:14.320 you begin to loosen the idea of truth itself, and 0:16:14.360 --> 0:16:18.440 then people feel, you know, they're not rooted in reality anymore. 0:16:18.600 --> 0:16:21.560 They doubt this, you know, all sources of information, whether 0:16:21.600 --> 0:16:24.040 it's the media, or whether it's the government, or whether 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:27.680 it's universities, and then they begin to doubt everything. And 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:30.640 people who doubt everything, and people who don't know what 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:33.600 to believe and aren't oriented, are much easier to manipulate. 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:37.480 So so you know, you're seeing right now several things 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:41.240 going on at the same time. One is this, you know, 0:16:41.360 --> 0:16:45.640 return of bad ideas. The second is ever more sophisticated 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:48.200 ways of you know, convincing people that nothing is true 0:16:48.240 --> 0:16:50.000 at all, and that they don't really know. They can't, 0:16:50.040 --> 0:16:52.520 they have no way of knowing what reality is, so 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:55.880 they might as well go along with, you know, with 0:16:55.880 --> 0:16:57.840 with whatever is easier. 0:16:59.000 --> 0:16:59.200 You know. 0:16:59.240 --> 0:17:02.080 It's it's interesting. I mean, at least dephonic is a 0:17:02.160 --> 0:17:08.239 particularly confusing in some ways version of this. I mean, 0:17:08.240 --> 0:17:13.480 it's somebody who's clearly educated, right, who's clearly intelligent, who 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:17.120 must know she's lying, you know, who, who who must 0:17:17.240 --> 0:17:22.040 understand that, you know that January sixth perpetrators were insurrectionists 0:17:22.080 --> 0:17:25.800 and not and not heroes, and they're certainly not hostages, 0:17:26.880 --> 0:17:30.119 you know, And yet has you know, is so profoundly 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:33.439 cynical that she's using again all these tools, you know, 0:17:33.600 --> 0:17:36.280 the the you know, the false language, you know, the 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:41.720 being reinforced by you know, by waves of internet emotion. 0:17:42.720 --> 0:17:46.359 And she's doing it in order to, you know, in 0:17:46.440 --> 0:17:48.600 order to obtain power. I mean, whether it's power for 0:17:48.640 --> 0:17:51.480 herself or power for her party, you know, remains to 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:53.400 be she I mean, maybe she wants to be vice president, 0:17:53.440 --> 0:17:58.480 maybe she wants to be have another leadership role. And 0:17:58.600 --> 0:18:01.679 you know, we've we we really forgot that that's you know, 0:18:01.760 --> 0:18:06.440 that's normal behavior throughout history that people, you know, people 0:18:06.640 --> 0:18:10.080 are opportunistic and cynical, and they lie to get power. 0:18:10.359 --> 0:18:13.159 Well, it's an important part of the coalition, right. You 0:18:13.240 --> 0:18:16.520 have the fanatics, you have the ideologues, but none of 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:20.800 it happens, none of it comes to life without the cynics. 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:25.560 Let me, let me ask you turn this towards Ukraine 0:18:25.880 --> 0:18:32.440 and to the war, and towards the global security situation. 0:18:34.640 --> 0:18:40.119 Nineteen twenty three Hitler's punch. We are one hundred and 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:43.000 one years on, and we are one hundred years on 0:18:43.240 --> 0:18:48.000 now from the birth dates of men like Jimmy Carter 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:53.360 and George Herbert Walker Bush. Jimmy Carter just missed the war. 0:18:53.440 --> 0:18:57.080 He graduated in Napolis in nineteen forty six. George Bush 0:18:57.680 --> 0:19:02.040 was the youngest fighter pilot, naval aviator in the Pacific. 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:07.400 But when we think back towards you know what's called 0:19:07.440 --> 0:19:11.840 the Greatest generation. A lot of the young men who 0:19:11.960 --> 0:19:15.080 landed on the beaches and who were buried under the 0:19:15.200 --> 0:19:21.560 crosses were born in a twenty four after the nineteen 0:19:21.680 --> 0:19:25.280 one hundred years ago. It was their birthdates. And there's 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:29.840 something true about history. The sixteenth century was deadlier than 0:19:29.920 --> 0:19:33.160 the fifteenth and the seventeenth. Then the sixteenth, the eighteenth 0:19:33.240 --> 0:19:38.000 more than the seventeenth. The nineteenth was a very deadly century. 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:41.960 It was a preface to industrial war, and things went 0:19:42.080 --> 0:19:45.760 completely off the hook, as you know in the twentieth century, 0:19:45.840 --> 0:19:50.160 where by the time you reach the midpoint with mankind's 0:19:50.200 --> 0:19:55.959 possession of weapons that can extinct civilization, one hundred million 0:19:56.040 --> 0:19:59.440 dead in the Second Global War of the first half 0:19:59.480 --> 0:20:07.600 of the cent history has been broken or postponed. But 0:20:07.600 --> 0:20:10.000 there's a lot of time left in the twenty first 0:20:10.040 --> 0:20:15.360 century to exceed the Butcher's bill of the twentieth century. 0:20:16.400 --> 0:20:20.240 And so my first question, and I'm going to ask 0:20:20.280 --> 0:20:23.520 a bunch of them put together, who is winning the 0:20:23.560 --> 0:20:31.600 war in Ukraine and Russia? And two, it seems to 0:20:31.680 --> 0:20:38.280 me that Donald Trump's security vision is very clear. He 0:20:38.480 --> 0:20:43.479 views the world in a nineteenth century sense. He's a 0:20:43.520 --> 0:20:51.640 mercanti list in some regard a moral but he doesn't 0:20:51.760 --> 0:20:55.840 understand why the United States would extend a security guarantee 0:20:55.880 --> 0:21:00.520 to Taiwan. He looks at that as China's back yard 0:21:00.560 --> 0:21:06.000 and doesn't care. He looks at Ukraine as Russia's backyard. 0:21:06.040 --> 0:21:09.119 And whoever the strongest power in Europe may be, let 0:21:09.200 --> 0:21:11.360 him fight it out. If that's what they want to do. 0:21:12.000 --> 0:21:15.439 And I think that Trump looks at the Western hemisphere 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:19.320 is my territory. I don't think you ever have to 0:21:19.359 --> 0:21:24.080 look forward to Trump trying to send an American army, 0:21:24.440 --> 0:21:27.920 let's say, to the Middle East. I think that's anatomatic 0:21:27.960 --> 0:21:31.000 to him. But I think there's a real lack of 0:21:31.080 --> 0:21:36.159 imagination about an American army rolling south into Mexico or 0:21:36.200 --> 0:21:41.560 into Venezuela, or into other places in the hemisphere. Trump 0:21:41.600 --> 0:21:45.960 ideologically doesn't necessarily want a foreign war on the other 0:21:46.040 --> 0:21:49.480 side of the world, but all dictators want a war, 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:55.000 and Donald Trump's personality would suggest that he too would 0:21:55.080 --> 0:21:57.720 not be indisposed towards sending that. So when you look 0:21:57.760 --> 0:22:00.640 at the world and you look at it an American 0:22:00.720 --> 0:22:05.960 president that would, I think, within a week functionally abrogate 0:22:06.160 --> 0:22:16.000 Article five of NATO. That pretty quickly would realign the 0:22:16.040 --> 0:22:18.800 world in the sense that the United States is not 0:22:19.160 --> 0:22:22.480 is not coming to help you, the United States is 0:22:22.880 --> 0:22:29.800 going home. Talk about that in the context agreement disagreement, 0:22:32.000 --> 0:22:34.800 but also in the context of this of this war 0:22:35.119 --> 0:22:42.280 in Ukraine. United States weapons supplies to Ukraine are tenuous 0:22:42.320 --> 0:22:48.080 at best. There is an unbelievable hostility towards the Ukrainian 0:22:48.200 --> 0:22:53.840 nation from this MAGA right, that is fully in league 0:22:53.880 --> 0:22:59.800 with the ambitions of Vladimir Putin or useful idiots forum. However, however, 0:22:59.840 --> 0:23:04.520 you see the world to talk to a warning community, 0:23:04.560 --> 0:23:09.840 if you would, about this moment in the next moment, 0:23:10.040 --> 0:23:14.800 as this security situation continues to unravel in a way 0:23:14.800 --> 0:23:16.840 that I find very, very worrisome. 0:23:18.160 --> 0:23:22.879 So what you're talking about is Trump's dislike of the 0:23:23.000 --> 0:23:28.040 idea of collective defense. So Trump is not interested in 0:23:28.160 --> 0:23:33.359 America having allies and in working with other countries to 0:23:33.480 --> 0:23:35.560 preserve regions of stability. 0:23:35.920 --> 0:23:37.480 I don't want to cut you, I don't want to 0:23:37.520 --> 0:23:39.760 cut you off there, but I want to take for 0:23:39.800 --> 0:23:43.240 an academic purpose, right, I want to take the Trump 0:23:43.240 --> 0:23:50.439 position on this. Is the German army is it prepared 0:23:50.480 --> 0:23:56.280 to fight? It is not. The Canadians have the capacity 0:23:56.400 --> 0:24:02.080 maybe to send a battalion to Haiti, maybe not. When 0:24:02.119 --> 0:24:09.760 you look across the Western European nations, what countries have 0:24:09.920 --> 0:24:12.960 a military that's ready to fight today. 0:24:14.640 --> 0:24:17.920 Well, I'm speaking to you here from Poland that's one 0:24:17.960 --> 0:24:22.640 of them. And the Poles would fight and are and 0:24:22.760 --> 0:24:27.320 think about it, frequently. I believe the British and French 0:24:27.359 --> 0:24:33.520 can fight, and they periodically do. I believe that if 0:24:33.560 --> 0:24:39.800 there were a war that you know, that that that 0:24:39.800 --> 0:24:43.399 that you know, that challenged Europe, I believe you would 0:24:43.440 --> 0:24:49.200 find Dutch soldiers, you would find Scandinavian soldiers, You would 0:24:49.480 --> 0:24:52.879 you might even find Italian and Spanish soldiers that will fight, 0:24:53.000 --> 0:24:55.360 and you would even find some Germans who would fight. 0:24:57.160 --> 0:25:01.200 You know, much would depend on how all the contest 0:25:01.320 --> 0:25:06.080 was organized and how people understood it. But you know, 0:25:06.200 --> 0:25:09.480 and you know you would. You might also have without 0:25:09.520 --> 0:25:12.679 the United States as an organizing power. And that's, by 0:25:12.720 --> 0:25:15.480 the way, the United States is most important function in Ukraine. 0:25:16.400 --> 0:25:19.160 It's not just that the US gives money. Actually, if 0:25:19.160 --> 0:25:21.800 you if you look at the numbers and you count 0:25:21.920 --> 0:25:24.600 EU donations, which of course come from the Member States, 0:25:25.400 --> 0:25:27.920 the US and the European Union give about the same 0:25:27.920 --> 0:25:31.520 amount of money to Ukraine. But the US has a 0:25:31.600 --> 0:25:37.640 fundamentally important organizing leadership function and of course has a 0:25:37.960 --> 0:25:41.760 military that it's not just the scale of the military, 0:25:41.760 --> 0:25:46.760 it's also the commanded control systems, the experience of leadership 0:25:46.880 --> 0:25:49.280 that the you know, the rest of Europe as a 0:25:49.280 --> 0:25:53.920 whole doesn't have. So, you know, I think you would 0:25:54.000 --> 0:25:56.280 find you would find people who would fight, you just 0:25:56.320 --> 0:26:00.240 wouldn't find the leadership and the and the you know, 0:26:00.320 --> 0:26:03.240 the the you know, the the galvanizing force that the 0:26:03.359 --> 0:26:06.879 US can provide. You know, I don't think it's the 0:26:06.920 --> 0:26:12.000 case that you know, Europeans are I don't know, incapable 0:26:12.040 --> 0:26:15.239 of warfare anymore. I think that's a you know, it 0:26:15.280 --> 0:26:17.720 hasn't happened here in a long time, but you now 0:26:17.800 --> 0:26:23.359 have a sense of, at least among some Europeans, you 0:26:23.359 --> 0:26:27.040 have a sense of existential conflict that you didn't have before. 0:26:27.560 --> 0:26:29.560 You certainly had that at the beginning of this war. 0:26:31.080 --> 0:26:36.400 And you know, it's not universal and it's not everywhere, 0:26:36.440 --> 0:26:40.720 but it's that it's quite powerful. So so I don't 0:26:40.720 --> 0:26:43.760 I don't think we're you know, what the US does 0:26:44.720 --> 0:26:46.680 is the you know, just returning to the beginning of 0:26:46.720 --> 0:26:49.840 our conversation, is the US in a way brings the 0:26:50.000 --> 0:26:54.639 organizing ideas and principle. You know, people people would fight 0:26:54.880 --> 0:26:59.000 for freedom, and they would do so under American leadership 0:26:59.720 --> 0:27:02.200 because as they do believe in that idea and they 0:27:02.240 --> 0:27:05.600 believe in in you know, and certainly Europeans believe in 0:27:05.640 --> 0:27:08.920 the idea that you know, larger countries shouldn't be able 0:27:08.960 --> 0:27:15.560 to occupy and and and destroy smaller ones. People understand 0:27:15.600 --> 0:27:21.240 that the Russian occupation of Eastern Ukraine is a tutalitarian occupation. 0:27:21.359 --> 0:27:24.160 You know, when the Russians come into a region, they 0:27:24.400 --> 0:27:27.680 arrest all the local people, they create concentration camps, they 0:27:28.119 --> 0:27:32.520 kidnap and deport children, They commit human rights, human rights 0:27:32.560 --> 0:27:35.040