 Should the US give full military and political support to Ukraine in its war with Russia, short of sending troops? That was the subject of a Soho forum debate held on Thursday, June 23rd at the Porcupine Freedom Festival or Porkfest in Lancaster, New Hampshire. Journalist Kathy Young, a Moscow native who emigrated to the US as a teenager, argued that the US government is correct to impose sanctions on Russia and send military and economic support to Ukraine. Scott Horton, host of anti-war radio, argued that US backing of NATO provoked the Russian invasion and that imposing sanctions and sending weapons has brought more death and destruction. He says the only role for the Americans is to call for an immediate ceasefire followed by negotiations. The debate was moderated by Soho forum director Gene Epstein. The US response to a Russian invasion of another country should involve the provision of ample weapons, supplies, and military intelligence to that country together with organizing aggressive economic, political, and cultural sanctions on Russia. Please vote yes, no, or undecided on that resolution. Now here to defend that resolution, Kathy Young. Kathy, please come to the stage. Yes, okay, Kathy, okay. Taking the negative on that resolution, I give you Scott Horton. Scott, please come to the stage. All right. Connor, please close the voting. Kathy, you have 15 minutes to defend the resolution. You probably want to take the podium. Kathy, take it away. Hi, everyone. It's great to be here. This is my first visit to Porkfest and it's really quite an exciting event. So I want to start by saying that obviously everyone in the liberty movement can agree that an interventionist state is dangerous to civil liberties at home, is dangerous to the freedom project. So I think we're all aware of the dangers of excessive interventionism. And certainly we've learned some hard lessons over the past 20 years in exporting democracy abroad to countries with little or no experience of liberty. And we've all found out in Iraq and in Afghanistan that that is very right for pitfalls. So yeah, we've certainly learned cautionary tales about the exporting democracy. I would argue that what we face with Russia today is very different not only because no one is really calling for direct intervention militarily or direct military engagement between the U.S. and Russia. I think we all know some really good reasons that that is not being advocated given the nuclear arsenal that both countries have. But also I would say that with regard to a less sort of overtly military or less direct style of intervention, which is what we're debating here, which is aid with weapons, aid with intelligence, and sanctions in case of an actual Russian attack, I would say that this is a very different type of argument than the kind of interventionism that we've seen the unfortunate results of in the past 20 years. First of all, again, in this case, we are talking about situations in which there is a direct aggression initiated by Russia. And obviously we're all thinking about Ukraine right now. So that's sort of the paradigm at the moment. And I think everyone will agree that whatever the history between Russia and Ukraine that was an unprovoked attack, which really has brought to the European continent horrific scenes of arguably genocide, which haven't been seen since World War II. But also the other difference, I think, that is essential is that Russian aggression is directed toward neighboring countries which are on, of course, however imperfect of liberal democratic development and which do have very genuine traditions of and aspiration toward freedom. And those aspirations are being targeted by an increasingly aggressive authoritarian and arguably even totalitarian militaristic state in Russia. This is something that began in Georgia in 2008 where it was preceded, by the way, by the actual Russian invasion, was preceded by years of Russian provocation in Georgia in the sense of handing out Russian passports en masse to a residence of South Ossetia, which is a region that has separatist issues with Georgia, and essentially creating a class of Russian citizens who were eligible philosophically for Russian protection. And it's really telling, by the way, that the Russian passports the South Ossetians got were not, did not entitle them to actually live in Russia. The only intent was to create a mass of people in South Ossetia on the territory of Georgia whom Russia could claim to act as the protector of. Then, of course, we had the situation in Ukraine in 2014 in which in response to what was really essentially a popular revolution, the ouster of a pro-Russian regime that was growing increasingly authoritarian and alienated from the people, Russia not only seized Crimea, taking advantage of disarray in the Ukrainian forces, but also initiated the creation of separatists, and I'm really putting separatists in quotation marks because these were not grassroots formations. These were essentially gangster statelets that were driven primarily by Russian citizens who were coming in and Russian organizers. And then there were actual incursions of Russian troops that continued for eight years with really preposterous excuses where Russia claimed with a straight face that Russian soldiers who were caught on Ukrainian territory were actually on leave and volunteering to fight for their Russian-speaking brethren in Ukraine. This has been going on for some time and, of course, culminating in the recent invasion. I think this is a situation where you can plausibly oppose on the grounds of philosophical consistency, U.S. intervention, and do it on principal grounds. I will say that, unfortunately, from following the debate on interventionism and anti-interventionism in this case, I have found that in many, many cases, maybe in the majority of cases, anti-interventionists have resorted to arguments that really distort facts and make sort of specious claims to discredit the case for Ukraine's defense. One of those is that Ukraine's 2014 revolution of dignity was a coup engineered by the U.S. deep state, which is based on some very, very out-of-context tidbits from conversations between American diplomats who were, in fact, involved in the and they were actually quite overtly involved in the negotiations between the proceeding regime and the opposition, which, you know, where they were trying to work out a deal. I think that there was some undiplomatic language that was used, but it really was not a conspiracy. If you read a lot of primary sources, the revolution in Ukraine absolutely was a popular revolution that was driven by pro-freedom forces. There were, yes, there were some extreme nationalists and authoritarian elements and arguably pro-fascist elements that were kind of glomming onto it, which represented maybe like one percent of the people who were involved in the, you know, the Euro Maidan movement that led to this to this revolution. But, of course, that also has been transformed into claims that the Ukrainian state is dominated by basically a Nazi clique, which really would make it like the world's first Nazi regime with a Jewish president. You know, that's, you know, that I think is really deeply ironic. And this is really, by the way, all of this is just echoing essentially Russian, you know, Kremlin talking points that have been out there for, you know, for eight years. And, of course, the other argument that has been made with regard to both Georgia and Ukraine is that it's really the fault of NATO expansion and the intent announced under the Bush administration to put both Georgia and Ukraine on a track toward NATO membership. I think this is a complicated issue, but what I will say is that even, there was a fascinating article that was written in 2008 at the time of the war in Georgia by a Russian general named Vladimir Dvorkin, who was part of the arms control negotiating team, as so this is a really high level person, who basically said that he was not a great fan of the Bush administration's plan, but he also felt that, again, you know, given Russia's nuclear arsenal, given the overall balance of power, it's just preposterous to claim that NATO expansion poses an actual threat to Russian security. His argument was that the real threat that the Kremlin feels is that being surrounded by NATO countries is going to push toward liberalization and push toward modernization in ways that the Russian government doesn't want. I will say, by the way, you know, without getting into a big debate about NATO, NATO is primarily a defensive alliance. The famous article five of the NATO Charter, which says that the other countries are obliged to come to the defense of a NATO country that has been attacked, it really stipulates that only in cases where the attack is unprovoked and not the result of an act of aggression by the country itself. So I think that really takes away a big part of the idea that NATO membership would enable aggression toward Russia. I think what NATO expansion is a threat to, specifically NATO membership for Ukraine, is really the Kremlin's dreams of restoring the Russian Empire, of which it sees Ukraine and a number of other smaller countries as an essential part. Russia today is a country driven by ideologues like Alexander Dugan, who, you know, whose work, who is this really bizarre, ultra nationalist guru whose work is taught in the military academies, who is close to a number of people very high in the regime, who essentially argues that the only way that Russia can have true nationhood is by being an empire and expanding an empire. So I really think that we're talking about a really appreciable danger to freedom. I don't think it's irrelevant for the liberty movement in the United States, whether the world outside the U.S. is dominated by authoritarian or totalitarian powers or by imperfect, but nonetheless, you know, real liberal democratic countries. And Russia, along with China, is the primary authoritarian force in the world right now that has repeatedly shown aggression toward pro-democracy neighbors. And I think that, you know, again, while no one wants direct military engagement with Russia, I think the argument that we should do whatever we can to help those countries under attack with arms intelligence and sanctions and hopefully along the way promote meaningful change in Russia itself, which is possible only if those imperial aspirations of the current regime are thwarted. I think there's a very, very good argument to be made that that is in fact a pro-freedom course and one that should be pursued. And that's it. Thank you, Kathy. Speaking from the negative, Scott Horton, Scott, take it away please. Thank you. We are in agreement that this war is an aggressive and illegal war launched by Russia into Ukraine. I don't think there's any question about that. I don't have anyone who disagrees with that, but it was not unprovoked. And frankly, I'll disagree with virtually all of what you just heard. I don't know how much of it I'll be able to address here, but I want to start with something that I learned when I was a kid about the aftermath of World War II and how there's some myth making here, but bear with me, that America in the aftermath of World War II befriended our enemies, the Japanese and the Germans helped rebuild their countries and brought them into our defensive umbrella and whatever and friendship. And the reason that they did that wasn't self-interested reasons. And this is partially true. You have to admit this is true. It was because they learned the lessons of Versailles. And the lessons of Versailles, as we should have even learned in government school, I learned this in government school, that after World War I, the Allies mistreated Germany so badly in the war reparations and the stripping them of their outlying territories that this essentially laid the groundwork for the rise of the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler. And of course, if you read Jim Powell's great book, you see how American intervention and extending the war helped lead to the communist revolution in the creation of the Soviet Union in the first place and thus setting the stage for World War II. And so we're not going to make that mistake again. We're going to befriend our enemies and treat them with respect and all of these kinds of things. Even the Japanese and the Germans, of course, had been a couple of the most ruthless and murderous regimes in world history. And yet we made friends with them because it was the right thing to do. But then what did we do after the Cold War with the Soviet Union ended and peacefully, almost entirely peacefully, as Gorbachev and the Soviets essentially just abandoned the empire, set all of South Asia and Eastern Europe free. Instead of eating the same lessons of Versailles, we kicked them while they're down. And the Bill Clinton government immediately broke both senior's promises not to expand NATO and brought in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland in 1999. And three weeks later, launched an aggressive war against the Serbs close, the Russians close allies, the Serbs in order to break off Kosovo. That was our defensive alliance. The United Nations wouldn't authorize it, of course, because Russia has veto power. So Bill Clinton just broke the law. I'm sorry. Sorry. So Bill Clinton just broke the law. And like George Bush's Coalition of the Willing, he used NATO to do it and launched this aggressive war in order to break off Kosovo for a bunch of drug dealers and gangsters and organ smugglers and criminals. And that was the start of it. And then, of course, he also sent the Harvard boys to not rebuild their economy the way they had done with the Baltic states and with Poland and try to help them, but in fact, to essentially rape their economy, to liquidate everything and take all the money. Life expectancy dropped by double digits in Russia in the 90s. Imagine a communist, a real, not just in name, but the government owned the economy, everything, a real Marxist country fell and adopted American capitalism. And life expectancy fell by double digits. It was the world's greatest catastrophe. And it was deliberate. And Jeffrey Sacks, who was one of the Harvard boys says today it was deliberate and he couldn't stop them. You can take his word for it. Then W. Bush comes in and even though Putin is the first man to call him, the first world leader to call him on September 11th and say, Matt, your service, he tears up two months later, he tears up the anti-ballistic missile treaty and says we're going to put anti-missile missiles in Romania and Poland in violation of Clinton's promise that, okay, we're expanding NATO, but we promise not to expand our military equipment into the new NATO countries that he had said in 1997. That's out the window. Now we're doing this. And Bush Jr. went on to bring nine more nations into the NATO military alliance. And as Miss Young said, he promised in 2008 to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. And this was despite the fact that four months before he promised that, his ambassador to Russia, our current CIA director, William Burns, wrote a memo. We know this from Julian Assange, who right now is sitting in prison waiting to be extradited and prosecuted for espionage for bringing us this information. And William Burns wrote to Condoleezza Rice, yet means yet. I met today with Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister, and he explained to me in absolutely explicit terms NATO expansion stops here. And Lavrov is very polite, of course, and uses his diplomatic language, but he says we absolutely will not tolerate the addition of Ukraine or Georgia into the NATO military alliance. If you do, it could cause a civil war in Ukraine. And then we might have to intervene, which is a situation that we don't want to have to face. So please don't do this. And Fiona Hill, who you know from TV as a hawk from the Trump administration and testified against him in his impeachment and all of that, she has said, because she was in the W. Bush government then, that the CIA and the other intelligence agencies warned W. Bush do not do this. This was their high confidence professional assessment. This is a bad policy that's going to provoke Russia. And why didn't they just bring them into NATO then? It was because Germany and France absolutely put their foot down. Why? For one reason. It'll unnecessarily provoke Russia. You can call it a defensive alliance all you want. But from the Russian point of view, looking west, it doesn't look defensive at all. It looks like a steadily encroaching military alliance right into their neighborhood. We have them in road doctrine that now expands the entire planet. But Russia is not allowed to have them in road doctrine at all, not even in their closest neighbors. And in fact, we did last time we tried to overthrow the government of Belarus was just a year and a half ago. And Lyle Goldstein, who was at the Navy War College, wrote that he thought that was the final provocation. They won't even leave Belarus alone. They tried it in 2005 with the denim revolution. They tried it again in 2020. And he said it was then not just Putin, but all of Moscow's national security establishment said that's it. The Americans are just relentless. They'll never stop. We have to draw the line somewhere. And so we're going to start getting tough now. And just think for a moment, regardless of slogans about a defensive alliance, just put the shoe on the other foot for a second. What if Reagan had spent America and our empire in a bankruptcy in the 1980s could have happened. And the Soviets had won the Cold War. And then they expanded their military alliance into Western Europe. And then they started expanding it into the Caribbean and incorporating Mexico and stationing their troops and armed forces there. And then they overthrew the government of Canada twice in 10 years because the Canadians kept electing the wrong guys who didn't want to join Russia's military alliance. And they hired a bunch of Hitler-loving neo-Nazis to help them do a violent street push on the second one to do it. Then they started threatening to kick America out of our naval bases in Alaska. And then they launched a bloody war on terrorism against the people of Vancouver, British Columbia, who refused to accept the new coup d'etat junta. Now, what would the United States of America do about that? I think everyone knows the answer is at the very least we would absolutely invade and crush the regime in Canada that had suborned itself to the Russians in this way. And that's if we're very, very lucky, because I think the average American president would start launching hydrogen bombs at Moscow. And I think we all know that. I don't think the Russians would dare. And yet we're to believe that Vladimir Putin is the most dangerous psychopath on the planet since David Koresh. But he should just sit there and take it and be used to it and just know that we have him overmatched and there's nothing he can do about it. No matter how many times he says in his speeches at this security conference and that security conference, for the love of God, will you please listen to me? I have security concerns and you keep encroaching and encroaching and encroaching. And I think any reasonable person who listens to his declarations of war from February the 22nd and 24th, you'll see that, yes, he's angry. But if you read the transcript through, it's far more reasoned argument than bluster and hatred and, you know, psychopathy or whatever. And I'm not saying that his argument justifies what he did. I'm not saying it's a reasonable argument for launching a war. I'm not saying that. I'm saying it is 100% rational argument right up until that point that this is the way the Americans have intervened. And you can listen to the Victoria Newland and Jeffrey Pye phone call for yourself on YouTube and various places on the internet. And you can hear them plotting the coup that took place two weeks later on February the 21st, 2014. And yes, it was a violent street putched by forces in the street. No one is saying it was CIA agents on the ground directing the mob in real time. The point is the Americans were supporting that entire movement and they had made a deal through the Germans with the sitting government, the same guy that they prevented from taking office in the Orange Revolution of 04, that he would pull all his police forces back and would agree to early elections if all the protesters on their side would be called back as well. And instead, after he pulled his police back, they just seized all the government buildings and chased him right out of town. And George Friedman from Stratford called it the most obvious coup in world history. And John J. Meersheimer from the University of Chicago, the dean of the realist school of foreign policy in America wrote an entire article about this for foreign affairs, the most prestigious journal of the Council on Foreign Relations in 2014 explaining this entire thing. There's no question about this. And he said at the time then that America is leading Ukraine down what he called the primrose path. We're making them all these promises of what we're going to do for them. But what we're really doing is we're getting them in deep, deep trouble with Russia. And there's going to be a backlash. And then after the coup, what happened was the first thing the new parliament did was outlaw Russian as a second language. And then three former presidents, four former presidents wrote a letter saying now is our chance to kick the Russians out of the Syvestipal Naval base on Crimea. And only then did the Russians leave their bases and seize the Crimean Peninsula where they had a deal since the fall of Soviet Union 24 years to lease the base. And that was it. And the reason they left the base and seized the peninsula without killing anyone, it was a coup domain without a single battle. They just took over the thing was because the new government in Ukraine was threatening to kick them out of there. And then the people in the east of the country who were the heaviest supporters of Yanukovych, the former president said, well, if you guys can do a coup and overthrow our democratically elected president from the election of 2010, well, then we can just occupy the government buildings here in the Donbas and refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the new government. And then the new government launched what they call the war on terrorism and simply attacked them. And you know, she says, oh, whoever they were that seized power in the Donbas at that time, they were just sock puppets or whatever. They weren't the people of the Donbas. Well, that's just not true. They were. And in fact, they voted after they achieved their, you know, de facto independence, they voted in a plebiscite to join the Russian Federation. And Vladimir Putin told them, no, said, I don't want you to join the Russian Federation. He already had a deal with the Germans and the French are closest allies, supposedly the Minsk one and then the Minsk two deals that the new government in Kiev would recognize essentially a strong federalism and autonomy for the Donbas region, Donetsk and Luhansk, but they would stay within Ukraine and not join the Russian Federation. And if you read, again, the declarations of war from last February, he talks about how the Americans made sure and intervene to prevent Kiev from ever implementing Minsk to, and they did pull back the heavy armed forces against them. But there was what they call low level fighting for eight years. Well, seven years after the worst of the fighting where overall, as many as 14,000 people were killed there. And so, and all the while, as the Americans themselves admit, they're normalizing and integrating Ukraine's military into America's military forces, it's being led by American military forces in a way that they even said themselves in the New York Times, this is making them a de facto member of NATO. And just real quick in 30 seconds in 2008, when Georgia launched that war against South Ossetia to reintegrate that territory and killed Russian peacekeepers, provoking the Russian response, Dick Cheney proposed that George Bush launch missile strikes at the Rokey Tunnel to collapse the tunnel under and destroy the Russian armor columns coming under the Caucasus Mountains, which could have led right to a nuclear war. And that man was one heartbeat away from making the decision himself, and only the cool patient wisdom of George W. Bush prevented us from all being annihilated off of the face of the earth right there. And so I'm sorry I ran out of time, but I'll get a little bit more to the provocations leading up to the current war in my rebuttal. Thank you. Well, I think that, you know, Scott has thrown out a lot of assertions there, which, you know, I would obviously need a lot more than five minutes to address some detail. I'm not even going to get into the real causes of the war, of the war intervention in Serbia and whether, you know, that was as unreasonable as Scott claims it is. I mean, you know, there were certain events that are widely recognized as a genocide, but we're not going to get into that. I also want to, I really want to question this argument, and again, there's a lot of material there that the United States treated Russia horribly after the end of the Cold War. I mean, first of all, there was like $55 billion given in various forms of aid to Russia. A lot of that went to corrupt officials. There was a famous incident where Al Gore was brought a report that basically said, you know, be careful because a lot of this money is going into, you know, to line the pockets of various corrupt people. And his response was to write bullshit across the cover of the report and send it back. You know, there was a famously like chummy relationship between Yeltsin and Bill Clinton. You know, Russia was brought into the G7, which it really was not of unqualified for in terms of the performance of its economy. In terms of NATO, you know, Russia was brought into the partnership for peace, which was a kind of expanded, you know, NATO related program where there are all sorts of security programs were pursued together. Russia was brought into the Russia-NATO Council, which was supposed to be coordinating with Russia and addressing whatever security threats Russia claimed that it perceived. NATO, by the way, held joint exercises with Russia until fairly recently. This is something that you won't really hear. But, you know, NATO paid for a lot of programs, for instance, in, you know, assistance to decommissioned Russian officers. So, you know, I think this is a very, very simplistic idea that, you know, Russia was just trampled on the ground. I think whatever Jeffrey Sachs says really used to be taken with a grain of salt because Jeffrey Sachs gets a lot of, this is the Harvard economist who was involved in the Russian economic reform, and he routinely gets accused of, you know, being took blame for the horrible way that, you know, the really bad way that these reforms turned out. And, of course, his response is to say, well, that just happened because the U.S. and the IMF didn't give more money. I mean, I think it's really kind of telling that Scott sees, you know, pro-democracy, pro-freedom movements in places like Belarus as solely engineered by the U.S. and essentially attempted coups. In terms of the Victoria Nuland tape, yeah, you can listen to it, but I think you really have to remember the timing. This was not a preparation for a coup. This was a discussion of an ongoing deal. I mean, they were talking about which people in the Ukrainian opposition should join the government. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that this was being done in preparation for a coup. This was being done as part of negotiations between Victorina Kovic, the pro-Russian president, and the opposition on forming a new government. So, you know, there is that. And I think, you know, I'll just add one real quick thing in terms of this argument that, you know, what would the United States do if Russia was cultivating alliances in the Western Hemisphere? Well, it's been cultivating an alliance with Venezuela forever. You know, we haven't invaded Venezuela, as far as I can tell. You may have heard of BRICS, which is the alliance that includes Brazil, Russia, India, and China, and South Africa. So, you know, Brazil is part of a coalition with Russia. Again, I don't see any American troops in Brazil. So, I mean, this idea that, and, you know, I mean, the idea that we have to take everything that Vladimir Putin says as, you know, reflecting his real thinking even. I mean, Vladimir Putin has also said, among other things, that, you know, Madeleine Albright made a statement that Siberia shouldn't belong to Russia, because it's, you know, it just has too much natural wealth to belong to one country, which is a complete canard. You know, this is something that Putin has repeated as a fact. So, I don't know if it's delusional. I don't know if he's promoting these fictions as a justification for wars of aggression. But I mean, I think giving Putin too much credence, I think, is really unwanted. So, you know, that's... Thank you. Well, first of all, regarding Madeleine Albright there, I wouldn't put it past her. I think the price is worth it. And look, yes, Bill Clinton was very chummy with Boris Yeltsin. That was part of, and I'm sorry, I should have specified, that was part of America kicking Russia while they were down. Was inflicting the regime of Boris Yeltsin and leading to Vladimir Putin on the people of Russia. People talk about what a gangster Vladimir Putin is. How do you think he got the job? And everyone knows, you might have even seen, there's a movie with Jeff Goldblum about how they rigged the election of 1996 for Boris Yeltsin. They poured in billions of dollars. They stuffed ballots and they ran a thousand focus groups and public relations, you know, Madison Avenue, full-scale campaign to re-elect Boris Yeltsin over the Russian people's dead body. They already wanted rid of him so bad at that point. And then, of course, it was Yeltsin who hired Putin to fight the war in Chechnya in two of them in 97 and then again in 99, which is how he made his rise to power. And in fact, as will be detailed in my book coming out whenever it finally comes out, but I have multiple very credible sources for it. Bill Clinton's CIA was backing with the Saudis, backing the terrorists in Chechnya in 1999 in the war against the Russians to try to help disrupt the reopening of an old Soviet oil pipeline that went through there. As part of his dance with the devil at the same time Al-Qaeda was already attacking us, Bill Clinton was still supporting them that whole decade long. And this was in Vladimir Putin's declaration of war from February 2. And you supported the terrorists in Chechnya in 1999 and 2000 against us too. You think we forgot that? Now that might sound like some Alex Jones BS, but it's not. It's true. And of course the Russians, even though the Americans might have forgotten it and don't care about it, the Russians sure don't. They consider it the height of importance. Now to me right now, regardless of what anyone else in North America thinks, I think that Joe Biden's refusal to send Anthony Blinken, our Secretary of State, to Geneva to meet with Sergey Lavrov to achieve some kind of ceasefire in this war is the greatest political scandal of the 21st century and maybe in the last century. This is, as John Mirsheimer said on the news hour, imagine the Cuban missile crisis, but Kennedy refuses to talk to Khrushchev the whole time. Could have all been killed. And that is the comparison here. We're four months into this war and Anthony Blinken hasn't talked to Sergey Lavrov since February the 15th. And that's because they wanted this war to happen. And I admit I fell down on the job and I wasn't paying close enough attention in the run up to the war to the different signs that the Americans, as serious as the Russians were, were not trying to stop this war. Biden's take was you better not do it or else. But he wasn't willing to negotiate. We know they refused to discuss NATO membership for Ukraine and other things. And you can find in the press where people like Admiral Struvredis said, well, listen, we don't know the first thing about defeating an insurgency. He told the New York Times, we sure know how to back one like we did in Afghanistan in the 1980s and like we did in Syria. Now, this is just four months after America finally left Afghanistan after the consequences of that operation in the 1980s. And these people have Afghanistan in their mouth. And the dirty war in Syria, Obama's dirty war that led directly to the rise of the Islamic state Caliphate and Iraq War three and another half a million people killed. And these Democrats say this is the model. This is what we want to bring to Eastern Europe. We want to pour these arms in. And their assumption was that the Ukrainian state would be defeated quickly and that they would be arming an insurgency led by, yes, Hitler, Love and Nazis, the Azov battalion and the right sector and the Adar battalion and these other guys who the Western press, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the BBC and Channel four and everybody else has covered this for years. The influence of the great grandsons of the Galatian SS from World War Two and their role in this war. In World War Two, we allied with Stalin to fight against the Nazis. Now we're aligned with Nazis against Republican Russia. Are you kidding me? This is absolutely insane and it's risking nuclear war. It has us closer or at least at the same risk or worse of nuclear war as we've been since the early 1980s in the height of Reagan's Bricksmanship or even the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. And in her opening argument, I know it's hard short for time in a debate. Yes, we should send in arms and coordinate Intel and help Ukraine fight the war was just one throwaway line without even the slightest regard for what the possible consequences of that could be. And in case you haven't looked it up on YouTube later, just one H bomb can kill your entire hometown. That's it. That's not a risk or take. Thank you. We come now, thank you to both. We come now to the Q&A portion of the afternoon. Line up with your questions and then please phrase your question as a question. No need to identify yourself. If there's anybody in particular you're addressing a question to state that as well. First question, please. My question is for Scott. You gave a great summary of the provocation. What do you think Putin's other option would have been? What would have been a better play? That's a good question. And honestly, I plead guilty that I've really not thought very hard about this and talk with other great experts about this. But I know just one throwaway line that I saw on Twitter that made perfect sense to me just kind of right off the top of a friend's head was, well, he could have just cut off all natural gas to Europe altogether and said, you can see how serious I am about this. You know, it's like people said we should have set off a nuke offshore to demonstrate to the Japanese before using one on their cities, you know, this kind of thing. Maybe he could have gone a little bit further in demonstrating how serious he was before ordering a full scale attack like that. There had to be another way than to do what he's done. And quite frankly, you know, my only dog in this hunt is I'm on the side of the Ukrainians. My wife is from Ukraine. She has family there now. And in fact, she has family in Russia as well, a young man who's in danger of being conscripted into this war. Tens of thousands of people have been killed. It's a total horror show. So it should have been something else. Kathy, comment from you on the question and the answer. Any comment, Kathy? Well, I mean, I think that Putin could have just not invaded. I think it's, you know, I really do not believe that there was like any sort of imminent security threat to Russia in terms of like NATO membership for Ukraine. I think it's been made very clear that it wasn't anywhere close to that. I mean, right now, as a result of Russia's attack, NATO is expanding. So I mean, if that was Putin's concern, I think he's achieved the absolute, the exact opposite of whatever he set out supposedly to do. In terms of, you know, looking out for the Ukrainian people, I think right now, something like as an 89 percent of Ukrainians say that they want to fight, that they don't want to negotiate, they don't want to because negotiating basically means that you're going to leave hundreds of thousands of people under an incredibly brutal occupation that is currently, you know, taking Ukrainians to Russia as slave labor, essentially. I mean, this is like we're talking really like World War II and Nazi, well, I don't want to bring up the Nazis because they're not sending people to gas chambers, but I mean, I think that's concerning enough. So I think, you know, right now, close to 90 percent, if not more of the Ukrainians, say that they want to fight and defend their country as long as it's humanly possible. So I think, you know, if we want to respect the wishes of the Ukrainian people, this is certainly what they seem to want. Okay. Thank you. Next question. Hi, this is directed at Kathy. Thank you for taking the position. I heard you mention, and I'm obviously biased against sort of foreign entangling alliances and whatnot. I'm wondering if you have some concrete examples of how Russia might be attempting to expand the empire. You mentioned earlier that, you know, Russia is attempting to reestablish sort of the old guard and then mentioned sort of dismissively that they're in Brazil, I believe it was. Is that an attempt to expand the empire and is that something that is worth the entangling alliance to prevent or is it not a big deal? Oh, I mean, I don't think it's a big deal. I mean, I think that it's, you know, Russia clearly wants really for, in large part, I think for the Kremlin elite self-esteem to be seen as a player, as a big player on the international stage, because I think that was really the great blow to the sort of the Russian political establishment's ego that suddenly they went from being an empire and like the other superpower to being, you know, viewed by many as a second rate, if not third rate country. I mean, I'm fine with Russia trying to maintain foreign alliances as long as it does it in a peaceful way. So, you know, I don't think that's a problem. I have a problem when they try to bully countries around them from pursuing the course of development that they want. And I just, can I just add like a real quick, because Scott was quoting John Mirshamer before. And, you know, I mean, I think he's a respected scholar, but he does have a very strong point of view that essentially large powers have the sort of natural right to dominate countries around them. And therefore, you know, Russia is entitled to its fear of influence. So I think, you know, you're just going to have to remember that that's where he comes from. I disagree with that. So coming from you, Scott, on the question or the answer, coming from you, Scott. Sure. I first of all, I think Mirshamer's position is that that's the way of the world that major powers are going to do things like prevent a minor power next door to them from allying with a major power far away or something like that. Not that that's right, but that's the reality that we have to deal with. And people say, oh, Ukraine can join whatever alliance they want. Well, can Mexico join whatever alliance they want? No, they can't. And that's the way of the world. And that's simply a recognition of reality as far as that goes. But as far as the Ukrainians would rather keep fighting, might that have something to do with the $50 billion worth of arms and all the support and the intelligence that were given them? And might they have negotiated on better terms for their own future months ago if we were not intervening? For example, there's a real question now whether the Russians are going to go all the way to Moldova and absorb the trends in Easter, this breakaway province on the Moldovan Ukrainian border. Well, they'd have to take Odessa and the entire southern coast of Ukraine to do so. But that's far beyond what they were ever asking for in the first place. That's far beyond if Ukraine had even given them the whole damn Donbas. And so now we have essentially by making these promises to them, we've created this moral hazard and again led them further down the primrose path towards even worse danger. And you look at like the Baltic states don't have any current conflicts with Russia. There have been some controversies over the rights of ethnic Russians in there, but nothing, no threats of military intervention or anything like that. Except the government of Lithuania, speaking of the lessons of Versailles, the government of Lithuania has just closed the easement, the corridor between Russia and Kaliningrad, this little strip of land on the Baltic Sea between Lithuania and Poland. And they used to have a right to this corridor. Well, that's how World War II started was Hitler insisting on his corridor to Danzig, this German city that had been stripped away after World War I. Now we're recreating that same kind of situation. And this is a quote from The New York Times, a Lithuanian defense official told The New York Times that a Russian attack quote is highly unlikely because Lithuania is a member of NATO. If this were not the case, they probably would consider it. In other words, scrappy do is out there trying to get us into a fight. And we gave him permission to do so. And who even knows, you know, here, the capitals of the Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, you want to trade your hometown? I see one hand, two hands in the air. Okay, five, you guys are pretty educated audience. I would screw them up, you know, which one is Tallinn, etc. So, given what's come up, I just want to ask, exercise moderate prerogative death. Kathy, a question. Kathy, just to put a fine point on the idea of the double standard, just hypothetically, grant the hypothetical, the Soviet Union appoints Canada or Mexico to be a part of a Warsaw Pact defensive military group of nations. The Soviet Union has some intervention in the politics of Mexico or Canada. Do you really think the U.S. would not respond militarily to such meddling in two countries that are off our borders? That's my hypothetical. Well, I think that, first of all, the Soviet Union, the Cold War and the Soviet Union versus the Warsaw Pact is an entirely different situation than anything we've had recent years. Just hypothetical, Russia establishes a military alliance with Mexico and gets politically involved in meddling in Mexican political affairs or does the same thing in Canada or off our borders. Russia is directly involved in saying, oh, it's all defensive, just military defenses in Mexico and Canada against the possible, what would the U.S. do? Do you think we would just accept it? We wouldn't invade? We wouldn't respond militarily? I don't think we would respond militarily. Excuse me? We would, you mean like Russia, not the Soviet Union. Russia, I said Russia. That's Russia, the country. I mean, I think that there would certainly be a lot of very strong diplomacy. I really cannot see the U.S. invading Canada, the U.S. invading Mexico. I mean, Mexico, by the way, had extremely friendly relations with Fidel Castro for all of the duration of the Soviet empire. We didn't invade Mexico over that. So, I mean, I think this idea that we go around invading anyone who forms an alliance we don't like, I think is bizarre. Okay, comment. Sure. I just need a short amount of time for this one. This is how we got into World War I. It's the Zimmerman Telegram promised a German alliance with Mexico and we declared war against Germany. That was it. And by the way, who in the world again, who in the world in the middle of World War I thought the Germans were coming to Mexico to help them retake the American Southwest? But that was good enough for Woodrow Wilson. Don't even think about it. And because the lesson was the Germans ought not to be talking that way. Not whether they could really accomplish such a thing or not. And then, you know, Cuba, talk about Cuba. Cuba wasn't the world empire. Cuba was one of the satellite states of the Soviet Union. So, Mexico's more or less friendly relationship with them is irrelevant. It wasn't a military alliance of any kind. And America did do an illegal coup d'etat, which failed in the Bay of Pigs. And we almost got into a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. When the Russians put nuclear missiles in Cuba and Jack Kennedy announced that he would burn the whole world to the ground before he let that continue. Remove your missiles or else, he said, and forced them out. And as Putin said in his speech, he said, when he declared war, again, I'm not saying there's a good enough reason to declare war, but I'm saying it's a reasonable argument. He said, and he ticked off the times, you're what you call missiles. If they were placed in Harkiv could get here in 15 minutes. Your Tomahawks could get here in 10. And if you installed hypersonic missiles in Harkiv, they could be in Moscow in five minutes. He said, this is like a knife at our throat. What are you supposed to do? Nothing. If anyone was talking about installing missiles in key American missiles in Kiev, then that would actually be a valid argument. But I don't know why we're even discussing the fight, but that'll go when. Well, Bill Clinton promised not to put military equipment into the countries that he brought into the military lines. And then he did it anyway. And in fact, you guys will remember that when Putin in his demands last December said, I want all NATO military forces that have been expanded into Eastern Europe and the new NATO countries brought back to where they were in 1997, they treated 1997 like it was 1897. Are you crazy? We're not going back. What's 1997 have to do with anything? Oh, it was just Bill Clinton's solemn oath that yes, we're expanding our alliance, but we promise not to move our equipment in. So now Vladimir Putin is supposed to accept that we're making Ukraine a de facto member of NATO, even in the words of American officials in the New York Times. But no, don't worry, we promise never to put missiles in. And if we do, it'll be too late for you to do anything about it because there'll be five minutes for Moscow. So again, I'm not saying that's a good enough reason to invade, but it's just ridiculous to say that's not a legitimate security concern. That's just a hollow excuse. Come on. Oh, you've got a chance to come in. Let me, let me question here. Yes, sir. I would just like to add first before my question, if I may, to the comments. Make it short, please. I'll make it short. First of all, three words, military industrial complex. Money. Our president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who ran World War Two, basically, came into office on his way going out. He said the greatest threat to America and the world as a whole is the military industrial complex. If Kennedy had listened to the military industrial complex who said take out those missiles in Cuba now before they're active, we would not be having this conversation because they were already active and they were told the first sign of aggression to hit that bomb. Dwight, Dwight is correct. So my question, my question is, we were told by Mr. Putin what his legacy was going to be way ahead of time. His legacy was to rebuild the motherland. What's your question? Well, here's what it is, sir. You have to add lead into this. That included his incursion into Crimea. That included his incursion in 2008 into Georgia. Georgia first, Crimea second, and then into the Ukraine third. Each one of those times he was acting on what he said he was going to do first of all. Why do we put that pipeline in? When we already had plans drawn up for a pipeline from underneath the East Mediterranean Sea with vast resources that was going to go across Italy and supply the needs of the future of Europe for the long term. You know why? Because of the industrial, military... Okay, is that your question, Dwight? Okay, I mean... Look, I think essentially that that's correct. Well, the first thing and the last thing you said kind of negate the second thing you said. What it is... You're going to have to sit down, sir. What it is is... You're going to have to sit down. You've spoken your peace. Thank you very much. Go ahead, Dwight. No, what it is is because of the military industrial complex and because of the American Empire, for one example they had this policy beginning with Bill Clinton to stick as many straws in the Caspian basin as they could and suck that energy southeast, west, anywhere, but through Russia to get to the world's customers. This is why Bill Clinton's government backed the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 1996 as they wanted the Taliban to take over the whole country and guarantee security for a pipeline from Turkmenistan down to the Port of Karachi in Pakistan. And this was, you know, part of... And this goes to why it negates the second thing you said about Putin's imperial ambitions. I don't know what exactly it is that you're quoting that he supposedly said, but in the case of Georgia and in the case of Crimea and the rest of what's gone on in Ukraine and for that matter, in the case of Russian intervention in Syria, it was all America's fault in the first place. Russia, for example, in Crimea, again, as I said in the debate, had 24 years after the fall of the Soviet Union had maintained a lease on the Sevastopol Naval Base. It wasn't until the Kudetah junta threatened to kick them out of there that they said, no, thank you. And in fact, Putin actually did an interview where he said, you know, sarcastically, he said, you know, we thought about how nice it would be to go and visit our friends, the NATO sailors, down there at their new naval base in Sevastopol. And then we thought, no, we'd rather that you come and visit us at our base instead and we'll just keep the base. And so that was simply what happened there. Imagine some foreign power trying to take San Diego from the United States of America. What do you think would happen to them? Ultimate violence. Comment from you, Kathy. Well, I want to say that, first of all, I'm not even really sure where the San Diego example comes in because that is actually- It's an important naval port. It's U.S. territory. I mean, I think we can argue about whether Ukraine had a good reason to repeal the lease at that point, considering Russia's actions toward Ukraine. I completely reject the idea that it was a good coup. I really don't even want to get into the whole resolve battalion thing. Of course you don't want to get into the azov battalion. I could. Well, I could. Tell me on a scale of one to 10 how much they love Adolf Hitler. Go. Yeah, right. Well, that would probably take us an hour. It's 10. They love Adolf Hitler 10 on a scale of one to 10. You can read it in the BBC where they said they're here to rid the world of the Jewish-led UNTER mention and save the white race. One of the major militias is called C-14. That stands for the 14 words of the slogan of the white supremacist. Give me a break. Yeah, that was written by a guy who co-founded the azov battalion. It is really not, I mean, the fact that there were some bad people involved with co-founding what is currently a regiment in the Ukrainian army really doesn't mean that it's a Nazi outfit today. He doesn't have anything to do with it today. It's a volley. It's which is why, you know, we really can't have this argument because it would really take way too much discussion of the specifics of, you know, what happened with the Ukrainian. They're moderate reform Nazis. We can accept that, right, guys? Do you want to talk about the Russian fascists who run Donbas? I mean, do you want to talk about the fact that like the guy who was the first First of all, do you want to talk about the fact that the first defense minister and the first president of the so-called Donetsk Republic were both Russian citizens, both of them with extensive ties to fascist groups? I mean, do you want to talk about the fact that the guy who was the self-appointed people's governor of Donetsk who co-founded the separatist republic was part of the Russian national unity, which is, you know, which has a fascist logo? I mean, you know, do you want to talk about Alexander Dugan and his extremely intimate involvement with the whole, you know, Novorossiya project, which is the, you know, the retaking of Eastern Ukraine for Russia? I mean, this is like, this is fascist times 10, you know. This is, I mean, not to mention that those, you know, the Donetsk and Luhansk republics actually aren't as fascist states. I mean, the fact that you take seriously the plebiscites that happened in these places just mind boggling, I mean, there's an actual, if you want to talk about recordings, there's an actual recording of one of the separatist leaders talking to one of his Russian handlers and saying that, well, you know, there's a war going on, we can't really do a referendum right now. And the Russian guy says, wait, like you're actually serious about doing this fucking referendum, you're going to like go and like have people actually like write things down and both of them's like, fuck it, just write that 90% of the people voted for the independent republic, and that's it. And that's, and by the way, I think he said like 99% and then he said, oh, no, no, no, let's make it 89%. And that actually happens to be like the actual number that supposedly voted for an independent republic. I mean, you know, who are we kidding? These are not, I mean, you know, no sane person takes these plebiscites seriously. I mean, these are places that are essentially run as torture camps. Do you think that Yanukovych won the election of 2010 that was verified by the EU? Who voted for him? Actually, yeah, he won it with a false promise of, you know, facilitating, because he had rebranded from a Kremlin ally to the centrist who was going to maintain a good relationship with both Russia and the EU. And, you know, then he screwed the people who supported him by saying, no, we're not going to do this deal with the EU, which was not going to put Ukraine on track to a fully EU membership, but was going to definitely be like about integrating Ukraine into Europe, which is when, you know, which is when the people came out on the square. Actually, what happened was the EU changed the deal on him at the last minute at the meeting when he showed up to sign it. He said, I feel like a bride who showed up at my wedding to be greeted with a prenuptial agreement. And I don't think I'm in love with you anymore, and I'm going home. So it's completely irrelevant that at the same time Putin was strong-arming him into rejecting this deal and offering, and claiming to offer him a better deal. I mean, you know, that's, seriously, and nothing has ever Putin's fault. I mean, he is only ever the put-upon victim. I mean, was Yanukovych legitimately impeached, by the way, by the time he was ousted? He was impeached by the Ukrainian parliament, which was also legitimately elected. And this is when he decided to beat it and, you know, run off to Russia taking wagon loads of stolen wealth with him. So, okay, next question. Next question. Question for the whole of you. Do sanctions work and who they work? Thank you. What's the question again? Do sanctions work and who they work? Do sanctions. Okay. Yeah, you want to talk about, I'll talk about sanctions. Yes, they work but not for the stated purpose. They do not, in very, very rare cases, do they compel changes in behavior by the subject governments? But if your purpose is to simply crush the Iranian or Syrian economy and keep it crushed, then they're very good for that. In this case, it seems like the sanctions regime against Russia is already backfiring and strengthening their economy. They're oil exporters. So, you know, help create a brand new crimp in supply and global supply and jack up the price even higher than price inflation was already causing. And they have a huge windfall and even the Biden government, anonymously, Biden government officials were complaining about this to the Wall Street Journal last week that, geez, it seems to be backfiring against us. But overall, it's meant to be a war, of course, against helpless civilians. In the 1980s, pardon me, in the 1990s, they would say about the blockade against Iraq that, well, everybody knows with the Oil for Food program that Saddam Hussein is taking all the money and he's spending it all on his palaces. That was a cliche. He's spending it all on his palaces. Well, then maybe we should lift the blockade and reopen trade with the country and figure out a different way to proceed. If he is not suffering at all, you're telling me he's redecorating while people are starving to death, then it's not working for what you said it was supposed to accomplish. It's just accomplishing all horse show. And by the way, this was, of course, one of the main reasons cited by Bin Laden for attacking the United States. America maintaining bases in Saudi to wage this blockade and the no-fly zone bombing campaign against Iraq and starving the people of Iraq all through the 1990s. That's how those towers came down. Coming from you, Kathy. Right. Well, first of all, I think the sanctions in this case have been actually pretty carefully targeted to primarily hurt a lot of people in the Russian oligarchy and the Russian establishment and target their personal wealth. So I think these sanctions actually have been better calibrated to hit the people who deserve to be hit. In terms of, I mean, are they working perfectly? No, certainly not. And I mean, I think the dependency of Western Europe on Russian oil and gas is scandalous. I think this is a situation that Western Europe should have never gotten into. And I don't want to get started on nuclear power, you know, because this is going to take us in a whole other direction. But I mean, this is something that really should not be, even like it should not be taking place. Obviously, as long as the dependency continues, the sanctions are not going to have like real bite. But yeah, I mean, I think that, I think it's a good thing right now to signal to Russia that it is a pariah state because I think Russia is, the Russian establishment is very, very concerned about its ego and its international image. So, you know, I mean, I think that it is possible that there will be some sort of regime change because of this. I don't know. I mean, I'm actually not like at all blind to the possibility that regime change in Russia could have, could pose serious dangers. I mean, I think this is something that needs to be considered very, very carefully. But at the same time, I mean, can a country be allowed to behave as Russia is currently behaving? Absolutely not. I mean, this is the point. This is what they have said over and over again, anonymously and officially, even the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense have said, we're trying to weaken Russia. We're trying to prolong this war. We're pouring these weapons to prolong this war to weaken Russia, even to the point of regime change in Moscow, which they somehow think would be beneficial rather than what would occur to any average person anywhere as taking an absolutely extraordinary risk of the apocalypse over political differences with a country that is no longer run by the evil communists, but instead by essentially corrupt conservative Republicans who we ought to be able to live with and deal with. Coming from you, Kathy. Well, I don't think that trying to crush the country next door because of political differences with it is something that we can regard as acceptable political differences with the current regime in Russia. I think there is a huge evidence of Russia's interventions everywhere to promote incidentally fascist forces. Russia is really positioning itself currently as the head of the liberal international where it's allied like every anti-liberal force that you can find, whether it's communist or fascist, you will find usually Russian financing behind it. So I think Russia is a huge perpetrator right now of... I want footnotes for that other than just anonymous CIA claims in the post. Okay, well, next... I think this will probably have to be a final question. Lay it on us, sir. Okay, this is for both of you. Given the two Ukrainians, do you think the Ukrainians should give up on slider or stop swatter? I guess that's... You hear that very well. Sorry, what was it? Well, should the Ukrainians give up on surrender? Is that your question? Yeah, yeah. Okay, Kathy, your answer. Well, you know, obviously I don't think so. I mean, the vast majority of Ukrainians believe that they want to stand and fight as long as they can. I don't think it has... I mean, would they surrender if they weren't given weapons? Yeah, they would have no other choice. But I mean, I think clearly no one wants to go to war just for the hell of it, just because they give you weapons. I mean, I think they're seeing... I mean, Russia is very clear right now that it wants to stamp out a Ukrainian national identity that the Ukrainian national identity as such is a threat to Russia, supposedly. I mean, they're very, very explicit about this at the moment. So I don't know what we're talking about. You know, that's clearly the Ukrainians want to fight and they have the will and capacity to fight. And I think they've demonstrated incredible bravery and stamina in fighting back. So the fact that maybe like half of 1% of their fighting forces involved with a regiment that has a dubious history, with a white supremacist founder is unfortunate, but I don't think that that should really materially influence the course of our support for Ukraine. Coming from you, Scott. I want a footnote for that low percentage, too. Listen, the international fascists are all going to Ukraine to fight on Ukraine's side against the Russians, including Nazis who participated in the riots at Charlottesville and were arrested by the FBI, and including Nazis from all over Europe. It's just a lie that the Nazis of the West are on Russia's side in this thing. It just isn't true. And what should happen now, because this is a proxy war. America is the world empire and Ukraine is our client state. And America, our Secretary of State should be in Geneva trying to hash out a deal to end the fighting immediately with the Russians right now. And if the Ukrainians want to play like Hamid Karzai or whatever and refuse to go along with that and keep the war going, then that should be their problem. And America should cease all intervention immediately. But the fact of the matter is that before this war broke out, Putin's demands were reasonable. Wanted it in writing that Ukraine won't join NATO. He wanted to pull the military back like in the 1997 deal. He wanted to guarantee we weren't going to put missiles into Ukraine and these kinds of things. He wanted the Minsk to peace deal to be implemented and a real ceasefire in the east of the country. And I'm sure his demands are a little bit broader than that now, but all of that was reasonable in the first place. And there should be, essentially Russia has been appeasing the United States this whole time. And then they finally quit. And it's time for us to recognize that we're enough in the wrong that we can climb down a few pegs on the ladder as well and make a deal. Sounds like a good summation. Okay, guys, okay, we're gonna have to give you just four minutes for summation rather than five because we want to respect the next event and we want some time for voting. So you'll get the chance to talk to the debaters afterwards. Kathy, take it away with your four minutes of summary. Take the podium. You want to do it from here? Ah, sure, yeah. Absolutely. All right. Do it from here. Sure. Yeah. Four minutes. Four. Right. Well, as far as I can tell, Scott's position is basically that again, everything that Putin says and does needs to be absolutely taken at face value. Everything that Putin does is completely defensive. He is the innocent victim who is only ever put upon by the United States and American allies. I think, first of all, it is worth pointing out, by the way, that the conditions that Putin imposed included not only a guarantee that Ukraine will not join NATO, but also a guarantee that it will not join the European Union, which, you know, what security concern does that pose to Russia? I mean, clearly, it is just really overwhelmingly clear that Russia's real concern is Ukraine sort of leaving its fear of influence and not being available to become a building block for this reinvented Russian empire that Putin has been talking about for ages, really, and that his ideologues have been talking about. I think it's really very foolhardy not to notice that, yes, while Putin made some friendly overtures to the United States early in his role, he also showed signs very early on of wanting to reinvent the Soviet slash Russian empire, complete with, among other things, even just symbolically bringing back the music of the Soviet anthem and bringing back the red flag as part of the official banner of the Russian army. The initial quarrel between Russia and Ukraine was basically that Russia was backsliding toward authoritarianism and Ukraine wanted to be on a Western path of development. If you look at the conflict in Ukraine today, Donbass is the region that is still stuck in the Soviet heavy industry mode. To the extent that the people in Donbass are authentic local separatists, they are the people who are Soviet nostalgists. They are the people who really just won the Soviet Union back the way it was. I mean, they brought back these young people's communist organizations. By the way, Russian soldiers today in the Ukrainian towns that they're taking, they're putting up statues of Vladimir Lenin. I don't know how much more explicit you can get about the fact that this is about rebuilding some sort of simulacrum of the Soviet Union slash the Russian empire. I think clearly, again, Ukraine wants to fight for its existence. Ukraine is facing a situation where its citizens are being kidnapped and forcibly taken to Russia. I mean, that's been very well documented. In terms of the, I just want to say about the war in Donbass, again, these were gangster statelets that were, among other things, kidnapping Ukrainian citizens. I mean, this is not a completely aggressive war of attack by the Ukrainians on these separatist republics, which, yes, were led initially very much by Russian citizens. So I think that the, I don't want to say that Ukraine has been completely blameless in all of this, by the way, just real quick, another fact to add that Scott mentioned the law that banned, the early on banned were demoted Russian language from the status of second official language that was vetoed by the president at the time. Has Ukraine made some mistakes? Yes. But it is an aspiring democracy that is being attacked by an authoritarian neighbor, and I think that's really clear. Thank you, Kathy. Four minutes of summary, Scott. I'm sorry. Sorry. Go ahead, Scott. Four minutes. They're Nazis and they're commies, which is pretty bad. Now, I got these for my summation here. I got these talking points directly from Putin, is an innocent angel talkingpoints.com. Dot net, because my loyalty is to him. Anyway, one time I was driving on the freeway in 2015, I was listening to NPR News. You ever listen to NPR News? I know you do. You have to, don't you, you masochists. And being interviewed by Robert Seagal was Ivo Dodler, the former American ambassador to something I forget. And he was part of a study, I think it was the Brookings institution, had a study with a lot of big names on it that said we should be pouring arms into Ukraine. Now, Obama, the first black president to support a Nazi coup d'etat in power, was afraid to arm them. And there are multiple sources for, he knew how radical and how bad the guys were that he just helped to put in power, and he was afraid to dump in arms. And so this think tank was demanding that we need to hurry up and do this as they put it to start sending Russians home in body bags. Now, Russia had not invaded at that time, but they had sent special operations forces essentially across the border to assist in the separatists holding out defense against the attack by Kiev. And he said, we have to start sending body bags home to Russia. And Robert Seagal said, well, and then what's going to happen? And he said, well, that will cause the debate to go up in Russia. And something about how they'll all blame Putin rather than blaming us for killing their sons. And they'll all blame the government and want to come home immediately, rather than wanting to double down and get some revenge for those who spilled their blood. The debate will go up. And Robert Seagal said, the debate will go up. I get it. That's good. And you see the same level of thoughtfulness in the policy that led to the war in Ukraine just last winter in December, the Biden government told the New York Times, well, what we're doing in is we're escalating the amount of weapons that we're pouring into Ukraine. Trump had started it. I don't want to leave that out. Trump had poured in the weapons. But the Biden government said last December, we're pouring in the weapons, but we're carefully calibrating the amount so that it's enough to deter Russia so they won't invade, but it's not too much to provoke them that they will invade. Well, now here we are, six months later. And tens of thousands of people have been killed. So either they were lying about that and they were deliberately trying to provoke a war or they really, really suck at calibrating how much offensive force to bring to bear on Russia's border, 1200 miles east of the Elbe River, which used to be the dividing line back in the days of the old Cold War. We'll send Russians home in body bags. Question mark, question mark, question mark. And then after that, it'll be great. The debate will go up. That's your security force. That's who's in charge, Joe Biden and his men. And with that, I'll let you know that right after this at the Mises tent, I'm signing copies of enough already in my book about the terror war. And next week, I'm coming out with a brand new book. It's called the hotter than the sun, time to abolish nuclear weapons, which is a collection of interviews of experts all about nuclear weapons going back 10, 15 years on the show there. I know you guys are really going to like it. And with that, thank you very much. Thank you, Scott. Okay. Connor. Okay, please. Connor, please sit down and start voting. I don't know. I forgot to bring the soul form to see where with me, but it will be sent, the special will be sent to the winner. The debate is open. Please vote yes, no or undecided on the U.S. response to a Russian invasion of another country involving the provision of ample weapons and complete support, but vote yes, no or undecided. Okay. Interestingly enough, the yes vote picked up one, yes, one initially had 1.6% of the vote. It wasn't 1.6%. It's only one, but it did not pick up any votes, the yes vote. So that's the statement to be did it pick up votes. The no vote went from 76.6% to 96.7%. So, but thank you both.