 Aloha and welcome to another of think tech Hawaii's point counterpoint programs and my name is John White and I will be hosting this program for think tech and we have four great guests with us this afternoon. We are going to be discussing the European conflicts in 2024 and joining us with we have Professor Jean Rosenfield was from the University well UCLA and we have Carl Baker who is an advisor to the Pacific Forum senior advisor by the way. And we also have. I'm going to let everybody kind of get into the mix introduce themselves and we'll get right into discussing what's happening in the Ukraine. And what's happening with the in Israel. Start off with Eugene tell us a little bit about what it's like to be a professor from the university from university I've got to see what UCLA stands for you know. It's just a tongue twister for me. Go ahead. I am a historian of religions formerly academic researcher at the Center for the study of religion at UCLA and lecture at UC Riverside and UCLA. My field is religion and conflict. I have studied terrorism. And my field is a is a social science field. So we analyze religion and how it relates to conflict and individual motivations. Thank you Jean Carl tell us about yourself. Yeah Carl Baker I'm a senior advisor as John said mostly mostly senior because I'm old I suppose at Pacific Forum. Prior to that I was a military officer for 30 years and I've been here for about 20 years and we're a think tank in a think tank in in Honolulu and we look at Asia Pacific primarily. But we've been looking at Ukraine also because it isn't an important issue that affects all the world. What's it like to be a global analyst. Aloha my name is Rukmati Khandekar and I have done my PhD and research degrees on international organizations and having worked with the United Nations the European Union delegation to India. I have just focused on researching researching and writing books researching and researching. So it's something I've become passionate about and it's lovely to be on the show with you guys. Stephanie let the people know what's it like to be at the University of Hawaii. It's very busy these days but I'm here not to represent the University of Hawaii Manoa but myself as an individual and a member of the English department because I'm not a political scientist I'm not a historian. But I look at Jewish identity from the lenses of rhetoric memoir biography and autobiography and Jewish identity. And so it's from those vantage points that I'll be speaking to you today. Thank you. Thank you all for joining us this afternoon and participating in this very important show. Now the conflict in Ukraine has been going on for about two years. And I'm sure that you know Putin didn't just wake up one morning and says I'm going to invade Ukraine. So why don't you give us a little bit about the background of that conflict and what are some of the ramifications from your point of view. Well the conflict between Ukraine and Russia is almost to some extent like a conflict between brothers because the mythology that animates Putin is the mythology of the three brothers Belarus Russia and Ukraine. Presumably from Russia's point of view it is the elder brother. Although the origin of Russia really took place in Kiev on the Niko River when the Swedes came down and established a trading post there that they then defended militarily. So that's irrelevant because Putin is acting out of a desire to restore Russian civilization basically from Vladivostok to Dublin. And we have to understand the philosophy of Eurasianism which is a neo-fascist philosophy that that animates a party in Russia that runs Russia. And this essentially means taking back what they believe is historical Russia including Ukraine the second largest country in Europe. And the bread basket of Europe the bread basket to Africa as well. So control of the Black Sea is very important to allow food stops that are raised in Ukraine to be transported to the rest of the world. Now. Go ahead. Sorry. You know I want to know a little bit more about what this historically means. I mean when you are you talking about restoring the Soviet Union again or what he's just some big bully or how does this all work. Putin was a KGB officer in East Germany when the wall fell and he was appalled by Russia losing the territory and gained after World War Two. He looks back to the battle of the battle of Potova in 1709 in which Russia became the dominant power in Europe because it defeated Sweden at that battle. Sweden was really trying to invade Russia. And so he feels very defensive about losing the satellites. And as you may have noticed since 2014. He has been trying to gain territory. In fact Ukraine is almost surrounded by Russian controlled territory including in Moldova. They have a strip of land next to the Ukrainian border. And it's quite obvious that he wants to absorb Ukraine. And for those Ukrainians who do not want to be absorbed by Russia presumably there is a plan to get rid of them. So we may be looking at a takeover of Ukraine which would include some mass killings or deportations in a Stalinist way. But Putin is a very big on the Orthodox Church on Russian civilization on deposing America from its role in the world. By establishing a new world order in which our currency will no longer be the dominant currency. He will have control over Europe maybe through means of energy control. And the United States will become an isolationist state and the global look to Russia. So Carl jump in on that. What are the policy implications of all of this for us. I mean for America for the world. Yeah. Gene is painting this painting of the larger picture of what could potentially happen I think. But to put it back into into what's happening today in sort of policy terms is I think important to understand because I think we are at a bit of a crossroads. But essentially I think the situation on the ground is there is a ground stalemate and it's similar to what happened in Korea from 1950 in the late 1950 to 1952 where there's a bit of jockeying between the two. But there's no real territorial advances in Russia has taken the eastern side of Ukraine has taken Crimea and it's and it's basically moved its borders closer to the Niko River than it was two years ago. But the fact is that. Yeah. Go ahead. Well I was going to say given what you just described though is there any chance that the Ukraine could actually win the war. Well I mean that's that's the that's the real policy discussion and that's why we're at a bit of a crossroads is what does win the war mean. You know for for Vladimir Zelensky winning the war means taking back all the territory that Russia has taken since the since 19 since 2014. You know and that I think is becoming more and more unrealistic given the ground stalemate because that was the intent of the of the 2023 counter offensive that that he put together. But the fact is is that for there's a number of reasons why. But the fact is is that the Russians are fairly well dug in. And so it's going to be very difficult to move that territorial zone now back to where those original borders were. So if you mean if it if you mean is Ukraine in a position to win back all the territory. I think it's going to be very difficult. And I think the real policy issue today is what does winning mean. What does winning mean for Putin. Well I mean if you take if you take Jean's line that winning winning means taking Ukraine first and then marching on to double. I think for for for Putin in in the in the at least the midterm is to eliminate Ukraine as a state. Jean you know what what's interesting is that there's some conversation now that there's Ukraine would not be a possible to exist in the fight without the support from the United States and without aid. And yet they're seeing initially there was an awful lot of support from the United States Congress going to the Ukrainian fight. And yet today the same enthusiasm doesn't exist. And and the opposition to all the isolation isolationist tendencies in the Congress seem to be driven by at least religious. I think some of the religious concern and that is that during the Cold War. Communism was you know the enemy of Christianity. It was and there was this connection that the left and the anti Christianity was together and yet today that there's still this paranoia about what's left. I don't know what that means with and that's not the discussion with the with some of the fundamentals religious groups in the country but it seems to me anything that used to be common as and yet why is it that all of a sudden Putin doesn't seem to be in Russia. At least in my opinion doesn't seem to be as much of an enemy to at least the religious right of the United States. The social issues in Russia mirror the social issues for Maga. They are anti homosexual. They are pro family pro religion. They are anti anti matriarchy. They are pro patriarchy. So on on very basic issues there are similarities there but there's something greater. There is the tendency to authoritarianism which is a worldwide trend today. And one of the reasons for that is that nationalism is is replacing a general global view and we have religious nationalism here that undergirds Maga and the Trump movement in Russia. They have religious nationalism that undergirds restoring Russian civilization over the Eurasian continent and Orthodox Christianity. So these are motivations which build loyalty to a supreme leader who is a father figure and both Putin and Trump have a lot of psychological and sociological parallels in their means to power. Power is the major thing because in power you can exercise control over how people live their lives. And this is something that the extreme Christian nationalists in the United States and the extreme nationalists and Eurasianists have in common. Well let's just so that doesn't sound like we're picking on only one of the cousins. Let's go to Umati and talk about some of the underlying aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. We give the Muslims and Jewish people the chance to express their participation in this situation. Tell us a little bit about what's happening in the Middle East. Yeah, so headlines. Israel was hitting headlines. Israel-Palestinian, Israel-Palestinian. But what happened on October 7th was unprecedented when you saw Hamas which is an Islamist resistance movement put up a terror attack on Israel which was so unprecedented that 1,200 people were slaughtered, murdered, picked up from their homes. And it gave the world such a, what is that? It was just catastrophic to see such anti-Semitic sentiments come out in the open. And the thing about this was 250 people were taken hostage. And the notions like sovereignty, right to self-defense, everything was brought into question in international politics. And the Israeli right to self-defense was resisted to such a point that Israel had to give a warning of 20 days to evacuate Gaza Strip from where the terrorists had come in to attack a nation. They did that. But then they were questioned all over social media. It was propaganda at its best by the other side. Hamas was going to be portrayed as the victim when in fact it was the attacker, isn't it? And this way Israel had to face Gaza, Hamas leaders behind a shield of people, civilians. And when the civilians were being killed, Israel was being bad picked for the tactics. And it was splashed all over international media, international organizations like the United Nations refused to take Hamas by name. They refused to have the ICJ, the South Africa took Israel to ICJ over the issue of genocide. Hamas is an Islamist resistance movement which was picking out the slogan of free Palestine from the river to the sea. This was wiping out Israel off the map. They were talking genocide when Israel was itself tried for genocide. And these things kept on coming in international media. And it's an ongoing conflict. The repercussions are still on because we still have hostages, 250 hostages on the other side. You have anti-Jewish sentiments seen on every street in the world. There are people who are half knowledgeable about this, but still they have a very strong voice against Israel. Does Putin support Hamas? I mean, how does Russia get into all of this? And Russian orthodoxy? For sure Putin, when Putin opened up this Ukrainian war, it gave Iran a chance to bring in 100 billion dollars by selling their oil. They were restricted by sanctions. But through the Ukraine-Russia war, when Russia opened up and de-dollarized the system, Iran got this massive funding. They were a starving economy. They got massive funding. That funding they diverted towards Hamas. And Hamas got a chance to put this money into slaughtering Israeli people. Otherwise, this such an attack would have never taken place. And Israel is the only democratic state in the Middle East. That's why it's very, very delicate and surrounded by six antagonistic states on each side, ready to pounce on. So the allies have to come across the seas to help. So, Romanti talked about the fact that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. And yet, South Africa filed a lawsuit in the International Court of Justice, alleging that there were atrocities and war crimes perpetuated on the Palestinian people. Not only doing this particular period, but even earlier. So, Daphne, how does this all come together? We have someone saying, moving towards a new world order with the EU-Europe forging ahead as a political power. It has been called into action by aggression on both sides. So you have Russia as an aggressor, you have Israel under attack. And in both cases, we actually see, despite what people might see on social media and public opinion, Europe coming in strong in support of Ukraine in terms of military support and also in terms of providing military support to Israel. So we have a distinction to be made between the actions of leadership in which Europe is forging ahead as a force to be reckoned with and has come in support of both Israel and Ukraine in ways that Israel has not seen before and in ways that have not been necessary before. So we see Europe taking a formidable role and that I think is probably a good thing for both Ukraine and Israel. You know, it's interesting because it seems that not specifically on the war, but as we were discussing earlier by Romanti, there seems to be a kind of antisemitism that is coming out again. I mean, raising its ugly head seems to do that every so often anyway, but especially now internationally. And that seems to be, at the same time, we also seem to see this continuation at least in parts of the world of the anti-Muslim type of feelings. Now, how does that all, this seems to be a real very complex, how does that all kind of fit together? I mean, I'm sure they play off of each other, but what are the roots of it? Why are people at the University of Hawaii going around saying that Israel is actually trying to judeinize Palestine? But we have a long history of the three world religions vying for power, political, economic, and social power. I'm currently in Spain teaching abroad and that's marked in the streets and in the architecture and in the famous mosques having cathedrals built right in the middle of them. So the fact that political and religious power have not always been separated means that when you have battles over landed power and you have theocracies that work, you're going to have the three world religions at war with one another essentially, being manipulated in these various ways by various leaders. So that I think is a good beginning point. From the Jewish vantage point, which is my own, my own great grandfather had to leave Odessa, which is part of Ukraine because of pogroms. And so, and then of course, Israel, and then he actually fled from Odessa to pre-state Israel to Tel Aviv in the 1920s. So the Jewish story has always been one of attempting escape, survival, wherever it could be done, and is considered one of the oldest forms of discrimination, centuries old. And so whatever happens at the University of Hawaii is not unique to this particular time, place, or period. Well, you know, how effective the internet would be an institution like the international, and this is for anybody, international court of justice to deal with things like anti-Semitism, anti, you know, and the atrocities that we now see in war, not only in the Israeli Hamas conflict, which obviously occurred, but also in the Ukraine. I mean, what's happening to all the civilization? Maybe Jean, you can jump into some of this. Yes, I'm personally researching the answer to that question now. I don't have the answers, but there is, as I said before, a global trend of authoritarianism. It has taken over the primary ideological conflict of the time from religious terrorism that wave is kind of exhausted itself. And what we're having now are aggressive states that are developing religious bases for their superiority and trying, and we're seeing aggression, national aggression. So what we're seeing in terms of war, and Carla can speak to this even better, is a return to the type of warfare we saw in World War II. And in terms of great powers vying for a new world order and exacerbating conflicts in proxy states like Iran and Israel and Ukraine is an attempt to become a global power, a supreme power. And this really amounts to a return of neo-fascism, but the conditions of the military on the ground in Ukraine right now, as Carl has said, are at an extreme point. And there has just been a replacement of top generals owing to the concern about the lack of ammunition and manpower in Ukraine relative to Russia and what this means in the long term. And I think Carl can speak to that. Yeah, why don't you jump in this, Carl? Yeah, I mean, there is this important underlying theme about religion and long historical trends. But in practical policy terms, again, what Jean is talking about is sort of this breakdown of post-1945, where when Russia invaded Ukraine, a sovereign state, this sort of broke the norm. And I think that this is an important point to recognize is that once you break that norm, then things do start falling apart. And the international institutions that we've built are no longer adequate to address some of these problems. So to get to your question about the ICJ, yeah, the ICJ can investigate genocide. But when you're breaking norms, that seems much less important than it did 10 years ago when everyone was still abiding by the norms of sovereignty. And I think what's happened now in the rest of the world is that the rest of the world is watching this and they're watching these narratives. And the narrative that we've tried to build around democracy as this is a defensive democracy becomes less, doesn't resonate as well as it would if we were talking about the breaking of the norm of sovereignty. So in other words, what's happened now is Russia has broken the norm and it has played well in the rest of the world. So China, India, others in the so-called global South are looking at the opportunities that the invasion has given them to de-dollarize the international economy to find new outlets for resources coming out of Russia and basically developing a whole new trade network that excludes the West. That while the European Union and the United States are trying to defend Ukraine and Israel, the fact is that Russia is building a new network through China and others in the world, which ultimately become a challenge to the norms and institutions that were built post-1945. Wow, that's a great place to take a break. And we're about ready to do that because we want to come back and apply what you just said, Carl, to the situation in geopolitical terms of what's happening in Israel. That this may not be simply a question of terrorists versus their neighbors. This may be something much deeper in the Middle East as well as the Ukraine. So with that in mind, we are going to take a short break and come back in about a minute. Welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii and our point counterpoint discussion on the European context 2024 and its implications for the world and for our country. When we left this call was actually expressing the point of view that the invasion of the Ukraine actually afforded totalitarianism or totalitarian regimes to the opportunity to actually create an alliance against Europe and against the United States or some kind of how does that work in terms of the Middle East, I mean Middle East and India and what we call the Indo-Pacific. Yeah, this ICJ continuing on the ICJ judgment, you see it's an organ of the United Nations and it has decisions which are non binding. And so these are just guidelines, they serve as guidelines so we don't have a supervisory authority in the international system as such. So these conflicts thrive and they continue over years. Now we are seeing over years that these conflicts are continuing. They will term somebody a war criminal, they will say this is genocide, but nothing is being done. And at the helm of it, when the Secretary General himself refuses to take the term Hamas in the resolutions, you see the veto power of America becomes very important for Israel in the Middle East. Because this what happened in, I'm talking about Israel Hamas conflict, for Israel it's an existential crisis. It's not an issue of land or anything, it is about their existence tomorrow and the repeat of this terror attack again. So that's why everybody has to take a stand that when you have terrorist attacks, the right for a country to self defend, it was not mentioned in the ICJ judgment. So how can you give credibility to such an organization? And when it's the only super national intergovernmental organization the world has at its disposal and still we have no impartial judgments. It's difficult to trust international institutions and so countries are acting in their own right. And these conflicts do take place without supervision. We have realizing authority. Well, you know, given that situation, which is, you know, you start off thinking of the struggles in Palestine as between two groups, but actually it seems to be spreading throughout, you know, you have, I mean, you have well, you have countries that the denials seem almost like a confession, you know, at least to me where Iran says, well, we're not doing this, so we're not doing that. And yet it's hard to think that the situation could exist without some kind of broader support. And yet what binds all of these things together? I mean, what binds it? It seems like, well, and that's a question really for Daphne. I mean, what, what, why? Why is Israel so unpopular with its neighbors that we have this situation? And yet the Israeli cause seems to be a righteous one. What's the, what's the, what's at play? It reminds me of a question when I teach, I teach a film and literature of the Holocaust. And we, we're in Spain right now, so begin with 1492 and the expulsion of the Jews from, from Spain. And, and it reminds the students that the Jewish people there had to wear either red or yellow cloth to designate themselves as Jews. Eventually there's a decision made that they should just expel all together so there can be a Catholic hegemonic power. So essentially that bureaucracy. And the students almost ask the same thing, why, why do they hate the Jews so much? You know what, as kind of just a precursor, right? I tried to give a precursor to the Shoah, to the Holocaust. If you have the expulsion in 1492 of Jews, then you have the reemergence of the yellow star. As a kind of way of marking people who otherwise might be able to pass. And there's sort of this fascination with the other, with people who refuse to recognize Christ, people who refuse to recognize Muhammad, people who are different, people of different traditions, people who maintain a sense of community and a commitment to their belief in language and culture. In various times I've seen to be some sort of political threat to that hegemonic power. So we see that again since I'm teaching in Spain and Franco's regime that he would also sort of position the Jewish people as a potential threat to fascism in Spain. How realistic that threat was is probably not in keeping with the, you know, with the alarms that he attempted to, to, to fashion. So, you know, you're asking two very complicated different questions. I think the positionality of Israel, geopolitically, what it represents traditionally is the only quote unquote democracy in the Middle East. The US is siding early on in its emergence after the was allowed to become a state that the US would stand behind the cause of the of the Israelis and the Soviet Union choosing side of the of the Palestinians. And so if you're asking, for example, where the tendency of the left to side with the Palestinian cause, the Arab cause that's been there from from quite from from within that history. And so I think one of the key alliances this geopolitical agencies were made for talking about antisemitism, regardless of these geopolitical struggles and the, the role that Israel plays in the least in terms of political socio economical power within the culture within the culture of Christianity in the culture of Islam you have a certain amount of antisemitism. We also are working within those ideological battles, so that the people on the ground, regardless of their understanding of the geopolitical struggles have inherited from within those cultural traditions centuries of antisemitism, better than easily manipulated by political figures as a way to further their own costs. The interesting though is that the same time that the Jewish Jewish people were expelled from Spain you also got the Catholics expelled the Muslims from Southern Spain. So, you know, the, the, the, I don't know, this is sort of a naive question but why don't, why don't you know instead of Jews and Muslims fighting each other why don't they just gang up on Christians. I mean, that's who kicked them out everywhere and. And so it's kind of, you know, maybe human beings are much more complex and that obviously but often times absolutely within Muslim, you know, controlled government or government. So, within Spain, for example, in the 12th century, the Jews were did quite well. The Muslim countries and have not always gone after the Jewish communities that's actually in that that's something that I also have to teach my students they tend to think you versus Arab. First of all, they're Jewish Arabs. Second of all, there have been many times and also within Spain's history that the Jews actually did fared better under Muslim governments and Christians Christian or. Yeah, it's sort of, it's sort of interesting because I think that we have a tendency to see Muslims as be Arabs and yet they are Palestinians are actually different than Iranians and and Benuans and the rest. They're all these multiple nationalities. And so, which takes me I'm going to give Gina chance to get into this thing, you know, and which takes me what what's really happening here I mean is it really about religion. There was religion being used and what it's really about this this yearning. I was reading someplace that there seems to be like Hillary Clinton in some interviews said really there's the kind of yearning portion totalitarian is going to the conflict because the Hamas and the other entities that form the axis of resistance say that they initiated this because of what happened almost a year and a half ago in Al Aqsa mosque. And every time Al Aqsa is affected in Jerusalem. It seems to be an intifada or an uprising of some sort and aggression and certainly the three monotheistic religions have much in common. But what they have most of all in common when it comes to conflict is a belief that God is on their side. So, God wills it was the God will cry of the crusaders. Conquest is the confirmation or Islam that God wants them to control something. And for Jews, if you go back to the Torah. You see that God promised that land to the Jews. So these three related religions, the eldest brother of which we're back to three brothers again is Judaism. I'll believe that God is behind their initiatives and out the way that Hamas described to this war is they call it the Al Aqsa flood or the Al Aqsa storm. So while the world is looking at this from much more pragmatic reasons, you know, such as power, military history and all of that. There is a religious underbelly to this because in terms of personal group identity, you need a religious foundational myth. And the those that do not subscribe to this religious foundational myth are constructed as the other. When you have a construction of the other, you have potential for dehumanization and dehumanization must proceed violence in terms of group wars. So taking this down, taking this back into into Russia and Putin. You know, when Stalin was in control, the mantra in Russia was that, and this is really, really, you know, short, short, short, you know, and getting to it, but it was something along the lines that religion was the opium of the masses. But if anything, we ought to get rid of it. And then you get to Putin takes over the country and one of the first things he does is he immediately makes peace with the Russian Orthodox Church, which, you know, which is which existed, by the way, even doing the Stalinist era. And, but it's sort of state related state state religion. And they start to prosecute gays and the rest of it. And then he invades the Ukraine, and there's a split in orthodoxy so it's not only, you know, between Jews and Muslims and it's actually Christians are having their field day as well. And I don't how much does that play into the Ukrainian conflict. Religio is the root word of religion. Religio means to bind. If you're going to have control over a population and you become the father figure and the leader, you need a binding force. And what brings people together is their desire to belong. We all have a kind of an atavistic desire to be in a group, because evolutionarily that's how we defended ourselves against other species. So theorists in social psychology state that this need to belong in in engaged in groups with identities with a common philosophy or religion binding them together can contribute. At this to social stability, that the price of social stability may be aggression against the other, whom the group feels is encroaching on its territory, its culture, its identity, and its interests. Well, coming back to the United States, we see reports now of, and in my opinion, it appears to be affected by what's happening in the Ukraine and what's happening in Israel. And that is that this whole theme of nationalism in it used to be that to be a patriot in the United States was to be a to be anti Russian. And yet, the so called Supreme Patriots, the real right wing types that, you know, you would expect in years past to be anti anti Russian. I mean, it was just, it was almost like, you know, a mantra of the conservatives that you had to be anti Russian. And there's a growing movement in conservatism that is now saying that you have to be anti all of these things I'm anti, anti, while on the social values, but there seems to be anti somatic tendencies, anti Muslim tendencies in infecting our politics. How does that play with all of these conflicts. Yeah, I mean, this is really a question for gene, but I'll, I'll take my stab at it, I think, I mean, because I think what gene is talking about is this, this process of other and, and, you know, clearly, you know, in the 1950s, as you suggest, you know, McCarthyism was a real thing. And it was, it was very much an anti communist sort of sort of movement, but what I think what's happened in the United States is like in much the rest of the world is it's not really about an ideology anymore as much as it is a form of nationalism. And I think in the United States, what what's really being developed in this nationalism is an anti globalism. And so it's not so much. It's not so much. The other has become the globalists of the world. You know, so when you listen to some of the rhetoric coming from from the far right. It is really the anti globalist that is the anti globalist aspect of it that is becoming the more important element. So it's really a matter of othering, but it's, it's the globalist has has sort of been the recipient of the nationalist ire, I think, in the United States. Well, it seems interesting though, Karl, and you since you're an advisor to the Pacific farm, it seems very interesting that many of the same people that are starting to, in a sense, get soft on Russia. Seem to have picked up that same kind of intensity that they used to have against Russia are now being applied on China. You know, and how much of that and that you can't I don't see that as necessarily having religious roots like some of these other conflicts that we talked about. How much of that is racial? I don't know. I don't know how much of it is is racial. You know, I think there's there's I think in my mind there's there's a tendency to overthink the racist aspect of it. I think in the case of China, you know, to shift completely to the other side of the world. I think that that the in the United States, the dissatisfaction with China is that China sort of beat the United States at its own game in in the in again in globalism, where China China has has developed a much stronger economy than the United States thought was possible. And so, you know, I think that that there's there's a bit of a backlash. It's a globalist backlash, but it's it's against China because they see China as as the threat to to American hegemony, both in the region as well as as in the economy. So I think I think that's where where the the the the nationalist aspect of the United States interacts with with China. It's not, as you say, it's not really religion as much as it is something that that the United States sees as sees itself as using its hegemonic position in the global economy, and it sees China as as the reason for that happening. And so, you know, in this case, it's I don't think it is about religion and I don't really see it so much as a racist thing as as a state to state, you know, geo geopolitical sort of thing. But that that in the beginning anyway, the US jumping into the to back up the Ukraine. And when Russia invaded Ukraine. How serious are we to do the same thing. And what's the prognosis, if if China was to invade Taiwan. I guess I'll take that question. It's a leading question because first you have to believe that China is going to attack Taiwan. And, and in my in my view, I think China is reluctant to do that because it sees the problem with trying to take China or take Taiwan by force. I mean, I don't think China is to the point where it sees it is at its advantage to take Taiwan by force it. I think it's much more is inclined to wait, wait, Taiwan out that it sees it sees the United States and Japan as unable to ultimately defend Taiwan, it's overwhelming presence in the region and it's growing dominance in the region will force Taiwan into a into a subservient at least economically servient position to China where it becomes a matter of Taiwan accepting China as the as the hegemon region and therefore acquiescing to its demands for for recognition of Chinese. Kind of which kind of makes the makes the situation interesting in the sense that it makes Putin even sound more irrational than he appears to be. I mean, why would you attack Ukraine, given the fact that you would get the kind of resistance that you now have. Well, I think I think I think I think Putin was pretty surprised that he got the resistance he got. Remember, you know, I think I think I think Putin, it was certainly a strategic blunder on his part to think that he was going to drive tanks into Kiev and and take over Ukraine when this war started. So I think I think that was it was a a misreading on his. What would be able to even exist without the support of the Western powers, given the widespread opposition they seem to face in the Middle East. It's anti Israel rhetoric is so strong in the domination and you know the readiness of every antagonistic country to jump on to Israel and wipe it off the map. Every statement that comes out of political leaders at the helm is to wipe Israel off the map and this kind of aggression that Israel has to face would not have been. They would not have been able to resist this if we did not have support of the Western allies and us in particular and these regional conflicts do have global implications now this religion what we talked about. It was Temple Mount before a religious place for the Jews. Now when you convert it into a religious place for Muslims, the third most soulless site for Muslims, there is a regional religious tension and that religious tension leads to you know land conflict this that but this global implication will be when these people migrate outside. They come to democratic societies like Europe and America and they dominate or you know implement their religion their culture on to a democratic society which does not want to accept them and that you know that kind of tension would lead to more conflict. Resistance in democratic society so this these two regional conflicts are going to have terrible repercussions on the global society in a few years time. So, which you know what you know definitely what happens if Israel wipes out Hamas I mean does that stop anything or do we just have another group popping up. I don't actually think Israel will wipe out Hamas I'm not sure that's possible but I think what what I would say is that what's worrying about what's happening in Ukraine and what's worrying about this particular attack by Hamas on Israel is the dehumanization that's involved so that we have across all civilizations and agreement that we protect children we protect the elderly. And so, and we do not use sexual violence against women. And negotiating conflicts when you when you have civilians brought into the conflict in this way to terrorist means, and you have the kind of aggression that we see in Ukraine. We're seeing a heightened tolerance for dehumanization. That's what's more worrying really to me is that it's not so much the anti Israel rhetoric which we've heard before. But it is the lack of shock and dismay at the dehumanization, taking place, took place and taking place currently in Ukraine, and that took place in Israel, where our common sense of humanity should bind us together. So this is another way of thinking about religion, our common sense of humanity should bind us together. Regardless of ideological if I could just for regardless of our ideological positionings to express outrage at the murder of babies and kidnapping of children, kidnapping of elderly, and of Russia's aggression towards Ukrainian people. This is where we the humanitarian response and a sense of ourselves as ethical actors on the global stage is where we need to begin to find hope and resilience and collaboration, rather than sinking into a kind of despair over the ways in which we are divided. You know, I think that's a great, great capitalization of what you know what's up the discussion and where we are. You know, we're the good guys, we think anyway, I mean we're on the right side in Ukraine we're on the right side in Israel. Yet, we seem to see the world in a way uniting against us, which was described by Carl, you know, the idea of a new alliances, and they seem to have one thing in common because it's, you know, we talked about religion but it really isn't religion because half of Russia that's threatening Ukraine is terrorism, for example, but it seems to be this thing about totalitarianism. I mean, you know, like, people seem to, well, it just seemed that they want something more than democracy or different than democracy. We've got about a minute, anybody can grab wherever we are and go for it, you know. How much of this is how much of a symptom are the Ukrainian situation and what's happening in Israel and how much of it is the cause of where we find ourselves as a country. Does anybody want to try that? Well, totalitarianism is on the rise. Neofascism is on the rise. The type of military conflict on the ground, even the use of Jones, which imitates the kamikaze campaign by the weaker Japanese entity in World War Two, all brings back the prodrome to World War Two. And I do believe we are in a third world war right now, which is a high-rhythm war. It's fought with different weapons, but there is extreme polarization between, as Carl has explained to us, and this is well within the philosophy of Russia and its alliance with China. At this time, they would like to win without losing too much, so they're using other means, space, threats, narratives, propaganda, sigh-ups. Thank you. You know, I was hoping to end this program with sort of upbeat, but it's difficult to do. So I'm actually going to give each of you a chance to say a few words, and we're going to run slightly over time, but Romanti, any last comments about this? Our discussion. I just hope that they differentiate between Putin's aggression in Ukraine and Israel's right for self-defense against terrorism in straight terms, rather than equating both of them as aggression of countries. That's totally. Thank you. Carl, anything? Yeah, I'll say real quickly. I think, you know, Daphne brings up the issue of a humanitarian approach, and I think it's important that we remember that the humanitarian approach is really where we should be binding ourselves into a common theme, is we need to think about a humanitarian answer to conflict. Daphne, you got the last word. Well, in the face of effective polarization, emotional polarization, which tends to create conflict and has us emphasize in conflict, our best weapon against that is our common humanity. And so I will end on that note. That's where my hope lies, and that's where my efforts lie as someone in the humanities, someone who studies the humanities is to find the common ground and the good in each culture, in each religion, in each nation that we have a commonality that values life and that protects innocent and defends those who cannot defend themselves. And we all know that to be true. And we need to depend on our senses of what is right and what is good in times of conflict, and not be manipulated by an attempt to polarize and divide along these manufactured conflicts that have to do with identity and ideology. So, I tend to be hopeful. Thank you. And thank all of you. Thank you, Jean. Thank you, Romanti. Thank you, Carl. And thank you, Daphne, for a very, very intense discussion this new. We appreciate you joining us and we appreciate all of the people who sent in 100 plus questions, by the way. And thank you for listening. And we look forward to further discussions in the future. Aloha, everybody. Mahalo for joining us.