 is doing west of Ukraine, that's the issue today. Here on Global Connections, I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech and the handsome young man is Carl Ackerman, Dr. Carl Ackerman, if you please, history professor and more. Welcome to the show, Carl. Thank you, Jay. And as I always say about you, you're the immense extraordinaire. Okay, we're gonna get a dictionary and try to help people out on that. So, see, I have so much to talk to you about today, Carl, but let me start with my observation over the past hour of Rachel Maddow trying to make sense of Cassidy Hutchinson and her testimony in the select committee. I mean, it seems clear that Trump knew there were people with weapons on January 6th and he knew they were trying to get into the Capitol and he ordered that the MAG machines, MAG machines, that is the TSA X-ray machines be taken down so that they could get in with the weapons. That's really an interesting revelation. And then it appears that he said that the weapons wouldn't hurt him, but the implication is that the weapons wouldn't hurt somebody else. And then finally, he tried to join them. He said he was gonna join them and he tried to join them. And in fact, he got into an altercation with Secret Service on the way back to the Oval Office. And she was either directly or indirectly a witness to all of this and there's more to come as we left this unfolding story. She was about to testify about why he wanted to get to the Capitol himself together with his armed friends. And you know what it tells me in my preparation, my thought for this show about Vladimir Putin and his moves west of Ukraine is that we have an emergence of autocrats and what Trump was doing was trying to emerge as the president, no matter what the vote said, trying to emerge as the single leader of the Western world, no matter what the vote said, trying to avoid the peaceful transfer of power. That's what he's trying to do. That's what autocrats do and that's what Vladimir Putin does. So he has emerged through mostly trick over the past several years and he is an autocrat in Russia. There are others too, Victor Orban, for example, and others all around. So we have an emergence of autocrats and that kind of helps us understand what Putin is doing in moving west into Ukraine. So you and I have talked before, Karl, about various places that were at risk, vulnerable places, aside from Ukraine itself. There's Belarus, which Trump has moved nuclear weapons into Belarus and he owns Belarus. He controls the autocratic president there. And of course, there's Kalinograd, which is on the, I guess, the ocean, the Baltic Sea. And he's been threatening Lithuania because Lithuania has stopped the flow of Russian, Russian supplies, I guess, to Kalinograd on the Baltic Sea. He's made threats to, let's see, to Moldova and that little slice of land, transvest, transnestria, that little slice of land between Russia and Moldova. And he's got this strange relationship with the autocrat in Hungary and he's made threatening comments to Romania. So if you wondered what he was all about and what his next plan is, it certainly seems that he's not gonna stop in the Donbas. He's gonna move through Ukraine if you let him, if we let him and he's going to threaten everybody around, including all of the EU in Western Europe. He's gonna threaten everyone to try to minimize the support they give to Ukraine. That seems to be his style. But I guess we're here, Karl, to try to figure out what moves he's gonna make. So far, this is rhetoric. What moves he's gonna make that are true threats and what he will follow through with as the, what do you wanna call it, the autocrat of Eastern Europe. So your thoughts about all of that, please, Karl. Well, you know, Jay, you began in a wonderful way and you were beginning to talk about Donald Trump and we all should know about Donald Trump from reading Mary Trump's book. Mary Trump wrote a tell-all and Donald Trump's treatment of his older brother was horrendous and his growing up and his paternal influence was horrible and only rewarded him for doing kind of dastardly things and talk to him about, if you don't win, you're nothing at all. And that's the deep sort of seated psychosis that Donald Trump has. And if you move it over to Vladimir Putin and these guys were good friends and good psychopaths together, Vladimir Putin lost, was there when the Soviet Union dismantled basically in 1989 and he's never forgotten this and that's the way he operates in the world. He wants to return the old Soviet Union. So those are the parameters. Now, in talking about the great things that you're talking about, which is the West and Transnistria and I'll begin there because Transnistria is what the plan is to take the other parts of the southern part of Ukraine near the Baltic, cities like Odessa then build a land bridge there to Transnistria carving out more of Ukraine. I doubt that's gonna happen because Ukrainian fighters are doing counterattacks in that southeastern part of Ukraine. So, and they haven't taken Odessa yet and that's such a beautiful city and of course celebrated in film with Potemkin, which you well know, my friend who is so well known, who knows so much about film. So, Eisenstein, you know, with Potemkin. But the thing is with Kaliningrad, that's what I'd like to spend most of our time today if it's okay with you and that's an enclave and an enclave is just something that is not contiguous with the rest of Russia. The biggest enclave that I know about is Alaska. You know, we do not, you know, the United States, the 48 States do not continue up into Alaska and I mean, I don't know if you'd call Hawaii an enclave too because we're separated by a body of water. So anyway, like a large body of water and you know, I just as an aside, it always makes me laugh, Jay, when pilots are leaving Hawaii and they're obviously not from Hawaii and they say this is a nonstop flight to the West Coast, you better hope it is. Anyway, so Kaliningrad, you know, this is really an interesting sliver and I think that a proper name was Konigsberg, which is, you know, the German center and you know, what's interesting about this particular area is Konigsberg was the capital of the Prussian Empire before, you know, Germany was unified in 1870 and then it switched to Berlin. So this has been, you know, an enclave of Russia only since about 1946 when the Allies gave this territory, you know, whether to protect against another German onslaught or whatever, but, you know, it was part of the bargaining process. Probably it yelled up, but I don't know where it actually the bargaining process took place, but I know it began in 1946. And of course, the reason the Russians are interested is because they don't want to take their ships and launch from St. Petersburg because, you know, St. Petersburg part of the ocean freezes over and I have a funny story, Jay, and I'm gonna share it with you and your viewers today. When I was in Leningrad at that time in the former Soviet Union, I was flying a stunt kite in that icy area and was actually walking along the ocean there. And I was walking along because it was frozen and I had a Russian come up to me and sort of the great Russian nationalism that Putin shares, of course Putin's much worse. A Russian came up and said to me in Russian, you know, you're an American, yes. And I said, yes. He said, you know, your kite, it's not as good as the Russian. Russian kite goes up, it stays there. Your kite is twisting all around. And I tried to explain to him, but it was a stunt kite, but it didn't work, so there you go. But anyway, but that's to explain the Baltic fleet is in Leningrad and so they want that port and that's a huge economic money maker like the electronics in Hong Kong, you know, I mean, it's just, you know, a huge money maker and you know, the Russians don't want to mess with it. It's much freer than most places in Russia because it's not contiguous. And well, how does it work, Carl? Cause it's hundreds, if not thousands of kilometers west of Russia itself. It's completely disconnected. It's bordered by Lithuania and Poland as I recall. It is, Poland is to the west and Lithuania is to the east. You know, I think that, you know, there are Russian banks there. It has a, you know, it has a great relationship with the EU. And so you have goods and services. And this is where Lithuania comes up, is that Lithuania because of the March 2022 victim by the EU and Lithuania is part of NATO. I mean, I think, you know, it's part of NATO for a while. I mean, I think by 2005, but I don't know for sure. Don't quote me on that. I don't know, you know, I'm giving that number 2004, 2005. So they're just following the dictum. So what they're doing is they're cutting off, I think, steel and one other product from, you know, doing going into the market of Kaliningrad. And of course, this disrupts the Russian economy. The Russians make a huge amount of money. And I imagine the bank transfers are what goes on. I think everything's electronic. And the main source of revenue, I think, are food resources. And whether those come from the Ukraine or they come from Russia and also tourism. And of course, both those things are being hurt by this war. I mean, all the food is dust from the Ukraine. And so Russia can't do anything without crossing Lithuania and or Poland. And you know, those trains go across the two Baltic states and in order to get into Kaliningrad. So they're in deep M.G. But anyway, what's interesting about this, you're right, Jay. And the Russians reacted to this Lithuanian observance of Euro policy, European Union policy, by saying, you know, we're gonna launch something great against Lithuanian. Now, this has happened. You know, they're not gonna, you know, once they cross the line of attacking a native country, you know, that's the line in the sand that Joe Biden has established. And he's, he means, he means it. I think that, you know, Joe Biden is not someone who's gonna lift this line in the sand. I mean, he's going to, or I should, I don't want to use the proper metaphor. He's not gonna move this line in the sand and create another line. He's gonna have to move and he's gonna have to move militarily. So what happened yesterday in Kaliningrad is there was a cyber attack. And the cyber attack failed, but it was a huge cyber attack. And I think that's the way Russia's gonna go now. And with Transnistria to go farther south to Moldova, for those viewers who don't know where this is, it's in the eastern part of Moldova, bordering Crane. They took out, you know, two radio outlets or radio television outlets, you know, with missiles. But there hasn't been any kind of major movement there. But the, you know, Transnistria is really not as significant as Kaliningrad, which brings in, as I said, that kind of hard currency, the money, the, you know, the kind of trade. And of course, you know, it borders on the Baltic Sea and the Baltic Sea, you know, doesn't freeze over. And so it kept farther north, you know. And so I'm sorry, the North Sea, the Baltic Sea does freeze over farther north, but the North Sea does not. So, you know, this is a big threat to Russia and Russia sees it as something that is, you know, sovereign Russian territory. But, you know, I don't think that even in his craziest moment of Vladimir Putin is gonna try to attack a native country. If he does, you know, all bets are off. And then the American military and especially the American military Air Force begins to work and, you know, our missiles work and, you know, we're very efficient at the military. But you see how cute this is. This is not an attack on a kinetic attack, if you will, a military attack on Lithuania. It's a hacking attack. And it's not clearly established in law or in practice, international law of practice or the law of war, that a hacking attack is a war-like attack or that it would violate the NATO, you know, protection agreement. So it's cute. It's cute and it's his style now. It's his way of threatening. It's kind of international terrorism is what it is. And we know for a fact that it's a state, it's a state terrorist. It's a state act by Vladimir Putin, for sure. But I guess the question I put to you is at some point, you know, you do get to consider it a war, a war attack. It's like a kinetic attack. If you bring down power plans, if you bring down government institutions and so forth, the way he has done in other places, for example, in Ukraine itself. Yeah, you know, I mean, today, you know, if you watch that there's this warning, you know, he attacked, you know, there was a missile that went into, you know, a shopping center, you know, I don't know what kind of danger that was. And I said before, I'm not so convinced that some of these things are planned because I think that, you know, I don't have a lot of faith in the Russian's ability to be picture perfect as, and even the United States is picture perfect, but I think we have much more control about where our missiles land. But in any case, I think that, you know, the Russians are, you know, launching this counter offensive in the Donbass region and that's his overall plan. And, you know, the West is secondary, but you know, he's gonna let people know by this cyber attack. And, you know, cyber attacks are part of the arsenal, not only of Russia, but also of China. And China does it all the time with our banks from Wells Fargo, and America, you know, separate center, right? And, you know, these Marxist-Leninist countries, of course, which include Cuba and, you know, North Korea, they're never gonna be our friends because they have a different ideology. And they, you know, I remember we had a colleague, Jay, you and I, who was trying to suggest that democratic centralism was something like democracy. Well, it certainly is not, and it never has been, never been historically, but I think that what's interesting is that Putin has had to Vladimir Putin, President Vladimir Putin has had to, have you suggested a resort to cyber warfare? Well, it's a hybrid war, you know, just as Biden doesn't wanna have an expanded kinetic war, Putin is afraid of that, and he uses these clever mechanisms. Now, on 60 minutes in the past two weeks, there have been three instances of interest, and I'll mention them to you and see what you think. Number one is the oligarchs have, with their fabulous money, they have bought neighborhoods in London. Some of the most expensive properties in the whole country, they bought them. And I don't know if they live there, but they're holding their money outside of Russia by buying these properties. The other thing they've done is they've made huge political contributions to members of parliament, and they try to, in fact, one of them was recently sworn in as a member of parliament, and that really is scary. And other members of parliament are saying, what's going on here? They're trying to achieve influence over parliament. They're trying to soften us up to Russian aggression. They're working it from the inside. You can talk about hybrid war. Wow, nothing like hollowing out in the country and affecting its government. And that's one of the things that was reported. The other was Daniel Atega in Nicaragua, who was an absolute oligarch, a terrible dictator who makes his adversaries disappear. The same way that Navalny has disappeared in Russia. Somebody runs against you or speaks against you. You find a way to throw them in the back end of the prison or you disappear them so they are never heard of again, which is happening according to this article in Nicaragua. Further, we find that Russia is investing funds in infrastructure in Nicaragua and other Latin American countries and in African countries. And when I say hybrid, I mean hybrid to the fullest extent, you could possibly define the term. It's everywhere. And I don't know if it costs him a lot of money because he doesn't have any money. You know, the Russian bank is now in default as of last week of its national obligations to the investment community, the global investment community. So I guess what I'm saying and asking is, this is also part of the hybrid war, as well as the rhetoric by which he, and the hacking of cyber attacks by which he attacks countries that portend to support Ukraine. He's also building a kind of coalition of autocrats. Victor Orban, just one of them, Daniel Ortega, another one, and God knows what he's got going in the UK. And so what we have here is it's terrorism, but it's also an autocratic coalition building. Doesn't this, or my question is, does this help him in dealing with the Ukraine invasion? I think wherever he could find a, the initial answer to the question is yes, it does help him, minimally, I think. And this is why today in Madrid, in NATO, both, there was no disagreement on the part of Turkey, et cetera, to NATO membership. So people around the world, this is the critical aspect for Russia right now, is to prevent NATO membership for two countries that had no intention before the Ukrainian invasion, wanted to remain neutral. So that's something right on Vladimir Putin's border. And he can't get away from this. And if they become NATO members, sort of game over in the sense of what he wants to do north of. So that's one thing. There was recently a Chilean election and the progressive came in. Not a Marxist son is like Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista crew in Nicaragua. But actually someone that is progressive but willing to listen to, he's of the Bernie Sanders type. Bernie Sanders doesn't wanna get rid of all of capitalism despite what some of his followers think. He liked the richness of America. While he's a socialist, I think that in our own contemporary world, socialism means sort of like war, government, help. It's not like he wants the United States government to take over McDonald's. That would be silly and stupid. Both of what the Bolsheviks did in October 1917, really out there and we saw what happened. I think that I'm not as pessimistic. I think that the people that are much more influential or the Chinese who have much more money, much more willpower to do things. And if you look at the major sort of state that relied on the Soviet Union for many years and that was Cuba or as the people would say Cuba, there they wanna, they're trying to find I think a hybrid road because they don't want all these sanctions put on them because they have realized that, especially with Fidel Castro gone, that things are not going all well and in their sugar plantation economy and they're trying to do other things. And eventually I hope that Cuba will return to sort of the Western framework of democracy and capitalism. Capitalism takes on many forms and we have a good capitalist system in the United States but perhaps the better one is in Sweden where they have more taxes, dare I say that, and more things they're taken care of. And I always laugh, both on the right and the left, the right complaining about, in all these countries that have a look, the right complaining about government intervention but when their companies are about to go under like the auto industry, what do they look for? They look for the government. And of course, people complaining about socialism. I mean, how are in most of our states schools supplied or policemen paid or firemen paid or public hospitals, it's like, get with the program here, it's just, or garbage pickup, I mean, in words, it's a form of socialized framework with us all contributing something with our tax. I think we're full stock of labels. Just as Russia is defaulting on its international financial obligations, that the visibly the quality of life of the average Russian is declining right now and in relatively short order. I mean, he can ignore the sanctions, try to bypass the sanctions using clever mechanisms to bypass them on a sort of national fiscal approach. But the fact is that the ordinary Russians are their quality of life is declining. And so I guess if he had his way and he took Ukraine, which is the logical possibility, I mean, I hope it doesn't happen. I don't think it'll happen, but if he does take Ukraine and threaten all the countries around it, we can name them as, you know, there's a half a dozen or maybe more countries that through these threats and cyber attacks and God knows what clever and draconian things he can think of, that's another world order. That's the old fashioned Vladimir Putin Eastern Europe model. Be damned the public, be damned quality of life, be damned capitalism, be damned thinking about democracy. There wouldn't be any, it would be backed to the Russia, the Soviet Union of the Cold War and the Eastern Europe of the Cold War. And my question to you, and you know, you've had a lot of experience in Eastern Europe, will Eastern Europe in the year 2022 or 2023 tolerate that? Will the countries, will Russia, the citizens of Russia tolerate that? Will the citizens of these other countries that are vulnerable, that could get swept up in Putin's grand plan, would they tolerate that? And if not, what would happen? Well, you know, I think the Ukraine is a good example. I mean, they've, you know, not had that many years of democracy, but it really stuck it for the younger generation, that's what they've known. So my answer to you is twofold. One, for many countries, I would include Poland, you know, all the Baltic States here, Hungary is, if the Belarus is definitely pro-Russia, but depending on which, you know, East Germany is now part of West Germany, so it's just Germany. So I would say my answer for the most of the States, it would be no, I think. And no one wants to return to the scarcity of the former Soviet Union. I mean, that's a proven failure, you know, in terms of Marxism, it's too bad that North Korea and the Sundinistas are not taking notice of that, but you know, people don't read their history books, unfortunately, and you and I both meant that wonderful mensch, David L. Well, you know, but what that suggests to me is that the countries that are vulnerable all know the history, they've been there. They have been part of the Soviet, you know, Eastern Europe model, and they know how hard it was on their families, and they're not about to go back to that. And even in Germany, they're not about to go back to the old Germany. They remember, and they remember how it didn't work out in any way for them. I guess the question though is, when you conclude that, and you conclude your point early on in this discussion that NATO is not gonna permit them to invade, and Biden is not gonna permit them to invade, quote, not one inch of NATO territory, where does that leave us with all these threats? Threats of, you know, the cyber attacks and nuclear threats, and his threats against the civilian populations, governmental institutions, shopping centers, God. And to say nothing about atrocities and war crimes, where does that leave him? Is he barking up a tree on this? Is he gonna go nowhere? Or does this somehow serve his purposes? I, you know, Jay, my answer, it's in Putin's hands now. I think that if he decides to attack a NATO country, he's gonna get the full retaliation of the United States. And NATO, I mean, it's not just the United States, countries, you know, really well, countries that have weapons like the Germans. And so they're gonna be in deep trouble, the Russians. So I'm not sure he's gonna do that. I think that, yeah, I think what you're suggesting is he's gonna try to do cyber attacks, and he's also gonna try to unify all the sort of crazies in the world, including, you know, the Sandinistas and the North Korean government. And unite the independent countries that have received help from Russia like India, which doesn't, India's a full-fledged democracy, but they've gotten the aid from Russia and so has, you know, a lot of the countries in Africa and also some of the countries in Latin America, you know, but I, you know, I mean, all someone has to do is look at the Cuban burden. When they stop giving, you know, Cuba money, look what happens to the Cuban economy. So, you know, it's just, the writing's on the wall. And I think Vladimir Putin, as a Putin comment, should remember Afghanistan. This is not a winning proposition. Yeah, let me, let me, yeah, tripping off that though. One other point I would like to discuss with you is this. In Afghanistan, yeah, you know, the mothers and daughters and sisters and grandmothers, they opposed having their boys brought back in body bags from Afghanistan and they put pressure on him. And it was him. On the other hand, he handled, you know, the area south of, I guess, Georgia was one of them and Chechnya, he handled that differently and the world never really knew. And maybe, you know, the Russian people never really knew what was going on. And he lied to them and caused these provocations to happen and then used those provocations to enhance his own power. He was much more adept in that phase of his power expansion. And so, right now, you have a situation where one of his goals is to keep on going. It's a war of attrition. It's a war without end. It's a war where he says I can, whatever you throw at me, I'll beat it and I'll keep going and you guys are gonna get tired. And Western Europe, you know, is every indication of getting tired of this. They're worried about gas prices and their economies. The US, the same thing. If a guy like Trump wins in the next election or even this fall, you know, the other side of the equation may be a nationalistic approach. We don't care about Ukraine. We don't wanna get in any foreign adventures. He's counting on that. He's hoping for that. He's planning for that. Taking every step he can to make it a war of long term attrition where we take it off the top of our priority list. And I worry about that. I think he could win that simply by keeping the siege going. You know, thoughts? You know, Jay, there was an indigenous Russian group, indigenous, meaning the Russian people themselves that began mostly mothers, opposition to Chechnya, because they're exactly, as you said, their sons were coming home in body bags. And so I think as this war gets longer and it's long right now, and as people return with information from what's been going on, they go into a neighborhood, there's no fascist, you know? And so, uh-oh, you know, I've been told something and it's not true. And the same sort of discouraging way that many veterans from Vietnam came home and said, look, you know, we're not, we're not, you know, well, many were saying we weren't fighting the war in the right way, but some were saying also that this was a war that we could, so I think that's, I think it's, you know, I think the longer the war goes on, the worse it is for Vladimir Putin. I think that's why he's trying to store up the Dombos region. And again, my, sorry, my computer here, but I accidentally, what I would say is that I think that Vladimir Putin is on his way to lose the initial support at Russia. And I think he's gonna lose big time. If he continues in the long run with this war, and I mean, he, remember, they pulled out of Chechnya and they pulled out of Afghanistan and, you know, they pulled out of Afghanistan because they realized that they could not produce anything, you know, if the models told the estate there because people had a different ideology based on, you know, some ideas of Islamic philosophy. So, you know, I think it's a no-win for Vladimir Putin. There was a song in the 60s that was written by country Joe on the fish. I feel like I'm thinking to die. And I'm waiting for some smart American to translate this into Russian. And instead of, you know, come on all you big, strong men, Uncle Sam needs some help again. And saying, you know, instead of Uncle Sam, you know, Uncle Vladimir Putin needs some help again. Put it on your books and pick up a gun. We're gonna have a whole lot of fun as the song goes. But that's just my last rendition of country Joe in terms of what Vladimir Putin is gonna face in the future. Well, one thing is clear, Carl. And that is we can't, we can't forget Ukraine despite Vladimir's wishes on that we will forget Ukraine. And despite the fact that we have all this Mishigas, Mishigas is also in that dictionary, going on in Washington, which sucks up all the oxygen. When I think of the good policy we can do, the good steps we can take, all the good legislation that could be passed, and instead we spend our time fighting around Trump and dealing with Trump and dealing with the GOP and QAnon and the like, the conservative movement is I don't know if it's the right term. We are wasting time and we are also wasting public attention. And I think that always Ukraine should be right at the top because he represents the liberal world order and we need to be concerned about that. Therefore, I suggest that you and I check back and continue this discussion on a regular basis, Carl. That would be wonderful, Jay. And it's always nice to give it with you. And I will end by just saying that Vladimir Putin combines what the American History Channel called Louis XVI, the Shlub, but he's also a Schmuck. He combines both words, Schmuck and Shlub. Okay, there you have it. It's time for all our viewers to go and look at their unistictionaries. There we go. Understand how we're leaving this. Thank you, Carl Ackerman. So, so nice to talk to you. Aloha. Thank you, Jay. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.