 Welcome to Politics for the People. This is March 3, 2022, and I'm Stephanie Dalton, and I'm your host for this weekly show. Our topic today is the painful consequences of global politics, and particularly today for Ukraine, as it is relentlessly attacked by Russia. To discuss these these politics and and how they distribute pain and what that might mean and affect the international situation and us here at home, I welcome a panel of guests, including Jay Fidel and Tim Appichella and Karen Buzzer. Thank you all for participating. Well, let me begin, Jay, with you and ask you, whose policy in whose policy internationally now is assigning pain? We can talk about what that might mean. Who's doing creating the pain as a result of their politics now, Jay? Can you comment on that? Well, it's geopolitics, and it's your friend, Vladimir Putin. And, you know, I have to say that I used to think he was, I mean, a day or two ago, I used to think he was out of his mind, but I no longer think that. I mean, you know, if you start connecting the dots on him, you realize that it's all pre-organized. He has a specific intention in mind. He's a monster, but that doesn't mean he's crazy, you know. And what is instrumental on that for me is that a few days ago, he threatened nuclear war. He said, don't forget, Russia's a nuclear power. And that is before we saw that he was, you know, devastating Ukraine, devastating it, you know, shooting cluster bombs at civilians, firing rockets into residential buildings, just making it into a rubble-filled parking lot. That's what he's doing. It's extraordinary. It's so mean, it's hard to believe. But at the time he said that Russia was a nuclear power, it hadn't been made clear. One could still think for a moment that he was attacking the Ukrainian military facilities. You know, it all turns into a blur, but at some point, we thought that, and then later we found that no, he was attacking civilians indiscriminately, or maybe I should say discriminately, he was leveling the country. So it was at this point, I believe, when all that was clear, that he made that crack about nuclear power. Okay? So why would he have made that crack? Because he's crazy? No, it's because he felt that what he was about to do, and just starting to do, was going to offend the world, especially Western Europe, so much that they would think about breaking their, and the U.S., about breaking their original, you know, decision not to put boots on the ground. I think he was concerned that there would be boots on the ground, that they would be coming in to attack him, or rather counter-attack him, inside of Ukraine. That's why he said, we are a nuclear power, to deflect and deter Western Europe from doing that, deflect and deter Biden from doing that. And indeed, you know, as this is so horrendous, that it is inevitable that you would think, hey, how do we save these people? Sanctions aren't really saving them. They're dying in the streets, in the subways, they're dying, they're dying from hunger and health, lack of clean water, and it will get worse. And that's what Putin wants. Remember Stalin in 1932, how he intentionally starved out the Ukrainians, and then replaced them with Russians. And that's why there are so many Russians in Ukraine today, because Stalin killed a lot of Ukrainians by intentional starvation. And so I think people remember that. And I think that he's not crazy to threaten atomic war, because he fears that Western Europe is going to change its mind about boots on the ground, because he fears the U.S., as a moral matter, may ultimately change its mind about boots on the ground. If he continues what he's doing, it is an issue that is raised for all of us. Chilling comments, Jay, thank you. Well, Tim, would you speak to the motivations of this tyrant or this autocrat? And indeed, if there is pain from political decisions and perhaps unavoidable pain, the kind of pain that's being distributed now on... You mean like death's pain? You mean the pain of being killed, that pain? Is that what you're talking about? All the pains you listed, Jay, all of that torment that's being visited by those people. I would have to say that death is the ultimate pain. Anybody disagree? Other stuff would be uncomfortable, too. Death is not... No, it's living through what you've suffered through and not dying. That's the ultimate pain. Your limbs are blown off and you're on a ventilator. Death would be welcomed. So what does that touch on? Yeah, talk to us about... Tim, talk about then where is the mind of this man and given that the leaders have to make decisions that do a lot of pain. But what's going on with him? Is there no... Well, I think it's obvious. You know, about a month ago, we did a show on What Now America and the title was Make USSR Great Again Invade Ukraine. And we had some fun with that title, but the title really was Dead On. And Jay's right. He's not crazy. He's crazy like a fox. And, you know, he's ex-KGB. He wants the glory of the USSR back again. And Ukraine is the first step to do that, as was Germany taking Austria. He wants his satellite states back again, and he wants USSR to stand up as a world power of which it's not any longer. And that is Putin. That's what Putin's all about. He knows that, you know, the system under the Soviet system, the economic system, you couldn't... It wasn't sustainable. He knows that on one hand, but then again, he pines and longs for those days. So he's a man who's mixed with his emotions and what he wants for Russia. And that is his sole purpose. There might be... Jay suggested yesterday that there might be another, you know, hidden agenda there. And that is raw materials for computer chips. Jay said that the Ukraine is the... What is it, Jay? What material is that? Lithium. Lithium. That Ukraine is the largest source of lithium. And we know that China has been coordinating that market in Africa and around the world for years. And Putin realizes that petrol dollars are going to come to an end sooner or later. So he needs to branch out and get another monopoly somewhere where he can have the world at his beck and call because he has the supply. So that might be a partial reason why he's doing what he's doing. But I think it's all about Russia pride, the glory of the Soviet Union, and how his neighboring countries quaked and feared under the Russian bear. Okay. Well, I hear you saying that this certainly war has been waged on last justifiable circumstance of desires or goals. In other words, to make his what, a New Jersey-sized economy thrive. I've heard that it's sort of like New Jersey. Maybe it's... Well, I think he wants to turn that into a California economy. Right. So, then where does this put us? Karen, how about talking about the morality of this in relation to the distribution of pain that is necessary in certain politics? Well, I think there's kind of two competing versions of reality with this conflict. One is that Russia is a oppressor like has been discussed. And there's a desire by Putin to be aggressive and to take over more territory and expand his empire kind of thing. And the other side is that Russia does have legitimate security concerns because the NATO has pushed right to its surrounded it and pushed to the border. And I think it's possible to... Let me go on record to say I completely disagree with you, Karen, but that's okay. Okay. So, I think one to be quite a contrary to some of the points, I think you can say both is true without saying that you agree with Russia or Putin. He's obviously is reacting to a policy that US has implemented toward militarism and NATO by extreme measures and one cannot go along in any way condone the measures he's taken. So, I think that you have to kind of look at both sides of the issue and not just one side because I do think that a lot of it is the result of US policies which has been to push NATO right up to the very back door of Putin. And even Condoleezza Rice during the Bush administration made a comment that Ukraine was a very red line for Putin even back then. And I think he made it clear. And I think the other issue is having a kind of weak negotiator with Anthony Blinken. Was that his name? Anthony Blinken said two years ago that the only way he would negotiate with Russia was with a gun to its head, with Putin's head. So, I don't think that's a good starting point for a negotiation if you really want to try to resolve it in a non-military way, which I think there had to be more of a ton to a discussion about what could resolve it in a more peaceful way without bringing in the Putin sort of exercising this tarantual role of bringing in the military. So, I think that's kind of the pain is that none of this is this kind of to me the kind of extreme polarization of these points of view, two points of view. Erin, I wanted to ask you about the NATO issue for Putin and what is the affront to him by NATO when all of these? Well, he has, if you look at the expansion of NATO, originally it was like 15 and now it's 30 states, but the original agreement was just Western Europe. They would have NATO bases, particularly Germany, and since then there's been a US policy of expanding NATO, which essentially military to areas around Russia, Eastern and Eastern Europe. So, gradually it's been expanded to closer and closer to the borders of Russia, and there's been a lot of articles written, academic articles I might add, that's warned the US that this was a dangerous policy. It was following that they shouldn't provoke Russia, that they didn't really need these NATO bases right next door to Russia, and that we had really no real interest in Ukraine per se. So, why provoke it? What I think the negotiating point was he wanted a commitment that Ukraine would remain neutral, not take a position toward the West or toward Russia either way, which Blinken was not able to negotiate because he wouldn't put it on the table. So, I think there's kind of, in a time of war, there's a lot of polarization of opinion and also demonization of people, and so I think to negotiate you have to kind of remember that people have their reasons for what they're doing, and you have to look at both sides. So, are you saying that Blinken, Tony Blinken, was not willing to give that option? What's never on the table? The US isn't going for that. That option has to be Ukraine's choice. Correct, yeah, right. It had to be on the table and, you know, for whatever reason, from what I've read about Tony Blinken, he's not a great negotiator. He did a very poor job with China negotiating. I think he's not a strong person to be leading negotiations, so that might have been an error in the US strategy as well. Okay, well done, Jay. I'd just like to jump in on that one. You know, maybe it's not a failure of negotiation. Maybe it's a strategy. Remember, the USSR collapsed trying to keep up the United States as far as military spending, and they couldn't sustain it, and that's what's led to the ultimate collapse of Russia or USSR. I'm not saying this is a similar strategy, but there's more to it than what the eye seems to see here in this negotiation. Okay, I do want to respond. I just want to say in other words, you're thinking maybe the strategy was to bring Russia down or to kind of collapse Russia by overspending. If not by military spending, certainly by world public opinion. Could be. Okay, well, Jay, I feel like you might want to or in on this discussion of the NATO issue. Do you have follow-up comments on that point? As I said last show and this show, I disagree with Karen. Even if NATO has more people applying to it and they apply, the boundaries haven't changed. Nobody's pushing a boundary here. It was originally a Western European organization, and now they've pushed into Eastern Europe. They haven't pushed anywhere. It's an agreement is all it is. No boundary has changed. No aggression has taken place. There's a big difference between having an agreement for defense purposes and how about killing a country that's the largest country in Central Europe. I don't buy that at all, Karen, and I don't think the United States or Ukraine has ever taken any steps to change that Eastern boundary. Furthermore, now that he mentioned that he's a nuclear power, we already knew that, we find in the newspaper that in fact he has twice as many nuclear bombs as we do. So who's the aggressor here? Who's the guy that's rattling the saber? Who's the guy we should be worried about? It isn't the United States and it isn't Ukraine and it isn't NATO. The Russians have this ridiculous dream to recreate the USSR. That's old news. The fact is that we are defensive. We are trying to keep the peace. We are not aggressive. We would not do anything like what he is doing in Ukraine, which is a travesty and a war crime. I don't put that as two positions to be considered. That's like Trump saying, let's negotiate that the election was stolen. One of those two positions is poppycock. I think it's poppycock to say that NATO is a threat to Ukraine. He just wants more land and he has no morality, whatever. He doesn't mind killing people and that's a completely different affair than NATO or the US or any country in Western Europe. If you talk to the people in Western Europe, they will all agree with what I'm saying. Well, Poland is a member of NATO. Is that a good thing? Will that be a stopping point if Putin takes Ukraine? Won't that be a stopping point before Article 5 of the NATO Charter kicks in if Poland is entered? Yes. And what's Article 5? That's aggression. That's like the three-marched tears, one for all and all for one. Yeah, it means that Europe and the United States, the other members of NATO, will protect Poland. And that means going into Poland, boots on the ground and actually having a war in Poland. Who are they talking about? They're talking about Russia. They're not concerned that Finland is going to come in. They're talking about Russia. Russia is the aggressor here. I don't think it'll happen with Poland, but you know, the people in Poland are afraid. The people in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, they're all afraid. They talk to anybody in Western Europe and they'll tell you that these Eastern Europe boundary countries are all afraid and they're afraid not only of an invasion such as Ukraine, but like an invasion through nuclear means. We are at a crisis here and there is a right and a wrong. And what exactly could you negotiate? What do you want to do? You know, draw a line through Ukraine and give half of it away? Speaking on behalf of people who don't agree with that, what do you want to do? You know, what are the possibilities of making an agreement to say you'll never join NATO? That leaves Russia with the opportunity of taking you over any time and being protected against any possibility of boots on the ground from NATO. You know, neither of those is a worthy possibility. And I think that Blinken is right. I think Blinken has taken a conglitude. He's open for discussion. But frankly, if I put all of us in the room there in that discussion, what are we supposed to negotiate? What would they be supposed to negotiate in the meetings a couple of days ago in Belarus? What's to negotiate? Either you're going to crush my country or not? Well, Jay, I think that what you're addressing here is the answer to another question, which is, is Russia or Putin satiated by only taking Ukraine? Is that the end of his? Most of Europe does not believe it will stop at Ukraine. All right, Tim, what's your take on? Well, Karen was trying to get something to get her point across. So I defer to Karen in her comment. As I said, I think it's possible to both sides to be true. Does it mean that I'm supporting Putin and his militarization? It's great, you know, go Putin or something like that. But I do think the U.S. has its own blame in the situation. And you can't ignore that. What he was trying to negotiate was that the states around Russia would remain neutral and wouldn't have military. Yeah, but Karen, you know, Putin changed his mind. He, you know, at first he said, I just want to make sure Ukraine's neutral and it doesn't become a member of NATO. He's changed his tune. He now says I want pre-1997 borders established or agreements established. So he wants those countries that have signed up with NATO since 1997, he wants that all reversed. That's crazy thinking. And don't forget, don't forget Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons. They had nuclear weapons and they gave up the nuclear weapons. They gave it all to Russia. So, you know, Ukraine is like a peace nation. Ukraine never attacked Russia. So I don't know what the problem is here. Let me, let me go to another point that's an oblique Karen, and that is this. We have a substantial number of people in this country who follow Trump. Nobody will deny whether that's more or less on a given day because one, you know, remarkable gaff or another fact is a lot of people support him. And his principal point on this is that is that Putin is clever. Let's support Putin. That he had a crowd shouting at the top of the lungs the other day. Putin, Putin, Putin. I say to myself, it's a, it's a really good thing. I didn't have a meal before I saw that because I would have lost it all over the kitchen floor. You know, this is, these are Americans who have been raised in the civil, I shouldn't say civil war in the Cold War to understand we are in a nuclear contention with this country. And we survived for a long time on the basis of deterrence. Well, in many ways, Russia is ahead of us on nuclear weapons now. And they have numbered cities in Siberia, where nuclear scientists are, you know, developing other nuclear weapons and missiles. I mean, should we not be concerned about that? Should we not be concerned that Trump, you know, sucks up to Putin and compliments him and believes he's right? I mean, that is, I don't, I don't have to say this, but it's tantamount as many things Trump has done to, to, what's the word I'm looking for? Wait, it'll come to me. It's the opposite of patriotism. It's treason. It's treason. You know, we are now in a Cold War. I hope you got that. We are in a Cold War, and Trump is sucking up to Putin, telling everyone that Putin's right, and having them call out his name. As far as I'm concerned, it's treason. And it's recent. And it's recent. It's within this context. So we have a question that I, that we can insert now. So, Tim, I'll come back to you and I'll read the question and you can give us some comments on that and others too. The question is, given that you think Putin has waged this Ukraine war to recreate the glory days of the USSR, do you, do you think that means that other non-historical USSR countries have nothing to fear? And if no, what do we in the U.S. have to fear? Okay, great question. If you're a former Soviet satellite country and you're not part of NATO, you have everything to fear, just like Ukraine. You are no different than Ukraine, because there's nothing in a charter that says you will receive the protection of NATO and its nations. As far as the United States, we are back, I agree with Jay, we are back in a cold war. That means there's going to be aggression. And we already know that Putin tried to compromise our free and fair election in 2016, and to some extent 2020. What is that all about? That's called a cold war. It's just we haven't been calling it a cold war, but it is. So great question. And yeah, those nations, they should be very concerned. And I'd be in a hurry to sign up with NATO, frankly. Karen, do you agree that in the U.S., we have much to fear, even though we have these two big oceans and a big bunch of guns? So what do you respond to this question with? I guess my greatest fear is the report that came out on global warming and how we're at a critical point and how this is distracting from our ability to work together these different countries to try to stop global warming, because I really feel that they should settle this diplomatically, move on and not try to do it militarily, which is the U.S. is sort of known for. What's the settlement, Karen? The settlement is we just agree that Ukraine will remain neutral. And I haven't seen to the other point, I haven't really seen the latest thing about pushing back to an earlier period, but I do know that Putin has been pushing back ever since we started NATO-wising the Eastern Europe, so I haven't seen his recent comments. But I do think that it's not really worth it. I think our focus should be on, we say to them that Ukraine will be neutral, there will be no war, they don't have to be killed. And then basically, we go back to really what we need to focus on is climate change. Karen, does that mean that Russia pulls out of Ukraine to get to that? Yeah, right. If we agree to, yeah, it would be part of the agreement, it would be pulling out, yeah. It's like one of those old movies where you run it in reverse. So all the pieces of the building that were blown up, actually returned, the building is recreated. All the people who were killed come back to life, all the automobiles and the trucks and the facilities that were destroyed are returned to the original condition. We have very little time left, so let's just do one round, one final comment, trying to get to some closure here. So Jay, why don't you just give us a brief statement and for a final comment here on this, you know, a very muscular discussion. I'd say Putin has crossed the rubicon on this, and we know more about him than we did a few days ago. We can connect the dots on where he wanted to go for a long time and where he is going and where he will go. And having understood that, having now on understanding that, that seems to me that it's not only Putin has crossed the rubicon, Europe has crossed the rubicon. And for that matter, the United States, whether it likes it or not, and whether Trump followers like it or not, we have crossed the rubicon. The world has changed in one week, and it is not for the better. And I agree with Karen that this is sucking all the oxygen out of our most important story, our greatest existential threat. But the fact is that, and a lot of people will die because the climate change, you know, arguably billions over time. But the immediate problem regrettably is that we are failing, we, all of us, every country, the human species is failing at maintaining a peaceful existence. But I blame that entirely, entirely on Putin. And I think one of the problems, the flaws in our species is that from time to time, we have autocrats, dictators, and monsters. That's what he is. And if you give Trump a chance, he'll be the same. Kim, comment. Ditto to Jay, I mean, perfectly stated. I agree with Karen that diplomacy is certainly preferred over war. And an elegant solution could be that Ukraine becomes the next Switzerland, a neutral-stated country. I don't think that satisfies Putin. I agree with Jay. He's this naked aggression, and continued aggression will continue. And I don't think he'll be satisfied with pulling out of Ukraine and keeping it as a neutral country. I just don't think that's going to satisfy his inner wishes and desires for USSR country again. So more news at 11, as they say, we'll see what happens. Karen, your final comment for the show. Okay, I think this is very similar to the Cuban missile crisis where we kind of got too close to each other's borders. And it needs to be negotiated. Remember, Cuba was an independent state, so they had the right to put Russian missiles in there. But the U.S. basically was ready to bomb it because of these missiles. So it was resolved diplomatically. And I think rather than... And in fact, from what I've read, Kennedy himself had to stand up against the military and say that they wanted to bomb Cuba. And he said, no, no, we're not bombing Cuba because he was afraid the next place to bomb would be Miami. If we bombed Cuba, then Russia would bomb Miami. So he didn't want to go there. And he agreed to remove our missiles from Turkey in exchange for them removing from Cuba. So I think there has to be something on the table to negotiate with them that allows us to settle it without military. I would distinguish that nobody had crossed the border. Nobody had actually attacked. And the resolution of it was, if you remember, the Russians pulled the missiles out of Cuba. That was the resolution. Yeah, it wasn't a half compromise. We pulled missiles out of Turkey. You know, months later, that was the side agreement. That was the hush-hush agreement. Okay. All right. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Jay. Thank you, Karen. This show is policy for the people. And I'm your host, Stephanie Stoll Dalton, for this show each week. And thank you, participants, for in this exciting discussion. So we'll see you next Thursday. Mahalo for viewing. And aloha, everybody.