 I think here in the 40 verse we are particularly well prepared for what's going on in Europe, what's going on with Vladimir Putin because the years we've been talking about the realist approach to politics, the realist approach to life, the realist approach to reality and morality the realist approach to international relations, the realist approach to tourist study trying to stay in reality is the ongoing theme of this show and we use a lot of theories to try to simplify and get at the essence of reality in a particular area so sometimes for a quarterback knowing who's the mic linebacker alright that's your magic key for decoding what kind of defense you're going to be facing and sometimes you can just tell by how quick people are in response you can get a good read of their IQ and in a certain situations knowing someone's cranial capacity their cognitive capacity that's the magic key for trying to assess a situation now we are looking at Vladimir Putin what does he want surely it's a lot more than just Ukraine and does what Putin wants is that the same is that coterminous with what Russia wants is what's good for Vladimir Putin good for Russia and of course it's not going to be exactly equal coterminous so it seems to me that overall Vladimir Putin has been a highly effective leader of Russia but individuals incentives are not identical to the incentives of the corporation or of the nation state whoa is that next to an economist who's specialized in analyzing corporate boards and what are the incentives for corporate board members and how are they different from the incentives for corporations right so for example Vladimir Putin is about 69 70 years of age so I can be around forever he wants a legacy and Putin is some kind of flashy splash make dramatic gestures to try to establish their reputation to try to burnish their reputation but many of the things we do to burnish our individual reputations not necessarily good for the groups that we represent so try to figure out the audio here let's get a little professor John Jay Mearsheimer international realities in 2020 professor Mir Shimer won the James Madison Award which is given once every three years by the political science association to an American political scientist who has made a distinguished scholarly contribution to political science so John Mir Shimer has been talking about how this Ukraine crisis is primarily the West Fort because it's equivalent to you push and push someone all right you push their buttons you make them feel unsafe you invade territory that they believe it should be theirs and then you're all shocked and appalled when they react and that's essentially what the West has done they have kept moving NATO closer and closer to the borders of Russia making Russia feel threatened naturally normally because the United States has its own Monroe Doctrine we don't like it when the Soviet Union was in Cuba we would not like it if China got involved in the Americas so what's good for the goose is good for the gander so John Mir Shimer makes the argument that it's the West who caused this crisis in the Ukraine Professor Mir Shimer it is an honor to have you with us today the floor is yours Thank you very much Tom it's a great pleasure to be here I wish I was not here virtually but that I was physically at Cambridge I'd actually love to come to Cambridge sometime and talk to you and to meet people go to lunch go to dinner and so forth and so on I understand these virtual talks are a good second best but nevertheless they are a second best Tom asked me to talk for about 20 minutes on the whole subject of the Ukraine crisis which I of course have written about and talked about extensively since 2014 so I'm happy to do that and I'll answer questions on Ukraine and I'm willing to answer questions on almost any subject that you folks would like to talk about let me do two things first let me talk about the origins and the history of this crisis so I've been playing Mir Shimer for five six seven years now right he is the preeminent theorist of offensive realism there are various schools in international relations for theory and there are various schools for the international relations theory of realism he focuses on offensive realism that what's most important in trying to understand the capabilities of a nation state what are its offensive capabilities like how much damage can they do so I love the analogy I think it's from Mir Shimer that we're essentially all locked in an iron cage together there's no higher authority coming to bail us out and to adjudicate our disputes nation states like rival drug gangs and I've used this analogy over and over again for years if you make a drug deal and it goes wrong you can't call the police you can't invoke the courts you can't sue anyone you are operating above and beyond normal legal procedures and in international relations you are operating above and beyond normal legal procedures because yeah even though there are things called international law it doesn't really matter much unless countries with power decide to enforce international law so we're all locked in an iron cage together and we can never be sure of anyone's intentions because we don't even fully know our own intentions because our own intentions are constantly changing based on our own capabilities our own energy our own alliances right the amount of power that we can muster our own mood and what what the opportunities that presented before us and then talk about why it's on the front burner today and then let me say a few words in conclusion about where we're headed the conventional wisdom in the West and this is certainly true in a place like Britain and the United States is that Putin is responsible for this crisis it's the Russians and the chat says what's the difference bro no one listens to John Mirsham it's not like any politician listens to him Biden Harris definitely don't listen to him I think about President Joe Biden's political weakness his low standing in the polls his lack of effectiveness during his 13 months in power that makes him particularly susceptible to doing the silly stupid things that he's doing such as sending more US troops to Europe sending troops to Poland and putting more importance on this situation than it necessarily deserves so Biden is doing the wrong thing because he's so weak politically he's trying to shore up his standing because he doesn't want to be accused of oh Biden he's the guy who lost Ukraine and John F Kennedy plunged us into the Cuban Missile Crisis for similar reasons he was facing very difficult midterm election in the fall of 1962 and he wanted to rob the Republicans of the argument that the John F Kennedy and the Democrats were weak on defense and so as a result he brought this world closer to nuclear war than it ever happened before in large part to shore up his political standing right so a lot of what happens in the world is in part because of individuals so overall I think structure is more important than individuals so yes individuals matter individuals face incentives so any politician based with the incentives of a midterm election where they were facing like devastating low back would would be very inclined to do all sorts of things in international relations that would necessarily be against their country's interest but might be in their party's interest and in their personal interest so the structure and the situation affects the incentives that individuals operate under so US policy vis-à-vis Ukraine but not that different if Donald Trump was in office if Joe Biden was in office if Tulsi Gabbard was in office if Alexandria Ocasio Cortez was in office because the structure of international relations is that we're all locked in this iron cage together we don't know other people's capabilities or motivations and so we are strongly incentivized try to come across as strong as possible but if we operate under this strong incentive it just doesn't mean anything that we do that we think will make us stronger many of the things that we do to make us stronger personally or as a community or as a nation state end up making us weaker so Putin invading Ukraine may end up being the death knell of Russia and the death knell of Putin they're good guys and bad guys and of course we are the good guys and the Russians are the bad guys this is simply wrong the United States mainly but the United States and its allies are responsible for this crisis not Putin and Russia now why do I say that very important to understand that what the West has been trying to do since 2008 is turn Ukraine into a western bulwark and not just that all sorts of US politicians have said we need a revolution in Russia in other words overthrow the Russian regime mainly democratic politicians have said this and of course that's going to push Putin into a corner that's going to be a threat and when people are under threat they don't tend to react calmly when you push people and put them under threat well they tend to react in more extreme ways than they would without the threats so this is Don Mirshimer here talking about the situation in Russia and Ukraine and when we playing Mirshimer hey the politicians don't listen to him well it's important to try to understand what's going on and to understand the world around us you need theory right theories are simplified pictures of reality and John Mirshimer wrote a long paper in 2014 about the virtues of theory because theories explain how the world works in particular domains right there's a theory for what do you do when the defense is playing too high safeties right there are theories about that and there are theories about the capacity of cognitive measurements to predict how groups will operate in the real world so this is from John Mirshimer's 2014 essay the world around us is blooming and buzzing confusion right it's infinitely complex it's difficult to comprehend and to make sense of what's happening in the world around us we need theories we need to decide which factors matter most right so we have to leave many factors out because they are less important for explaining what's going on so theories make the world comprehensible because they help us zero in on what's most important so theories are like maps maps are not exact replicas of reality maps distort reality but they are good enough usually right maps and theories simplify a complex reality so that we can grasp what's most important you can have a highway map the United States it could include major cities roads rivers mountains and lakes but it would leave out many less prominent features such as individual trees and buildings or the rivets on the Gordon Gate Bridge alright so like a theory a map is an abridged version of reality now unlike maps theories provide a causal story so theories say one or more factors can explain a particular phenomenon so theories are built on simplifying assumptions about which factors matter the most for explaining how the world works so realist theories or the balance of power considerations account for the outbreak of great power wars and the domestic politics as less explanatory power so whether or not a nation goes to war doesn't really matter much whether it's a democracy or an authoritarian or a totalitarian state its balance of power considerations is the structure of international relations and the relative strengths and weaknesses of the nation states at under consideration that are most important so theories boil things down to variables or concepts so a theory will say how key concepts are defined they will make assumptions about key actors and theories will identify how independent intervening independent variables fit together which then enables one to define when it comes to international relations now they're not universal they apply only to particular times and particular spaces and the scope of a theory can vary significantly you can have grand theories such as realism or liberalism which purport to explain whole broad patterns of state behavior let's get back here to John Misham on Russia's border and that policy had three dimensions to it the first and most most important is NATO expansion the idea was that we were going to expand NATO eastward to include Ukraine the second element of the strategy was EU expansion so in other words it was not just NATO expansion that was going to go and include Ukraine it was also EU expansion and the third element of the strategy was the color revolution and in the case of Ukraine that was the orange revolution and the idea was to turn Ukraine into a liberal democracy like Britain like the United States and not only a liberal democracy but a liberal democracy that was allied with the United States because again this is all part and parcel of a strategy that is designed to make Ukraine a western bulwark on Russia's border now as I said to you the most important element of the strategy is NATO expansion and that's why the April 2008 Bucharest NATO summit is of immense importance so whether it's the United States that controls Ukraine or Ukraine controls Ukraine or Putin controls Ukraine or Russia controls Ukraine it doesn't really have that much significance for the United States there isn't a whole lot of particularly valuable stuff in the Ukraine directly for the United States but by pushing NATO right up to the borders of Ukraine you put Russia under pressure when people under pressure they react in unpredictable ways and so we're increasing the odds of war with Russia we're increasing the odds of some kind of nuclear exchange we're dramatically increasing the odds of bad things happening to us because we put Russia under pressure and now we've got all these variables at play and we don't know which one's going to explode at the end of that April 2008 Bucharest summit NATO announced that Georgia and Ukraine would become part of NATO they said this is going to happen period the Russians made it unequivocally clear so I like democracy compared to an authoritarian state yeah I'd rather live in democracy but it doesn't mean that democracy is the cure for all ills democracy is not the cure for great power politics conflict and I like religion but religion makes some people worse religion isn't going to solve every problem so religion properly lived out makes some people better and makes some communities better but religion sometimes makes people and communities worse and I like to study history right but the study of history is not going to solve all our problems either so the world is infinitely complex and many of the things that are good for us personally or the type of regime that we want to live under does not necessarily translate into other situations clear at that point that that is not going to happen they drew a line in the sand as you all know there were two big tronches of NATO expansion before that 2008 meeting the first tronch of NATO expansion was in 1999 that included Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic so if you don't know a lot and you live in the West you think NATO is a great thing and NATO went facing the threat of the Soviet Union NATO was a great way for Western and Central Europe to band together to try to halt any possible expansion of the Soviet Union ok time and place NATO was great right now or particularly since 1993 when NATO was steadily expanded NATO has become a detriment to US security we would be much better being out of NATO and one of the problems with this conflict of the Ukraine is that it gives NATO a reason for being under Donald Trump NATO was simply withering away and we have steadily shifted resources out of NATO into far east northeast Asia and somewhat to the Middle East we don't have any vital national security interests in Europe anymore but now we're getting sucked back into Europe in large part because Joe Biden is so politically weak and he doesn't want to look as though he's a wimp so he's trying to look tough even though the way he's doing it is against American interests then there was a second tronch in 2004 which included countries like Romania and the Baltic states and so forth and so on the Russians swallowed those two NATO expansions they intensely disliked to both of them but they swallowed them when NATO said in 2008 that expansion would now include Georgia and Ukraine the Russians drew a line in the sand it's very important to understand that they said this is not happening it is no accident it's similar to a lot of other things like a certain amount of religion may be good for a person but more religion than that turns them into a freak a certain amount of exercise can be good too much exercise can be harmful a certain amount of water is good you drink too much water it can have great harm so everything is proportionate everything depends on context and so NATO when it was facing the Soviet Union pretty good mechanism but NATO now it's a detriment to US national security that in August of 2008 a few months after the April 2008 Bucharest summit you had a war between Russia and Georgia remember Georgia is the other country besides Ukraine that is going to be brought into NATO the Russians said that ain't happening and another big problem with our national security industry is what type of people go into international relations what type of people go into the State Department what type of people are particularly interested in America's relations with the world people who want to make a difference people who want to make a name for themselves people who want to feel important we all want to feel important people going into international relations from an American perspective they have led to America being much more involved overseas than is in America's interest but standing up to Putin or working some special deal so that Ukraine has a different type of government just like we did in 2014 when we shifted the power in Ukraine we contributed to a shift in Ukrainian power from someone who was a Putin puppet to someone who was not a Putin puppet and it's all very exciting when you're pulling the strings behind the scenes and you're moving this person into power and you're taking that person out of power and you're getting the United States deep into involvement in Africa and in Eastern Europe it's all very exciting for people who are professional diplomats and people in the international relations community who are getting paid to pull these machinations so it's very exciting for these individuals not so good for the American national interest and you had a war it's a little bit like in real life streamers people going down the street and being obnoxious it can be compelling video but it's bad for the community as a whole it deteriorates social trust and social cohesion to have people going down the street saying obnoxious things August 2008 in February 22nd to be exact February 22nd 2014 the crisis broke out over Ukraine and it was mainly precipitated by a coup in Ukraine that overthrew a pro-Russian leader and installed a pro-American leader the United States was involved in that right so America installs a pro-American leader it sounds wonderful right but installing a pro-American leader could rebound on us in negative ways it's like the alt-right when they moved from a movement that was primarily online into in real life activism they destroyed the movement right so sometimes you don't want to go into in real life activism sometimes you don't want to install leaders who are pro-American or pro-group your group because for every action there's there are reactions at coup the Russians went ballistic this is hardly surprising they went ballistic and Rikata says isn't Putin a great friend of the oligarchs he's a great friend of some oligarchs as long as they do what he wants and he's a sworn enemy and a destroyer of other oligarchs and they did two things first is they took Crimea from Ukraine why did they do that you understand that there is a very it's like someone at work who oversteps his authority and let's say he doesn't get fired but he gets his wings trimmed right his responsibilities are reduced his power is reduced maybe his pay is reduced so the West overstepped in Ukraine and they got their wings clipped an important naval base called Sevastopol on Crimea and there's no way the Russians are going to let Sevastopol become a NATO naval base this is not going to happen that's the principal reason that the Russians took Crimea and the second thing that they did is that the and the question in the chat is it true that Ukraine is Russian parts of Ukraine are heavily Russian and other parts of Ukraine lean more towards the West Russians took advantage of a civil war that broke out in eastern Ukraine almost immediately after the February 22nd 2014 crisis so one of the when I have been like physically threatened or physically assaulted I don't think I fought back at least since grade school because you never know how these things are going to escalate so if I fight back yeah maybe you know I'd be more of a man and I'd feel better about myself and maybe you know other people would be less likely to pick on me but you're also escalating the situation so that you know someone could get really hurt so I could face criminal charges or I could get really hurt and so the West by pushing right up to Russia's door they've escalated the situation put Putin and Russia under pressure and when people lash out from that perspective you never know what's going to happen but you've dramatically increased the odds of something terrible happening for you and what the Russians have done is they have fueled that civil war and they have made sure that their allies were mainly Russian speakers and in many cases Russian in Eastern Ukraine are not defeated by the Ukrainian government they in effect are wrecking Ukraine the Russians are basically saying we will wreck Ukraine before we civilization hangs by such a narrow thread right so anything that diminishes social cohesion and social trust is terrible because it's so hard to build up social cohesion and social trust in the San Fernando Valley people walked around in the 1960s without locking their cars without locking their homes without installing all sorts of security equipment because it was safe then but after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 you got this explosion in crime what came with it was a destruction of social cohesion and social trust and now we've got since the Ferguson effect in 2014 we had another explosion in crime and then the Black Lives Matter terrorism of 2020 another massive explosion in crime and we're just hacking away a social trust and social cohesion and it's so difficult to build it up it's so easy to wreck civilization it's so hard to maintain civilization and one of the ways you maintain civilization is by trying to ensure that people and the more people have in common the more likely people are to cohere and have trust with each other so that's why diversity is such a threat to civilization because diversity means that it's a great thing that we have very little in common with our fellow citizens and it's so hard to come back from that decohering of a society which we've had in large parts of the United States particularly since the 1960s through excessive amounts of immigration by certain groups are sacralized and they're not held to the same moral standards as other groups we allow Ukraine to become a member of NATO so the Russian response is very important to understand this in 2014 when the crisis first broke out into the open in response to what had happened in Bucharest in 2008 the Russian response was twofold number one they took Crimea and you should all understand Crimea is gone it is never going back to Ukraine one and number two they have said implicitly that we will destroy Ukraine we will wreck it before we will let it become a member of NATO now the question you want to ask yourself why are the Russians doing this this is realpolitik 101 and the fact that people in the west especially in places like Britain and the United States so realism means that people aren't simply motivated by nice sounding things I love people but I also contain the capacity for hatred I can be cuddly but I can also be quite nasty that's just the human condition and realism accepts the reality of human nature that a lot of what drives us is really nasty and yeah it would be great if everyone was a Democrat small D and if we all live together in peace and tolerance but that's just not how people operate I don't understand this boggles my mind I just don't understand it that you could take a military alliance run by the United States the most powerful state in the world and run it up to Russia's borders and the Russians wouldn't be bothered by it is simply unthinkable and Ricardo says look what would it take to convince Americans to mobilize for war again Ukraine certainly isn't it and Taiwan no chance well the decision to militarily support Taiwan is already being made so a lot of foreign policy decisions and a lot of decisions about where we send troops and where we send military assets do not depend on popular approval or agreement the American president has essentially all the foreign policy rights that King George III had in 18th century England the American president can send troops where ever he wants he can launch nuclear weapons every democracy contains dictatorship and every dictatorship contains considerable elements of non dictatorship so when dictators don't perform when the situation changes so that their decisions look bad then they frequently get overthrown so we live in a complicated world the US is militarily engaged to support Taiwan and it doesn't really matter whether the people are behind it or not so a lot of decisions are just made by an elite to play that much into it so we're not going to risk American soldiers in large numbers to defend Taiwan but we have all sorts of military assets that will defend Taiwan we in the United States have the Monroe Doctrine the Monroe Doctrine says that no distant great power is allowed to form a military alliance with a country in the western hemisphere and is certainly allowed to move military forces into the western hemisphere I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis very well what happened there is the Soviets put nuclear tip missiles in Cuba the United States and that wasn't the only thing that happened there John F. Kennedy was facing a very tough midterm election and he had all sorts of incentives to appear tough incentives that did not correlate exactly with what was in America's best interests so here's a little bit more from this excellent John Mirshimer 2014 essay about the virtue of theory so theories provide overarching frameworks they give us the big picture of what's happening in a very complicated and buzzing and blooming reality there's no way to understand an infinitely complex world just by collecting facts so Carl von Kloswitz said this anyone who thought it necessary or even useful to begin the education of a future general with the knowledge of all the details of the human mind is possible without a certain stock of ideas in other words we need theories so theories provide us with economical explanations for what's going on they help us to understand, to interpret by just taking out of buzzing, blooming, confusing reality just certain key variables right so in economics you have you know Keynesianism or monetarism or rational expectations or behavioral economics international relations scholars array their theories as isms for the similar reason so the more complicated the more diverse the reality the more dependent we are on theories on mental maps to help us navigate the terrain so international relations has to place a very high value on theory theories such as realism because it's trying to make sense of a large and complex universe so international studies international studies it's this complexity that accounts for the diverse range of traditions in the field so theories revolutionize our thinking they transform our understanding of what's important and they explain puzzles that made little sense before the theory was available so consider Charles Darwin's impact on how people think about the origin of human species before Darwin published his work on evolution most people believe that God really undermined that view because many people have changed their thinking about God religion the whole nature of life itself I can't think of any thinker more influential in the past 200 years in Charles Darwin I can't think of any book more influential in the past 200 years in the origin of species so theory also enables prediction and we need to predict for our daily lives for making policy for advancing social science so we're all constantly trying to predict the future and because much of the future is unknown we have to rely on theories to predict what is likely to happen if we choose one strategy over another theory is essential for diagnosing policy problems and making policy decisions we have to rely on theory because we're trying to shape the future we're interested in cause and effect and that's what theory is all about so to be concerned with policy is to focus on the intent to produce certain effects and what's important is causality thinking and theory fifth is crucial for effective policy evaluation so a good theory identifies indicators we can use to determine whether a particular initiative is working so if your theory of counter insurgency suggests that the key to victory is killing a large number of insurgents then body counts are an obvious benchmark for assessing progress but if one's theory of victory identifies winning hearts and minds as the keys to success then reliable public opinion polls and evaluation depends on good theory and then theories inform our understanding of the past theories enable us to look back at the past and to better understand ourselves and our history theory is helpful when the facts are sparse so in the absence of reliable information we have little choice but to rely on theory to guide our analysis during the Cold War the dearth of reliable facts about the Soviet Union and to understand what was going on inside that closed society so theories are particularly valuable for understanding novel situations such as the one we're in right now with Ukraine we don't have that many historical presidents to guide our thinking and theory is critical for conducting a valid empirical test so social science essentially consists of developing and testing theory said this is categorically unacceptable military forces from afar are not allowed in the western hemisphere and we had the Cuban Missile Crisis and the end result is those missiles were removed when the Soviets were later talking about building a naval base at Sienfuegos the United States told them in certain terms you are not building a naval base at Sienfuegos just not going to happen the United States views the western hemisphere as a backward and it prohibits distant great powers from coming into its backyard well don't you think the Russians are going to be deeply disturbed by the United States turning Ukraine into a bulwark right on its borders of course they are and the Russians told us that immediately after the Bucharest Summit the Russians made it categorically clear that Ukraine is not going to become part of NATO but of course the Americans and their allies did not listen because we believe that we are the good guys we are a benign hegemon here in the United States and we can do pretty much anything we want in the world and for a while it looked like we could get away with that the first NATO expansion the 1999 one and they accepted the second NATO expansion but after Bucharest they said this is not happening so you had this major crisis that broke out in February 2014 now the crisis the crisis tamped down quite a bit after 2014 probably in this crisis right now probably if Donald Trump was in power but because Biden feels so weak and because Biden is more wedded to elite opinion then our elites are more interventionist than regular Americans because it's so exciting and they have the power to get involved and to try to change things around the world it provides a sense of meaning and importance and excitement and those incentives don't necessarily align with what's good for the United States of America Christopher Cordwell has a book review that's just out about lessons from the fall of the Soviet Union and he talks about how Russia became a key factor in the fall of the Soviet Union when Gorbachev undermined central government elites in various national Soviet socialist republics from Ukraine to Armenia to Kazakhstan began building up their provincial institutions to become a climate for autonomy and independence but there was one republic and one republic alone there was lacking in such institutions Russia so the Soviet state had been the Russian state so as Gorbachev's programs began to bite and reforms began to work the ethnic Russians who constituted the Soviet majority sensed that they would need a state too if they wanted to avoid simply being looted among all the Gorbachevian upheaval so ordinary citizens felt this they made a choice between the crumbling Soviet monolith and the fledgling Russian nation and we are in a similar dynamic right now in the United States and around the West so one of the central paradoxes of contemporary politics is that over solicitousness towards minorities tends to strengthen majority identity and even to bring these majority identities into existence where they had never existed before so Kamal Atatürk is the father of the Turks not out of sentimentality but because most people in that part of the world did not think of them as Turks in the early 20th century so Turks came to realize that they were operating in a post-imperial world and that it was through ethnic identity that power would henceforth be exercised people thought that as the 2000s rolled along that ethnic identity, racial identity and religious identity the world became more secularized and liberalized well it hasn't worked out that way and you see this happening again and again and again in 1949 India the new constitution was built on the recognition of various castes and minorities and so a previously undefined majority has in recent years rallied behind the majority Hindu party right? this is what the elites condemn as Hindu nationalism but that's what rules India now in the United States citizens who do not enjoy special consideration from the government under the 1964 Civil Rights Act and subsequent evolutions make up the core of Donald Trump's support and because of that they get condemned as white nationalists in Britain the Scottish, the Irish and the Welsh get to vote and make their own laws while English voters have no such prerogative so you can just look at the Brexit referendum on leaving the European Union to see that question is still alive in Ireland but it passed by a landslide in those parts of England outside of London and leave voters in the United Kingdom were accused of English nationalism let's get a little more from Misha Amir here routine but in the fall in the fall of last year 2021 it began to ramp up and of course early this year and I'm talking about early 22 it became a full blown crisis and the question we want to ask ourselves is what happened here you know why why all of a sudden this crisis go from the back burner to the front burner and the answer is that the United States and its allies were effectively turning Ukraine into a de facto member of NATO you'll hear lots of rhetoric today that the Russians really had nothing to worry about because nobody is talking about making Ukraine a member of NATO today and I think that's true but if you look at what we were actually doing it's a different story first of all coming back to the Trump administration and continuing into the Biden administration we are now arming Ukraine we were not arming Ukraine during the Obama administration in February 2014 when the crisis broke out and let's say hello to Ricardo long time no talk how are you man good man what do you think about what's happening oh I tend to agree with you that a lot of this is the reaction to American aggression or expansion you know I just the thing I struggle with is like I've come to not really like particularly the values that America goes around exporting to other countries and the ideological agenda and a lot of the rhetorical justifications for why they do things like when they chose to do the empire thing in 1945 is it kind of like if you're not growing then you're just dying you know and so like if they don't go into Ukraine and in other words like they have no choice you know I mean maybe we think they have a choice but they just don't I don't know well I mean there are so many factors but I mean I think it's clear to me that America doesn't have any national security interest in who runs Ukraine no I completely agree I mean other than I mean there is you know there are issues of resource flows and controlling them and you know like this Nord Stream 2 pipeline you know if Germany got all of its energy from Russia Germany would fall into the Russian sphere of influence and maybe America looks at you know Ukraine as necessary in order to like hold off a domino oh my gosh we're talking about domino theory yeah I don't know I mean it's not real justification but I guess you know maybe they've never gotten over that Kyle what do you think about what's happening in the Ukraine I think it was it was a long time coming but also I have to say that Ukrainian leadership is a factor here the Ukrainian president has not done a very good job and just broadly speaking the background to all this is that Russia thought Russia had the Minsk agreements right that was an agreement from Ukraine to federalize meaning to give power to the regions so that Russia could have like a graduated buffer state where like the more eastern parts of Ukraine are kind of Russia aligned the western parts are west aligned it's not like NATO is exactly right on the further most you know frontiers of Ukraine but instead it was more it was supposed to be more of a compromise but Ukraine has just aggregated that compromise totally and both Ukraine and the west believe that there's no legitimacy to this agreement signed with Putin and particularly this president has really kind of he was elected kind of as a moderate but he took a very hard nationalist turn you know kind of a similar way to Trump I think Trump was elected kind of to back away from foreign involvement but he ended up being quite a hawkish president soon because of how domestic affairs boxed him in I think that I don't think Biden is to blame for this I think that it's not a very good situation at all just like Afghanistan there are no real good answers for America here maybe lean on Ukraine but you know lean on Ukraine to be conciliatory to the Russians maybe but that's a big ask I don't know Kyle does America have any vital national security interest in Ukraine or Europe it's a complicated question the trend for the last several wars has been for the key who has the largest alliance to win so all these people who say like oh you know it's so cuck to be involved around the world that's just utterly cuck nothing to do with national interest well the fact is that it connects completely to the most pressing national interest which is not to be conquered and the reality is that for the last few wars the side with the smaller alliance so yes there is a national interest in Europe and there is a national interest in Ukraine but you know in this particular case what we've done is we sort of made overtures to Ukraine that we're not willing to to pay up on and so we've kind of inspired Ukraine to act in a way that will get totally swallowed by Russia and big invasions are not good for anybody they're not good for everybody because that precedent means that you have to spend a lot more on deterring it and it means that it's a lot more likely to happen in the future but I think it is a good move for Russia it's just that it's bad for everybody else I think the United States finds itself over extended it is to Kyle's point it's not necessarily Biden's fault the board has been set long before but you know it seems like the United States is in a situation of its reputation with its allies is dependent on it honoring its commitments and it is sort of incrementally entangled itself by making these promises another thing to the point about what's in America's interest maintaining the alliance Rome used to campaign every summer every year and they had to every year because they wanted to draw their Latin allies into the field along with them so that they could never get restless and actually rebel it's hard for an alliance to break up when you're both engaged working closely together on the same side in an actual campaign so it could just be a matter of like the American army basically has to be engaged everywhere in order to you know prevent a realignment occurring well I think what's important about this whole story is not Ukraine it's like where does Putin go next presumably if Putin takes over Ukraine and then takes some of the Baltic states I mean I think that's the the most interesting thing if Putin comes to dominate Ukraine and that's it then this story does not have compelling interest for me it's where does Putin go next I don't think anyone thinks that Kyle do you think that Putin would be content with simply swallowing Ukraine I mean it reminds me of of Hitler frankly like just in terms of I'm not talking morally I'm just talking in terms of strategically the way Hitler talked before he started the war and when he was halfway into the war was like oh I'm way too clever to get sucked into like a giant two front war like I understand that trope I am trope aware I'm not going to I'm not going to get sucked into this but the person it's kind of like taking heroin like the person you become once you once you've had a great success in getting another country it's not the person that you were but yeah it's that's one of the reasons why it's very bad for everybody else and why it would be better to have a solution where they didn't break the precedent that you don't have these very large conquests one reason why I would be pretty concerned that I don't think I don't think that there's going to be like a long insurgency that hurts Russia Russia has a lot of advantages over say like America occupying occupying Afghanistan there's a secret police know the language of the people they're trying to trying to catch there's a lot more cultural commonality you know it could be very successful but that only makes it more dangerous for everybody else besides Russia and Riccardo surely it's not Ukraine in and of itself that is a particular interest to you it's what are the next dominoes to fall after the Ukraine well I don't really see I mean in a way the Baltic states Belorussia I mean they're they're largely like still within the sphere of of Russia they're not you know a Soviet Republic but I think Ukraine the Ukraine government I don't know that Putin would necessarily take the Western part maybe it's just a matter of like being a friendly regime there that gives him a buffer which would seem pretty reasonable to me I you know are they going back into Poland I don't think that's a realistic possibility especially with nuclear weapons like it's just that's too far outside the bounds if he wants Poland I don't think that I could stop him having short of nuclear weapons well but I think they might be willing I think that you know because here's the thing it's like when we say like America makes all these promises and commitments but the current state of affairs or such like they have blown their load in terms of their ability to convince United like the United States people to like mass support a war you know they did that with in Vietnam and then again in Afghanistan and Iraq and so nobody's fighting for Ukraine then Ukraine is going to fall to the Russians and basically Biden you know there is the confusion who knows how much to read into this but you know they're not they don't want to call this an invasion or they're reticent to and they basically have said like there's nothing United States is not going to respond in any meaningful way and so but I do think that Poland would be it would sort of draw so heavily on like the World War Two mythos and that Americans and the West generally could you know find the will to like actually want to go to war over that so I'm not sure that's going to happen Kyle any thoughts Yeah things become pretty unpredictable I broadly agree with Ricardo I think that probably Putin would believe a sliver of Ukraine like the most hostile Western sliver of Ukraine has like a rump state and I also don't think that Putin would immediately embark on a really really large Westward invasion but just the prospect of it would force a lot of a big shift of American troops into that area and it would create more potential for misunderstanding and it's just kind of it's it's like partly a return to the old the old dorm where we had this big eastern alpany and and we had to put a lot of national effort into the terrain America is also being drawn they're the ones being drawn into the two front situation because anything that has to go into the Black Sea or you know Eastern Europe is not available in Southeast Asia and is China more likely to try to invade Taiwan if America is distracted by Europe I think if Putin is successful it's a big inducement if you're a Chinese leader you might think am I going to squander one of the best chances that I have considering that the Americans are so distracted it seems so if you're resolute on the other hand maybe they're thinking the West is going to decline and we're on the upswing so we might as well wait yeah it's not clear it definitely would I think it would increase the chances not necessarily because America is distracted but because it's demonstrates a precedent that you can get away with this sort of thing well that's true but I'd say even on both counts we find ourselves in a dangerous situation but I don't I don't know it's like you know if and I guess this is the fear right like this would be bad for us would be if well I don't know I'm not going to make any conclusions about whether it would be good or bad but you know if Ukraine goes and then Taiwan goes and then Germany says you know what I'm going to end with you know the United States and the United Kingdom and not that they formally join like some new Warsaw Pact but that Russian sphere Russian and Chinese spheres of influence like grow and can you know and basically do fall like Domino's I mean Domino's theory in principle doesn't have to be wrong it's just in its application you know didn't didn't live up to the promise how much of this do you think is Vladimir Putin wanting a legacy as opposed to what's really in Russia's best interest I think it is in their interest I think it is in their interest you can go ahead no I was just going to say like you know like I've listened to some things on this and people are like oh Putin's crazy like this is crazy like why would he do this it's like what's going to happen I mean in a lot of ways there's so much moral high ground in terms of I mean this is my next door neighbor Americans have you know American politicians elected officials in their words and actions have you know you know want to put their weapons on our doorstep you know in these breakaway republics you know if they're about democracy and self-determination like there are Russian speaking people in eastern Ukraine that want to be with Russia or at least not you know or in a more favorable relationship to Russia being denied that I mean like who's who's going to war over that like what American soldier is you know willing to die for that nobody well I mean Biden is sending troops into Poland troops into Europe which seems to be against our national best interests like it did seem for the past five years that NATO was going to wither away and die and now we've got an increased economic and military commitment to an alliance which may no longer be in our best interests any thoughts Kyle yeah that's kind of a very standard like right wing dissident take but again like the problem that I keep going back to is that the cold reality that the countries with the largest alliances conquer the countries with the smaller alliances so like that just breaks it down for me like even when you look at like chips chips are a big topic now right so you have Taiwan semiconductor and what's generally not understood is that Taiwan semiconductors is kind of like a holding company it's a company that coordinates a lot of resources from all around the world there's like a very large European company that supplies the fundamental component like UV radiation source for that and it's a giant you know billions of dollar project and it involves coordination across space and time with a huge amount of Europeans and a huge amount of American assets and all that and you know it's good to have the larger alliance in peace and it's also good to it makes a lot of things way easier a lot of German and Japanese activity was trying to get around the fundamental fact that the allies kind of had the world and the Germans and Japanese had to kind of work around them all the time but when we say larger we're talking about industrial production like war material like ability to put soldiers on the ground equipped and let's just presume I mean I mean the big question mark is what it's trying to do like this are these are Russia, China and the United States like three independent actors without unwilling to coordinate their activities or like if Russia and China were united I mean the nuclear arsenal the Russians the industrial production of the Chinese I mean is the West even larger anymore I mean do they have there's a I I don't know if either of you read that Richard Hanania piece about this but him talking about you know relative birth rates and what that says about the willingness of people to like send their children to war I mean how what kind of manpower can the West muster really Kyle who are you paying attention to these days particularly with regard to what's going on in Europe Michael Kaufman these what's called OS accounts like it's like an open source intelligence movement they use like all kinds of data and they give you updates not necessarily all that useful but it's definitely fascinating to see things in real time there's a huge amount of data available to the to the lay person now but really I don't know I've been listening to the Atlantic Council podcast and some you know some a lot of like retired CIA people have podcast and so I listen to them not because I agree with all their perspectives or because they see my growth is well informed and at least tells you where the debate is yeah but do you think do you think that they're the larger that the United States Empire is the largest the larger alliance yes yes like fundamentally the US plus EU plus I don't know Latin America like it's well in Japan don't forget Japan you know Korea the thing is that it's both very large and also very geographically distributed which matters right like like a lot of the difficulties of in Germany related to geography as well as the geography is favorable presuming that the United States is able to control the seas you know but with like these supersonic missiles and there's only like 10 aircraft carriers I mean it's way more than everybody else's but I mean that's 10 missiles I think the fundamental problem is that like nowadays I think that the real action is under the sea not the aircraft carriers and it's a lot easier to kill than to protect right like it took it took a bigger investment from the allies to stop the U-boat threat than it took the Germans to create the U-boats and we're kind of in the super U-boat era so if China has to be maybe like three times as strong as America to stop America from just sinking all their sinking their their trade routes and they rely on trade routes more than you know my no no I understand but my point is that you know at least what you what I've heard or you know the fear mongering about supersonic missiles developed by the Russians is that these carriers I mean it's they're no longer able to project that kind of power because they are you talk about attack and defense it just takes 12 of these missiles to take out multi-billion dollar you know you know aircraft carriers right like I read that article with that with Hanania and Su I think broadly it's wrong because like these are these are basically a fancy fancy ballistic missile right like they're they're basically ballistic missiles except that they do more maneuvering and they have like a much longer glide phase yeah and you know basically everything you could do with them you could do with ballistic missiles only the ballistic missiles are faster but also easier to intercept but do we have the capacity to stop you know a bunch of ICBM class missiles targeted on a carrier I'm not sure we do yeah so I don't think it changes that much but but so then if you're not able to basically park your bombing your bombers off the coast of Shanghai and hit their factories then they're going to grind you up in their ability to produce and arm hordes and maybe it's not that they're able to then mount their own invasion on United States soil but that Eurasia is no longer if the US doesn't it can't guarantee the seas then what is the point of the United States from the point of view of the EU well China creates a lot of hostility to to itself like as un-charismatic as the latest woke Americans are the Chinese the mom managed to be less charismatic than that so like kind of the purpose of the US would be from the perspective of random countries around the world would be to try to hedge against China and like if you add up like you add up EU and like I'm not sure well not you would need well but even industrial production yeah I think it's China has the factories yeah but they're like 77 per capita income I mean they're not they're a third world country well but they are the United States was not wealthier per capita than Europe at the time of war yes it was the United States became the world's richest country per capita in the 1880s what did it oh ok alright well I stand corrected on that point but I guess it doesn't change the fact that the United States income now is like so largely based on services and sort of like the legacy of their their control their control of the money supply that you know I don't think they can churn out you know the tanks I partly agree and I partly don't and here's where I partly don't right the best Chinese AI researchers where are they they're all working here yeah yeah right so the wealth they're just going to drone them to death I mean I guess that's it right in large part yeah we don't have to put troops on Taiwan to defend Taiwan we can use we can use technology to send missiles and bombs we don't have to put people in the way because our technology is so much better than China's Kyle what were you saying Taiwan is a difficult one because it's so close to China but yeah like the broader point yeah like the wealth of the west is not illusory this is like an intuition that you get from studying economics and it's like it sounds like it sounds like you're being too confident or whatever but the reality is that you know GDP actually does matter it represents even if it's it's it's quote unquote fake or misleading in some ways it ends up being being more relevant than you think in others and so like the reality is that Chinese elites especially the the very very top intellectual elites they want to have their children educated here they want to be able to to come here and that really matters right and China can can stop this China can obviously stop people from emigrating the same way the Soviets stop people from emigrating but that creates like moral problems and coordination problems and all of that like the fact that that real estate in the US is so expensive reflects in a way the fact that it's the world's premier destination for people people who have the power and the wealth to choose wherever they want to go you know the US and and allied countries you know very analogous like that you know sweep up the lines here of those well I think it's been true that's that has been true but what I would say is that what you crane may you know sort of listen COVID the election of 2020 like there the the reaction to Donald Trump in 2016 these are these moments where like the mass drops from the regime and you know you crane lays bare the fact that the United States is not in a position to basically defend defend the periphery of its empire and once that periphery that edge is challenged like you don't quite know like what kind of momentum will come off of that and what I'm saying is that dry you know China and Russia together which they never have seemed to manage to like truly unite because they are different civilizations and they don't have all the same interests and maybe that's a key weakness of theirs but it would seem to me that they ought that China at a minimum could take Taiwan with no serious response I don't think America would send maybe more than their own support but like once Taipei is taken they're done there's no you know D-Day invasion coming from the United States to protect Taiwan like is China like China is not more pleasant than the U.S. when it comes to COVID right so like all these sort of things that America is doing that are maybe missteps in terms of overreacting to COVID there are things that are echoed you know tenfold in China and you know and they're also echoed in Europe and they're also you know there's not a place that really comes off looking much better than America out of this catastrophe it's it sort of degrades the quality of life everywhere but it's not like you know oh there are no COVID restrictions in South Africa I don't know if that's true or Korea and Japan yeah you're not going to go there like the places that don't have any restrictions relative to America have other problems that are worse and the places that that are you know doing better in terms of COVID numbers are more restricted like China, Japan, East Asia more problems but I don't mean necessarily it's about their response per se it's that there are these issues that if like a social trust a social cohesion I think that's what I'm talking about yeah it's dramatically changed the perception of the regime it's not this thing that you know I see the like I mean I'm a guy that I stop like national anthem I stop wherever I am I mean it's had off hand you know on the heart face the flag like I stood I said the Pledge of Allegiance proudly every day in school like and now I see those things is like they kind of disgust me it sort of upsets me that I ever like saw it as it's like not the American government is not representative of the American people and therefore like it has its mercenary forces you know that it uses to do these operations in the Middle East and it has its weapon you know it has its technology but it does not have the soldiers it does not have the ability to mobilize the United States people to you know South Korea I don't think Americans are going back for Korea and if Japan was to fall into the hands of the United like or fall into the sphere of influence of China who's going to go to war over that are we really I mean without like some I'm not going to say false flag but some sort of like direct provocation against you know the American people I think like the will of the ability of power is way more fragile than it has seen in the recent past like in the past 20 years like since the end of the Cold War right you're talking about the steadily dropping social trust and social cohesion yeah which undermines the ability to make war and so anyway and Kyle do you think that we've experienced steadily dropping social trust and social cohesion makes this country weaker? yeah no doubt of that I mean when you see countries like Northeast Asia and how they react to COVID by you know pulling together and being individually responsible and such a dramatic contrast to Western individualism sorry Kyle back to you yeah definitely true but like it's a very broad story right like you saw a whole lot of their death numbers and you also saw like pretty consistent results across the entire West so we can't blame anything recent for this it's a much bigger story than anything that's happened and you know it's a story of two civilizations really like it's a the divergence going back in the thousands of years it's not like you know the latest polarization numbers cause this no I'm just saying that we within within the context of you know like this 50 year period there's just been a steady and like you said it didn't happen with COVID this is the latest instance of the breakdown the breakdown of trust in the government like the idea and the social cohesion and American people and willingness to you know engage in warfare that's not like an assault on us you know which so I just think that I think that an American appetite to go defend much outside the you know they would probably