 So, as the title indicates, this is a discussion event about global issues and global events. It's a virtual panel discussion hosted by the Department of Political Science and School of Education and Behavioral Sciences here at Middle Georgia State University. Our event is also co-sponsored by the MGA Political Science Student Organization, as well as the Alpha Musata Chapter of Pisces Alpha, which is the National Honorary Society for Students of Political Science. Before we get started, I'm going to tell you a little bit about our program for those of you that might be new to these events, as well as introducing the people that will be participating in our panel. And then we'll talk a little bit about the structure of the event and go from there. So, without further ado, first I just wanted to very briefly introduce our programs. Our department offers two bachelor's degrees, a bachelor's science degree in political science, as well as a bachelor's science degree in interdisciplinary studies, which is a degree for students who are interested in combining multiple different areas of scholarship in their degree program. We also have several different minors that you can add on to any degree that's offered at the undergraduate level, or we say bachelor's degree that's offered at the undergraduate level at MGA. Those minors include political science, African and African diaspora studies, environmental policy studies, global studies, and pre-law. We also offer in collaboration with several other universities in Georgia, the Certificate in European Union Studies, which is a little bit broader than the title indicates. It also looks at not just the European Union, but also European politics and culture in society a bit more broadly as well. And again, that's a collaborator program that involves the Middle Georgia stage, as well as quite a few other state universities here in Georgia. I think there are nine participants at the moment, and that's a program that we offer collaboratively online. So if you're thinking about classes for the spring, if you're looking for those courses, those will be the Euro courses in the course schedule. So we have a few people that are joining us today to discuss things, want to introduce them. So first, we have Dr. John Hall, who's an Associate Professor of Political Science and has been here at Middle Georgia State University since 2015. He's a doctorate, is in Public Policy and Administration from Auburn University. We're also pleased to be joined by our Fulbright scholar, Dr. Yuri Lovota, who is visiting us from the National Defense University of Ukraine, and not to put him on the spot, but I'm sure he has some insights that he'd like to share on at least some of these events. And so we're glad to have him as part of our panel, glad to have him with us today. We also have, or I guess, we also have a number of faculty in the audience that may contribute as well. And I will be also participating as the moderator and discussion re-leader and monitoring the chat and all the other things, keeping the stream running as well. I'm Dr. Christopher Lawrence, I'm the Chair of the Department of Political Science, and I'm a Professor of Political Science. I've been here at MGA since 2012, and my doctorate in Political Science is from the University of Mississippi. So as far as our event structure goes, those of you that have been to our events before are probably familiar with this already, but the panelists have discussed a few potential topics, and we'll talk about those, which we'll be phrased sort of as questions or discussion prompts. We also, though, are interested in your questions, and hopefully we'll try to be able to answer your questions over the next hour and a half or so, so we'll just round rules. First, please be civil to each other and courteous. I know some of these topics can be controversial and involve a lot of different issues and things like that, but I definitely would encourage you to be civil and courteous questions to other participants in the discussion, as well as the other ground rule is basically that while you're more than welcome to ask as many questions you might have, nonetheless, to give everybody an opportunity to ask questions. If we do have lots of questions, sometimes we have a lot of questions, sometimes we don't, but if we do have a lot of questions, we'll try to give everybody at least one question they get to ask, and then if there is time, we'll let people follow up or ask additional questions if necessary, but we do want to make sure that people don't feel like that the discussion is being monopolized by one or two participants, or at least the questions are being monopolized by one or two participants. So as far as our potential discussion topics or questions that are likely to be asked, we have a couple of questions, a few questions on the conflict in Ukraine, which of course is probably one of the, it's not the most prominent issue in international politics and global relations at the moment, but there are lots of other things going on in the world as well, and so we want to make sure we have some time to talk about some of those. We may talk about all of these, we may talk about some of them, depending on the enthusiasm of the panelists and the audience. So also on the borders or within the region, I guess, of the former Russian Empire, we have the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia and the region of Nagorno-Karabakh that has recently re-emerged in the news very suddenly after a little bit of a quiet period. The, not to be outdone, China has decided it's also going to do a bit of, say, rattling in the east as elections are approaching in Taiwan, and perhaps we'll talk a little bit about that. In Africa, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, we've had a number of coups and attempted coups in really the last couple months, and I don't know if there's something in the water going on in West Africa or something, but we'll talk a little bit about that in other countries like Gabon, Niger, and Burkina Faso, and then, depending on the, again, the enthusiasm of the panel, I may have to carry the discussion on these. Some upcoming elections, my passion of comparative politics coming to the fore, I guess, and we may talk a little bit about upcoming elections in countries such as Argentina, Ecuador, New Zealand, the Netherlands. There's also Swiss elections coming up. If you really want to talk about the Swiss elections, we could talk about that, or maybe just talk about chocolate, I don't know, or banks or something to do with Switzerland, but I actually forgot entirely about Swiss elections coming up until I remembered earlier. I forgot to put it on the list, but so nobody has to answer any questions about Switzerland today, but nonetheless, there is a Swiss election coming up, which will do what elections in Switzerland normally do, which is return to new government Switzerland. So without laboring the point, I guess we'll go ahead and get ourselves started, bear with it a little bit while, so try to admit people to our event and things like that as well. So let me make this thing go away, and we'll stop presenting, and we'll start talking about our first topic. So our first topic is the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, and I guess it's sort of a very kind of 50,000 foot overview, or about 13,000 meters, give or take. We should kind of give an update on the current status of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. I know it's been a while since we had one of these discussion events about Russia and Ukraine. It's probably been about six months or so. So for returning people, we're going to kind of just see what's happened over the last few months, and also for to get new people up to speed as well. What's been going on and how is it changing? And I guess, John, do you want to lead off? Oh, absolutely. Thank you. I'd like to take the opportunity to say thank you, Dr. Lawrence. Thank you for being here, Dr. Kavali, Dr. Lester, and of course, Dr. Lobota. And it looks like the dean of our college, Dr. Beek, just arrived. So we are all glad to have Dr. Beek. Great question. In terms of the 10,000 foot overview of the Russian, I don't like to say the Ukrainian war. That implies something that it's not. These are Russian war crimes in Ukraine. There is nothing that is acceptable about this war in Ukraine. Basically, we go back to about 2014. President Putin sent in Russian troops and seized the Crimean Peninsula. This is something that was internationally condemned. Sanctions were immediately imposed on Russia fast forward several years, and we get to February of 2022. Last year, when as U.S. intelligence agencies were predicting, there was a full scale mobilization and invasion of Ukraine, a sovereign nation state that is a liberal democracy by Russia. This invasion was terrifying, obviously, but it's important to note that in terms of how things are going in Ukraine, it is a miracle that Ukraine exists. Absolutely all experts, myself included. I would assume everyone on the panel, everyone that's joining us, would have thought that the might of the Russian military would have crushed Ukraine in a matter of days. That is actually the prediction that was made, but the extraordinary bravery and skill of the Ukrainians saw them pushing back against the Russians. The Russian invasion that attempted to take the capital city of Kiev was pushed back. Russian special forces were annihilated. While there were gains across most of eastern and southern Ukraine in 2022, something amazing happened in the summer of 2022, and there was a counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces that was exceptionally successful. They pushed Russians out of many areas of Ukraine that had been occupied so that we settled on something of a stalemate. As of now, there are significant Russian forces in eastern Ukraine and in southern Ukraine. The long expected counteroffensive in 2023 is still underway. It has been slower than many expected, but the reason it's slower than many expected is because many, when we reference many and the expectations of many, have absolutely no military training and don't truly understand what it's like on the ground. The Russians spent months laying literally millions of mines. They have laid defensive positions, trenches, anti-tank mines, anti-tank obstacles. It is an extraordinarily difficult military endeavor. What the Ukrainians are trying right now, but the advantage that they have is that they are succeeding. They are pushing into the southern regions of occupied Ukraine. They're having success in the Zaporizhia region, which Zaporizhia is an interesting city because it's home to the largest nuclear energy facility in all of Europe, with bombs occasionally landing near it. In terms of a quick overview of what's going on, the Ukrainians almost two years after the initial illegal invasion by the Russian forces are holding their own. They've had extraordinary successes pushing back the Russians, and right now they are slowly but surely pushing the Russians further back as they continue this counteroffensive. Now one of the more significant elements of this war, and we'll get to this probably in the next question, involves aid, foreign aid from other nation states. NATO countries, including the United States, have in an evolutionary process been sending more and more and more complex weapon systems to the Ukrainians. Weapon systems that it would have been unthinkable for the US to send to an ally fighting Russia just years ago. The biggest ticket item that's coming up soon will be F-16s. F-16s, in addition to being one of the more successful weapon systems ever designed, they are extraordinarily plentiful. All NATO nations have them, and the US months ago, President Biden agreed to allow F-16s to be given to the Ukrainians. That will significantly change everything sometime next year, maybe around next summer when Ukrainian pilots have been effectively trained on the F-16s. That'll open up a whole array of weapon systems that can be used to fire against Russian forces, and it'll give them a lot better chance at achieving some kind of not superiority, but some kind of a control over their own skies. As I am getting deeper and deeper into this answer, it occurs to me that there is no end to this answer. So I'm going to try to force myself to find a stopping point. What is occurring in Ukraine right now is a miracle from the very first day the Russians invaded. Everyone thought they would have been annihilated. They have not been. And what they've been doing is costing the Russians tens of thousands of soldiers that can't be replaced. They're costing the Russians ammunition, artillery shells, weapon systems that cannot be replaced. The sanctions that the international community has placed on Russia have been extraordinarily significant, and they are impacting Russia's ability to wage war. The Ukrainians are pulling off a herculean effort to not only survive the initial Russian attack, but to slowly push them back. And that is where we are right now. And I'm going to leave out about a thousand details and open the floor to Chris, if you'd like to fill anything in, or obviously, Dr. Lobota, if you would like to jump in. Yeah. Yeah, I guess I really want to give Dr. Lobota first an opportunity to jump in, since he has an opportunity to speak on this. And so we'd love to hear his perspective. Hi, everyone. Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah, we can hear you. So the only one thing I can say that we are outnumbered, we are outgunned. And I think this year we can we can resist by, but I think the next year just everyone will be killed. I guess the quantity of enemy is superior. It's several times much more than Ukrainian army and it will be total genocide in the center of Ukraine. So I'm quite pessimistic about that. And no matter how patriotic and you know, and how to say and no matter how patriotic Ukrainian soldiers and civilians are we are still outnumbered, we suffer heavy losses and we do not receive essential and significant help from the people who disarmed Ukraine before. And it's a huge tragedy. It's a huge tragedy not for Ukraine, only it's a huge tragedy for Europe, because after Ukraine, Russia will attack NATO states, Baltic states, Poland, and, and I think the same results. So I'm sorry for being so pessimistic, but I know what's going on. And she just suffering suffering huge losses. And we are very close to total defeat. Only because we are just outnumbered, we cannot, we cannot kill just all those thousands of Russians that are emerging and emerging due to total mobilization in Russia, because it's really total, it's covered total mobilization. They killed about 150,000 of people, but we lost almost the same the same quantity, but our army is not endless. And sometimes we'll, moments will arrive that will be just defenseless, because we lost all our people because it's too, it's too many, it's too many tanks against us, too many rockets, too many soldiers. And we are just outnumbered. It's miracle miracles do not exist. Unless just maybe some in some very not numerous cases like Finland in 1940, or Afghanistan in 80s, we are quite different. It's a genocidal war and Russia will not stop killing just every Ukrainian they will attack attack, of course, Europe. And this is what Baltic states and Poland realized absolutely clearly. That's why they had they help us so, so widely. But, but it doesn't it doesn't solve all our problems because we don't have so many weapons, we don't have rockets, because our rockets were destroyed during disarmament of Ukraine started by in 90s and successfully completed in 2000s. So yeah, it's a huge tragedy and but we are not the first and we are not the last who will be will be killed by the by the aggressor in this history. So and this this is what was going on. Sorry for this. So so pessimistic. It's just it just facts. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, thanks, Dr. Lomota. John, do you have anything you wanted to add or think it's a great point that Dr. Lomota made with regard to the breakup of the Soviet Union. Ukraine was the location of correct me from wrong hundreds. I don't know if it was literally thousands of Soviet nuclear warheads. And one of the principal reasons why the international community was able to get Ukraine to give up those nuclear warheads giving them back. I believe in the Soviet Union, some may have been dismantled was because of a promise that the international community would not allow Russian aggression in Ukraine. We now from all the way back to the illegal seizure of Crimea in 2014 to the outright invasion, February of 2022. We have seen an invasion of Ukraine by Russia. So the international community, in addition to the thousand other great reasons to continually work to prevent Russian subjugation and annihilation of Ukraine, we made an agreement that we would protect them in exchange for giving up nuclear weapons. I'll give that back to you, Chris. I don't know if we're bleeding into the next question. No, I think that we can address that question separately. I definitely agree with not necessarily, I don't know if I'm necessarily as pessimistic as Dr. Lomota is. That said, he's Ukraine and he's been there on the ground. He knows what's going on in his country and they are definitely in a tougher position than a lot of people. I think probably the West appreciate. I think that as Dr. Hollis pointed out, what they have accomplished so far is great and beyond all expectations. But as Dr. Lomota says, the question is, is it sustainable? Is this something that, and I think any military would have difficulty countering a larger military force that is dedicated to trying to complete its mission. Unless something changes in Russia, unless the costs are increased for Russia, unless internally the costs become too high to bear for Russia, then there aren't that many constraints on their ability to out raise, outgun a country like Ukraine or a country like Finland or a country like Estonia or a country like Poland even. That's part of the reason why countries like Finland and Estonia and Poland are part of NATO or part of an alliance because they know they can't stand alone. That there aren't that many countries around the world that really could stand alone against an aggression by a country that has the resources of Russia or China or the United States or a large military power. And of course Ukraine was led to believe that they had some degree of protection, although certainly not the degree of protection that being a member of NATO would have given them when they gave up their nuclear weapons. And I think that as Dr. Loboto's point out, that is a real tragedy and it is a real tragedy that Russia was emboldened, I would say, in 2014 to do what it did. I think in retrospect, a lot of people in the United States on both sides there would probably say that we made a gross strategic blunder in believing that Putin was a guy you could do business with. And at the time, people that pointed out that this was a gross strategic wonder were frankly not treated well by the establishment, by the media, by a lot of people, right? Yeah, there were people that definitely mocked the quote-unquote reset button, but at the same time, it's also the case that people that were skeptical of Russia's intentions were not paid attention to. We're seems being fighting the old war when the reality is that this is kind of Russia's playbook, right? Is to try to expand its influence into what it concerns to be its backyard. And it has no compunctions about using its military and killing not just civilians from those countries, but its own people to do that, right? At a rate and a scale that would not be tolerated in a country like the United States, right? I don't think we would, one, I don't think we tolerate the degree of civilian casualties, but more to the point, I don't think we tolerate the degree of casualties among our own forces that would be required to do such things, nor do I think a lot of countries would. But that's something you can do in an authoritarian, totalitarian state. Now, there's an interesting question of the time, I think it's worth pointing out, right? You know, the question is, you know, why would why would Russia nuke Ukraine in the first place? And it's not that Russia would nuke Ukraine, right? Russia probably won't nuke Ukraine. I don't know why they would. They have superiority in terms of conventional military forces. The point is that nuclear weapons are often used as a deterrent, right? One of the reasons, arguably, why countries like North Korea and Iran are able to do what they do and defy other countries is because they have or threaten or are close to having nuclear weapons. One of the reasons why that it's an invasion by the Arab countries of Israel has become increasingly unlikely is because Israel has nuclear weapons. And, you know, and that has what we call a deterrent effect, right? It's, you know, the basic idea is if you attack our country, we will nuke you in response. And, you know, had had Ukraine kept its nuclear weapons, it would have had a credible threat to say to the Russians, you know, if you try to take over Crimea, if you try to take over the Donbass region, then then we will, you know, destroy St. Petersburg in response, right? And they don't have that capability anymore, right? And so Putin and the Soviet or the Russian regime is able to do that, right? And because, again, Ukraine doesn't have a conventional military that's capable of delivering similar sort of destruction on Russian soil, they don't have that sort of deterrent, right? They don't have that ability to deter an attack or an invasion or that sort of thing. So just to kind of speak to that, that particular question from the chat. So I guess we should probably get to our follow-up question, which has to do with aid and the lack thereof, I guess. You know, the U.S. there's been a lot of discussion the last few weeks about, you know, whether or not the U.S. should continue to give assistance to the Ukrainians. You know, I think there's, you know, and we've seen a rotting majority of the public supporting U.S. aid to Ukraine. And that culminated, of course, in the temporary stop gap funding measure, the past Congress this past week before the latest drama in Congress that we won't re-get into today. We'll probably talk about that in a couple of weeks. But, and that is, you know, that we basically decided that we were not going to include any additional aid for Ukraine in the, what was called the continuing resolution. So essentially the budget continuation for the next 45 days, whether or not that means there will not be any separate aid is kind of up in the air. It's possible there will be. It's possible there won't be. It's possible that, you know, it could be further down the road than 45 days. It could be that it doesn't really, you know, over the short term, maybe it doesn't really matter all that much to have a few dollars here or there. But maybe the symbolism is more important. So I guess the question is, you know, is what sort of impact is this likely to have or is there likely to be any impact? And we can go from there, I guess. Great question, Chris. I don't know if Dr. Lovato want to jump on, but I will, if he doesn't. First and foremost, it's important to note what Dr. Lawrence said is correct. There is some dwindling support for Ukrainian aid. That's understandable. We've given roughly 75 plus billion dollars to Ukraine. About 60% of that has been in military aid. However, it's important to note that in 15 different polls that I double-checked today, American public opinion supporting aid to Ukraine is still well in the majorities and a supermajority. If you look at the HAPS and the Senate, you are in the numbers of 80% of Republicans and Democrats in the legislative branch who still fundamentally support aid to Ukraine. So the support from the American people, from Congress, obviously from the Biden administration, is still very much there to support Ukraine long run. And we've already been here for almost two years, and the support is still there. Having said that, in terms of without getting bogged down in the local politics here or the national politics, there's something of a revolution going on in the Republican Party right now. They have a nine seat majority in the house, and they just voted to basically decapitate themselves and they took out their own speaker of the house. Now that will create a situation where for several weeks until we have a new speaker of the house, there won't be much movement there. But having said that, there's still a great deal of support for aid to Ukraine. They are going through roughly around two and a half billion dollars of military expenditures per month. We currently have a little over five billion dollars still left over from past appropriations. So we're still looking at a couple of months with relatively consistent aid that's already there, but eventually the Republican Party will elect a new speaker. And I believe eventually there will be approval of some version of the Biden administration's recent aid request. The continuing resolution that temporarily funds the federal government over the next couple of months was missing about 13 billion dollars of additional U.S. aid to Ukraine. So that is an incredibly significant issue. But again, I don't want to use the words I have faith in Congress, but I do have faith that when the powers that be are back in control, when the adults in the room are looking at U.S. foreign policy to the rest of the world and whether we should or should not continue to aid Ukraine, I am confident that we will continue to aid Ukraine. A lot of that has to do with who winds up as speaker. One of the frontrunners, Steve Askelis, is the number two Republican in the House. He is very much in favor of Ukrainian aid. Now, if Representative Jim Jordan, Republican from Ohio, were to receive the gavel, he's very much against Ukrainian aid, but I don't see that happening. So long story, even longer, U.S. public and government support for Ukrainian aid to fight off the war crimes that are being committed by Russia in a sovereign liberal democracy are still very much there. We are still very much supportive of aid to Ukraine, and I think that once the House of Representatives, once the Republicans have a leader in the House again, and we can get going, I don't doubt the aid will be there. It's interesting to point out that over the Senate, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are already diligently working on an aid package to Ukraine while the House Republicans get their house in order. So can't stress it enough, extraordinary support for Ukrainian aid could at one day diminish? Absolutely, that's how American politics works, especially going into an election year. The possible Trump campaign in 2024 have no doubt that President, the former President Trump will win the Republican primary. He is as of now exponentially against aid to Ukraine, but I think even that might be political in nature. Having said that, I hold out a great deal of hope that continued USA will continue to go in, not to mention NATO aid. The U.S. is not the only nation state that is sending military aid to Ukraine. In addition to that, recent developments that I'm sure we're all familiar with, new weapon systems like the German Leopard tanks, British Challenger tanks, U.S. Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles. There's an immense amount of armor that is going into Ukraine that has been in Ukraine, and we have, I forgot the number, but I think it's somewhere in the vicinity of eight, nine, 10 Ukrainian brigades that have been trained to fight with these new armored weapon systems. I don't want to, I agree with you, Chris, I hold more optimism, but I also do not want to in any way contradict what Dr. Lobota has said. If anyone here is listening, make sure to listen to Dr. Lobota above anything that I say. But again, great deal of confidence that aid from the United States to Ukraine will continue. We spend upwards of $750 billion per year on defense. What do we spend that for? We spend that money to remain competitive with near-peer adversaries, and one thing that the Ukrainians have bravely shown us is that outside of the realm of nuclear weapons systems, the Russian Federation is no longer a peer of the United States Defense Department. Thanks, Sean. Yeah, I think the only thing I would add is, you know, I think from a, again, kind of thinking strategically, thinking big picture, right? You know, at the end of the day, yes, I mean, I think for rhetorical purposes, there are going to be some people in Congress that are going to be opposed to aid. I think that President Trump is going to be opposed to aid for a variety of reasons that, you know, you can't really, you know, do much about, frankly. I mean, I think it's just part of his convictions. He's an isolationist by nature. But I think for the vast majority of people in Congress, on both sides of the aisle, you know, the bottom line is that, you know, spending money now to help Ukraine, even though it's a lot of money, pales in comparison to what we'd be spending three, four, five years from now to defend a NATO ally if Putin were to decide that he wasn't done with Ukraine. And I think that most of us, or most of most Americans, would not want, you know, given the choice between having to send American forces to defend our NATO allies and, you know, having to, you know, spend, you know, more of, you know, like Iraq war, Afghanistan war, levels of money, and, you know, lives and that sort of thing, given the choice between that and, frankly, having another country do it for us, you know, I mean, I hate to put it in these blunt terms, but from a strategic perspective, from the United States perspective, we are better off having other people fight this war for us rather than us having to fight it down the road. When it's, you know, against an emboldened foe who is not going to, as Dr. Lobota points out, is not going to stop, right? He, you know, Putin wants the restoration of the old Russian empire, and that means Finland, that means the eastern parts of Poland, that means the Baltic states, right? You know, that means the Caucasus, you know, the Caucasus mountains, that means, you know, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, right? You know, that means, you know, and that is not something that anybody that has any sort of conception of the world, you know, who cares about if they beyond the U.S.'s borders should want, you know, unless you're the most diehard Russophile in the universe, right? You know, that's not in the America's best interest, it's not in Europe's best interest, it's not, frankly, in humanity's best interest, and so, so, you know, a Russia that is bogged down in Ukraine is a Russia that is not causing more mischief elsewhere. As we've seen, you know, not to skip ahead a little bit, but, you know, as we've seen in Azerbaijan, right? If Russia was not, you know, distracted by trying to, you know, expand its territory in Ukraine, the Azeris would not have tried to essentially wipe out the Armenian population of, you know, part of its country, you know, because, you know, the Russians were there supposedly to stop that from happening, and they just folded like a cheap tent. So, if the Russians can't even stand up to a country like, you know, Azerbaijan at this point, right, when they're supposed to be the neutral peacekeepers there, then I would say that, you know, keeping Russia distracted with Ukraine is good for the rest of the world, even if it isn't good for Ukraine, but everybody else is kind of, you know, there isn't much we can do about them, you know, being in Ukraine, except make them lose, right, at the end of the day, right? You know, they're going to be in Ukraine whether we give them aid or don't give them aid, right? So, you know, this myth that, you know, the Ukrainian world be over if we just stop giving money to the Ukrainians, now it wouldn't be over, it would just be bigger genocide, right? You know, but the Ukrainians wouldn't stop fighting, you know, they don't, you know, there's no secret fifth column of Ukrainians that wants to be ruled by Russia. If there was, Ukraine would have been defeated already. You know, at least that's my perspective, now maybe, you know, maybe other people would disagree, but that's just my perspective. Oh, let's see, so I think we've kind of tackled that question, but if anybody wants to elaborate, let's see. So, I did have another question here. I don't know if you want to speak to this briefly, John. Some of the controversy, I don't know if you've heard from, or some of our people in the audience have been familiar with this. There have been some controversies lately, not in the United States so much as some other native countries. I know there was a controversy in Canada that led to the resignation of the Canadian speaker at the House of Representatives. I think there's also been a recent controversy involving the same person, I think, in Britain about honoring people that served in the, well, that were Ukrainians that served during World War II, and I don't know if you want to briefly speak to that and why that was controversial and why sometimes things are kind of complicated in Eastern Europe. Yeah, this is one of those classic examples of the value of vetting people before honoring them before the Canadian House of Commons. Basically, what happens here, the House of Commons, Speaker of the House of Commons, Canadian Anthony Roda, brought many individuals, including the President of Ukraine, to speak to the Canadian House of Commons. One of the individuals, let me get his name right, Yaroslav Hungka was honored by the Canadian House of Commons. There was a standing ovation for his efforts in fighting during World War II against the Soviet Union and the potential liberation of Ukraine that, of course, would not occur long term. The problem is that he did fight. He fought, I guess you could say valiantly, he fought in World War II against the Soviet Union, but he fought with the 14th Waffen-Grenadier Division of the SS. So basically, the Speaker of the Canadian House of Commons, Anthony Roda, brought, I don't actually know if it was him specifically that brought this person in, but if you're the Speaker of the House, anything that happens is going to be on you. He brought a former Nazi into the Canadian House of Commons and celebrated this band for his valiant fighting efforts in World War II. Again, the problem was he fought with the SS. This was a political nightmare that we could all imagine. Eventually, the Prime Minister resigned his position from the backlash. There were apologies, of course, made to the Canadian and global Jewish community for this oversight, but at the end of the day, this was a horrific example of how embarrassing things can get when you don't properly vet individuals who come in to your organization when you intend to celebrate them. That's, I don't see any other major elements to this story other than it was just a complete catastrophe from the perspective of improper vetting. Yeah, just one clarification, was the Speaker of the House of Commons, who's not the Prime Minister, a different person? Did I say I'm sorry? Yeah, I know you misspoke. That's okay. Yeah, it would have been even more embarrassing had Prime Minister Trudeau done that, who would be actually the leader of the country more or less. Yeah, I think the only thing here right is the I mean, when you look at Eastern Europe during World War II, there was a distinct lack of good guys, is probably the best way to kind of think about things sometimes, and the problem is that yeah, a lot of people that that quite rightly did not like the Soviet Union, because we've talked about this before. During the 1930s under Soviet rule, there was a genocide of Ukrainians under Soviet rule called the Holodomor, and many Ukrainians, and many Poles, and many other ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union, hated Joseph Stalin for good reason, because he had perpetuated genocide against their people, had put millions of their people in concentration camps, and the Gulag, things like this, and this is also true people in the Baltic States, and in places like Finland, and when the Germans came from a very misguided perspective, some people thought of them as kind of liberators. Now, many of them did not participate in the German Holocaust or things like that, but some joined the Germans and did some of those things too, and so, you know, being in Eastern Europe at that time, if you were a Ukrainian or a Pole or something like that, or a Fin, or an Estonian county, keeping your powder dry, not being a Stalinist, but not being a Nazi, might have been a little bit of a challenge, you know, and put you probably at risk of being killed by both sides. So there were people that kind of looked at the SS and said, this is the least bad option here. Of course, there are a lot of Ukrainian that didn't look at this as the least bad options and still stuck with the Soviets, even after the Holocaust, after the Holy Moors, so, yeah, it's complicated. It's not as clean and easy and neat as it was in the West, I would say, and when Westerners look at what went on Eastern Europe, that that becomes problematic because, you know, you'd have to have that kind of deeper understanding, but also the understanding that, hey, at the end of the day, the SS were the Nazis, right? You know, we're not talking about joining the German army, we're talking about joining the SS. The SS was part of the Nazi party, right? It was part of their, you know, you know, not that the German army itself was innocent of more crimes and things like that, but, you know, when you're talking about, you know, the people that were committing political, kind of the Holocaust and things like that, not to say the German army and navy and stuff weren't involved in those things, but it was at a much lesser scale. It wasn't their primary, right? It was the SS, right? Racial purity was part of their, like, that was their remit, right? So yeah, you know, again, you know, not a lot of good guys on the Eastern Front was put that way, and a lot of people, you know, got stuck in the middle of that, and they kind of sucked for them, and either way it was going to suck for them, and it turned out it was going to suck for them for the next 40 years of Soviet occupation in any event. So we have a little, I don't know if we want to get much more into this, but we did talk a little bit, I did talk a little bit about the Nagorno-Karabakh situation, I know if you want to just briefly kind of address that, you know, because we've already talked a little bit about already, but we are already halfway, more than halfway through, so. Great point, and this is an interesting development regarding the Russian war crimes in Ukraine, and you mentioned it earlier, Dr. Lawrence, this is drawing a great deal of Russian inventory from their military, specifically to Ukraine, and that is leaving other areas unattended to. When you look at this area, forgive me on the pronunciation, I always have to look at the name, Nagorno-Karabakh. This is an area of land that is predominantly ethnically Armenian, and it is sandwiched inside of Azerbaijan. So for any students out there not familiar with the underbelly, the soft underbelly of Russia, above Iran, above Turkey, but below Russia, you have Azerbaijan here, you have Armenia here, and they represent the southern border with Russia. It is a, and has always been, a hotly contested, politically exciting, I guess you would say area of the planet earth going back to the dawn of civilization. Now this particular area, post-World War I, the Soviets went in and using their classic divide and conquer strategy for satellite states, they basically recognized and created this autonomous region that was going to be predominantly ethnic Albanian, and it's in the middle of Azerbaijan. So understandably, this is not a recipe for peace into the future. So what we eventually wind up having happened, we have the independent Republic of Karabakh declared, and this is basically supported by the Soviet Union. It's also important to note that historically the Soviets have cited more with Armenia than they have with Azerbaijan, so Azerbaijan has a lot of reasons for not necessarily liking the fact that there's this Soviet sponsored region inside their nation state that is made up predominantly of Armenians, and it's not in Armenia, it's in Azerbaijan. There's a full-scale war that eventually kicks off. There's a ceasefire that's declared fast forward to 2020, more recently we have yet another war, and there's a Moscow broker deal calling for Armenian forces to be withdrawn from Azerbaijan 2022, fighting breaks out again between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and most recently the Azerbaijani military went in and overwhelmed the region and the Armenians have fled. That is the quickest summary I can give you for this particular region. Where we are now is in a situation where arguably one of the more important geopolitical realities is a simple fact that Russia or Moscow does not appear to be calling the shots in this area as of right now. They cannot rule by fiat, they cannot simply threaten because they have clearly lost control of this region on their southern flank. That I think would be the most significant detail and it is directly driven again by the enormous amount of military inventory and resources that they are spending in their current and continued war crimes in Ukraine. It has diluted Russian influence in other areas that are in their sphere of influence. There we go, perfect. There's Armenia to the left, there's Azerbaijan to the right and what you're looking at there exactly right there is the area that we're discussing. So I think the key takeaway outside, make no mistake, the horrible humanitarian crisis that is occurring here, people who are dying are not necessarily that wedded to Azerbaijan or Armenian politics. I don't in any way mean to make light of the horrific suffering that's occurring but overall the story that I think we can take from this is the simple fact that Moscow does not does not have, does not wield the same influence that it wielded prior to their war crimes in Ukraine. Yeah, thanks, thanks, Ron. Yeah, I just kind of hopefully was kind of sharing there a map that kind of gives you a a little bit of an illustration of tell what we're talking about here, right? So on the map it was called Artaus which is I'm probably mispronouncing which is the Armenian name for their enclave that more or less were responded with Lugrano-Karabakh. Lugrano-Karabakh is technically the I believe the Azeri name and then just to accompany things further, the Azeris I think legally abolished Lugrano-Karabakh like last week or something like that. So, but basically, right, a couple things and a couple reasons why this is obviously a big deal. First, you know, if you know, again getting back into our depressing history of genocides, you know, Armenia itself has been subject to genocide before. Armenians, there was the Armenian genocide during the latter stages the Ottoman Empire and early stages of modern Turkey that took place roughly around the time of World War I. So you may, you know, a lot of people that are Armenian or ethnic Armenians by descent have talked a lot about that in American society. The Kardashian family, for example, are Armenian and one of their causes is, of course, remembering the Armenian genocide and things like that. And so obviously the apparent ethnic cleansing that's going on in Azerbaijan definitely harkens back a lot of memories for people that, you know, remember what happened in it with Turkey. And it's not also lost on, you know, people that are Armenian, that the Azeris and the Turks are, you know, the Azeri-Bajani language is a Turkish language, Turkic language. They're ethically related to each other. So, you know, to Armenians, I think, you know, it's perceived as sort of like the, you know, the sequel to their Armenian genocide. And, you know, and there have been cultural, you know, destruction and things like that that have taken place in areas that used to be inhabited by ethnic Armenians that are now inhabited by Azeris and that sort of thing. So it's definitely been an area of controversy. Like, you know, John said, that, you know, historically this has been an area where, you know, that Russia was perceived as, you know, being on the Armenian side, for better or for worse. Obviously they're not in a position really, apparently, to maintain things the way that Russia wants, which, you know, that begs the broader question of, you know, can Russia do this elsewhere in areas of what we refer to as the frozen conflicts, right? So for example, on, you know, there are areas of the neighboring country of Georgia that are now, that are currently occupied by, by Russia, by Russian supported separatists. Does this mean the Georgians might go on the offensive and try to get back some of that territory? There's part of Moldova that's occupied by, which is called Transnistria, that's occupied by pro-Russian separatists. It's also on the border of Ukraine. Could that, you know, emerge again as a, as a battle front, you know, while Russia is distracted in, in Ukraine, that, you know, the, you know, there could be some broader global instability as a result here that, you know, frankly, we don't know, you know, how that's going to play out. But, but definitely it seems like, you know, Russia is not in a stronger position to project its power on its borders as it was before certainly leading into the, the invasion of Ukraine, you know, last year over the last 18 months or so. Let's see, so what's the shift gears? Talk a little bit some other parts of the world since we've spent last hour or so talking about Ukraine and, and Russia. And we'll, I guess first kind of the other great power we probably all talk about is China. Hard to talk about rises of great powers without talking about China, although China is now no longer the largest country in the world as of this year. India has now surpassed China in population, which is going to be interesting development of itself. Don't have any India questions, but perhaps we should at some point at a future discussion, perhaps in the spring. But China has been escalating its attempts to intimidate, isolate, not sure exactly what the, the grand strategy is with regards to Taiwan over recent months. Is this the kind of saber rattling that they usually do in the lead up to elections for those who don't know Taiwan is a, well long story short, Taiwan was, is an island off the coast of China. There's actually more than one island, but there's a big island and a lot of little ones that was occupied by the Japanese up until World War II when World War II ended. It was a return to Chinese jurisdiction. At the same time China was going through a civil war. The losers of the Chinese civil war called the Republic of China government that was backed by the United States eventually failed to prevail, lost in mainland China and fled to Taiwan. And basically the Chinese were, or the communists were told that basically that they were not to follow them and try to wipe them out. And so there was kind of this stalemate during, well ever since essentially where Taiwan has effectively been governed by a different government than the rest of China. That country, Taiwan, that territory whatever you want to call it democratized around the end of the Cold War. Obviously the rest of China did not democratize around the end of the Cold War. Google Tiananmen Square if you want to know about why that didn't happen. And ever since there's been kind of this weird stalemate where on the one hand there's a lot of cooperation, particularly economic cooperation. A lot of China's mainland China's economic development has relied on Taiwanese investment and Taiwanese expatriates. A lot of the big companies that we think of in the tech industry were started by Taiwanese investors and things like that. But they operate in mainland China. So there's a lot of economic ties across, but at the same time there's also a lot of military cyber-rattling as well. And when the Republic of China, when Taiwan has its elections, the communists occasionally like to remind the Taiwanese who their neighbors are with a bit of cyber-rattling. So this is just the typical cyber-rattling. Is there more to it? Is this kind of part of a broader Chinese strategy perhaps or how would you assess what's going on here? And perhaps it also could be in mind in the backfire has the other situation with Ukraine and Russia and how that might kind of play into Chinese thinking or lack thereof here. Great question, Chris. I hesitate to say anything that's potentially stupid as there will not be a war. However, here I am overwhelmingly confident. This is cyber-rattling and nothing more. China, or more to the point, Xi Jinping has not ascended to near total power in the Chinese Communist Party by being stupid. Invading proactively out of launching a war of choice across the Taiwan Strait to invade Taiwan might be the single dumbest thing I can possibly imagine China doing. And there is no way, in my opinion, as a constitutional law professor, there is absolutely no way that China would ever commit such a horrifically stupid act for several reasons. First and foremost is we have to recognize that China's growth of the last few decades where they were hitting 10 percent and above growth rates, that's over. They have demographic nightmares that they have to contend with. They have extreme rapid urbanization on the one hand, plus the devastating policy that goes back to Mao, one child only policy, has left them with a population that really cannot support itself very well. They don't have enough young people. But in addition to that, China, while they have been militarizing exponentially more than they had in the past over the last few decades, they are building a more impressive navy than they had in the past. It is still not competitive with the US navy. The US navy is still by far the single most important entity for guaranteeing the globalized economy that we have today for maintaining safe sea routes for the whole world. The US navy protects China's ability to trade globally. China has become the largest importer of food and energy of all other nation states on the planet. Now just think about that. China is the largest importer of food. Now imagine if what happened when the Russian war crimes were launched against Ukraine. Look at the global response. Look at the sanctions on Russia. Imagine that or the equivalent of that on China. I think it's safe to say that outside of some very strange preemptive strike by Taiwan that would literally never happen. If China were to invade Taiwan without any reason for doing so, there's no national security, if they just decide to invade Taiwan, I can see global sanctions against China that would be equal to or even more so than those that are currently on Russia. Just looking at some of the numbers they import more soybeans, corn, wheat, rice, and dairy products in any other country. Imagine sanctions with that particular reality. They're over dependent on other nation states. For things like seeds, we don't really think of seeds when we think of global food security, but about 70% of all agricultural biotechnology patents are owned by American companies. Imagine all of this being cut off to China. Another important detail to look at would be where a lot of this food comes from. When you look at something like soybeans, the majority of Chinese soybeans come from the United States and Brazil. These are two nation states that I think would definitely be able to get together on sanctions for China if they invaded Taiwan. Not to mention, if you look at corn, the US and Ukraine, I had to look this up. I was shocked when I saw this. 98% of China's corn imports come from the US and Ukraine. Imagine 98% of your corn imports being cut off. This would lead to a humanitarian tragedy of China's own making. For what gain? There is no gain. Taiwan, nothing against Taiwan, they are important in their own right. They are the semiconductor capital of the world producing about 90% of the planet or semiconductors. That's another reason I can't imagine China invading and cutting off that infrastructure. The thought of China invading Taiwan just because they feel like it is literally impossible for me to make that make sense in my head. It would be agricultural suicide. They have a growing military, but let's face it. And don't get me wrong, I look at this as a good thing that China can look to. But they haven't been in a shooting war since 1979 against Vietnam. Again, not being in a war since 1979, I look at that as a compliment to China, but you don't just build a military and have it automatically know how to fight. You need decades of experience in your officer corps, in your enlisted personnel. Again, this is one of those areas that I can talk for the rest of the night and I am pretty sure no one wants me to. So I'm going to try to find a good spot to stop being the world's largest food importer, being the world's largest energy importer, having the demographic challenges that China is going to be facing over the next 10 years without an invasion of Taiwan. I can't imagine China actually deciding to do that. The global response against China would be so devastating and quite frankly the memories from the Great Famine from the late 50s and early 1960s from the devastating Mao policies on agricultural reform, that is still fresh in the minds of many of the elderly Chinese leadership and I think they would recognize the unimaginable horror that would occur if there was a global, if there was a series of global sanctions against China, which I believe would definitely happen. So I can't possibly imagine China just deciding to invade Taiwan. Rattle Sabers? Absolutely. Militarily, it's not a foregone conclusion that China would be able to successfully conquer Taiwan. If I were in Las Vegas and had to bet, okay maybe they could, but they would lose so many personnel, so much infrastructure. We have armed Taiwan to the by god teeth. They are prepared. Their entire military with using sophisticated weapons systems is prepared for one thing, stopping a Chinese invasion. So I think the lessons learned from Russia over estimating their capabilities and being able to conquer Ukraine in a matter of days, I think China is paying attention to all of this. China recognizes their own limitations. I cannot imagine China deciding to attack Taiwan essentially because they are bored or want to look like a powerful military on the global stage. So no, now what I am concerned with, the saber rattling comes with real costs. Chinese naval forces in the Strait of Taiwan in close proximity with U.S. Arleigh Burke destroyers who are going on right of passage or freedom of passage maneuvers. There is the possibility that Chinese naval forces, American naval forces, Taiwanese naval forces could accidentally literally bump into one another and maybe an incident could escalate, but I could not imagine this being a purposeful policy decision made by I just can't imagine that. And anyone else is welcome to jump in and give the more depressing counter that they will, but again, no, not at all. I cannot imagine China invading Taiwan. Of all the problems we have to worry about and we have a lot, I just don't think that's one of them. No, I think you're probably right. I think the pessimistic, putting on the pessimistic hat for a moment here, right? First, you do have the potential blunder into war sort of scenario that you kind of elaborated on. I think that's that's a possibility. The other possibility is, you know, that we've already seen, right, that there are states that overestimate their capacity that, you know, Xi has, I think fair, I think it's fair to say, consolidated power by surrounding himself with people that telling one what he wants to hear. And that sounds a lot like another leader we could talk about. Is he a more rational leader than Putin? I don't know. The thing about China is, you know, people don't really know, nobody knows that much about China. And, you know, there's a reason why, you know, any sort of authoritarian totalitarian regime is hard to sort of penetrate. But the Chinese regime, in particular, is one that, you know, Western analysts have a lot of difficulty trying to understand. I mean, I think that, you know, the only caveat I would give is that my, and this is something I do see people talk about occasionally on social media and things like this is, is there a fifth column in Taiwan, right? Is there, are there elements of the Taiwanese regime, the Taiwanese government, right, that would enable China to sort of sneak in the back door, right? That's the thing that, I mean, at the end of the day, there's not what you can do about it. If you have people that are disloyal and are willing to sort of help, you know, the communist takeover. You know, the, I've heard reports. I don't know how credible they are. The, you know, the Taiwanese intelligence services are essentially completely infiltrated by the communists. Is that true? I don't know. It's just stuff I've heard on social media that buy people that seem like they know what they're talking about, but that and, you know, six bucks will buy you a latte at Starbucks today, right? You know, they sound like they know what they're talking about. They have the credentials, but do they know anything more than I do, right? That's what I think I kind of worry about with Taiwan is not so much that you would have an open shooting war, but and, you know, but you could have a scenario where there is sufficient political economic pressure on Taiwan where the government is coerced into some sort of arrangement with China that erodes its sovereignty, right? That, you know, that is sort of the, that would be my fear with Taiwan is that not that Taiwan would, you know, just suddenly be invaded, but essentially would be kind of converted, right? It would be subjugated, you know, through the economic and political ties because the Taiwanese leadership would be too fearful of, they don't want to be the ones to destroy themselves, right? You know, and so, you know, and I don't know, you know, if the Taiwanese put themselves in that situation, who are we to stop them from putting themselves in that situation, right? I guess you have to ask yourself, but, you know, that's where they, if they were to become overly dependent on the mainland, if they were to become overly, or just, you know, where essentially they can be blackmailed into giving up their independence, right? I would say, however, that would have been much easier five years ago, right? Because Xi, out of his paranoia and fear that somebody who's wanted, you know, oust the Communist Party from power, has, you know, cracked down on dissent in Hong Kong, and Hong Kong was always sort of the model for, well, you know, the Chinese Communist can be trusted to maintain this one, one country, two systems sort of arrangement, right? You know, that we can have kind of this this oasis of freedom alongside the Communist, and they can all, it can all, it can all coexist, and basically Xi has proven that the model doesn't, that he doesn't believe in that model, right? Because he has basically said, I don't trust the, you know, we can't even let the people of Hong Kong like remember that Tiananmen Square happen, right? So, so I think that's the sort of, that would, that would, that would be more of a concern five years ago. Now the time we use, we're gonna say, look, you know, we know we're gonna get, you know, there is no guarantee that we keep our one country, two systems, right? There's no guarantee we preserve our democratic elections. There's no guarantee we preserve our self-defense or, you know, our freedom of travel, our, you know, our system, right? Because, because Xi has proven he can't be trusted, right? And again, five years ago, that argument was harder to make, right? Today, I think if you're, you know, unless you're kind of a hardcore reunification supporter, then I think it's less of a concern, right? I mean, I think more or less of a concern in the sense that I don't think, I don't think most Taiwanese really want to be assimilated into China, right? Under China, on China's terms, right? And the, and, you know, any sort of overtures of partnership are going to be seen, I think quite rightly, much more skeptically than they were, would have been five, 10, 15 years ago, because, because again, I think them, you know, Hong Kong was a short term success for the communists, but a long term, complete another screw up, because it proved they were not credible. I think that's, you know, that's something that people sometimes forget is, you know, okay, you can get away with it one time, but, you know, the next time around, nobody's going to believe it, you know, right? So, so anyway, we do have a couple questions related to that from the chat. Let me look real quick if we want to follow up on that. We have a question, is Taiwan the only country you can't imagine being attacked by China? Or, can it? I'm not sure if exactly if I understand that question. Are there, is there anybody else that China might be attacking? I wouldn't think so, but I mean, China has had border scrimmages before with Russia and with India, and so, you know, those are remote possibilities. I can't see China going to war with any of those countries. There was kind of amusingly some, the Chinese government allowed some literature to be published a while ago that showed like Chinese claims to take over like, you know, Vladivostok and stuff like that, which normally they wouldn't let people publish. So, again, though, I think China does a lot of stuff as sort of a safety valve for a lot of the problems that China, that John was talking about in terms of their internal population management. They use nationalism domestically in a way to try to kind of maintain power, and so they allow people to kind of indulge in these nationalist fantasies without them really becoming their policy. So, I don't say any real, no, extremely weakened Russia, you know, maybe all bets are off with China, I don't know. But then again, you know, Russia still has nuclear weapons, right? Again, going back to deterrence, right? Maybe they don't work, but do you want to be the country that tests that, right? You know, a lot of things in Russia don't work, but do you want to be the country that figure, that is going to be the one to learn first hand whether or not the Russians really can nuke you or not? I don't want to be that country unless I absolutely have to, right? I don't think the Chinese really want to either. So, but you could see an extremely weakened Russia, you know, in that situation, but it seems unlikely and we start to medium turn. Certainly, they would have to become a lot weaker than they are now. I think for other countries to start thinking they're slim pickings for, you know, it's one thing to sort of kick them out of your own territory like the Azeris did, more or less, or are doing. It's kind of a different thing to, you know, go and capture a lot of Astok, which, or the or the Shanklins or something, right? Which country is bigger threat to the United States, Russia, China, another country? None of the above. I would say Britain, what's that, right? Threat to the global order and indirectly the United States, I'd say probably China, just because China sees itself as a rival power on the rise and wants to and it has more of an ability to assert itself. That said, I don't see China as a country that has any aspiration to conquer or take over anything that the United States currently has, right? So in the, and nor does Russia, right? I mean, yeah, Russia occasionally publishes a map where it takes over Alaska again. But again, is that, you know, Russia is in no position to actually deliver on that threat, right? You know, I think the bigger question is not so much are they threats to the United States, but are they threats to American hegemony and to the world order that favors the United States? In which case I'd say, yeah, probably China is the biggest threat to that, followed closely by Russia and perhaps India. And I don't even know if India is a threat to it. India again, largest country in the world now, definitely has some nationalist aspirations, definitely has some regional aspirations in terms of the subcontinent, definitely wants to be a global player. But I don't think the Indian government sees itself as wanting to, they don't want to be the global hegemon, right? They don't want, and fundamentally, I think the Indian government sees the world order as it is today is more or less in its interests, as does the United States. So there's a lot of, that's why you talk, why you hear a lot about American cooperation with India, because American India actually have a lot of common interests. And so we have a lot of common interests with China. China's interests are best served by the current global order too. For the most part, I mean, they would like to have more influence in the global order, but as far as their economy is concerned, the global order is set up very well for them, economically. Russia is a disrupted power, right? Russia doesn't like the global order as it is today, but on their own, they don't have enough power to really do much about it, right? So I mean, yeah, there's always talk of an alliance between Russia and India and China to create an alternative world order or whatever, but arguably their differences are bigger than what they have in common, right? What they have in common is basically they just want to be in charge, but beyond there, it's a squabble over who would be in charge, right? So, and realistically, none of them are going to be in charge. So, you know, I think that at the end of the day it's more about influence. It's more about, and that's where you do see the competition, where you do see China trying to exert influence abroad, right? Where it's trying to, not necessarily impose its view of the world, but trying to, I guess, carve out a space where it kind of can get more of what it wants, which I guess all countries really do, through things like foreign aid and things like that, but a lot of that is driven by domestic Chinese issues, like the lack of population, like China has spent a lot of energy and resources trying to developing things like infrastructure capacity, and it's running out of things to do it with, right? It's running out of China to build roads in it. It's running out of China to build high-speed rail in, and so they built all this capacity to do this, and now they need to go, they either need to use it or lose it, right? And so, that's what you're seeing with China, right? I think more than anything else is, you know, that's what Belt and Road is fundamentally about, is, you know, okay, well, you know, let's get the, you know, these developing countries to pay us to come and build high-speed rail in their countries, right? And build freight rail and things like that, which on the surface doesn't sound all that exciting or glamorous or, you know, even threatening. You know, the fear is, I guess, that well, China is going to control all this stuff, but the reality is that it's still going to be in those countries, right? So, you know, yeah, they're going to owe something to China, but are they going to really owe that much to China, right? At the end of the day, China has, you know, you know, China isn't going to be able to enforce anything on anybody, right? And maybe that's why they're building their militaries, so they can go and, you know, have their, you know, their boats show up in your ports when you stop paying off your loans, right? Maybe that's their perspective, I don't know. Those are great points, Chris. I would add, I would go even a step further in terms of threats. I mentioned briefly the demographic problems that China has. I can't stress those enough, the population crunch. They have problems that over the next decade I honestly don't know how they're going to solve. Russia, like I said earlier, I think they've shown that they are not a near peer to the US. I would literally rather fight, if nuclear weapons are off the table, I would rather fight Russia than fight Poland. And I mean that. Beyond that, I think I just don't see any individual nation states that represent national security threats to the United States. I think the biggest threat to the United States, as it has been for quite some time, is the United States. I think a breakdown in democratic values, the fact that we have two major political parties, and one of them, the majority of registered voters in the Republican Party, do not consider President Joe Biden to be the legitimate president of the United States. That is exponentially more dangerous than anything you could find in China or Russia. Having that many Americans who with absolutely no empirical data to back it up, they just believe it. That many Americans who do not believe in the legitimacy of the current president, that is terrifying. What makes liberal democracy so difficult, one of the things, is losing. You have to be able to lose, look at your opponent and say you won and I'm going to sit back and plan for the next election. For the first time in American history, including a civil war where we had mid-term elections and presidential elections during the civil war without really any violence, we had violence. And again, we have this lingering belief that is questioning the legitimacy of American democratic theory at a time when it really shouldn't. American elections are quite clean. They're some of the best in the world and we have data to back that up. So again, I think I don't see a nation state out there that represents the threat to the United States. I think the United States is the only threat to the United States. And I don't mean that in an American-centric pounding our chest, USA kind of way. I mean that legitimately. Nor do I see China as even having aspirations, like Chris mentioned, of conquering the United States. They want influence. They want influence in the South China Sea and economic influence around the world. Now when it comes to rare earth elements, that's a different story. China has got the vast majority of them and that's a different discussion for a different time. As we are re-engineering our transportation economy to go with fully electric automobiles. There's a lot of rare earth elements that you have to have to have these car batteries and China's got most of them. Sorry for the total tangent there. It wouldn't be the first one in this conversation. So yeah, we're close to adjourning time. I will say that far be it from me to disagree with my colleague. I do think that he's right in the sense that the only thing we have to fear is not fear itself, but ourselves in the sense of I'm not a doom and gloom person. I don't think that we're on the verge of democratic collapse or anything like that. Having said that, because I think when push comes to shove, a lot of people like the rhetoric is very heated to the point of being absurd and insane, but the people that spew it have mostly proven to be paper tigers, right? And then, you know, the, if that's the silver lining, I don't know, but it is silver lining. You know, at the end of the day, Donald Trump is scared of going to prison, right? And if you don't believe it, just watch his body language when he's in court. He's scared of losing his money even, right? Much less going to prison, right? You know, in this civil case, it's going to be on New York, right? And so, you know, the idea that this guy is going to, you know, lead some sort of revolution, I think, you know, is kind of far-fetched. That said, you know, he can certainly get a bunch of crazy people to show up at a particular place at a particular time in weeks and a half, as we've seen, right? January 6th. And so, you know, the question is, was that, did that sort of exhaust that pool of people willing to do that, or are there more of those people out there, right? My suspicion is that for the number of people that really were going to go beyond talk to action, I think most of them showed up on January 6th, and most of them are now on their way to, if not in jail, or prison, or that sort of thing. You know, unless you see a regime kind of tipping over, it's very hard to mobilize people to get off their couch and actually, like, go out and like bring down a government, right? You know, we think about historical, you know, cases like, you know, the Beer Hall push, right? You know, 100 years ago in Germany, right? You know, that's 100 years ago, literally 100 years ago, right? And, you know, that was not a lot of people. You know, that was probably about the size, order of magnitude of January 6th, right? If that's all, and most of those people are in jail, most of those people are going to be in jail, then I'm not too worried about it. If, on the other hand, they're, you know, this is kind of the tip of the iceberg, they are worried about it, right? I guess my only other sort of concern way to that is, you know, and this is a concern not just for the United States, but a lot of other countries that are kind of in the same boat, is we have, you know, a disaffected population that isn't getting what it wants out of the political system, and can't get what it wants out of the political system, and figuring out what is the way to channel that into something more productive or more valuable, right, and more realistic, right? I mean, you know, in a few countries, right, you know, they have an electoral system, basically just funnels them into a party that gets 20% of the vote, but has no power, and you can just kind of ignore them and hope they go away, and that works for a while. Unfortunately, that doesn't work for, we don't have that system, right? So how do you sort of funnel this free-floating, and we, about the political system bordering on violent fantasy, into something that is actually good for our society? That to me is much more of a threat than Vladimir Putin or Z, or that sort of thing, is, you know, how do we figure that out, and maybe there is no figuring that out, maybe it's just a phase, maybe people just kind of, okay, they just wake up one day and say, that was kind of weird when we all went around and liked the guy that looked like he was a cheetah, and then, you know, and then go back to their normal lives, you know, that was weird, or, you know, maybe it gets worse, I don't know. That's why we have the social sciences, right, is, you know, we're trying to figure these things out. But in any event, we have gone, kind of, over time, and I'm just rambling at this point, so this is a good point probably for us to adjourn before I say something really stupid, as opposed to something just plain stupid, like I probably said already. So I would like to thank our guests, I'd like to thank Dr. Loboda for joining us. I appreciate his insights, and hopefully for his country's sake and for his sake, that, you know, that his pessimism turns out to be wrong. I'd be, not to say that, well, I'd be delighted if he were wrong. Unfortunately, my experience of human events is that being a pessimistic person doesn't always win you a lot of friends, but sometimes it turns out you're right. But I hope he's wrong. For his sake, for the Ukrainian people's sake, for the world's sake, I hope he's wrong. But I would like to thank you for joining us. I'd also like to thank Dr. Hall for taking time out of his evening as well. I'd like to thank our audience for their questions and thoughts, and listening to us ramble this evening, as well as our colleagues that joined us as well. We do have another event probably coming up in about three weeks. We're going to skip ahead a little bit, and we'll be talking about domestic policy, upcoming elections, that sort of thing. Not upcoming elections in New Zealand, but we do have a few state elections and things like that coming up, so we'll probably talk a little bit about those things, but mostly about what I would, what I referred to as domestic policy, potpourri, which for those of you younger than about 40, there used to, on Jeopardy, they used to have categories, and usually the last one was something like something potpourri, or something, I don't think they'd do that anymore, and maybe they only did that on Saturday, and all that sketches, I don't know, but then any event, that's kind of the working title for that topic, and that will be the week of the 23rd, I believe. We might, we're probably going to do it on the Monday rather than the Wednesday, but we're going to finalize that soon. I don't know if anybody here is looking to go to graduate school, but about a couple weeks, we're also going to be having a informational session about our Doctor of Public Safety program. That's why we're not going to be doing this in two weeks, so probably doesn't apply to anybody here, I don't think anybody is likely to be graduating in December and looking to start a doctoral program, but nonetheless, I did want to mention that very briefly. You can read about that inside MGA if you're interested in that, or just interested in possibly doing something like that down the road, because that program is going to be here, so when you graduate, so if that sounds like something you might be interested in, it might be worth learning a little bit about it even now. Anything else, Dr. Hall, you wanted to add? I think that just about does it. I think we were able to cover some large areas as precisely as possible. Thank you all for joining all the students, thank you everyone else for coming out, thank you Dr. Beak for being here, and y'all have a wonderful evening. Yeah, thank you all and hopefully we will again be able to talk about some more happy topics when we meet again. So thank you all, good evening, and I'll see you all hopefully in about three weeks or so.