The Duran Podcast
The West in Decline - John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen
Hi everyone. I am joined today by Alexander Mercuris and Professor John Mersheimer. Welcome to you both. Glad to be here, Glenn. So our discussion today will focus on what is perhaps a new stage in the Ukraine war and also the global implications of what we have done in Ukraine. For example, how this war will impact the US-China rivalry. Hopefully we will get to that. But let's first start off with Ukraine. Again, this could be contested, but it appears at least to me that the US is preparing to reduce its involvement as the war appears to have been lost now or at least moving quickly in that direction. I am not sure the Europeans they appear at least to be in a bit of a panic. It would seem they are not sure how to respond. Some argue if the Americans withdraw a bit and the Europeans have to take over, but that seems all delusional at best as this would be very big shoes to fill. We go back to the same issue. What do we do when we are losing Ukraine and Americans are losing interest? Do we escalate or do we start negotiations? I think this split we have talked about here before is becoming more evident. Obviously, the French are now talking about sending in troops while the Germans rejected the Americans on a state of union speech by Biden. They also rejected it. It seems everyone is pulling in a little bit different direction. This is when NATO Secretary General Ian Stoltenberg stepped in and told the French, "Listen, let's consult first internally before we wander in the public eye." Hopefully, we will cover up on some of these fragmentations as we have to show unity and solidarity. I wanted to ask, what is this stage we are currently in? Do you two read it in the same way? Are we moving towards a deeper splitter in NATO? Let me jump in to start. I think you want to think about what is happening today at two different levels. One is what is happening inside the United States and the other is just what is happening in Ukraine. Let's put the United States aside for a second. I think it is becoming manifestly clear to more and more people that Ukraine is going to lose the war. We can talk about exactly what that means, because that is a very complicated issue. But there is no question that Ukraine is going to suffer defeat and indeed NATO is going to suffer a defeat as well. There is no plausible strategy, in my opinion, for turning this ship around and rectifying the situation. This is a huge problem for the West. That is point number one. Point number two is inside the United States, you can no longer just talk about how the United States thinks about Ukraine, because you have this clear division between Donald Trump and his acolytes on one side and Joe Biden and his acolytes on the other side. I believe the Biden administration is in this one for the long term, and they will do everything they can for years and years to come to contest the Russians inside of Ukraine. But Donald Trump apparently is a different story, and the Republican Party more generally is a different story. One can make an argument that if Trump gets elected, the United States is basically going to abandon Ukraine. We are going to try to work out a deal with Putin and pull many, if not all, of our troops out of Europe. If you are a European and you look at what is happening, you see that, independent of the United States, Ukraine is going down the tubes, number one. And then number two, when you look at the United States, you see that Donald Trump, who is likely to win the presidency at this point, it is not an open and shut case by any means. But it looks like he is the more likely candidate to win in November. This is going to send shivers down the spines almost every European. So it is kind of a double whammy. And then just to add a third level to it, and this gets back, Glenn, to your point about Stoltenberg in effect saying, let's not put our dirty laundry out in front of European publics or the world, the fact is that there are really quite profound differences among Europeans about how to move forward. I mean, you not only have the Orban versus everybody else divide, you also have the Germans and the French at each other's throats and all sorts of differences of opinion about how to move forward in Europe. So from a European point of view, or more generally from a Western point of view, this looks like a train wreck. I completely agree. I just wanted to quickly add that what this affair has demonstrated, and it is something that Europeans need to think about very closely, is the extent to which the West, the alliance between the United States and Europe, only works in the way that the Europeans have become accustomed to with the United States. The United States is not providing a lead if it is not supporting a project like the one in the Ukraine. The Europeans ultimately cannot do anything. They can't really push for a military solution in Ukraine. They don't have the resources. They know that perfectly well. In fact, the only realistic auction, I would say, with respect to Ukraine that they would have in that case, is themselves to start looking for some way out with the Russians, which for all kinds of reasons, they find very difficult to do. But panic is exactly the right word. Now, I am here in London. I was saying a couple of weeks ago, when it all began with Macron, that there was a mood of panic around. I've been speaking to various people now, including somebody who was in the British government quite recently. They say exactly the same. All of the European capitals are suddenly having a panic. They're all asking themselves, what are the Americans doing? What are the Americans going to do? Are they with us? Are they moving away from us? What are we going to do in the long term? And what are we going to do about the Russians? Nobody has any clear plan about what to do. Macron comes up with one, but all the others shoot it down because they know it can't work. Nobody else has any alternative. The only thing they can think of is keeping their fingers crossed and hoping that Joe Biden is reelected in November. That at the moment is the entirety of strategic planning in Europe, which is a pretty dismal thing. Yeah, I just make just a couple of quick points. First of all, if you look at the state of the military establishments in Europe, it's a pretty pathetic story. It's not like these are formidable military forces in countries like Germany and Britain and Denmark that could fight in Ukraine or even provide much deterrence capability without the United States. Second is when people talk about Europe, especially in the United States, they like to refer to Europe as if it were in single integrated entity, the United States of Europe. But the fact is it's a bunch of countries that have different interests, and therefore have all sorts of collective action problems. And the third point that I'd make is that the one European country that's best situated to take the lead in solving those collective action problems in the absence of the United States is Germany. And we all know that when you start talking about Germany taking the lead and providing security in Europe, you're asking for all sorts of problems. It's funny I would say the look at, well, refer to Europe as an entity because I, this tendency to refer to the West as an entity is also, I would argue, sometimes very delusional. I saw an interview recently with Boris Johnson, we pointed out that the Russians, technologies are backwards, you know, look at the West, where the Russians, you know, Google and Amazon and Apple, you know, actually the Russians do have all the major tech companies, the dominant ones in Russia are actually all local. But in Europe, my point was I thought it was fascinating that he said, look at us, you know, our Western, but they're American. And this is, you know, this idea that we are, that we are one entity that, you know, we can always share the exact same interest. I think this is going to be, as you said, a shiver going down the spine would notice that different countries have different national interests and they will go a different way. But, anyways, the point I wanted to make before was, what I found interesting with Macron's comment was he was saying that if the Russians start to get close to Kiev or Odessa, then the French will send in their troops. For me, this reads very much as an admission that obviously things are not going well on the battlefield if you think the Ukrainian army could collapse to this extent. And again, an admission more and more becoming aware of coming forward in the media, but still this is still a big denial going on. But if we're all sensing the same thing now, Ukraine has lost or NATO has lost, however, way we want to see it, obviously negotiations are very difficult because we've been, you know, this is after all the new reincarnation of Hitler refighting, so we can't really negotiate. What is, where we're heading towards this? Are we waiting for Ukraine to implode and then say, oh, well, you know, they failed or is there no, because, you know, Alexander, you're here a little bit in London. Yeah, John, you know, what's going on the US is there is there no real path going forward here, except a strategy of hope? Well, if I can just quickly, because you brought up London, and we were talking about divisions, divisions in London are, I think, almost as profound on pretty much every topic, except perhaps Ukraine, as they are in the United States. I mean, it is difficult to convey how chaotic and disorganized the political system in Britain has become. We are at the end of what is universally acknowledged to have been a very unsuccessful government, you know, since it was elected. It first came to power 14 years ago. It has basically failed in everything. It's undertaken. The British state of the British military, which John was talking about, is absolutely terrible. I read somewhere that we have just 40, 4-0 operational tanks. I didn't believe it. I contacted some buddy who knows. They told me it is true, 40 operational tanks. The Royal Air Force is in a slightly better condition, but not much. We don't have the pilots to fly the airplanes that we need, that we have, and we're selling off some of them. And there's even talk that we might have to pension off one of these very expensive aircraft carriers that we built quite recently, because we can't properly operate it. We don't have the aircraft for it, and we've never sorted out the mechanical problems. At the moment, the British government is incapable of planning ahead. They have this impossible election to deal with. Perhaps some people hurt the new government might come in with clearer plans, but Britain is in no position at the moment to provide any real forward thinking or planning or intellectual ideas taking matters forward, which for those of us who live here, and for those of us who remember how it was, fairly recently, is terribly sad. I don't think that most people, especially in the United States, but it's true in Europe, as well, understand how much trouble we are in. I mean, we've not talked about the Middle East here, but you cannot underestimate how much trouble the United States is in the Middle East. And the same thing is true with regard to Ukraine. We are going to lose the war. The Russians are going to win. The only question is, what does that victory look like? Do they end up basically keeping the 20% of the territory that they now have, the four Obas plus Crimea, and Ukraine becomes a neutral state? That's option one. That's the good option. And the bad option is they continue to fight. Ukraine loses more territory, more people die, and Ukraine is even more of a dysfunctional state at the end of that scenario than it would be if they stopped the fighting now. But in both cases, NATO loses. We were committed to beating the Russians in Ukraine. We were committed to wrecking the Russian economy and knocking the Russians out of the ranks of the great powers. We failed. The Russian economy may be a bit strong to say that it's thriving, but you could make a case that it's thriving. And if you look at the European economies, the European economies are in real trouble, especially the German economy. In fact, what's happened with the sanctions is that they've boomerang. So in the final analysis, this is a devastating defeat for the West. There's just no way you can alter that situation. And it is proving extremely difficult for the elites who have believed from the beginning that we would prevail in this conflict to accept the idea that they failed, that the Russians have prevailed, that Vladimir Putin has beaten them. They just can't accept that. And that's where we are today. I'd like to put it in the context of the wider problem, because I feel like we went all in on all the major conflicts, not just Ukraine, where we effectively said we're going to defeat the world's largest nuclear power, and now failing, of course, that the repercussions will be very difficult to calculate. And then in the Middle East, of course, when this started, we went all in supporting Israel unconditionally, even as it became evident that this was most likely a genocide. And of course, China is also down the line where we have gone all out on, well, not all out, but very heavy on an economic warfare, stating we're obvious, and a objective should be to stop its technological development. None of these policies have succeeded. I'm just wondering, what is the fallback position here? I guess the internal divisions, what would be the natural impulse of states in this position? Do we just pull in all different directions, or do we unite against an enemy? This just looks like it's going to be an immense splash coming our way though. Well, I would just say very quickly, we should talk a bit about the Middle East. But given what's going on in the Middle East, and giving what's going on with Ukraine, this makes it more likely that Trump will get elected in the fall. I mean, foreign policy is a huge problem for Biden. And if Trump gets elected, he could really shuffle the deck, right? You know, we all understand that the West is in real trouble in both the Middle East and in Ukraine. And that's, you know, presents what I would call sort of a plastic moment. I mean, as things begin to unravel, there's an opportunity for who's ever in control to do very different things. And Trump is the sort of person who could do that for two reasons. One is he does have somewhat radical views. And I don't mean radical to be a negative term. But given the conventional wisdom in the West, he has radical views on a number of key issues. But secondly, he and his supporters believe that the blob or the foreign policy establishment beat them back at almost every turn in his first administration. So if there's a second administration, they're going to bring in their own team of people this time, and they're going to make sure that they're able to implement, again, let's call it a radical foreign policy, they're going to be able that they want to be in a position to be able to change US policy in major ways. And having had that first experience, they'll be better positioned this time to do that. And again, I think it may be a plastic moment, you know, next January, if he moves into the White House. So I think, you know, for the short term, maybe even the medium term, you're going to see more of the same. But what could make an argument that as you move forward, you know, into 2025, certainly if Trump gets elected, there's going to have to be some fundamental changes in American foreign policy. And that will have huge consequences, as we talked about before, for European foreign policy, and the West foreign policy in general. Well, one would hope it would start to become a little bit more realistic. I'm not realistic, but at least realistic. Going back to Glenn's point, I think that in Europe at the moment, there is no fallback position in the sense that I do think anybody's thinking of one. Well, I'm sure there are people thinking all fallback positions, but they're not the people who are making the major decisions. Eventually, we will have to stumble into one. I mean, it is inevitable. We can't just put ourselves in a position where we're just in a losing proposition, and we're trapped in it indefinitely. But for the moment, thinking of that sort is not happening. And if we actually go to the Middle East at this point, if we're talking about the Europeans, again, it is striking that they have no Middle East policy at all. Now, this is really astonishing, given that the United States has a kind of grand strategy in the Middle East, or has had one, it is perhaps visibly failing. It is in serious trouble. But the Middle East is at least far away from the United States. If everything goes wrong there, well, the United States has an ocean between itself and the Middle East. With Europe, it isn't like that. This is absolutely as much a part of our neighbourhood as Ukraine is. I mean, I was born in Greece. It is very easy to travel across the Mediterranean from Greece to Egypt, for example. My parents used to do this regularly. So this is not a far away region, but we have lost our ability to influence decisions there. Again, we are waiting on the Americans. There are many people in Europe who are unhappy with what the Americans are doing or failing to do. But there is this extraordinary paralysis of the will again, no ability to do anything about it, or was the hope that somehow the Americans will find their way and make it come right. And on the experience of the last 30 years, there's no reason to think that will happen, that the Americans will find a way to make it come right. Yeah, I mean, I think that if you look at the war in Gaza, there's really no end in sight. And as we've talked about before, Netanyahu has no interest in bringing this conflict to an end quickly, because then there may be some sort of mandate or some sort of decision in the Israeli body politic on his future. And so he keeps this war going, and he can pretend that he's winning. He can stay in office, and that's to his advantage. But let's assume that the shooting stops at some point in time. The question is, where are we then? The fact is you're not going to get a two-state solution, that's completely off the table. Are you going to rebuild in Gaza, or are you going to feed the people in Gaza in a meaningful way? I don't think you're going to rebuild in any meaningful way, and I think starvation will continue to be a problem for the foreseeable future. And furthermore, the Israelis are now stuck in Gaza. One cannot underestimate how important this is. You remember Ariel Sharon, who was no shrinking violet, he pulled the Israeli settlers and Israeli troops at a Gaza in 2005, because Sharon understood that this was not a smart strategy to have settlements and troops in Gaza. Well, the Israelis are back in Gaza. They don't have settlers there, at least yet, but they have troops there, and they have no intention of removing those troops. So given the situation in Gaza, this is going to be a festering sore for a long, long time. It's going to cause all sorts of problems for the United States around the world. It's going to cause all sorts of problems for the West around the world, because people are going to say something has to be done from a human rights point of view to help the Palestinians out. And I, of course, agree with that completely. But what are we going to do? The Israelis are going to continue to play hard ball with the Palestinians. They're going to continue to maintain an apartheid system in greater Israel, and we're not going to do anything about it. And we're going to be seen as supporting the Israelis at every turn, which, of course, we do. So this is a real problem. There is no solution there. And then you throw in the whole subject of potential escalation. What about a war against Hezbollah? What about the war that's now going on with the Houthis? What about all the fighting that has taken place in the past few months between these militias in Iraq and Syria and American troops? What about Iran? Is this all going to go away? No, it's not, certainly not, as long as the conflict in Gaza continues. And again, I don't see that coming to an end in any meaningful way in the future. So I think the United States is really in deep trouble in the Middle East, and it's in deep trouble in Ukraine. I was also glad you put in Hezbollah at the end there, because if Hamas is a horror show for the Israelis, then Hezbollah will be a completely different story. The Israelis are already moving out of the northern parts of their own country. And this could be a huge disaster. And also, much like the Ukraine crisis, no one actually clearly defines what victory means, because you can't really wipe out Gaza or wipe out all of Hezbollah either. So it's a guy's common theme of the past 30 years. This lack of exit strategy, it just seems we're going to have worse and worse levels in terms of consequences. Yeah, I mean, the Israelis went into Lebanon in 1982. In fact, it went all the way up to Beirut. And then they withdrew down to the Latani River. And they stayed in the area that runs from Israel's northern border to the Latani River, the southernmost part of Lebanon for 18 years. They finally left in 2000, and they left with their tail between their legs. And in the process, they converted the Shia who welcomed them at first when they went in 1982 into Hezbollah. The Israelis played the key role in creating Hezbollah by occupying southern Lebanon, which was filled with Shia. Then they went back in in 2006 with ground forces, much smaller operation. And the fact is the Israelis got badly beaten in that operation. They suffered a lot of casualties, and they got out very quickly. So what are they going to do? Go back in again, drive up to Beirut, drive up to the Latani River, and occupy southern Lebanon. I don't think this is going to work very well. So what you're talking about is a situation where they got out of Gaza in 2005, and they're now back in there with no signs that they're going to get out. And they're also talking about going back into Lebanon, which is, in my opinion, another prescription for disaster. So the fact is the Israelis don't have good options. You know, we talk about the United States and the West being in trouble. These are what's going on in the Middle East. I would argue the Israelis are really in deep trouble. I mean, there are many dimensions that we haven't talked about yet, but they have not solved their basic problem with the Palestinians. They have not solved their basic problem with Hezbollah. They're all sorts of negative economic consequences associated with this war for Israel. And the political problems that this war is generating cannot be underestimated. Can I just ask, I mean, if we compare the end of the way British Empire events happened, and you brought up the apartheid system in Israel, and of course, the apartheid system, when we talk about apartheid, I mean, South Africa is obviously the place where it all started. And of course, South Africa was absolutely part of the British Empire. It was part of the British Commonwealth. The British were very close to South Africa. Jan Smuts, who was the South African leader, was a part of the British war cabinet effectively during the Second World War. He was very close to Churchill. The British were very, very close to South Africa. And then, of course, in the 50s, things began to change. And in 1956, there was the crisis at Suez. The British started to realize that Suez brought them down with a thump. And then, a few years later, Harold Macmillan goes to South Africa, and he delivers the wind of change speech. He says, "You can't go on like this. This is impossible." I mean, that's what he essentially says. You can't go on like this. You've got to reconcile your fact, the fact that what you have been doing, what you have stood for, isn't going to work. Perhaps, just possibly, there has to be some big Suez-like event for the United States to start shifting its policies and to do something similar. I mean, an American president, I can't quite see it going to Israel, doing the kind of speech that Harold Macmillan did with the South Africans. But something a little like that, saying, "This doesn't work anymore. It can't continue. It needed Suez to make it possible for the British to do that. Could the same happen with the United States that a defeat in Ukraine, a major failure in the Middle East, might make them start to think differently and to start to be more realistic and ultimately more humane about some of the policies that are happening in places like Israel, the Middle East, and elsewhere?" I think that if you look at the apartheid system that the Israelis have in place in greater Israel, you quickly realize that it's not sustainable or it would not have been sustainable without support from the West, not just the United States, the British for sure as well. I mean, just look what's happening in Gaza today. You have a genocide taking place, and basically the West is supporting the Israelis at every turn. And the same thing applies to the apartheid system. Now, every American president since Jimmy Carter believed that this apartheid system was not sustainable over the long term, and it was going to lead to huge amounts of trouble. And that's why every American president since Jimmy Carter has pushed for a two-state solution. That's why everybody in the West is now saying we've got to move to a two-state solution, because I think everybody deep down inside understands everybody in the West, deep down inside understands that apartheid is not sustainable over the long term. The Israelis resisted every turn, and given the power of the Israel lobby, not only in the United States, but in Europe as well, it makes it very difficult for Western leaders to push Israel to end its apartheid system and to create a two-state solution or to move to a two-state solution. It's just been impossible for us in the West to do that. So the system continues on and on. So you Alexander raised the question of whether or not there will be some event or some force that will change this situation and cause us to put great pressure on the Israelis to move to a two-state solution. I just don't see that happening. I hope that I'm wrong. But it's a necessity though that it's the United States to push for it. And I get it, this will be the dominant state. But I would argue because the United States has been dominant and will allow Israel to do as it places, this obviously enabled Israel to ignore the different paths it had to piece over the years. But I was thinking not not that long ago when the Chinese negotiated this peace deal between the Iranians and the Saudis. And then they said, our next step is to also extend this to the other Gulf states. I thought it was interesting then because there was an article written by the former director of Mossad in Israel. And I think it was published in Haritz where he made the argument list. And if all the Arabs are going to jump ship and will abandon this anti-Iranian campaign, we can't stand all by ourselves. Perhaps we should also seek to make a deal with the Iranians. So in other words, the whole coalition against Iran disappeared. And then again, the former head of Mossad suggested, well, there is possibility to make peace with the Iranians. It's not beyond the pale. There are solutions. And I'm wondering if he continues this way with the shifts of power in the Middle East, not necessarily towards China, but wouldn't it put similar pressures on Israel, not that Americans are pressuring them. But if they see the American influence in the region and the American's ability to dictate the solutions is falling away, wouldn't this also be a pressure point for the Israelis to strike a deal? Again, I have no idea what that deal would look like anymore, given the two-state solution doesn't look very likely. And it's unclear how they would live as equals in the same state. But yeah, I would just note to you, Glenn, that I think a lot of the leaders in the Arab world are willing to live within apartheid Israel. You want to remember, we already have three Abraham Accords. And before October 7, there was lots of evidence that the Saudis were moving towards an Abraham Accord with the Israelis. The Americans were trying to broker the deal. And all sorts of people make the argument, I think, quite correctly, that the Arab elites don't really care that much about what happens to the Palestinians and they're willing to cut deals with the Israelis. The big problem they face is public opinion from down below, blowing up in their face. So these Arab leaders, after October 7, have been reasonably tough, not very tough, but reasonably tough on the Israelis because of public opinion, not because those elites are really that concerned about the Palestinians. So you basically have a situation here where lots of countries in the Middle East are willing to live within apartheid state in Israel. The West is willing to live with that. In fact, the West is willing to support it. So the question is, where does the change come from? And the Chinese are in no position to force the Americans to change their behavior on this issue. And as long as the Americans back Israel unconditionally, which they pretty much do, you know, the status quo remains in place. And that's where we are. So I mean, if maybe you guys see a way out of this, but I hope I hope I'm wrong. And I hope there is a sort of a magic solution to it. But I just don't see it. I don't pretend I see it. I mean, I'm not going to try and come up with a solution because I have no idea what the solution would be. This is one point I wanted to say. And could it be that the absolutely right about the Arab leaders? Most of them are very cynical, many of them perfectly happy to live with an apartheid Israel. We see that it's been true for a very long time, actually. Isn't that though, the mistake that we've been making in that we have been, I say we because the Europeans are fully complicit in this, have been dealing with the Arab leaders and saying to themselves that because the Arab leaders are prepared to come to terms with an apartheid Israel, that means that the Arabs generically are prepared to do that also. And that in fact, what we're doing is we are dealing with, you know, the sort of upward crust and not looking at what's below. And the result is that what's below is always bubbling up to the surface. And in fact, we're not achieving not just a piece, but a sort of orderly situation there in the Middle East. And by trying to negotiate a deal between the Israel that is and the Arab leaders, we're simply allowing the situation to perpetuate and are not really addressing the underlying problems and causing it to remain unresolved. That is certainly true with regard to Israel and the Palestinians, right? This problem just doesn't go away because you have tremendous resistance from down below from the Palestinians who are the victims in this apartheid state. You have a first Intifada, you have a second Intifada, and then you have October 7th. And the consequences of this for the United States and the West more generally are enormous. You were saying Alexander, and I think it's obviously true that Europe is right next door to the Middle East. So what happens in the Middle East matters to Europeans in really important ways. You have a vested interest in coming up with some sort of solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. But there is no solution there. And the other problem is that in many states in the Arab and Islamic world, the leaders are at a sync with the publics, and we tend to support the publics. Actually, we tend to support the elites and not the publics on these issues. And this can cause all sorts of problems as well. I wanted to switch gear a little bit, if I may. I'm take it a little bit back to Ukraine on the topic of changing the status quo, because you both argued as well that perhaps Trump will be able to shake things up a bit, or at least this is a position to make great changes. But are we seeing some adjustments by the Biden government? I don't disagree that it's committed to this war to the end, but I really wanted to bring up the retirement of Victoria Newland. I'm suspecting it's not a permanent retirement. But nonetheless, I'm wondering if this signifies a larger shift in US policies towards Europe, and well, maybe also the Middle East, but her main footprint has been Europe. Well, she's been in orbit all over the place. I think she's been one of the permanent war hawks really over the past 30 years. She began in the Clinton administration. She was a top advisor to Cheney during the invasion of Iraq, planning it, executing it. She was also there during the administration, during the color revolution, that is the first time Ukraine had its government replaced with a pro-Western one. She was the ambassador to NATO during 2007 and '80, if I'm not mistaken, when a lot of this push were to expand NATO to Ukraine's border. Most people listening, who are also probably should be familiar with this, in 2014, about two weeks before the coup. She was caught on tape, essentially dictating who should be in the government, who should stay out the government, once they got rid of Yanukovych, everything fell in place, as she said. She was the one who pressured other Western governments to follow the line. She had been accused of running Ukraine like a colony. I guess last, she doesn't get enough credit or blame, however everyone wants to see it, but she also had a key role in managing the Information War, because this institute for the study war, this think tank, has really been the main go-to for every major Western newspaper who reports on the war in Ukraine. They all refer to this same think tank, and that also happens to be operated by the Newland Kagan family, which is a neo-con family business, I guess, but it has a very important role to sell the war to the public, as well as framing it for the politicians. As she has been the key architect of the Ukraine war, what does it mean? Did you step down voluntarily? As she had been asked to, she had been pulled away, should you read too much about, into her retirement at all? It just, for such a huge news, it didn't get a lot of attention in the news. I was wondering what the perspective was for the two of you. Alexander, I'll defer to you. Why don't you start off? Well, subject theory, your heart. This is, of course, something which, again, I'm bringing to it what I never British civil service culture. I mean, the statement that the State Department, the Blinken, signed off on for her resignation, which came somewhat unexpectedly, if it had been produced about somebody leaving government in Britain, would suggest that this person had been asked to leave, or at least that they were being gradually squeezed out. And the fact that there is no statement from her, that she's not actually herself given reasons for her departure, which she hasn't done since the announcement was made, would tend to reinforce this. But, of course, I'm not familiar with the things I've done in the United States in the same way as they are done in London. And this is something that I've been talking about in my various programs. To me, it looks as if some people in Washington, powerful people in Washington, have said, look, you've got us into a deep mess in Ukraine. We don't quite know how we're going to get out. We don't know quite what we're going to do, but one thing is, if we don't want you there any longer, we become very frustrated by the role you've been playing. And we're asking you to leave and please go in a gentle and civilised way, rather than do it through a public route, which is not in your interest and not in ours. That's how it looks to me. Now, I've also been talking to some people, one person in particular who is in China, who's Chinese. And the Chinese are certainly interpreting this, or some people in China. A lot of people in China are interpreting this as the United States starting to think beyond Ukraine and focusing again on China. And there's a lot of worry in China about Kurt Campbell, who's the person who's taken over. And the Chinese are nervous about him. They see him as a China hawk. There's been comments about some of the things that he said. And the sense is that a Russia hawk has left the scene and a China hawk is coming in. Again, not knowing much personally about Mr Campbell, I'm not able to say whether or not that is true. And it may be that the Chinese are completely wrong about this. And again, I don't know how much influence the Deputy Secretary has stated the overall system would have. But certainly from a British civil service perspective, this would look like somebody not exactly shown the door, but being led through the door and told, you know, please leave. We now have to take over. And we can do it better if you're no longer there. I have a somewhat different view. I think you want to, and let me just say, preface my remarks by saying that we don't have any inside information here. So who knows for sure exactly what's going on. But I think it was last November when D Sherman stepped down as the number two in the State Department, they had to find a replacement. And the person that the Biden White House wanted to put in that position was Jake Sullivan's Deputy, Jonathan Feiner. But then when they began to think about it, it made the most sense to keep him in the White House, because he was so good. So Feiner, who was the number one choice, got taken off the table. And then people said at the time that it came down to Newland and Campbell. And for reasons I don't understand, Campbell was chosen, not Newland. And it could be because they wanted to put more emphasis on China and less emphasis on Ukraine, and Campbell was the person to do that. But regardless, Campbell was nominated. And before he got approved, they had to find an acting number two. And of course, they put Newland in that position. Newland was really number three. And she got temporarily moved up to number two. And then in February, Campbell was finally approved, and Campbell moved into the number two position. And that meant Newland went back to number three. So the question then pops up. Why did Newland resign then? Because she could have at least stayed until January of next year, and maybe even beyond that. I think Newland wanted to be number two. I think she was deeply disappointed that she wasn't number two. And people have said over the years that she and Campbell don't get along very well. I've heard that on more than one occasion. And furthermore, my guess would be that she sensed that things are not going well in Ukraine. You kind of can't avoid seeing that. And maybe this is the time to get out. It's kind of like Zaluzhini going to Britain to be the ambassador to Britain. I mean, I think that was a brilliant move on Zaluzhini's point. I don't think you want to be in key for the next year or two. You're better off if you're Zaluzhini being in London. So one could argue that that drove her as well. I have trouble with the argument that this reflects a shift in American thinking about the relationship between East Asia and Ukraine. Because the Biden administration at the top is filled with people who remain completely committed to fighting in Ukraine. I mean, Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden, and Tony Blinken are no different than Victoria Newland on the question of how committed we should be to Ukraine. I mean, I don't see Victoria Newland leaving the administration leading to any change in our approach to dealing with Ukraine. Biden is still talking the same way about how to deal with the problem in Ukraine as he was before Victoria Newland left. So I think they may have some interest in putting more emphasis on China since China is the more meaningful threat that Russia is. But the fact is the United States remains deeply committed, profoundly committed in the Middle East, profoundly committed in Ukraine, and profoundly committed in East Asia. Although East Asia is number three in terms of the attention the administration gives to those three issues, because it's so bogged down at the moment in the Middle East and in Ukraine. But anyway, I just don't think that Victoria Newland's exit matters that much. And that's why I don't think they pushed her overboard. I think she just left because she didn't get to be number two. And, you know, she has a nice cinecure now at Columbia University. And why not take it? Yeah, I've heard that argument by many as well, that this was because she was passed over to become Secretary of State. But in terms of you, you accept that Biden administration was still very much committed. And of course, the intentions are there. But I'm wondering, the resources are limited. And certainly, there must be some discussions on the inside in terms of what can be done. I mean, they keep pushing for more and more funding. I think 300 million were going to be sent as an emergency. But a lot of this money is to keep Ukraine and the economy alive. But in terms of what's actually possible, it's quite interesting because, you know, they can print up the money, they can give the aid. But what we've seen over the past two years, the ability to ramp up industrial production for the weapons, we haven't really seen this take place. And even if the weapons could be supplied, who would use them? The key problem for Ukraine now is the destruction of not just equipment, but the military itself, the manpower is being depleted quite rapidly. So again, this casualty rates are so horrific at the moment, and it seems to only intensify. So in the absence of the actual resources on the ground, given that this army can't be printed at a printing press, does it matter if even if they have the intention to fight Russia? Would they not have to adjust anyways to the reality that the distribution of power is shifting very quickly in the favor of Russia? Can I just make two quick points about China? And then we could go back to the very important points you're raising, especially the manpower point regarding Ukraine. But, you know, there's a lot of talk that with Kurt Campbell in power now, we're going to get tough with the Chinese, and the Chinese have good reason to worry. I think you want to understand that if you're the United States at this point in time, the last thing you want is trouble in East Asia, right? If anything, you want to do everything you can to dampen the tensions in East Asia, because you are up to your eyeballs and alligators in Ukraine, you are up to your eyeballs and alligators in the Middle East, and we have limited industrial capacity, right? So getting into a fight in the South China Sea or over Taiwan would be, in my opinion, catastrophic for the United States. The second way to cut at this is just to talk about the industrial base, which is a subject that Alexander talks about all the time. The Russians and the Chinese both have impressive industrial bases, and they have the ability to produce huge numbers of weapons. The American industrial base shrunk during the polar moment, and we don't have the capability to produce lots of weapons. Nevertheless, there are huge demands on us from the Israelis, from the Ukrainians, and don't forget, there's this whole Asian scenario. So if the United States were to get into any kind of protracted conflict with China and the South China Sea or over Taiwan today, it would probably run out of ammunition very quickly. We have a huge problem here, right? So they're just real limits to how tough we're going to get with the Chinese, right? And again, if anything, what we're going to try and do is keep things at a much lower level of tension. I mean, isn't that again making the case, which is one that Donald Trump might be thinking about, of trying to do a deal with the Russians, in the sense that China is after all the country, that is the main challenge to the United States, and that you have to perhaps find a way to get out of this conflict in Ukraine. I mean, I don't know whether people are talking about the United States being bogged down in Ukraine. I've often wondered about whether that word is being used, whether people talk about it as a quagmire, because that's to some extent how it's looking to me, absorbing US resources, absorbing US attention, diverting the US from other things it might want to do. Might a new administration actually say, look, we've got to start thinking about sorting out the American industrial base, which by the way, I think one point I do want to make, the American industrial base at the moment is run down. But if the United States actually were to exercise the will to rebuild it, it could do it. I mean, it does have the means to do it. It might take a few years, but it's not something which is beyond American resources to do. That's not something I've talked about much, because that's not what's happening at the moment. But if you if you reorient your priorities, if you say, let's stabilize the situation in Europe in some ways, let's focus on our industrial base, then we can start to rethink our strategy better. And also, is there anybody in Washington who says to themselves, well, actually, this whole strategy of weakening Russia is wrong. If we want to put distance between the Chinese and the Russians, which is presumably what we want to do, and actually we want the Russians stronger rather than weaker, because stronger countries are more likely to assert themselves against overpowering neighbors who are trying to be their allies or want them to be allies. And that that means that the Russians might become more assertive towards the Chinese than they are at the moment, when they're perhaps dangerously dependent upon them. Is there anybody who thinks it that way? Just asking. Look, I think you're making imminently good sense. I wish they could move you into the White House, and we could put the policies that you're articulating into place. But the Biden administration thinks about the world in ways that are odds with how you think about the world. And there's no evidence that they're beginning to wake up. It may be the case that if Trump comes into power that he begins to think, or he begins to implement policies that reflect your thinking, that may happen. We may find ourselves in a plastic moment, as I said before, and Trump given his instincts may move us in a very different direction. It looks more like what you're talking about than what the Biden administration is talking about. But at the moment, I do not see any evidence that Biden is changing his policies on Ukraine. And again, this gets back to the Victorian Newland business. This is why I think that her exiting the administration and the final analysis doesn't matter much, because I think Biden is just so deeply committed to you, and to Israel, that he's not going to change in any meaning, the way on even one of those issues. Because part of the strategic interest, which has been communicated by many American leaders, be it Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, General, I forgot his first name, Kellogg. All these different leaders have been all saying the same thing over the past few years, which is not the American leaders should support Ukraine, because this would effectively knock out Russia as a strategic rival. And this would also, by extension week in China as a key ally of or partner at least of Russia. And then the US could shift its resources and focus on the Chinese instead. Now, obviously, NATO's defeat alters Washington's calculations, with a more powerful Russia merging now, both militarily, a more stronger military than it was before this invasion, but also growing economically and integrating deeper with China. Now, what you're referring to, it sounds a bit like Tucker Carlson, when he reached out to Putin, saying, "Listen, you don't really trust these Chinese. Have you thought about, well, we didn't say this directly, but can they be trusted, almost testing the waters if the Russians would join the United States?" Again, maybe I'm over analyzing that common teammate, but obviously that's not going to happen, but the Russians would take not not anything, but they wouldn't turn on the Chinese, but obviously from what I hear, at least from various Russians, would be that their ideal economic situation would entail a more diversification. So not just dealing with the Chinese, the Indians, the Iranians, but also have functioning economic relationship with Europeans and Americans, effectively cutting them off from the West, has made them more reliant on the Chinese than they would otherwise want to do. Again, not wanting to join anti-Chinese coalition, but simply avoiding excessive reliance on economic partner, which is more powerful than you, which is what you would advise any country to do. So this is why I'm thinking even though they're committed to going against Russia, surely there must be someone who's recognizing that if your primary objective is to prevent China from getting too strong, surely you have to give some more avenues to the Russians. I mean, this was what the Indian Foreign Minister was saying at the Munich Security Conference, like, shouldn't you be happy we're reaching out to the Indians, not to the Russians, should all the business go to China? Aren't we speaking the same language? So some of this must be going through, isn't it? Oh, no. You would think so, but I think you don't want to underestimate just how intense the Russophobia and the demonization of Putin is in the West, and especially in the United States. I mean, many people think that this guy is the second coming of Adolf Hitler, that this is like dealing with Nazi Germany, and you can't negotiate with Adolf Hitler. You have to win at the size of defeat. This is going to be a long war, and indeed we have to worry about World War 3 in Europe. I mean, this is all, of course, ludicrous as the two of you know better than I do, but this is kind of where we're at. So getting to West, getting people, the elites in the West, to change their thinking about how to deal with Russia is going to be difficult in the extreme. And of course, on the other side, Putin has made it clear that he doesn't trust the West. The Western elites, as far as he can throw them, and I don't blame him one bit. He's over time since he took office in 2000, tried to work out some sort of modus Vivendi with the West, and the West has simply refused to play ball. And in fact, if you look at, as we all know, the negotiations surrounding the Minsk accords that the West basically duped him, and he's not going to trust him. So when you add this all together, it's just hard to see a significant improvement or any even small improvement in Western dash Russian relations moving forward. This is all very very sad, actually. We're not seeing policy change in the Middle East, where it's all going wrong, and getting worse, and getting worse all the time. We're not going to see changes of policy towards Russia, though I would have said all the reasons argue that for such a change of policy, we have to keep our fingers crossed and hope that a new administration led by of all people, Donald Trump, might take us in a better direction, because in all other respects, we're apparently trapped in continuing these policies for visceral reasons, more than any others. It's a very sad situation. And I have to say, we shouldn't just be hard on the US here. The Europeans have played a very significant role in this. I don't remember this. This was before my time, but Harold McMillan once talking about the British being the Greeks to the Americans who were the Romans. It was a certain thing when he said it. But anyway, he did say, well, we're certainly not being Greeks. We're certainly not being coming around and being wise, and telling our American friends, well, look, just hold back a little, think about what you're doing here. We're not doing anything of that at all. In fact, to the extent that we're doing anything, we're cheering the Americans on, and making it more difficult for the Americans to change course. The worst thing that we should be doing in Europe, I will say, I have heard it said, I know that there are people in Britain in the British government who deep down don't agree with what is happening. I've spoken to these people myself, but I know it from others who have done. I believe the same is true in every other major European capital in Germany, in France, especially. At the moment, none of these people are prepared to come forward. And a failure of imagination but also I have to say of courage. Yeah, very hard to disagree. And I mean, if you look at just, let's move away from the governments of these various countries in Europe and in the United States. If you look at the public discourse about Russia and Ukraine and the Middle East and American foreign policy or the West foreign policy in general, there is unanimity among the commentators. It's really quite amazing sort of where we are for people who hold our views, the three of us, to sort of get a space in the mainstream media and make our arguments. It's just extremely difficult, right? There's this group thing that's at play here that is really quite stunning. I mean, if you go back to 2003 in the Iraq war, there's no question that Tony Blair, to take the British case, was fully supportive of what the Americans were doing. But if you looked at the British elites in general and British public opinion, there was a huge opposition to what the Americans were doing. And if you look at countries like France, you look at countries like Germany, there was real opposition to what the United States was planning to do in Iraq for good reason. But the situation in 2003, the run up to the war in March of 2003, is fundamentally different than the situation that exists today. There's a group thing present today at the elite level, inside governments and in the mainstream media and in the foreign policy establishments more generally, that is really quite stunning and in a way hard to explain. In liberal democracies, we are supposed to have a marketplace of ideas. You would expect that there would be more of an open discourse and that people would be interested in hearing what we have to say. You don't have to agree with us, but you would at least want to hear these arguments. But that has certainly not been the case up to now. And anybody who talks about changing anything gets hardened feathered. It's again quite remarkable. I think the problem goes beyond governments because it's the public discourse, I think, has changed. All the languages now these days expressed in morality, which you would think would be a good thing. But obviously, all policies are framed as being the good fight or a good cost. And obviously, the opponent's perspectives become something evil. They look for your bad intentions. So I can understand very well what you're explaining in terms of how any opposition is portrayed, because every time I discuss Ukraine, it's always the assumption that, wait, do you have bad intentions? So if you want, why aren't you cheering for our team? If you're cheering for our team, you shouldn't get a lend end legitimacy to the other side. But if we all take the point of departure, we want this whole horror show happening in Ukraine to end. The point of departure has anything we have done to help Ukraine actually help them. Before 2014, Russia didn't lay any claim even to Crimea. Hundreds of thousands of people, young men, were still alive. This is something you spoke about a lot, especially in 2014 and 2015, saying we're taking the Ukrainians down the primrose path. I'm guessing your point was proven. Sadly, all your predictions came true. Even now that we're accepting that the Ukrainians are losing, that's more men than they, more territory, but still, this idea that the only moral thing is to continue to fight, it's quite astounding. And again, this is not a new issue. I remember Hans Morgantau, he wrote about this, if you frame conflict as good versus evil, then you can't have compromise anymore, because compromise becomes a peaceman. Even 100 years ago, we had Walter Lipman when he reported on how the British covered the Russian Civil War. He also said, framing everything as a struggle between good and evil, we had this advantages and disadvantages. A great, great thing was we mobilized the whole public, because everyone believes good should fight against evil. But his main point was, once you have a workable peace, then we won't reach for it. And the reason we won't reach for it is because you can't have peace with evil. As you said, John, you're not going to make peace with Hitler. This is a key problem, I think, in a discourse. We've put in this new Hitler and the resistant movement in the Middle East. They're all terrorists. We can't even talk about Iran as a country with national interests. They're evil. My concern is, we're building up, China's not quite there yet, but we're also building up China as this new Soviet Union, a communist empire, who wants to do evil. Again, we don't have to have the same interest as the Chinese. We can have competing interests, the times we want to balance them, the times we want to cooperate. But the point is, as long as they're all evil, it's always just escalate. There's no moderation. Maximization of power always is equated to maximizing security. I think it creates a delusion across the border. It also, one of the problems here, Glenn, is as the situation deteriorates and you worry about losing support on the home front, what you do is jack up the rhetoric. You make the argument that you're dealing with Adolf Hitler more and more because you're desperate to keep people on board. Actually, what's happening today is that people are making the argument about World War III and the Soviet. I mean, Russia has the second coming of the third right more and more because they're desperate to make sure that they can keep the American people on board and get the American people to vote for Joe Biden instead of Donald Trump, because Donald Trump is an appeaser. He doesn't recognize how evil Russia is. It's that kind of argument. The situation is actually, in my opinion, gotten worse in recent months as the situation in Ukraine has deteriorated. That is certainly true here in Britain. I mean, the rhetoric has, in the last few weeks, all been about the Russian march into Europe, the threat from Russia, talk about nuclear war, people talking and debating nuclear war in ways that I would once have considered unimaginable, but it is actually happening. Talk about the British and the French sharing their deterrence with the Germans, which again, I mean, once upon a time, the French sharing nuclear weapons with the Germans. Again, that would have been unthinkable too, and it's a disastrous idea anyway. Never the word peace. This doesn't seem to be something that anybody wants to even talk about. I'm not talking about, even a cold peace as people talk about, a period of, it's always like the cold war where we weren't fighting them and they weren't fighting us. We were hostile to them and they were hostile to us, but there were ground rules, and we each understood what we could and couldn't do. And that meant that people were able to get on with their lives with a certain degree of security. But in recent today, there is nothing like that. And I don't see any sign from any part of the political system of that changing at the moment. I do know that there are many people, well, I don't know about many people, but there are people in government who deep down think this is wrong and who have doubts, but they're far too intimidated and afraid to come out and speak. And in the media, of course, you don't find this at all. You find one or two journalists, like Simon Jenkins, who sort of tiptoes around some of these issues that we've been talking about, but even he can't really be forthright about them, as perhaps he would want to do. Can I ask you two a question? Over the past year or two, I've placed great emphasis on the importance of the artillery balance for determining which side will prevail in this conflict. And of course, the Russians have had and continue to have a significant advantage that if anything appears to be widening. But watching what's going on these days, I'm beginning to think that certainly the artillery balance matters. But what really has changed is the coming of air power, the fact that the Russians are using these iron bombs with sophisticated guidance systems on them that's turned them into smart bombs, smart glide bombs, which are having a profound effect on the battlefield. And also the manpower problems that the Ukrainians are having. There's a big piece in the Financial Times today on the Ukrainian military's problems raising manpower. It's a stunning piece. It's a shocking piece, because it shows just how many Ukrainians are outside of Ukraine. And it shows how little enthusiasm there is among young males to fight this war. But anyway, all of this is to say that I'm beginning to think it's not so much the artillery balance. And I don't want to say that doesn't matter. But it's the coming of air power and manpower problems on the Ukrainian side that really are dooming the Ukrainians at this point in time. I was wondering what you Alexander and you Glenn, think about that comment. What can I just say? I've come to much the same conclusion. If you've been following my program, so I said that the artillery issue, I mean, it still remains important. It is not historic. But people who discuss this, that the attention it is getting in Europe especially, you know, scrabbling around trying to find shells, going to who knows which countries to buy them there, who knows what condition that this is becoming actually up and of something that is becoming overtaken by events. Because if you actually look at what has happened on the battlefronts, the battlefields, over the last few months, it is precisely the sudden dramatic appearance of Russian air power. And there are all sorts of factors playing here. There is the fact that the Russians have developed finally precision guided bombs took them years to do it. A war incentivized them to do something that the United States had mastered 30 years ago. But now they've done it and we see the effect. But also the fact that the Russians have finally managed to get on top of the Ukrainian air defense system, which they weren't able to do at the start of the war. And here again, we see industrial issues starting to play a role, because we're finding it apparently very, very difficult to keep the Ukrainian air defense system supplied with the missiles it needs in order to keep the Russian air force back. It's manpower, it's artillery, it's every single resource Ukraine is running short and the Russians are getting stronger. And again, to come back to a point you made earlier, John, I don't think there is anything practically we can do to turn this round. If the United States went all in, converted its industries to a war economy to try to keep Ukraine going and fulfill all the other needs around the world, well maybe. But we all know that isn't going to happen. I mean, there isn't the social consensus in the United States or in Europe to support that, even despite all of the war propaganda we see. If the United States really felt threatened, if people in the United States really believed that war was about to happen, to defend the United States, they would do it. But they're not going to do it in order to win a tactical victory over the Russians of Ukraine. And the same is true of every European state, all the important European states also. Yeah. Now I very much agree, but I also wouldn't denounce artillery as the king on the battlefield, because it remains quite a leading weapon for causing casualties. But of course, the air power is quite interesting with the drones and missiles, especially the last few months of the war. If you see how much havoc the Russian drones and missiles are causing against the Ukrainian defenses. And as you mentioned as well, the Fabwa bumps, these gliding bumps, these old, many of them I think from the Soviet era, but putting the wings on them and allowed them to glide towards the target. These are huge. And they're just punching huge holes into the defensive line. And of course, the drones I think were also important to knock out the air defenses, because they send these get on very cheap drones over Ukraine. They shoot them down with their expensive missiles. But then at the same time, the Russians can detect where their air defenses are. And then they send their more high quality missiles and knock out the defense air defense. So obviously now that the Ukrainian air defenses are collapsing, it seems natural that the Russian will then be willing to use more air power. And so this is why the casualty rate only intensifies. And that's not even mentioning electronic warfare. I think this is also something that still in a young stage, but definitely that the Russians are dominating in ways which have huge impacts on the battlefield. And just lastly, on the manpower issue, I think this is an interesting point, because I think this is where some of our propaganda has failed to caught up, because I agree that I think the Russians underestimated the national identity that emerged in Ukraine over the past 30 years. Obviously, there are many who fight, even ethnic Russian Russian speakers on the Ukrainians that are willing to fight till the end for Ukraine. But this story we have that all the Ukrainians, they're all willing to fight till the end, fighting against Russia, all they want from us is our help. It doesn't really correspond with reality, because it's not that black or white. There's millions now inside Ukraine or hiding from their government who are being pulled out of buses and out from their homes. There are also millions of Ukrainians who have fled the country who are now across Europe and not wanting to go back and protect their country. And even most interesting of all, the country in the world has taken the most Ukrainian refugees is Russia. I was watching a Ukrainian TV program that day, at least a clip, where they were talking about a lot of these kids who had come back from Russia when Ukraine, and they asked to go back because life was better there. Obviously, it may make sense given the current state of Ukraine in this war. But nonetheless, this idea that everyone, every Ukrainian is just dying to fight for the government against Russia. I think it doesn't really correspond with reality. You can't explain where all these people have gone. I think that was also something that Selensky's former advisor, Arastor, which pointed out about a month ago, saying, "We shouldn't probably have demonized all the Russians to this huge extent given that millions of people in our own country might have supported us now instead choose not to fight and go into hiding or flee the country." I agree. I think the manpower issue and the weaponry, especially now the air power, is a huge significance. Just very quickly, the Financial Times piece today reports that there was a February survey that was done in Ukraine asking young men their views on whether they were prepared to fight or not. This is according to the Financial Times, 48% of the Ukrainian men surveyed were not prepared to fight. They were not prepared to fight. 34% were, and 18% didn't have a clear answer to give. Only 34% were willing to fight. Furthermore, the article shows that there are 1.3 million men of military age living abroad, and there are 1.2 million men in the Ukrainian military at this point in time. That's the Ukrainian military broadly to find these are all not combat soldiers on the front lines, obviously. But just think about that. There are more Ukrainians, more Ukrainian men of military age living abroad than there are in the Ukrainian military. Shocking. Again, 48% of the men who were surveyed were not prepared to fight. There's a country that is significantly outnumbered in terms of manpower to begin with. How can you possibly win? Both of you surely know there was this French magazine article. I think the magazine is at Alexander Marianne. Marianne Marianne. That reported on these French Ministry of Defense studies that had been done about the war in Ukraine, and those Ministry of Defense reports and the Marianne article made it manifestly clear that what we're saying here dovetails with what they were saying, or which is to say Ukraine is doomed. What Macron is being told by his own military people, because it seems that he has in fact received these reports, so I understand. But of course, he doesn't want to hear what he's being told. He talks instead about we mustn't let Putin wait because exactly as you said, John, he's the second coming of Adolf Hitler. Well, that's all quite what Macron has said, but sometimes the implications come very close to that. But that's absolutely right. Every metric, every indicator now shows that Ukraine is going to lose the war. It's now impossible objectively to deny that truth, and in that article by Marianne, they quote a French officer who says that the greatest strategic error that you can possibly make is to think that there is some kind of military solution to this conflict, which ends in a Ukrainian victory. That is impossible. That's what the military are privately advising their political leaders. The political leaders just don't want to listen, and that's the problem. This is one of my concerns that once now it becomes evident that Ukraine, one of the key reasons is losing is this lack of absence to manpower. The next step in so-called helping Ukraine will be discussing, cutting their benefits, going all the way to deporting them to send them back to Ukraine. I've read in the media in this country, at least with some former military people arguing that it's the responsibility. They should go home and fight if they're of that age. One could sympathize with the argument if it wasn't our war too, because keep in mind, we had to want to topple the government who was committed to neutrality. As the New York Times recently posted with the CIA cooperation from the day one of the toppling, we began to run the country a little bit like a colony, also as confirmed by the general prosecutor Viktor Shokin. After toppling the government, we, time and time again, over sabotaged the peace agreement. First, the Minsk, and then in early 2022. To now deport Ukraine and refugees and force them to fight in a war, which is largely ours. I don't see the morality there anymore. I'm hoping we're not going down that direction. I just keep getting surprised by the horrific things we're willing to do in the name of helping Ukraine. This is one of my great concerns that we will try to solve the migrant issue and the lack of manpower in Ukraine with a solution like this, because it, well, nothing shocks me anymore, I guess. Well, can I just add to that? What is being proposed basically to porting people to go back to Ukraine, to fight a war in which they're killed? That would not just be something that would mark an extraordinary moral reversal. It would also be a complete change in Western legal culture. It would be something which goes profoundly against the grain of the way in which Western or D.C. European countries, certainly Britain. I mean, I used to deal with cases of this kind, deals with people effectively, who are effectively refugees from a war. I mean, this is, I mean, there's international conventions, there's all sorts of things, which we in Europe largely, and the Americans, we created, which say that you shouldn't be doing this thing, and if we're going to do that, we're setting all of that aside. In order to promote this extraordinary venture, which has destroyed Ukraine, I mean, it's difficult to convey how bizarre and sad this really is. I think Alexander and Glenn, when you go back to that April 2008 decision to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, you see that that was one of the greatest strategic mistakes of modern times. I don't believe I'm exaggerating when I say that. When you think of the consequences of trying to bring Ukraine into NATO, trying to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia's borders, and where this is all led, oh my God, and mainly for the Ukrainian people. Well, so for the Russians for that matter, the Russians have lost significant numbers of troops, and many people have been wounded. This is horrible, but if you think about Ukraine, what's happened to Ukraine, the country's being dismembered, right? It's going to turn into a dysfunctional rum state. The number of people killed, I don't know what the exact number is, but I think it's at least 500,000 casualties that would be dead plus wounded. Oh my God, that decision in April of 2008. And then the fact that we doubled down at every turn, you have a war over Georgia in August 2008. Isn't this evidence that the Russians are not going to tolerate Georgia and Ukraine coming in to NATO? Then trouble in 2014, and what do we do? We double down again. And then in 2021, 2022, when it looks like you're going to get a war, do we try to prevent a war? No. And then when we have peace negotiations, the Istanbul track and the Israeli track with Naftali Bennett, what do we do? We basically push the Ukrainians to walk away from a possible deal, just hard to believe how remarkably foolish we have been, and what the utterly horrible consequences are for the Ukrainians. I can only agree. I can't add anything to that. I mean, I completely agree. And these people claim to be defenders of the Ukrainians. They're Ukraine saviors, and it's people like us who are anti-Ukrainian. This is what an upside down world we live in. I think this is the product of propaganda, though, because everyone knew that this would happen. You yourself, both of you referred many times, I guess, to the when that horrible decision was done in 2008 to try to expand NATO to Ukraine. This is when, you know, who's now the CIA director will and Burns made this warning. You know, this will trigger a civil war, which he did, and then Russia will likely intervene, something they would not want to do. Again, the CIA director also, so all the warnings were there, and still, this is all of this is brushed over in order to make it so we can pretend that any of this has anything to do with helping or supporting Ukraine. This is why I think that the rhetoric that propaganda is so important in this conflict, because it washes across everything. You know, we say, "Oh, Ukraine has to join NATO now. We're still because Russia would never dare to attack NATO country, but also we have to support Ukraine, because if we don't support because if Ukraine falls, then Russia will invade NATO countries." So none of this makes any sense, but you know, you have to choose. Either Russia will never attack NATO country, or that's what it will do, but there's no consistency anymore. And we just have this reason, this effing, I guess, by this moral slogan airing. We even have our recent history of historical memories even gone, like Putin. He's now, you know, this idea is Hitler. That's this eternal enemy of the West who we can't negotiate with. You know, he was been in power for 24 years. For 22 of those years, he was attempting to make peace, and he wanted to integrate into a greater Europe. We had someone who was willing often to ignore partners in the East in order to stare Russia towards the West. This idea that everything is some external enemy looking to destroy us, and we have no blame in it. It's just, it's become so, yeah, so delusional. It's, yeah, it's obscene, but this is where we are. Len, one final point, because I know we have to go, but you don't want to forget that in the 1990s, when NATO expansion was first broached and pushed forward by the Clinton administration, there were a substantial number of prominent people to include George Kennan, Paul Nitsa, a super hawk, the Secretary of Defense, Bill Perry, that's Bill Clinton's Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all of whom said that NATO expansion is going to lead to disaster. There was a huge opposition in the 1990s. Most people forget this, right? And those people proved correct. So it's not just people like us, right? And people who started arguing in 2008, or started to argue in 2004, that this was going to lead to big trouble. Going back to the creation of this policy, in the mid 1990s, all sorts of prominent people with, with, with establishment credentials, right? And in some cases, very hawkish people said this was a prescription for disaster. And of course, they proved correct. Absolutely. I mean, amongst, one amongst them was a man I knew briefly, called Richard Pipes, who was a brilliant historian, but one of rather, shall we say, solidly rush, you know, critical views about the Soviet Union certainly, and not particularly favorable views about Russia, I would say overall. But, you know, he also said this is going to be a terrible mistake. I mean, it was, it was right across the scene, you know, people would say this is going to be a mistake. And of course, it was still done. And after that moment, from the moment it started, they got this ball of NATO expansion rolling. There doesn't seem to have been any ability intellectually to stop, to say, you know, look, we've got as far as we can the Russians are pushing back in the interests of maintaining preserving peace in Europe would also be in the priority, the paramount priority from that was what we appeared to have secured peace in Europe. In the interest of securing peace in Europe, the time has come to stop and to move forward and to see how we can sort things out with the Russians in their interests and in ours. We didn't do it. And here we are. Just to add a few names to the long list that John just had. I would also add that Bill Clinton himself, he made a speech in January of 1994, when he actually cautioned that NATO expansion could mean drawing a new line between East and West, which could then create the self-fulfilling prophecy of a future confrontation. That's Bill Clinton. If he would say that today, he would be a Putinist. And, you know, and then you have, but then the new people like Jack Matlock, who actually were part of negotiating then to the Cold War, warned this will bring the Cold War back. And you're the same with James Baker. He also cautioned this was this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we do this, we're going to have a war, not the war in Israel, but conflict with Russia and no. And that's a great line by Roderick Lyon. He's a former British ambassador to Russia. He actually said in 2020 that, you know, it was a huge mistake in 2008 to try to pull Ukraine into NATO. And in the direct quote, if you were to start a war with Russia, this is the best way to do it. This is right up there with Angela Merkel saying that Russia would interpret this as a declaration of war. I mean, this is what frustrates me. This is what is considered today to be Putinism or Russian propaganda. It's just something which was stated by all top officials for 30 years until it was deemed to be something that led legitimacy to the opponent's opponent side. So now we have to pretend it never happened. It's, anyways, I'd like to finish on a good note. So any of you have a final comment before we log off? No, I have nothing more to say. I'm saying, should say I have nothing positive to say. I'm sad to say. I have nothing very positive to say. The only thing is, I would say that, you know, events can sometimes take unexpected turns. I think the wall, we're not going to see anything unexpected there. I think now it's fairly clear what's going to happen. But once we get to the other end of the other side of it, perhaps, perhaps some of those people who do have their doubts will start to come out and will speak out and, you know, we'll find a way back. I'd like to hope so. I'm going to hope so, even though I have no reason to think that that is what's going to happen. Yeah, let's hope common sense prevail. We're with today in the newspaper. In this country, there was, you know, they refer to the Pope because he suggests that, come on, it's time to have the white flag. Let's negotiate. And one of our headlines in our paper was, we don't need the white, Pope's white flag was surrendered. We need the grenades. So this is the sentiment in this country of peace. So anyways, let's just wrap it up there. And again, thank you to both of you. I appreciate it taking the time. And for anyone listening in, thank you to you as well. Thank you, Glenn. Thank you, Alexander. [Music]