The Duran Podcast
Geopolitical Reality w/ Tarik Cyril Amar
Ok, we are live. We have Alexander Mercuris with us today. Alexander, how are you doing? I'm very, very pleased and extremely excited to have Tarik Cyril Amar with us today on the Duran, just to say I read pretty much everything. Anytime I see that he's written something, I always read it. And I've learned an awful lot from Tarik, unless I should just say that before we proceed further with this program. Yes, and everyone that has been watching the Duran over the over the years, they have been waiting for Tarik to join us. And we're very, very happy that we have you with us, Tarik. I have your website information in the description box down below. I will add as a pinned comment Tarik's Twitter and sub-stack as well. We recommend that everyone follow Tarik and read all of the amazing analysis and information that he puts out there. Alexander follows Tarik, so we highly recommend Tarik. And before we get started to talk about some of the geopolitical realities in the world today, let me just say a quick hello to everyone that is watching us on Odyssey on Rockfin Rumble, YouTube, the Duran.locals.com. And a big thank you to our great moderators. Spartan Warrior Queen is with us. Peter is with us. Zariel, I think, is in the house as well. Thank you to our moderators. And Tarik, Alexander, a lot of news in the world today. Let's talk about it. Indeed. And can I also say if we are positioned from London, which I am, an awful lot of anger today, to a degree that I have rarely seen, a huge amount of anger about the way things are turning out, not just the more in Ukraine. I mean, that's the main part of it. But I mean, a great sense that a lot of what was hoped for and anticipated out of this war is going wrong. A bitter article editorial in the daily telegraph this morning, for example, saying that Putin looks more entrenched than ever, which is one way of expressing it, but also a genuine sense that we've reached a pivot point and that we in Britain are on the wrong side of it, that things are now shifting away from us. Tarik, what do you think? Is that true? Are we at a pivot point? I think you're right about this. Let me add one thing before I answer your question, because I didn't have a chance to thank both of you for your very kind invitation and also your very kind introduction. Thank you very much. So I agree with you entirely. I think this is a pivot point or maybe a turning point, a breaking point, but something, we're in a crisis. And the crisis can go either way, but it's unlikely that things can go on the way they have been going for much longer. And as to that sense of anger that you are describing, particularly in Britain, I have a feeling this is quite widespread now in what I would call EU NATO Europe. And it's coming through, unfortunately, among the media class, which has been very streamlined throughout this war, it is also coming through in parts of the public, as one gets out of anecdotal detail maybe from social media, which is perhaps even more unfortunate. And it's coming through in the political elites who have in a way lost all self possession, it seems, right? I mean, you have spoken about this particular response in Britain now, but we've also had, I think, an editorial today by Charles Michel, the head of the European Council. And of course, on one side on his Twitter, he attacks Putin's election, which is very ironic because nobody has ever elected him in any serious way for his position, which is extremely influential in its own way. But the other thing is he published in a tutorial, I think, yesterday, in which he literally says that the response to what is now happening in the war in Ukraine is that Europe has to adopt a war economy. He uses this term. He puts it in quotation marks, which is a very strange move, right? He wants to use his very strong word, but he doesn't quite yet have the courage to do it. So he uses it in quotation marks. But this is, as you know, aligned with much of what we've been hearing out of European elites, in particular, recently. In fact, you know, there has been, I've just yesterday, I read an article published in Germany, of course, on Nachtings, I think, which is sort of an alternative side, right? By Michael van der Schuhlenburg and Ojofonke, and both of these people are outside the mainstream, right? van der Schuhlenburg has had a very distinguished diplomatic career with the UN, among other things. He's now with the Wagenknecht parties that has emerged. But what they are saying, and I think the right about this, is if you look at the United States, bad as things are, there are some signals of at least trying to rethink this a little bit, right? Whereas the European media and the European elites now have shifted into this, as I would say, these are not his terms, stay the course mode, right? And my sense is that what we are seeing is, remember when the Vietnam War wasn't going by the United States in the last century, and there was this term, we've got to Vietnam is the war, we've got to make it a Vietnamese affair. And it's almost, we are seeing the Europeanization of this war, right? Not that the EU hasn't been heavily involved before, it should never have acted the way it acted, but now it seems the Americans are retreating piece by piece. And the Europeans, or the EU Europeans, the EU NATO Europeans, I should say, are all too eager at this moment, it seems, I'm not saying it's going to stay this way, to take their place. That's at least the way they're talking. That's very interesting. Now, there's been a very interesting article in one of the sort of military journals here in Britain, published by the Royal United Services Institute, by a man called Alex Vashinan, who's a very clever, talented military officer from the United States. And he's pointing out what a war economy really amounts to. And to achieve that, to achieve the kind of war fighting capability that someone like Charles Michel is talking about, you would need a social and economic revolution in Europe, you would need to transform European society and European institutions completely in ways that, in fact, would actually empower people in some ways against the elites. So I mean, you would have to, for example, provide skilled training for industrial workers, you'd have to have a lot more industrial workers, you'd probably have to have them in unions. Vashinan doesn't talk about that, but it's difficult to imagine that that wouldn't happen. You'd have to have sweeping industrial policies, all kinds of things, planning systems, things of that kind. And I don't know whether Michel understands that, but it's unachievable. If you're going to try and preserve the current political structures and system in Europe. And I think that at some level, he probably does understand that. I think that collectively, they know that they can talk in this way, but that he can't be done. And I think that probably explains some of their anger and some of their, you know, sense of frustration. But is there a chance that rather than try to do that long term thing, they will try to do something risky and dangerous. We've had Macron talking recently about sending troops to Ukraine. Do you think that they might do a high stakes gamble of that kind? If I may say one word about your comments on the Vashinan article. Again, I think you're right. And I had read it, but I hadn't actually picked up on that aspect. I think you're absolutely right. It implies some form of political social revolutionizing of Europe first. And you know what that brings to mind to me now that you mentioned it. During the second word, why I think the Americans termed this notion of the garrison state, right, they developed it first for what could happen if the Axis powers ever controlled Eurasia plus Africa. That I think was the origin of the term. And the idea was that we will be so beleaguered then that we have to turn our society into a garrison state, right. And then they used it in the court war with reference to what the Soviets could possibly do, but my both of course had really been able to do to them. And I think what you're describing as this implication of the Vashinan piece is that it's almost a dream about a garrison state EU, right. And you're absolutely right. It's not possible. It can't be done. As to your question, do they think it's possible? I don't know. I think you're probably right that the smarter ones understand that it's highly improbable, right. I mean, even if you look at the recent European defense initiative for whatever they call it, this new plan that they set up, right, if you look at the details, the funding is totally underwhelming, right. And basically they're saying, yeah, but in the future we'll invest more. And you really have to ask yourself, where's it supposed to come from with Europe's economies in the state there? And now to the question you asked at the end, which is would somebody be insane enough to try, you know, what the Germans used to call an escape forward, right. So you're in a desperate situation and you count as your own despair by actually launching an attack, by going under your offensive, right. I hope not. I've watched some of your comments on Macron's initiative. And I think if I understand you correctly, I agree with you that it didn't go very well for him, right, and that for now at least it seems that he has certainly not been able to bring major players in Europe behind him, right. And also, as you pointed out, Putin himself, the Russians have called his bluff in very strict terms. And I'm very happy they did that. I think that was very salutary for all of us, actually, for world peace. And it seems to have worked. But here is what still makes me concerned about this. And that is the fact that he's not stopping. And when he started this whole thing, he did make one very interesting remark. I think it was at this initial press conference after this Paris meeting where he launched this whole thing for the first time, I think. And one of the things he said was, well, we have seen many times that inside Europe, we have had red lines, and then later these red lines were surpassed, right. And there, of course, he has a point, empirically speaking, has a point. Since February 2022, Europe as a whole, Germany is a prime example, but others have acted similarly, has moved from being very reticent about actually supplying into this war to being ever more reckless, so that we have reached the stage now where German officers, two of them generals, one the head of the Air Force, sit in a virtual room and discuss how they can camouflage German cruise missile attacks on the Russians, right. So here I fear that, unfortunately, my cons observation that the European scene, if I may put it that way, is so unstable and so badly controlled, that maybe they can still get to cross the red line of that kind as well isn't entirely displaced. I mean, for the moment, I agree with you, it seems that that was something that failed. There was a trial balloon that failed, but is it entirely off the table? I fear not, you know, I wish it was. What do you think would be the reaction of the European public if something like that was tried? What do you think would be the reaction specifically in Germany, for example? I mean, the Germans have long history of war in this part of Europe. I mean, the Germans were there in the First World War, they were there in the Second World War, it didn't go very well, but that was in terms of political time and in the lifetime of people a long time ago now. Would people in Germany, would they support such a thing if it ever came to it, or would there be on the contrary such a strong backlash that it would not be possible politically to do, and might that lead to people if it would ever suggest questioning other things? Unfortunately, I think that the time that has passed since Germans have for the last time fought the horrific war in this area has been so long that a lot of them have forgotten the lessons. That is my impression right now. However, it's difficult to tell for a specific reason, which is that I also feel that the German media landscape, at least the traditional media, right? The major news magazines, the major TV shows, the major channels, also, yeah, that's basically I think what I was trying to mention, that these traditional media are right now extremely bellicist, astonishingly bellicist. For German of my generation, I'm not that young, that's not the Germany I grew up in, the West Germany, actually I grew up in West Germany still, and that was also a very conservative country in many ways, deeply ingrained, but there wasn't the degree of open fascination again with weapons system, that was just not fashionable, you just didn't do this, constantly talk about, you know what can our Lyapart do to the Russians, what could our cruise missiles do to them, that wasn't done. I'll give you another example, an extremely important officer in the Bundeswehr, in the German army, has just come out in a tweet, and he's tweeted that he is so happy, because then the process of making the German army "kriegs-tüchteig", now if you're not German, it's very hard to catch how strange this term is, because what it literally translated means is war capable, capable of regime war, kriegs-tüchteig, I can guarantee you that in the 1980s, at the end of which I actually had a stint in the West German army, nobody would have used this term in West Germany, this would have been scandalous, every time you talked about the possibility of war, even inside military training, which I went through, you talked about the case of defence, the frütteigungs file, you never said something like "kriegs-tüchteig" belong to war, you said we may have to defend ourselves, now on one side that was a semantic game, right, everybody knew that you're talking about the possibility of a war, but it is very striking that this type of rhetoric is now allowed again, and that it's practised by the army itself, that a very similar rhetoric is practised by the Green Party, that similar people are unfortunately even in the SPD, not all of them, but a lot of them, in the government in January. So here's my short answer to your initial question, I fear that some sort of reckless adventure where NATO troops, EU troops, would be posted in a part of say Western Ukraine, right, put on the ground, would initially not find much resistance, I'm not sure whether that means a lot of Germans would love it, but I don't think a lot of Germans would come out and actually act against it, the really interesting question to me is, what is going to happen when the Russians will do what is entirely logical and attack these troops, right, if you insert these troops into an ongoing war, put them on the battlefield where they become targets and the Russians have told us that this old rule will hold, they will not make an exception, what will happen if Germans begin to hear that Germans have died in this way, somewhere in Ukraine, Germans may already have died, and well aware of that, yes, I'm sure French mercenaries have died or even foreign legion people have died in Ukraine and British troops have, I think, in the fact or died in Ukraine, but you know we're talking about something else, an official big deployment by the current standards of official ground troops who are officially there being attacked casualties, that's the first step I don't know what would happen, but the next step I think is even more critical and interesting, what would happen if Russia would finally pull the plug on this fiction of not being at war with the West, why the war is constantly at war with, why the West is at war with Russia, through Ukraine, and would attack a base in Germany or in Poland with Germans on it, I really don't know, would Germans do what they did in World War I, would they essentially, you know, circle the dragons, the famous idea of broke freedom, right, the peace of the castle, the beleaguered castle, and ultimately go along, or what you have been hinting at would they finally rebel, personally, I very much hope they would rebel, but I also remember that a lot of socialists before 1914 hoped that a lot of populations would rebel and they didn't, right? Exactly, including a lot of socialists, of course, in Germany specifically, do you get the sense, which I also do, that amongst the elites there is now a fear of peace in Europe specifically, perhaps to some extent also in the United States, but that they are very, very nervous about a peace settlement which might in a kind of a way play against their position, we've had now statements, I mean there was Zelensky, President Zelensky came to Turkey recently, he met with President Erdogan, Erdogan told her you've got to talk to the Russians, Zelensky said no, nobody in Europe is telling Zelensky look without the Americans, there's a limit to what we can do, it doesn't look as if the Americans are there for much longer, that there's a kind of fear within the elites about not so much defeat, but peace itself, that a kind of strategy of maintaining tension is preferable even in the event of defeat to some kind of settlement which might lead to a secure peace, because I have to say from the language of some people in Europe within the elites, I'm always getting that very sense actually, I think you are probably right, look I mean the first thing that comes to my mind concerning this issue is in a paradoxical way, these elites of Europe who have become so belligerent, who have made war really their policy over the last at least two years now, there's one thing they have to fear from peace which nobody else has to fear, which is that the peace will last, because look at it this way, one story that we have been told again and again and again, and Michel has said it again, Biden has said it recently, Schultz has said it, they all say the same thing which is, once Russia, if Russia ever wins in Ukraine, then Russia inevitably will attack us, this is one of the most important doctrines, mantras, that they are spreading without tiring of it, there is zero evidence for this, it makes absolutely no sense, it's about as plausible as the idea that the Russians would have blown up Nord Stream, it's very similar in that there's just no motif, why should they do this, right, but this fantasy has been extremely important for these European elites and for the way that they have treated their publics and electorates, right, now if the war ends, let's assume Russia wins, which I think it will, and the war ends with some sort of settlement that is largely not favorable to Ukraine, at least not to the current regime, let's be very precise here, that means that Ukraine becomes neutral, full stop, end of that silly discussion about NATO and all of that, and that is not favorable in indirect ways, also to those governments inside the EU and the EU itself, the Commission, Funderline and so on, Borrel, right, who was a terrible war monger, who has been a terrible war monger throughout this, and sort of discredits them, that's one thing, that's step one, but the second step would be the Russians would not attack, and that would discredit them as well, because they have told everybody that we have been fighting this long war, we have really accepted enormous damage to the politics and economies of the European Union, and we have, of course, sacrificed Ukraine in the process, and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians literally sacrificed to this, by telling you, but if we don't do the Russians are coming for us, and then they are not coming, and it's almost like this famous, I think what is going to happen to them is a little bit like that famous novel by an Italian author, I think it was called the Tata Fortress, where you sit forever in your fortress and you wait for the attack, and it never, never, never comes, right, and that's the crisis, that is one thing, but the other thing, this is not the end of the problems they would face, they would then have to explain why the European economies have taken this enormous damage, why our energy prices are now much higher than in Russia and also in the United States, why we have accepted de-industrialization by our ally, the United States, why we have accepted the largest act of war and ecological terrorism, which the attack on Nord Stream, of course, was by our ally, the United States, and maybe with the Ukrainians in the mix, all of these things, once the dust settles, would be coming up for discussion again, right, and then there would be questions about, okay, if we have peace now, and if it turns out that the Russians are not after all of us, why can't we re-establish normal relationships with them, why can't we re-establish, trade, and interaction with them, why can't we let go, not of just some sanctions, but actually all of them, because they serve no purpose and they have been counterproductive even throughout the war, all of these things would come towards these European elites, once there is a peace and I think you are right, of course, they are fearing that, right, there was an old German very, very sinister, dark saying at the end of World War II, and it went, enjoy the war, the peace is going to be terrible, right, I think that in this mindset by now they are seeing something very unpleasant coming for them, and I think what your question really aims at is something else, they are disincentivized for peace, they are completely misincentivized now, they have done this to themselves, but still it is a fact, they have created incentives to go on instead of settling, which they should do of course, because the other thing that I sort of sense is that there are other powers in the world, this is the other great change that we have seen in our lifetimes, you and I, is that, well, when it was West Germany, it was all the binary system, it was world politics was focused on, you know, the northern hemisphere on North America and Russia and Europe, that was where the great deals were, but it isn't like that anymore, we have the new powers that are rising, and I don't think it is widely known, but both China and India, and incidentally, since you are there, Turkey as well, I mean, they are actually, I think, trying to help the Europeans get out of this. Wang Yi, the Chinese Foreign Minister, has recently been to Europe, he has been touring European capitals, talking to European leaders, trying to get them to listen, Jai Shankar, the Indian Foreign Minister, went to the Munich Security Conference, where he made a very impressive and I thought intelligent contribution, saying, you know, you've got to start basically talking, Erdogan in his very complicated way, which I don't always understand, but he basically was saying the same thing, and this is what he said to Zelensky, but again, I get the sense that European elites particularly don't want to get this advice and help from these non-European powers, because they still want to preserve the fiction that Europe remains the global epicenter of world affairs, and that they don't want outsiders like the Chinese and the Indians and the Turks and others coming in and giving them advice and extending to them as a helping hand. But again, am I right in thinking this, or am I seeing more to this than there is really there? I have a very hard time explaining the behaviour of, you know, to be concrete, Commander Emma Cronk, Olaf Scholz, Anna Lena Berbock would come to mind, Robert Harbeck in Germany, the Minister of the Economy, what would be another good, of course, from the line. I have a very hard time explaining their behaviour in entirely rational agent terms, right? I mean, there's obvious system, possibility, maybe it's a temptation to abstract from the psychology that these people also have, they have certain socialisations, they have prejudices and so on, and to think that because of their experiences, politicians, because of their office and what their office demands of them, they must be deciding things at a much more rationalised level, right, they must be relatively free of these emotional factors. And I have a very hard time doing this for them, you know, if, because, not simply because they are being so bad actually at pursuing what should be European interest and the interests of their nations taking separately too, but because they are so hamfisted about it, and it's so easy to see, and they are committing so many, well, I don't know a better word, embarrassing for paths in the process, you know, I mean, Berbock has given us very clear signs that she is not psychologically capable of understanding how incredibly powerful and important China is, she just doesn't get it, it's not in her head. Shorts, if you saw the recent interaction with Andra Ibrahim, Andra Ibrahim is in Berlin and basically tells Shorts off to his face, right, and he was entirely right, this was about Gaza as it happens, but the other thing of that story is that how silly or how short sighted to use a more neutral term, did a German Chancellor have to be to walk into that? Why couldn't he think a little bit before he met this guy and think about his position and where he's coming from? No, Shorts didn't do that at all, hamfisted again. So I tend to agree with what I think you are saying, I hope I'm right about this, which is is a psychological factor, and it has to do with a persistent arrogance. I don't want to immediately use the term racism, but I do think there is an arrogance, and it has to do with who these elites see as common Europeans and who they see as not Europeans. Now the irony, of course, is that the same European elites have based themselves before the American elites as never before in post-war history. I really think this is true, even going back to World War II, this is the great paradox of our time, when the Cold War ended, the objective argument that you could make, why Western Europe needed the Americans and had to pay a price in subservience, you know, for their protection, it fell away. And we are now more than a third of a century later, but now if European elites had reacted more normally to the end of the Cold War, we should be in a world where Europe and the United States might still be allies and have good relationships, that's a different issue, but where this submission to American elites would have ended, we should be in that world, because the objective reason for that's completely gone, right? And of course, they would argue it isn't, I understand. But there is something very, very odd about the way in which it's almost, it almost looks compensatory, that's what I'm trying to say, there is a massive submission, a humiliating submission. I mean, think of the German Chancellor standing next to Biden and smiling like an idiot when Biden is basically saying, yeah, we're going to blow up your pipeline, right? It's humiliating, it's hardly humiliating. And you begin to feel maybe there is a psychological compensation, which goes along the lines of yes, you have to sort of do this with the Americans, but at least we still feel bigger than everybody else. And if that is really going on, it's got tasks, it's horrible. And of course, the rest of the world is seeing it by now. And the irony, the next irony is they're taking the Europeans even less seriously because they're seeing it. Oh, I agree, I mean, just to say, it's not widely known, but British American relations during the Second World War were actually very difficult. There were moments during that alliance when there were bitter disagreements and arguments. It's now been well established that the so-called friendship between Churchill and Roosevelt never existed. There were deep resentments between the two. But they still managed to work together and fight alongside because each made a hard-headed calculation that they needed, the author, and they were allies. That was a relationship of not exactly equals, but of relative equals. And what we have in Britain today is something else, which is a psychology of dependence. And that has been long the case in Britain, but it seems to have spread to Europe as well. Now, this is particularly strange to someone like me because I used to remember long ago people were saying that the reason why we needed to build up Europe through the institutions of what eventually became the European Union was precisely in order to achieve some degree of distance from the Americans. And instead of that happening, what's happened is that those very same institutions have bound this to the Americans even more closely and have shut down the debate amongst us even further. Anyway, going back to your point about the fact that we go where the Americans lead. Does that explain why Europe is unable to do anything at all that is positive about the situation of the Middle East, about Gaza specifically, which is, of course, right on Europe's doorstep. I mean, Europe is very, very involved in this conflict. Understanding why there is a state of Israel is you need to go back into modern European history to understand that as well. And of course the Europeans have been heavily intimately involved in the Middle East, the British and the French were the dominant powers there until the 1950s and besides which the Middle East is very close to us. But it seems European states individually have no coherent policies about what to do about the Middle East, they seem to have the same paralysis and dependence on the Americans also. You know, the thing, the case that has sort of attracted my eye in particular and it has to do with UAP, obviously, is the German case, right? But if I step away from that for a moment, what also fascinates me, somebody has commented on this recently and observed this, is the role of France, right? You added Britain to that, and both have a specific history in the Middle East. And with France, somebody pointed out, and I really can't remember what it was, you can trace that until a fairly late moment in the post for period, France was seen as relatively critical of Israel, not always. And unfortunately, I would say it was also a major military partner for supplies and so on, as we know. But there was a very complicated situation there, and this is not recognizable anymore at all in French policy, right? So across the board, there are minor exceptions, right? Ireland is trying to strike a slightly different tone. Orrell has gotten cold feet, I would say, recently, you know, and is at least saying things about Gaza, that the genocide in Gaza, that's how I see it, I should be very clear about it, that's my position on this, is saying things that, for instance, Funderline would never say, right? People have speculated about that, what that means. But I think you're still absolutely correct. The overall picture is that Europe is marching a lockstep with the United States and the United States has done in, with regard, what the United States did after the mass attack on October the 7th, right, was a classical horrific error of foreign policy. It's worse than an error, but I'm using this term now. They handed out a blank check, right? They did what you should almost never do. They said to a much weaker state, do whatever you want, we don't care, we are with you, right? So I know that if the Germans hadn't done that to the Austrians, we would perhaps not have gotten into World War I, blank checks are really bad idea, right? And so we can talk about why this happens in the United States, why the United States sticks to this policy after six months of slaughter by now, right? But to return to your question, why do the Europeans not offer any sort of alternatives? Why do they not at least impede the Israeli attacks? Why, to be concrete, has the German government multiplied, I think, tenfold arms supplies to Israel actually during this genocide, right? There's very concrete policy that is driven by the Federal Security Council, the Bundecikia itself, which is why some people in Germany are now trying to sue them actually, it won't work, because the judicial system isn't unbiased enough. I really don't know the answer, I don't think it is simply about a sense of guilt, as some people, you know, guess that somehow these Europeans, especially the Germans, of course, for obvious reasons, feel so guilty about what they did to Jews in the Holocaust during World War II, the genocide that they committed there, that they're completely paralyzed and they cannot in any way impede Israel, whatever Israel does. I think this isn't true, actually. I think it's a mix of factors, and they also have to do with, again, subservience to American strategy and seeing no alternative to that. They may have to do with economic considerations, right? This has come up recently. They may have to do with ideas about economic corridors, terrible as this would be. And also, I think what is in the way yet of the Europeans ever changing their behavior on this is a credible challenge in the Middle East. If the Europeans were looking at a coalition of powerful Middle Eastern states, able to actually challenge Israel, of course, there is the Iranian access or Iranian-led access of resistance, there's Yemen and so on, but this is not yet ultimately a very powerful challenge. It's a game changer, as he's saying now. I think if the Europeans were confronted with such a situation, they might behave differently. And I'm saying this because one of the things that I think will come out of this genocide is Iran acquiring nuclear weapons after all. And once that happens, things will change in the Middle East, and then we will see what the Europeans will do with that, actually. And I just don't turn quickly to the Americans because I think that the Americans do actually retain a degree of agency. We've discussed how you can actually get debates in the United States, and that's very striking. You see the American media. You find on its margins, but they're important margins, that real discussions about strategy based not always on realistic assumptions, but more realistic assumptions than those in Europe do take place. And, of course, the United States has the confidence that whatever happens, it is going to remain a great power. So it does have much more space and ability to maneuver than the Europeans do. That might, in time, and this is a completely separate question from what Donald Trump might or might not do, but it might lead to the Americans making decisions which the Europeans might not like and which the Europeans who are in a very dependent position might not be able to challenge. Putin fairly recently said that he believes that some kind of a dialogue with the United States will resume at some point, but that he doesn't expect that to happen with Europe. And that seems to me where the Europeans would be a catastrophe. I was not aware of that statement, but that's extremely interesting. I think he's probably right about that. I have to say that a similar thought, not the same, but a similar thought did occur to me a few days ago, where I was thinking, "Look, in the Cold War, there were moments of detente," and in that detente, the Europeans did play a role by the famous Ospolitic of Brande and so on, but it would be possible to imagine that at some point, the different type of American leadership and the Russian leadership will actually find a common language again. Not necessarily agree on everything, though, of course not, but that they will reenter a space in which they can actually make agreements with each other about contentious questions, which I think really due to the Americans that space has collapsed. This is not the Russians' fault. You can blame the Russians for all sorts of things. I've done so on occasion in public, but you cannot blame them for collapsing the space for diplomacy, and you can be very, very concrete about this before Russia actually attacked Ukraine in a major way, I know some people don't like the term large-scale invasion, but we know what we mean, right, February 2022. It was the Russians who, two, three months before that, at the end of '21, made a very, very clear, high-level diplomatic initiative in these two draft treaties that they presented to the West and said, "Let's talk before it's too late," and I think the signals were absolutely clear, right? They really did not give us no warning, and you could heap up evidence on the ceases that the destruction of diplomacy is really a Western thing. This is not what the Russians have done. This is not important because I want to shift the blame or distribute the blame. It's important because it really only takes a change on the side of the Americans now. The Russians, of course, have lost trust massively, but the Samuel Cherub and Jeremy Shapiro made one good point in a recent article, which is, yeah, but every such crisis conflict war comes with massive loss of trust, and somehow people talk to each other again after a while. They somehow do. You need to rebuild the trust, right? So like you, I think it's entirely possible that at some point, not only will Ukraine be left in the middle, right? Maybe the Europeans will be left in the middle, and these two major players will start talking to each other in a way that neither of them, neither Ukraine, nor the Europeans will have much influence on. If Trump becomes president, which I think if nothing very strange happens, is likely now, then that process might be sped up. It does play a role, I think, in that respect. But there is a longer-term trend, which I agree with you that the Americans have the great advantage over the Europeans, that they are a great power. I think they're declining, but they still have a lot of power, militarily, economically and so on. They're sitting on it, and they also space matters, you know, location, location, location, and the Europeans, of course, and they should have thought about this are in a horrible location to be in a bad relationship with Russia, right? The Americans are in a very different location in that respect, this is the age-old advantage on this globe. Now, if an American elite should, at some point, be wise enough to actually address the problem of decline productively, instead of saying, "We push back, we push back, let's fight, let's fight, let's fight the multipolar world," which is another way for saying the United States declining, right? The multipolar world emerges as the United States declines. If they should ever become constructive, and instead ask, "Okay, our moment of preponderance power is over, well, it happens," how do we secure a good place among the great powers in the concert of powers of the new multipolar world? This would be a rational American response, I'm waiting for it, right? If they should ever do that, then, once again, even that would get them to finally talking differently to Russia, ideally talking differently to China, which is yet another question, right? And in both scenarios, I don't think the Europeans would have much to say. I think you're absolutely right, and I just say both Putin and Xi Jinping have addressed the Americans, and have said exactly that thing in their last summit meeting, Xi Jinping, when he met Biden in San Francisco. He actually said, "We're not looking to supersede you. We're not looking to establish a hegemony in place of your own. We want to work with you." And interestingly enough, and this was said some months ago, actually, Putin made a speech in which he said, "Look, there's lots of things the West does which we don't understand. We don't understand their social issues." At the end of the day, if the Americans want to come to terms with us, they have a place in a new multipolar system as well. We are not seeking to exclude them. He was specifically talking about the Americans again. This is a separate comment from the one that I've discussed previously, but he also said, "We're not looking to exclude them." We are interested in creating a concert of powers based on the United Nations system ultimately, and the Americans, if they want, they have a place in it. But what we will not accept and we will not tolerate is the kind of unipolar hegemonic system that the United States is trying to perpetuate. By the way, in a program that we did on the Duran, there was an Indian ambassador who told us exactly the same thing. He also said that India had hoped that the United States would agree to a preschool transition to the multipolar system, and that the Indians have been very disappointed that on the contrary, the Americans up to this point have resisted it. One can see that there is a way back for the United States with all of these powers, but it was the Europeans' risk instead of becoming partners in this, becoming objects as the decisions about them are made by others. What I think is something that people in Europe perhaps sense, leaders in Europe perhaps sense, but don't really yet have a plan or a real idea about what to do. If you are paying governments and if the structures of the EU, this commission that is trying to be what Fonda lied, threatened us with years ago, the geopolitical commission, we've seen where that has led. If they were reasonable, they could even be relatively cynical about it. Then they would long have understood that the chance for leverage for Europe is, I don't want to put it too crudely, but there is an element of playing both sides, or all sides. You could almost say that in a multipolar system, by definition, your leverage is the ability to play all other sides. That's what you do. What the Europeans have done in status, they have sort of grabbed the Americans by the ankles and they're holding on tight to them and they're paying with the potential for actually executing a foreign policy, whether it's several foreign policies or a more or less united foreign policies, the eternal problem with Europe, of course, for executing some sort of European foreign policy that would actually pursue European interests. I think you could put this another way. When the Ukraine war, when we had to build up to the war between 2014 and 2022, yes, there was a war, but it was much smaller and so on. We had to build up to the larger war, and then 22 and everything that happened afterwards, I almost see the Europeans as insane gamblers. They took a high-risk path. They basically put all the eggs in one basket and the basket was, the Russians are weak. We just know this, we just guessed this and we're right about this. The Americans are very, very strong. We side with the stronger side and we will be on the side of the winners. It would have been much less risky even if nobody knows the future to say we don't know who's weak and who's strong. We don't know this. War is a test. You only find out by war. Maybe a smart way of maneuvering would be to actually delay the Americans, dampen their drive to war down, talk to the Russians, ask for something and return from them. Europeans can be concrete about this. It would have taken one major NATO member in Europe, like, for instance, Germany or France to say we will never agree to membership for Ukraine. That would have changed the situation. The Russians would have had to believe it. That's a problem. I know going forward. There would have still been the problem of the fact that other NATO members above all the United States were trying to put Ukraine into NATO unofficially, which of course the Russians had picked up and talked about already before the large-scale escalation of the war. This wouldn't have been a magic wand, but it would have been a sign of the Europeans at least trying to carve out a space for themselves. The beauty about such an approach would have been that all these people in the Green Party, in the SPD, in the German media, are now focusing on Germany again because I'm so angry with them, frankly, would have saved a lot of Ukrainians as well. And they would have saved Ukraine from this horrific war. Or you could go further back. What would it have cost Hollande and Merkel to not help the Ukrainian Sabotash Minsk II? Sabot Minsk II was a short document, but it had the UN behind it. As we all know, it was the best way out of this crisis. And it was feasible if the Europeans had said to the Ukrainians, you want to cheat on this, not with us. We will withdraw all support from you. They had some leverage there. They did the opposite again. Now, ultimately, I don't have an explanation why Europe is behaving so irrationally, right? So much and not in its own interest. But one thing that does occur to me more and more is that parts of our elites, I think, are heavily subverted by the United States. And we're beginning to see them as comprador elites that are basically not even interested in pursuing European interests. They're interested in something else. I have to say, I agree. Now, on that point, and that very, very powerful and wise point, by the way, Derek, I'm going to transfer to Alex at this point because I know we've got lots of questions. We could talk, I can tell, for hours, you and I about these matters. But I'm sure there'll be people who have questions to put to you. And I really should pass over to Alex at this point. Yeah, let's take a couple of questions and whatever questions are left, Alexander, we can we can answer them. So let's go to rebel king. Do you guys think Putin can liberate us from our Western dictators, liberate us from our Western dictator, so we can also join Russia? Interesting Yes, look, should I answer? Should I try to? Yeah, yeah, these are all okay. Okay, I get it. Sorry. Look, I think my first answer to that is he's not interested. That's not what he's asked. Putin is, I have great differences with his approach to politics. For one thing, because I'm a socialist, it can be open about this of some sort. But Putin is not a socialist. He's not after rebuilding some form of socialist commonwealth and some people say. But I have never seen a problem with the fact that he puts Russia first because that's his job. Actually, right? He's the leader of Russia. And it's a very natural and very normal thing for him to do. It's actually a very responsible thing for him to do. So he's, I don't think he will try to solve our problems with our elites in any way. But let me be, let me add one thing. I think it is possible that the fact that our elites will be heavily discredited by this unnecessary fight against Russia, that I do think they're about to lose, that might have ripple on effects that may, may perhaps shake up the European political scene. And I have to add one other thing. I'm sorry, but I'm also by nature a bit of a pessimist. So when I say up, shake up the scene, I am not predicting outcomes. But that there could be major changes coming from the European Union, in essence, losing its proxy war, that I think is quite possible. Yeah. The hockey goalie asks, can EU leaders not see their militaries can't catch the checks they're writing with all these escalatory remarks? Rational people can see the emperor has no clothes. Yeah. I, I don't know why they don't see this. I, I sometimes, you know, if Alexander, we remember this, Alex, you may be too. There used to be a German chancellor who was not as bad as the current one, actually, Helmut Kohl, right? You could have your issues with him, but he wasn't like Scholz. And Kohl famously didn't understand economics. And this respect, it was very similar to Kohl but Scholz, actually. And I begin to feel there are some people around in Europe who do not want to understand military matters, although they want to make decisions about them. And they treat armies and military means of, you know, getting your will in extreme cases, like miracle weapons. They, they strike me a little bit like children who believe these mythic tales, you know, we have the best rocket. We have the greatest tanks. And, and I know you have mentioned him often, and I watch him regularly, they need to watch Brian Bellatic much more often or they need to read Vashini, right? To come back to the, to the, by the way, accident piece you mentioned at the beginning, Alexander, Vashini's piece is great because there are many things that are not in there, but one thing he does beautifully, he really shows you in detail how hard it is to become good at attrition warfare. And that implies how very far away these guys are from that. And he also advances the argument that he doesn't use his term, but I read him as saying this is why in the West, we have developed a habit of believing in quick fixes, because we can only do quick fixes. And the dirty secret behind that is we can't even do the quick fixes anymore. Yeah, very true. Elaine asks, can our arrogant and dangerous leaders not see the evident truths that the Duran and Tariq have always seen? So what is their end game? Look, that's, that's very flattering. Thank you very much. Obviously, if you don't know, right? In the end. But if you ask, why, why can't they not even see, let's, let's put it more mutually, the risks, right? That people like us are talking about, and I would argue the risks are obvious enough, and it's a job to see them, right? Why can't they do it? I don't know the answer. Frankly, one answer I think is, I do think that, and I don't know when this happened, but the memory of major warfare in Europe has apparently become weak to such an extent that I see this in the German case, and I do think I see it a little bit in the Scandinavian cases, and I feel I see it a little bit in the French case, although Macron got a lot of backlash as well, luckily, right, from his own public, that I think a lot of people don't understand what a major land war in Europe would be like. I think they have these very sanitized ideas here, and make a pop culture reference. There was an Norwegian series a while ago, and it was called Occupy, and it all turned on this fictitious scenario in which the Russians occupy Norway. It intrigues that, but what was interesting about it is, there wasn't any real fighting. It was all about war, but the war was a very, very small scale. You know, there were these minor engagements between a few marines on a little island, and then somebody shut down one fighter plane. That was sort of the scale of the war. War had been reduced to these pin trick operations in this fantasy, and I'm beginning to fear that there are people in Europe that simply don't want to understand that war would not look like that. Not once major European states are openly engaged against the Russian Federation, that would be a large war, a very large one, and even the war in Ukraine, which after all they can observe, should already have taught them that, that this type of modern war is going to be very destructive, and why they can't see it, why they don't want to really face it, you know the Russians have, there is a part of Russian nuclear doctrine, and it reads very, very frightening, and it literally runs. There may be a necessity in a large-scale conflict, not Ukraine, in a much bigger conflict, but much more is again at stake. There may be a necessity to carry out what the Russians call a sobering strike, and by that they mean a relatively, relatively early use of a nuclear weapon, just to get some people in the right place in their head again in the west and show them what can happen. Now obviously, I'm not for the use of nuclear weapons, it's a horrible thing, but this idea of sobering, it struck me when I read that, because I thought they were up to something there. We have become very unsober about war in Europe, it seems. Thank you. You have time for a couple of more, Tariq? I do, yes, of course. Great, the hockey goalie asks, "Could Ukraine be seen as a Thucydides trap for the U.S.? Losing in Ukraine could be akin to Suez, unipolar versus multi-polar world?" I'm trying to, yeah, that's a complicated question. So the Thucydides trap, you know, the original goes back to the Peloponnesian War, and the Athenian January wrote about it, and so the Thucydides distract the basic idea, I hope I'm summarizing this correctly, is that two powers, that's the original version, can simply not trust each other, and because they cannot trust each other, the question really of perception, right, ultimately they end up in the conflict. I don't think this is what happened in Ukraine, to be honest. I think in Ukraine, and again, I'm not saying this out of sympathy for one side, but I think that the historical record will be that in the case of the Ukrainian conflict, Russia was advancing an agenda that its Western opponents did not like. Okay, that's one thing, but Russia was not intransparent, Russia was very transparent, and so I don't think it was ultimately really a perception problem, it was a problem of rigidity, the West just didn't want to give an inch, right, this was very pronounced in the run-up to the war, when people against Stoltenberg, the figurehead of NATO, that's what he really is, right, kept saying that it's simply against the rules of NATO that we ever close our door, and if you read the NATO treaty that is utter nonsense, there is no such rule in NATO, there is no rule based on the treaty that says everybody must be accepted in the end, yes, there are rules for acceptance, right, but there also is a very clear rule that the state can only be accepted with complete unanimous consent of all current members, and this was constantly obfuscated by the West and NATO itself, right, that was a degree of stubbornness, of obstinacy on the side of the West here, so I don't think it was a eucidity strap, I think it was much more a case of arrogance and overreach, it was a case of overreach really. Can I just say something about this, because I constantly hear about this eucidity strap, as somebody who has read Thucydides extensively, and of course he is part of my history because I'm Greek, I can say for a fact that Thucydides never believed in any such thing as a Thucydides strap, but what very old derives from is one sentence taken out of context, when he discusses the origins of the war between Arthurus, Athens and Sparta, and he says that the underlying cause of the war was the growth of Athenian power and the fear this caused in Sparta, he never says though that there was no alternative to that war, he makes it quite clear that both Sparta and Athens had alternatives, and in fact he is very critical of the wrong political decisions that were made in both states, especially in Athens which led up to that war, so I think that people are imposing a determinism and denying a capacity for decision, which Thucydides never suggested, now I just want to say that, I mean it's not perhaps at repose discussion, but there is always a choice, no I think you're absolutely right, can I add, I mean two things that Robert struck me about it, but I also read the Peloponnesian War as almost a very ironic story, it is a bitter ironic story because if you think about it the Spartans and the Senions had defeated the Persians one or two generations before, and at the very end of the Peloponnesian War the Persians actually come back and have reestablished peace, it's a horrible day, and you know the other thing that now that you mentioned the way that he treats Athenian politics, the Sicilian expedition also comes to mind, a crazy overreach, maybe that is like the analogy we could sort of think, but the other thing that also strikes me, I'm sorry I have to add this now, it really made me think about it, but what always fascinated me about him is that he's actually very fair to the Spartans, that to me is one of the most interesting and modern aspects of the book, he's a senior general, of course his career in essence was check-out and complicated, but he goes out of his way I would say, some people have contested this, but I think he's very interested in understanding at least what the Spartans want and where they are coming from, and that again is something that's been completely missing from the West, right, the West just demonizes now, it does never ask okay, be the West and they, Russia or they, China, want different things, but at least we concede to them that they too are rational, they too have a logic, we clash, but we both have logics, because once you accept that, and that goes back to your point about Thucydides, once you accept that point, once you stop demonizing and concede a certain logic to the other, you can negotiate, right, whereas on the other hand if you only demonize, you can't negotiate and I think that's the purpose of demonization, this is why ultimately there has been this whole idiotic cottage industry of comparing Putin to Hitler, because the message behind that is that on the Nazis we all agree, as I would say for good reasons, that no, you couldn't negotiate with them, you just had to fight them to total defeat, so every time the West nowadays wants to be uncompromising, it tries to impose the Nazi image on its rival opponent or potential partner, and the fact is that historically the Nazis were very exceptional, usually opponents are not like this, it is much more common that you can actually still talk to your opponents. Brad, our notes, there's what are the odds Russia will cross that need better? I, you know, to be very honest, I'm not trying to evade this, but given Alexander's intense and very regular, really constant, observing of what is actually happening on the ground, which I listened to, but it's not the same as actually doing this, I do almost think that this is a question for Alexander to be honest. The question that you probably answered many times in the past as well Alexander, but what are the chances? The short answer is absolutely nobody knows apart from people in the Kremlin and the Russian general staff, we can look at what they are thinking and doing, I think to some extent actually it depends on the political development, if there is a negotiation, if there are proposals, there might be very hard terms, if other would be extremely hard terms now, but I don't think the Russians want to cross deep into Western Ukraine, they might feel they have no choice but to do that because a political settlement is impossible, but I think that they would still prefer a political settlement, if they thought that would be secure and stable then they could rely on it, and that is very, very hard question, even for them to answer. Putin himself, in his interview recently was Kieselyov, the Russian journalist, basically was saying it's going to be very difficult to come to an agreement, but he didn't shock the door. Yeah, exactly the same impression of, I think I know the moment in the interview you have in mind, but he says something like, yes, we are open to talks as we've always been, but not on the basis he uses a very brutal term, but essentially he says of wishful thinking, it says something like of people who've smoked too much, so we only, we are open to talks on the basis of realities on the ground, and I think you're right that that by now means that what Ukraine could have had in 2022 in March, April, the Istanbul talks really, that were torpedoed by the West, that's all gone, that's gone, that's not coming back. Yeah, I'm agreed. Let's do two more, and then we will let you go, Tariq. Alexander says, "Why don't the Muslims, Muslim states, stop selling oil to the West like what they did during the Yom Kippur War in 1973?" I think this is, I think we're in a different economic situation. I think first of all, the Arab states, the oil producers, stopping sales of oil in that kind of way, it would be very difficult for them, it would be much more difficult for them to get by with that than it was in 1973. Saudi Arabia is already running a budget deficit, they have a very expensive economic program, they don't want to jeopardize that, and at the same time I think that they don't want to get into an outright collision with the United States. What they want to do is to pursue a policy of diplomatic pressure, and I think that is probably actually in the long term the correct strategy. That is my thought, now are we very interested to hear what Tariq has to say. I would add only two things, I agree, I'd add two things, but one is, I wished that Arab Muslim states or majority Arab and Muslim states would strike Israel much harder than they do. I, including militarily by the way, I think a genocide justifies that, but I also know that they're probably, I'm sure they can't do this yet, and one reason that that isn't possible is that Israel still sits on its solitary, entirely illegal, nuclear arsenal in this region. Before there could be a coalition attack of Middle Eastern states against Israel in the future, one of them would have to have nukes, but for the simple reason not to use them, but to neutralize the Israeli arsenal. That's a very different point, I understand. Now back to the oil, I think I would add one point, which is that America is also very different, and I think that the main target of such an operation would have to be America, Europe would suffer, but Europe doesn't decide anything, so it's not important, right? You would have to get at America, and America is no longer the dependent party because of the fracking revolution, right? America actually is not in the same situation as in the early 70s. All right, and from from Sparky, when I was in West Germany in the early 1980s, Germans would never abide German leaders being such obvious fools as they are now for even one second. I don't know what happened. Look, I don't want to make the mistake of being nostalgic, like nostalgic bias, where you always think things weren't quite as bad as they now are when you were younger, okay? But nevertheless, having said that, I've really been thinking about in particular shots in this government, and I do feel it's very hard for me to find a German post-war chancellor worse than shots, and to put this even more precisely, I think it's actually the worst. I don't think there's an equalizer. I go through them, even relative duds to be a little rude, like Kisinger, right, or Erhard, they don't qualify. And if you hold them up against people like Adnara Brandt, the party doesn't matter. Schmidt, you know, who was from the SPD, like shots, shots is abysmally bad as a leader. That is actually true. Now, the question was slightly different. Why is there, as it seems, so little pushback? I think one thing that has changed is the media landscape, really. And the example I will give you is, if you look at Spiegel, there Spiegel, there Spiegel used to be, by far, hands down, the best German news magazine for the post-war period, right? And it was, generically, on the left, liberal left, it used to get into scrapes with the government all the time. And if the Spiegel was, as it was 30 years ago, this, I can actually say, the Spiegel would constantly issue articles criticizing, and at least heavily questioning, the line on Ukraine. But the opposite is the case, exactly the opposite. So the media landscape in Germany has changed. I find it much more homogeneous than I would remember it from when I was a teenager in the 1980s. That degree of almost self-coordination, I'm afraid, I don't really remember. And where this has come from, again, I really can't tell, but I find one thing interesting, that in some way, this turn towards a more chauvinistic style, let's say, in German politics and in parts of the public and in the media, has coincided with a turn against Russia. And that historically is very interesting, right? I mean, if you know German history, Russia can bring out the worst in Germans. And that's not Russia's fault. There's something very strange about the way Germans project on Russia. And occasionally, that takes the form of romanticization. That also happens, where they're too optimistic, where they're a bit naive about how Russia works and what Russia is. That's what, you know, it happens. But we are now going through a phase of demonization of Russia. And somehow, this I think is a major catalyst in this terrible hardening of the German media and public debate space or this narrowing of the media and public debate space. But I don't have a complete answer, right? These are just some sorts. I'll just quickly say the Guardian is exactly the same written newspaper that I remember is completely different. And again, the demonization of Russia has undoubtedly led to a hardening of the media and political space. And again, I don't have a full complete answer. What has happened here in Britain? Let me give you one more question, Taniq from Elena. And then I promise we will let you go. What if Russia isn't interested in friendship with Europe, but just offers cold capitalism? Europeans have not been reliable threats. You know, to be honest, if I try to imagine Russia's perspective, right, as good as I can, I wouldn't be interested in friendship. Absolutely not. No, not just because I'd be, you know, the Russians have taken heavy losses here too, right? They're not as heavy as many restaurants claim, but this has been a bloody war for Russia as well. And it wasn't necessary. And from Russia's perspective, it could have been avoided if only the Europeans had played a different role. And I think Russia is right. So then they're not going to be happy with the Europeans for a while. But I do think, my impression, you know, this holds for Repkov, Putin himself, love Roth, you know, when you look at Russian leadership figures, also Russian think tankers or their equivalents, right? I don't see the obstinacy and the bitterness I see on the European and Western side. I see nevertheless, I see a hardheadedness, which is pronounced by now, and which is like, we don't do anything on trust with you guys. You know, that's over. But I do see enough of rationality that I think would enable the Europeans to build up what Elena, I think, referred to cold capitalism relationships with Russia, right? In so far as those will be advantageous to Russia as well, right? I don't think Russia will do anything for Europe just to please Europe. And why should they? I mean, that makes absolutely no sense. Among other things, not again, not out of anger, but out of strategic calculation. Europe has just shown that it is entirely capable of participating in a type of proxy war against Russia that at its core aimed at a regime change and be the dismemberment of the Russian Federation. I think this was the better stream of them all collapsing Russia, right? And among academics and similar types, it found a faint echo in all this loose talk about decolonizing Russia, right? Which was code for destroying the Russian state, frankly, right? So Russia has seen this. And that's assumed that within five years, Europe behaves more normally again. Europe is a little more reasonable again, chastened by its experiences. Russia will still, because they're not fools, look at Europe and say, we don't know why they are in 20 years, right? So we will build a good relationship with them, but we are also not trying to build them up or favor them. And again, when Alexander brought up, Russia will, I think, be much more interested, of course, in its actual partners, China, to an extent India, other partners, they're not quite as big but important, and potentially the United States, if there is another age of detente. So Europe, no, they're not going to get like a comfortable deal with Russia, but they might get a deal. They might get a deal. Yeah, I agree. I completely agree with that. Tariq, Syria, thank you for joining us on this live stream. This was a great show. And I will have your information as a pinned comment down below your Twitter, your sub stack, as well as your website. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much, Tariq. It has been a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you, Tariq. Happy nice day. Bye bye. All right, Alexander, we have a few questions to get to, and we'll wrap up this live stream. Let's see. Kyle, thank you for that super sticker. Amir says, is she a man talking about macaron, the whole Candace Owens. A lot of people talking about it. Ellen says, 34 trillion in debt. How can the USA get out of that without a total war? At least get rid of European competition. Of the Europe? Well, it's going to get harder and harder with every single month. And yeah, that this thing goes on full. The first rule when you're in this kind of hole is to stop digging, to start rethinking what your economic policies are. The United States still has huge resources, still an immensely rich country. It has a lot of potential to turn this thing around. It will be challenging to do, but it can be done. And war absolutely is not the right way to do it. That will be a catastrophe. It would make the situation existentially worse. So they do have time and space to sort it out, but they are running out of time, and they're running out of space. An awful lot is going to depend on what on the coming election. Just saying. Ricardo, thank you for that. Super sticker. Sparky says, free Assange. Jim Gibson, thank you for that. Super sticker. Sparky says, does it somehow seem foolish for the West to play Russian roulette against its namesake? Yes. I would really advise people to read Alex Fashinan's piece on Rusey. It is incredibly insightful. It is brilliant, actually. What is the website that it's on again? It's on Rusey. Royal United Service Institute. It's surprising that they allowed him to publish something like that there. But the absolute underlying message of this article is, don't take on the Russians in war. That's basically what he says to get. He says, tell me how a Christian war is fought, and you realize that what he's actually describing is what the Russians do. All right, Rusey. Everyone's asking, and the author is Alexander Vichina. Alex Vichina. Okay. Ricardo says, Macron is less Napoleon Bonaparte and more Napoleon Dynamite. Let's see here. Tired looking for a name, what a great show, what an insightful and wise guest. Yes, Tired was amazing. Yes, it was. Fantastic show. Where are we here? Eleanor says, "Is it just me who has a feeling many European leaders see their chance to revage for old grudges with Russia?" I read that the Van der Leyen's family lost textile industries in Russia during their revolution. You absolutely correct, yes. Not of them. I don't know about Oseil of herself, but I mean, absolutely some of them have tremendous issues with Russia, complexes about Russia. And in some places, you know, I can just about understand that I can understand why people in Poland, or some people in Poland, might have grievances against Russia. But, you know, we all spend all our time worrying about our grievances and thinking about those all the time, then we're going to just lose sight of existing realities. And that is exactly what we have done. And again, to understand the existing realities, I say this once again, go to what Alex Washington has been writing. All right, Sparky says, I noticed that in the waiting days of the Cold War, through reunification, Germans were becoming more and more domesticated, followed by the US millennial generation being domesticated from birth. I think that's true. I mean, I know Germany quite well. I travel to Germany often. My wife, I've said many times, is half German. And it was a very, very civilian place. I mean, there was actually a positive aversion to military things in Germany at one point in time. And it's very strange to me how all that's changed. But to completely change it entirely so that you go back to the Germany that existed before the First World War, where, you know, with everybody in the army and bands and soldiers and all that sort of thing, that would require a social revolution, which is beyond, I think, what even today's Germany can achieve. Sparky says, build a better world with bricks. Sparky says, D nuts by Israel. William says, Putin and Putinism has been entrenched by the West by Putinism. I mean, after Putin has gone, Russia will be governed by Russians for Russians. Yes, I agree with this. This is exactly what's happened. I mean, we have the West has engineered a massive consolidation of Russian society. And that is what all this pressure will, the regime change attempts, the economic sanctions, the proxy wars, that's what it's actually done. Consolidation of Russian society in a way that is deported mildly skeptical of the West and what he promises now. Sparky says, every time there's a quote, every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can't help but think that before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East, the US missionary, John Sheihan. It's true. It's absolutely true. Log 66 says, Cypriot government is a non-representative and supine entity to the UK, just as the UK is to the US, any prospect of change in this unpopular Cypriot government. I can't wait to further to Alex, who is from Cypriot, is any check. I don't think there's any change in Greece or any of these places. I think it's wrong to single outside prison, I have to say. It's just sending a ton of weapons to Ukraine by the Czech republic. There's no, there's no change. Sparky says, Putin may trust Trump but should wait and be wary of anyone Trump hires until he sees that the deep state is truly stifled, but this may never happen. Putin went out of his way and he's in his recent interview with Kiseleov to say that he didn't trust any body and he actually mentioned that he'd actually had issues with Trump himself and the Trump at one point even accused him of wanting Biden to win instead of himself in presumably a telephone exchange, which Putin said was simply not true by the way. But I don't think Putin is waiting for Trump. Tatiana, thank you for that super sticker. Sparky says, "Go Yemen, fight the power." Stana, thank you for that super sticker. Anna Sbellad Chevab says, "Certain social clubs who borrow their name from construction have excessive influence in EU and UK. They have been targeting Russia since the 1700s." Life of Brian says, "The oligarch sacrificed Macron as a trial balloon in the last throw of aggressive escalation, figuring he was finished politically regardless." Russell Hall says, "We're all drunk with sex wine from a dirty cup." G1416 says, "How do policy makers inform themselves? Do they form their opinions just by reading the mainstream media think tanks? What about executive leaders?" They mainly form their opinions from reading what they read from reading the media. That was my experience when I was on the fringes of politics before, and I've spoken to people who are involved in politics now, and they tell me that nothing has changed. That's the reality of it. They do get briefing sometimes in the intelligence agencies. But what the intelligence agencies say is very little different from what the media also says. Just saying. From Odyssey, from Breaking Bread, how's the socialism working out? From locals from Jeff Rock, I'll be watching the recording for the stream, but if not discussed, how do you all see Trump's end the Gaza war quickly comment? Well, I hope he does have a diplomatic solution. I don't know what it is, always with Trump, what has to wait and see. I think you can end the Ukraine war very quickly, actually, whether you can end the Gaza conflict. I don't know, because he might be conflicted there. He has very, very strong feelings towards Israel. His son-in-law is obviously a Jewish community, a person who has also very strong commitments to Israel. I remember seeing photographs of Trump's office, whether that means that he's got more leverage over Israel, and it wouldn't have to be. He would have to use leverage with Israel in order to end the Gaza war fast. We'll just have to wait and see. It really depends very much on him. Robyn asks, "Australia's top two spy chiefs were booted from the intelligence committee and must now be invited going forward." I hope this is an effort to distance our politicians from the US intel influence. I wouldn't ban on it. I wonder whether they've just been giving some advice that people just don't want to hear or who knows. I don't know enough enough about the story to comment, but I don't suspect nothing's going to change. Is that here? Thank you for that. Superchat. Rebel King says, "As a student of Islamic eschatology, the Gaza and Israel war was predicted by our scholars and prophesied. It will end with World War III. Iran, Israel, Iran, Iran, Israel, Iran, Israel, will declare officially." Well, I hope not. If you don't mind saying so, I hope you're wrong, because World War III is a horrific soul. I hope we can find a way out. Lana, thank you for that. Super sticker. Rebel King says, "If you look like an A-Z-I ideology and the way the A-Z-I youth were taught, it is the exact same thing as the idea of Israel." Well, I don't know enough about these things. All I will say is what's going on in Gaza is terrible. It needs to stop and needs to stop fast, and if he's doing massive damage to the United States and to the collective West and to Israel itself. Not much mentioned what it's doing to the Palestinians, which is beyond appalling. Rafael says, "Guys, put this into proper context for us. What did Putin want to say here?" Quote, "America, you are not ready for a nuclear war." Wow, drop the mic. This I think comes again from Kiselyor, the article with Kiselyor. What he was basically saying, the point he made it very clear in the program, look, for us in Russia, Ukraine is a life or death matter. If Ukraine were to win and the regime that exists there were to survive and it would become incorporated in NATO, it would be an existential, immortal danger to Russia itself. So the Russians have to win. The same is not true for the West. It is not for them, a life or death matter, and given that that is so, whilst the Russians in a life or death situation have the motivation to escalate to the very furthest point the United States doesn't. And that's what he means by the fact that they're not ready for nuclear war. Jam says, "Have you watched the greatest story never told? I've always felt parts of history are being censored. I've never watched, just saw it mentioned." Do you know something I never have? I've heard a lot about this, but I've never watched it. So I shouldn't have commented about it before I do. Strange, because I'm something of a film buff, by the way. Rebel King says, "Will determine people remove adult sholes?" Will they? Babs! There's lots of rumors about this, but the story at the moment is that the man will take over what we bore us for story is who's even more hard-line and extremist sholes has been. So I wouldn't be careful what you wish for. At least that's what I would say. Elza says, "Sad thing about German academics is that most didn't notice the shift in the media. My experience that most of them don't question the narrative." It's central in Britain, exactly the central in Britain, to a degree that I find incredible. You know, I can actually, in Britain, I can actually put a particular finger point on when it happened, which was the autumn of 1999. That was when there was the war, the first there'd be the war in Yugoslavia, which the Guardian and all of those supported, and then Putin was appointed Prime Minister, and within weeks, about two weeks of Putin being appointed, the Guardian was publishing an editorial demanding that Putin, that yells at sacking. No, no, this says, "70 years, Queen never visited Israel's intentional question mark." I don't know. I think yes, actually. I think that for all kinds of reasons, the British authorities wouldn't have wanted her to go, and she probably didn't want to go herself. But she's passed away, and she's not going to tell us. Maybe her diary will, when it's eventually published, in 50 years time, will provide us with more insight. Rebel King says, "Sadly, the dream of Western democracy only makes sense when you're sleeping." Jerry says, "AC and AM, how many languages do you each speak?" Well, I speak English in Greek. I used to speak French quite well, but I've lost nearly all of it. If I were to spend time in France, a couple of weeks in France, it would probably come back, and that's it, actually. I used to, again, for school for some time afterwards, I used to speak quite a lot of Latin, and that's it. English, Greek, Spanish, and I'm trying Russian, conversational in Russian, but I need help. You need to speak it to learn a language. You need to speak it, so you need practice, and I don't get much practice. Life of Brian says, "If the choices for PM of England were Macron, Trudeau, or Mussolini." Alexander, who? Well, the question. I mean, really. I mean, our gold helped us. I'm going to give a pass on that. I have to ask you this question, Alexander. What is Obama doing meeting with Sunak? What a very, very good question. Is he telling you to step aside, perhaps? I don't know. I'm asking him. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. People hear about... If you had to take a guess, if you had to take a guess, what would you say it's about? What would I say it's about? I can't believe it's about... I can't believe it's about British politics. Why would Obama be interested in British politics? He may be saying to Sunak, "Look, we've got to do everything we possibly can, stop the orange man getting back and becoming president again, and can you find some means using your very effective intelligence agencies and your information and your contacts in the United States to help us achieve that." I have to say that seems to be far and away the most plausible explanation, but it is a guess. sophisticated caveman says, "If the Turks pivot to Russia, does that open the door to the rest of Southeast Europe following? Is that actually possible?" Well, it isn't going to happen immediately. The Turkey has got much closer to Russia than I would ever have imagined. What I don't know is how permanent this is. We'll just have to wait and see what happens once other one does leave the sea. But people who know more about Turkey than me, a lot more about Turkey than me, tell me that there has been a shift in Turkish society and even in the political system, and that they are thinking in a more shall we say Eurasian as well. But I don't pretend I'm an expert on Turkish policies. Breaking Bread says, "The best geopolitical team at Iran." Thank you. Thank you for that Breaking Bread. And Rebel King says, "Can you explain how Western journalists still have the audacity to question Russian elections when ours are a complete sham?" Well, I agree with the sentiment you've just expressed. I'm not going to comment further on that. I mean, this is what they've been saying about these Russian elections. It's just ludicrous. And the dissent into absurdity was saying that, you know, accused of people lining up to vote is a sign of protesting against the election. I mean, I find that it's one of the craziest and most nonsensical and most silly pieces of misinformation I've ever encountered. I mean, it takes real foolishness to come up with something like that. Just call me on and says, "Thank you, Alexander, for your hard work." Thank you for that. St. Max says, "Alex and Alexander, what stance do you think the U.S. should take towards NATO that would actually help the European nations?" Well, I think the United States is simply to wind up a whole mess walk away. I think that will be best for the Europeans and best for the United States. That's my own personal view. Do a deal, obviously, with the Russians on security. But, I mean, NATO has become a real nuisance and a real danger. And as I said, wind it down. All it's done, all that expanding NATO Eastwards has done is that it's involved the United States in a conflict in Ukraine, which is of no use, Ukraine is of no use to American security. It doesn't add anything to American security. Of course, if you're pursuing near-con geopolitical imperial projects, then you can see how it can make some kind of sense. But those projects are not founded in reality. So, I mean, just ditch the whole thing, walk away, focus on American interests, and do a proper deal with Russians and forget NATO and bury this undead creation left over from the Cold War once and for all. Alvermation says... Alvermation says, Putin is winning three to zero against Zelensky. I have three books on Putin and zero on Zelensky. Sure enough. Game of chairs. Thank you for that. Super Chet. Pratt, too, says, "If the Nazis and the fascists are the left, not the right, the right is about limited government and the American Constitution is based on that." Well, you're applying an American conception. I mean, I don't actually agree with this. I think there was in Europe a social democratic left, which was completely different from what you're describing. And I don't personally agree with you that the fascists and the Nazis were in any sense a left-wing movement. The Nazis came up with some left-wing slogans from time to time, but I didn't personally take them particularly seriously. I don't want to get into a long, deep discussion of this issue, which is one really for academic scholarship. Belza says, "About marriage, he should consult Makaron." A tabernacle says, "Seep patrols in the Gulf of Oman." Question mark? Oh, wait. Russian? Sorry. Russian? I see the flags. Russia, China, Iran, seep patrols in the Gulf. Yeah, absolutely. They've just conducted naval exercises. They're not new. I mean, they've conducted exercises like this before, but obviously these exercises are getting bigger all the time, and they're becoming more politically relevant now. Sophisticated cavemen asks, "How will Russia secure Kaliningrad long-term all neighbors to the enclave are pathologically hostile?" This seems very dangerous. Well, it could become extremely dangerous, but again, I suspect that it ultimately depends on what the West does. If all this talk of trying to turn the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake, which is nonsense, by the way, mixed, absolutely no sense, people who talk in this way have no understanding of the real military capabilities of Sweden and Finland, and the real potential for the United States to project power in this region. And the Russians are overwhelmingly strong in the Baltic, but if NATO does something really stupid with respect to Kaliningrad, well, then of course, I mean, we're getting into World War three-time situations, and if we avoid the ultimate consequences of those, then the entire geography, the political geography of the Baltic will be changed forever. All right, and one last question from Jam. Blinken is in the Philippines as Taiwan next. Yeah, absolutely good question. Very likely. Very likely he is going to Taiwan. All right, that is everything, Alexander. Let me do a final check. Your final thoughts? Oh, I was an absolutely outstanding live stream, brilliant questions, and a absolutely superb and outstanding guest, and a very enjoyable live stream, if I miss it. It was always interesting to talk, and to read Tariq Cyril Armar's work is always enlightening, and I hope we have him many times again. We have one more question, and we're going to wrap it up with this question. Alexander from Tabramak, and this is Tabramak, this is of every important question, actually. Advice on picking the right woman to Mary, Alexander McCurs. Wait, and she will come. That's my advice. I had various encounters in my time, some of them very happy and very enjoyable, but when the person who I knew I was going to marry finally came, I married her, and there was absolutely no doubt about it at all, and we had a very heavy marriage ever since. When she appears, you will know. Thank you, Tabranak, for that final super chat, the final question. An important one. All right, we will end it there. Thank you once again to Tariq for a amazing live stream. Thank you, Alexander McCurs. Thank you to everyone that joined us on Odyssey, Rockfin, Rumble, vidiran.locals.com, YouTube, and thank you to our moderators, to Spartan Warrior Queen, to Peter, to Zariel, and who else? Who else? I hope I'm not missing anybody here. I think that's everybody. All right, reckless abandon. Thank you very much. All right, let's end it there. Take care, everyone. Absolutely. Take care, everyone. Thank you. Thank you again.