The Duran Podcast
Make NATO Trump - Proof w/ Jeffrey Sachs (Live)
Great to be with you. Great to have you with us again. And let's let's just jump right into the the many topics that we can discuss a lot going on in the world. A big hello and shout out to everyone that is watching us on Rockfin Odyssey, rumble the Duran, the Duran dot locals dot com, YouTube and thank you to all our amazing moderators. What in the world should we discuss? We could discuss lots of things, but I think there's one unifying thing that brings everything together. And that is that the great powers are not talking to each other. There is no effective diplomacy going on. And the reason for that is because the most important and powerful great power of all, which is still the United States, won't engage in it. We had news of a call just the other day from Biden to Xi Jinping. I've read the readouts, both the American and the Chinese. It seems it was just a restatement of old positions, no real movement at all. And of course on Ukraine, all the talk now is sort of diplomacy. It is of another hundred billion dollars that this time's NATO is going to cook together. Now, Professor Sachs has done an absolutely brilliant article on the need to rediscover diplomacy, the art of diplomacy at a time when the world's situation is becoming more dangerous by the day. With wars in the Middle East, wars in Europe, in Ukraine, and with the Chinese Xi Jinping going out if he's way to use the words "red line" when talking to Biden about Taiwan. I mean, one got the sense of a rather exasperated Xi Jinping. At least that was my sense from the Chinese readout. But no diplomacy at all. So Professor Sachs, let's talk about diplomacy. Let's talk specifically, I think, about diplomacy over the conflict in Ukraine, which is in Europe, which is now causing increasing nervousness, talk of sending troops to Ukraine, talk of a hundred billion dollars being put together by NATO to try to trump-proof Ukraine. I mean, absurd ideas, in my opinion, dangerous ideas. But where are we, and why are we not seeing diplomacy happen? And what exactly is diplomacy? Because I think maybe that's our starting point, because people have seen so little diplomacy recently that I don't think they fully understand what it is. They think that just picking up the telephone and speaking to the other side is diplomacy in its totality, when, of course, what you say over that call is what diplomacy really is. But Professor Sachs, you're a veteran of this. Tell us a bit about this. Discuss. Tell us a bit about your article. Well, first picking up a phone or pressing the button and making a zoom call, it would be a start. There has not been as far as we know one discussion between Biden and Putin since the beginning of 2022. To my mind, it's absolutely extraordinary. Diplomacy at the most basic fundamental level is, indeed, speaking with the other side. And frankly, I'm at least a tiny bit relieved that a phone call took place between Biden and President Xi Jinping. It's unbelievable what's happening in that relationship as well, because the US has boots on the ground in Taiwan right now. Of course, they're on training American military on Taiwan. So this is so stupid. What the US is doing is so much adrift, so dangerous, introducing so many new trigger points in the areas of fundamental misunderstanding that could go completely awry as happened in Ukraine, that even a phone call is a little bit of relief, even though, as you say, not much transpired. But there hasn't been one discussion as far as we know between the leaders of the United States and Russia since 2022. Now, we also have an absurdity, of course, a tragic absurdity every day where the Russian leadership of whether it's President Putin or Foreign Minister Lavrov say, we're open to negotiation. And the United States repeats. Yes, yes, we know there's no one to talk to. Yes, so we're open to negotiation. Yes, we know there's no one to talk to. This is a willful, again, absurdity of the United States. And it really behooves us to ask where has this come from. I think the weakness of US diplomacy has actually developed over time to the point where there is essentially none, which is the point that I've written. Yes, we have a Secretary of State who talks to quote friends and allies. We have a Secretary of State who goes into a room with the Russian Foreign Minister and makes a point that we don't speak to you. We leave the room, the G7 like children have left the room when the Russian Foreign Minister is there when the whole point of their job is to speak with each other. So this has deteriorated dramatically over time. What's happening is the question. And it seems to me that there are at least two parts to this one is a long term deep part, which is that the US has an agenda. It's the agenda is hegemony. This is absolutely not hidden. It's clear. It's written in every US strategic document. It's written in every defense document. It's written in every intelligence assessment document. The goal is hegemony. They sometimes call it primacy. They sometimes call it a full spectrum dominance. But the US has a, again, I think an extraordinarily dangerous, misguided, ill-conceived, hubristic strategy of dominance. It believes in that actually to some extent because they don't understand. They don't listen to your show. They don't know what's going on in the world. They don't talk to anybody else. So they kind of believe it. But when you believe in dominance, the second point is you believe you don't have to talk to anybody else. There are no red lines on the other side. There are no interests on the other side. You can have interests. You can have red lines. You can have spheres of influence. You could say, we'll blow up the world if you try to establish a military base in the Western Hemisphere. But if it's on the other side, that makes no sense. How could you object to Ukraine being a NATO because we're the dominant hegemon? It's an open door. It's up to us. It's not up to you. So part of it is this very deep attitude that is 30 years old, completely decrepit, an utter failure filled with fools as far as I'm concerned, but still there. And then there's the specific of a president who was too old for the job, probably incapable personally of detailed discussions and negotiation because in the end, heads of state really do negotiate with each other. Of course, their aides do everything to prevent that from happening, but there actually are meaningful discussions between heads of state that change the world sometimes saved the world. Sometimes it's even back channels between heads of state that saved the world is in the Cuban Missile Crisis, because the aides would have gotten the world blown up. But the two heads of state, Kennedy and Khrushchev, figured out how actually to save the world despite their own advisors. So that is important. And Biden, I think, is probably not mentally up to it at this stage. It's a guess. I don't know. I don't, I don't speak to him. We just watch him day by day. But I don't think he's in a position to be president myself and that is a very harrowing point. I love him to prove me wrong. If he wants to prove me wrong, I offer every day. Here's my phone. Call your counterpart. You want my zoom account. I'll give you my zoom account. What is the matter with you, Mr. The world is at the edge of nuclear war, and you don't even try to have a discussion with the other side. So this is the basic point. I think it's a mechanically complete failure because I don't know if Lincoln Sullivan, certainly not Newland, and others understand even the rudiments of diplomacy. The arrogance says we don't need diplomacy. And I don't think Biden is up to it, though he did make a call to his counterpart in China. So that's actually a good point. But I think you actually put your finger on the whole issue, because if you're pursuing hegemony, then that is a, that is an issue of power. I mean, you're, you're basically applying power, whereas diplomacy is about something completely different. It is about preserving peace. And in order to preserve peace, you need diplomacy. And when you go back to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and this is actually in some ways, it ought to be the locus, the locus classicus of study of how diplomacy is conducted. The point about the Cuban Missile Crisis, what happened there is that the two sides did engage in diplomacy against each other with each other in order to preserve peace. In order to save peace. And they succeeded, Khrushchev and Kennedy communicated directly. They didn't have telephones in those days that they could use, but they were sending messages backwards and forwards. They took hours, and at a time, you know, extreme tension, you know, with warships moving and missiles deployed and all that kind of they did that they were working through the night constantly. The President's brother, Robert Kennedy, who was a member of his administration, was in direct contact with the Soviet ambassador to green in in Moscow, sorry, in Washington, and they were also, they were also talking to each other. And over the course of those hours, an agreement was hammered down, and it had and it preserved peace, it just preserved peace, it preserved humanity, at least, I mean it, because we literally were on the brink then, but it could be done then, and both sides understood the importance of talking to the other. And it's so important to study that one occasion because it, it does illuminate everything about our situation and fate. By the way, a phenomenal book written by a great late historian Martin Sherwin, called the gambling with Armageddon, which goes hour by hour of the Cuban Missile Crisis in a way that no historian had previously done, and it's absolutely brilliant. And there are a couple of points worth emphasizing about this. One is that Kennedy and Khrushchev not only communicated to save the world, even from their own advisors at that point, but they had been in a private communication by letter writing, actually, the old fashioned way. From the time of Kennedy's election in November 1960 they wrote letters back and forth, which have are compiled and are absolutely fascinating to read, incidentally, for example, when the CIA and Kennedy made the disastrous step of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. In 1960, in the spring of 1960, Khrushchev wrote to Kennedy in one of these back letters. Mr President, piratical elements of your government have committed an international crime invading Cuba, and Kennedy wrote back one of the stupidest letters of, I think, an American presidency, saying, that's not true, this has nothing to do with the United States. These are, these are Cubans who are attacking their own country, and Khrushchev wrote back after that a blistering letter saying, Mr President, don't ever lie to me like that again, this is your government, you know it, do not talk to me that way. So they had this very strong give and take for almost two years before the Cuban Missile Crisis, this made a difference, there was a human element, one of the facts that Kennedy arrived at at some moment in the middle of this intense crisis was, my God, Khrushchev's probably facing the same pressures I'm facing, it seems like a basic insight, but Kennedy, at a moment, came to understand that the two leaders were imprisoned by their own sides who were rooting for war, and that's when he reached out. The second story that's absolutely important about the Cuban Missile Crisis, one of the things that led Khrushchev to realize we have to settle this was Fidel Castro calling Khrushchev or them speaking with each other, and Castro urging a nuclear attack on the United States. This is also telltale, Khrushchev was horrified, this is the client state, this is Cuba, this is the Soviet Union protecting Cuba and he realizes this guy's completely out of control. Well frankly Zelinsky and the others are completely out of control as well, they would do anything they want to bring in the United States into complete disaster. That's something that happens in the same dynamic, Israel is completely out of control, a genocidal state bombing diplomatic missions of other countries, unbelievable, but this is what happens with these client states or these states that want the big powers to do their bidding, they're not in control That's the second thing that one learns from this, a third thing that one learned from the Cuban Missile Crisis is that something that game theorists have discovered experimentally over many decades of experiments. When you have a crisis like Ukraine or the Cuban Missile Crisis, you have a situation called a strategic dilemma, a strategic dilemma means, hey there's a better way than nuclear annihilation or a better way than outright war to solve this. With Ukraine, the way to have avoided this war or to have ended it in March 2022 was for Biden to call Putin and say, okay, the whole idea of NATO going to Ukraine, that was crazy. The idea of putting Aegis missiles all over your borderlands, that was crazy. You stop the invasion, we stop NATO, we get back to some kind of peace, that was completely achievable, in fact I beg Jake Sullivan, do that, stop this, avoid this war. Okay, that's a strategic dilemma because one side might say, in fact they do say it because they're a little, the US a little primitive and it's thinking, oh, you know how are we ever going to enforce that Russia will never keep its word when the US is the one that lies all the time, by the way, but not in any event, the idea of a strategic dilemmas, there's a better way out, and if we could trust the other side to do it and we honor it, we both gain. That's, it's called prisoners dilemmas one example and so forth. Now what's been understood in experimental as well as historical cases is that when two people are negotiating over a strategic dilemma, they can generally find a way to solve this, but when two sides are doing it, the dynamic is much worse, because in group dynamics, each group says the other's going to cheat on us, and so this is why the advisors say go to war, bomb them, first strike and so forth, when the leaders can sense, okay, we need that individual diplomacy, it's a human being on the other side and it's humanity on the other side. And then there's one last absolutely completely fundamental point about the Cuban Missile Crisis that needs to be understood and is almost unknown and is one of the most, I mean it is the most harrowing event in world history, actually, and I think that's not an exaggeration. As some will know, after the two leaders had resolved how the crisis was going to be ended, the US pledging never to invade Cuba, and by the way it never did again because it lived up to its pledge, the two sides agreeing to remove their nukes. The Soviets from Cuba and the United States nukes from Turkey, after they agreed on how the crisis would be wound down, we almost had World War III, and the reason was that there was a disabled Soviet sub in the Caribbean, and that disabled Soviet sub was out of communication, these were times more than 60 years ago when pretty primitive, but it happened that that disabled sub had a nuclear tip torpedo, not all of the subs did but this was the lead of a squadron of subs, and it was disabled, it was in the bottom of the sea, and it was reaching temperatures internally that the sailors were fainting away, it had the surface. And when this sub began to surface, a jackass in the US Navy, as a kind of joke and game, instead of dropping depth charges on the sub to signal that it should come up, drop live hand grenades on the sub. And the commander of the sub said we're under attack, there must be war above, load the nuclear tip torpedo and prepare to fire. And under US doctrine, any attack by any atomic weapon would have unleashed the full arsenal of atomic weapons, the estimate of the US military is it would have taken out about 700 million people. We have some reason to believe it could have ended all human life on the planet through the so called nuclear winter, be that as it may, we were actually within basically a second of that. And what happened on the sub was by coincidence, because, again, not every sub in this squadron had this, there was a party official who was senior to the skipper and who said, I don't think it's a good idea to fire. And at the last moment, countermanded the order, the submarine reached the surface, and a nuclear annihilation was avoided. The point is, miscalculation, the point is events outside of the control, even of the two leaders, the idea is that these idiots because I really resent them playing with our lives. These idiots in the Pentagon in the CIA, in the security services in the White House, who don't know what they're doing, don't act like grownups, bring us to the brink, thinking what could possibly go wrong. So you talk to the other side, and one final point, which may be as obvious, but it's actually remarkable in these security dilemmas, which have been studied now since the prisoners dilemma was proposed as an object of analysis back in 1950 by the Rand Corporation. So we're 70 plus years into this experiments have shown that near talk between the two sides, even if it's not binding, even if it doesn't prevent the cheating near talk raises the probability of a cooperative solution dramatically. And so this is why no joke, I've said to the White House, first directly, and then on our discussions every day, talk to the other side, talk, just talk, you don't understand you don't know what you're doing you can't figure this out, unless you talk to the other side. And maybe, sorry for the soliloquy or the rant, but one more point that needs to be added. We have a, we have an idea, a big lie that adds to the idea of why you don't talk, and it is rolled out on every occasion by these fools. They are fools, by the way, when you know them it's not to respect them by the way they are absolutely without knowledge of what they're doing. And I know them, I know them personally, occasionally they were my students, come on, I'm telling them, get on with, with reason. What we have in our daily narrative is, you can't talk to the other side, they will cheat you, you know, Neville Chamberlain talked to Hitler. And that caused World War II, and it's an insanity of misunderstanding everything about that historical event, but it's also the most simplistic, misapplication of some garbled, jumbled, foolish account of Neville Chamberlain's negotiation with Hitler that is then used to say, don't talk to the other side. So, of course, the story is Neville Chamberlain negotiated with Hitler at Munich in 1938, came home declared, this is peace for our time. And Hitler cheated and took over Czechoslovakia and launched World War II and the moral of the stories never talked to the other side. The footnote or the lemma, if you were a mathematician is every counterpart is Hitler, because we're told again and again changing things, he's Hitler, Saddam Hussein, he's Hitler, but sorry, but Charlotte side, he's Hitler, Omar Qaddafi, he's Hitler. So this meme, don't talk to the other side is also underpinned by this very tail version of history. And this is also very annoying because it's used to say you, there's no one to talk to this no one to talk to is just Hitler is going to going to cheat. The story is Neville Chamberlain was naive, but he wasn't wrong to talk. And he was right to negotiate in 1938 he was wrong to come home and declare that this would be a self enforcing agreement. But the point that I make in this article, which I think is important in history is that it was the attempt to negotiate with Hitler. It was Hitler's brazen, brazen, of course the most brazen imaginable breaking of a public agreement that led the whole rest of the world to understand what is this about. It enabled Churchill to face down Hitler by saying to the British, we didn't try to negotiate this counterpart does not negotiate. They tried that enabled Churchill to keep power even at a critical moment. In May 1940, when the cabinet itself was divided and Churchill said no, we need to fight because we tried the other way. If you don't try the other way, you can never make that argument. You're going to win the public opinion either what we have in the world today and I promise I'll stop this monologue at this moment. I'm traveling the world as you know, every week basically. Nobody believes the United States. Nobody believes the US is trying. Nobody believes the narrative that we give that Putin's a madman that this is completely irrational Peter the Great rebuilding of the Russian Empire that Putin is a Hitler. Nobody believes that around the world. Nobody believes that Israel is trying to make peace by rooting out Hamas. Everybody knows what's going on. So the US is also in an incredible bubble. Okay, that's the problem. We have a miserably weak team. We have a miserably weak president who may be not even in capacity to be president and we're not having diplomacy. I completely agree with every point and please don't apologize for taking time to set them out. Just on the 1930s, two points to make either absolutely correct. The Hitler violated the Munich agreement meant the Britain went into the war a united country. It would not have done otherwise. And this is a point which people don't understand. And the second is that of course, you know, human history is very long. The way people talk about 1938 and Munich. You think that the whole of previous history is basically limited to a period of a few years in the 1930s. There are 2,500 years of known detailed diplomacy. And this is the only snippet that in a twisted way is rolled out all the time. You can't have diplomacy unit 1938. Unbelievable. It is unbelievable. It is absolutely unbelievable. And of course, I think the point that you can't fully control a situation when it becomes as dangerous as it can do is absolutely correct. Because of course, you're not dealing with machines, you're dealing with people, people make decisions. They can never be fully predicted. You can't always be sure that one person isn't going to do something which might result in the whole situation getting out of control. Look at how it is out of control. Look at the German case of the four German generals discussing the Taurus missile strike. What is that? Either Schultz's outright line. Either he's a sap and doesn't know what his own generals are saying, which is absolutely possible. In our world right now, we absolutely have multiple channels in government. These are not united governments. Any government is not united. And especially when you have a CIA driven deep agenda, which the United States has with its German intelligence counterparts, you have the possibility of things spinning out of control. Because even the ones that we think must be in control are not in control. Look at France. By the way, with France, President Macron has said to me, over time, face to face exactly the opposite of what he says in public. It's absolutely. And by the way, he sometimes has done it privately to me. And then the next week in public, the opposite. Okay, they lie. This is not exactly a revelation. But the instability of it, the lying of it, the multiple channels of power within any government. The fact that NATO is this bizarre alliance where you have other hate speech. I mean, hate coming from much of NATO right now. You have a president of Latvia tweeting Russia, the Landa asked, Russia must be destroyed. You know, in Cato the elders phrase about Carthage. A president of Latvia next door to Russia tweeting that Russia must be destroyed. We're in a land of absolute foolishness, absurdity, prayer, behavior. And this is where a president of the United States actually has a job to do. And we don't have that president doing that job right now. Absolutely. One very last comment from me because we're up to 30 minutes but just wanted to say this, the anybody who has been in a negotiation and wants to achieve a good outcome in a negotiation understands one very important thing. And that is that negotiations must be conducted in good faith, lying to the other side is a disastrous mistake. We saw that with Chris chef and Kennedy from that letter exchange that you were discussing. Understood. If you look at the manuals of diplomacy, getting all the way back to the 17th century, the one by Kanye, which is the one I sometimes say, he makes that point, you know, you might gain a small advantage for a short time by lying, but you leave poison behind you. That is exactly so true. And our friend John Mirachimer, you know, has written brilliantly about this that that leaders lie relentlessly to their own people, but not to each other. Actually, it's fascinating because the states are so high, lying to your own people. Well, that's politics in our modern practice, but lying to the other, you better be damn careful, which is why it's worth to talk. Absolutely. Professor Saks, that's that's me. Thank you. And there's a never apologize for giving us your views so eloquently and so well. Thank you very much for coming on our program and get a hand over to Alex. We've done 30 minutes. Yeah, we're low on time, but can you answer two questions, Professor Saks? Of course, of course. Fantastic. From so bad, no, Brazil, will Israel drag the USA to a regional war? Boy, Israel is trying to do so every day. The American people are absolutely turning steadfastly, by the way, this is Jews in America, non Jews in America against Israel, because Israel is being genocidal right now. And we have, again, a president who mumbles a secretary of state who wrings his hands. He brings himself to tears. Let me say when he talks about what Israel is doing. Oh, please don't do that. And Netanyahu reminds them, I run your government. You don't run your government. The Israel lobby runs it. So it's extraordinarily dangerous, the mindlessness of it, the cruelty of what Israel is doing. The absolute recklessness of what Israel is doing. It could drag the US into a wider war. It's trying. The US leaders do not want a wider war. They actually don't. But they prove themselves not to be in charge day by day. They wring their hands. You know, I don't think, by the way, it's a, it's complete theater when Biden says, and when Blinken says, we don't want Israel to do that. It's not just faking it. It's more pathetic. What they're saying is, we're only the president and the secretary of state. There is real. They've got the lobby. They've got the campaign contributions. It's grotesque. So what happens every day, you can't be sure. I don't think it is the desire of the United States, given the state of the world, the state of its stockpiles, the state of the military, the state of public opinion. To want a wider war, but it's not impossible. Israel really needs to be stopped from what it's doing. And there is a way to do it, incidentally. The way to do it is exactly the United States says, we're not arming you tomorrow. Israel cannot go one day to the next. I mean it. It's, yes, of course, it's, it's got a little bit of stockpile, but it cannot go one day to the next without the active military support of the United States. The US can stop this at any hour. And again, I'd like to remind them in the White House. That's the job of the US president is actually to stop wars. My theory of America is the war machine is always revving. Certainly among our vassal states or the ones that rule the United States, however you see it. And the job of the president of the United States is to be a grown up and to keep the foot on the break. So they could stop this war at any moment, because Israel cannot prosecute this war. This genocide, in my opinion, we'll see what the International Court of Justice says soon, but it cannot do this even day to day without the US active logistics, munitions, intelligence, military support. One more question from Rick F is the recent one hour phone call between Shoy Gu and the French Defense Minister and encouraging sign or just damage control from French saber rattling. I think in the, in the gist of what we've been discussing, it's better to have it than not to have it. I'm glad that it's taking place. And I, and I think it's, it's worth the basically just a couple of minutes about the whole diplomacy issue. I do believe that at the beginning, Macron and Schultz tried diplomacy and wanted to head off the escalation that took place in February 2022. Again, the war started in February 2014. This is important to understand the war did not start with the special military operation in February 2022. The war started with the violent overthrow of Yanukovych in which the United States played a major role. But the war was 10 years on and Macron and Schultz, I believe, tried to head it off. And I think President Putin's reaction at the beginning was, well, fine, but where's the American counterpart that leads your military alliance. I don't hear from the US because the US had directly rejected diplomacy over a draft security agreement that President Putin put on the table in writing online, you can find it December 15 2021. So the US said, no, we're not going to negotiate over that. Schultz and Macron, in my understanding, said to Putin, well, NATO is not going to enlarge and Putin said, why should I believe you. I need to hear from the United States and the US wasn't saying that because the US didn't believe that at the time the US absolutely totally believed NATO is enlarging it may even believe it today because they're fools. But in any event, so at the beginning, I think Schultz and Macron tried. I think they went to the wrong capital, frankly, because my advice back then was that Macron, Schultz and Draghi. So, Italy, Germany and France go to Washington and say, under no way shape or form is NATO enlarging to Ukraine. Are you crazy, Mr. President? Is your intelligence service crazy? Are your neocons crazy? Is Victoria Newland crazy? What is it? It should not must not happen because otherwise we risk complete disaster in Europe. That's what they should have done. So, rather than going to Moscow and saying that, which was fine, except President Putin's answer reportedly was to Schultz, when Schultz said, NATO will not enlarge as long as I'm chancellor, he looked at him and said, well, how long are you going to be chancellor? You know, he absolutely batted it back, but what he meant was, look, this is a US military alliance. And so, we need with the United States some grown up talk, and that never happened. And so, I think the huge mistake of Europe, the huge mistake was the inability to stand up to the United States. This is the pathetic side. Well, of course, the US has its influence, its power. The United States has its influence, the US, the money side, the carrots and the sticks in European capitals, but the truth of the matter is that Germany, France and Italy, if they stood together, could say to the United States, stop wrecking Europe. They could, they don't, but they could, and that is what failed. So, at this point, Macron's gone over to the other side rhetorically. It's, it's weird because he's told me exactly the opposite in private. He told President Putin the opposite. He knows, I believe that this whole NATO enlargement business, which is alive till today, because we also hear it from the absolutely foolish idiotic words of Yen Stoltenberg all the time, a man who does not have one moment of sense in him. But he tells the truth, actually, you know, he tells the truth about what he and NATO believe, which is quite interesting because he says, yes, of course this is a war over NATO, but I believe that Macron knows all of this. And for whatever political reason, maybe the European elections, maybe his misperceived politics, maybe whatever slight he feels, who knows, he's doing something different right now. And to answer the question, good that there was a call because every call at least establishes the possibility of some diplomacy, but the real diplomacy should be Europe extricating itself from the absolute recklessness of 30 years of the hegemonic aspirations, and Europe knew all of this, European leaders have told me all of this, how reckless the US is, European leaders opposed the 2008 invitation to Ukraine and to Georgia, for God's sake, that's a North Atlantic country to join NATO. And they've known all of this all along, but they don't have the capacity or they haven't had the capacity I should say, Berkeley did a bit, a bit, but not Schultz. The Macron draggy left anyway, they did not find the way to say this, just one last piece of this, their Spiegel ran actually an extremely interesting account of the 2008 NATO decision to invite Ukraine and Georgia to become members and it got it right. I know a lot of the inside story and it got it got it got it right so very interesting read. And it's even entitled something like when the war really began, because it recognized that it was the invitation to Ukraine and to Georgia to join NATO or better said that they would become NATO members that was the basis of this war, which now I think everybody except the bubble acknowledges. But the articles really weird because it describes how Merkel tried to stop it. It describes how that French tried to stop it, stop this invitation. And in the end, there was this mishmash compromise that yes, Ukraine and Georgia will someday be members, but we won't have a plan right now of exactly how to do it. So the worst of all words, but then their Spiegel concludes by saying, you see, Merkel was engaged in appeasement. Crazy, the whole story is how they tried to head off a disaster, how they tried to head off a war, and then it's called appeasement. Now, I don't know whether that is something that there's legal has to say to fit into the prevailing opinion or whether it's another demonstration of the twisted mindset that we have in Europe right now over this. But in any event, it's a real account that shows that Europe, European leaders have known how dangerous and reckless the US unipolar mindset has been how reckless the expansion of NATO to Ukraine and Georgia as an idea has been. But they don't stand up, and that's the sad point. Brussels is owned and operated by the United States. It's not an accident that the capital of the European Union and the headquarters of the EU and the headquarters of NATO are in the same city, not an accident. It's not a good idea for Europe, but not an accident, but the major powers of Europe absolutely could have stopped this had they held together and gone to Washington, rather than to Moscow, to put down the line. With Moscow, frankly, we need the call from Biden to Putin. It's so many years overdue. And that is absolutely what will end this war and save Ukraine. Let's add, this is not about giving up Ukraine. This is about saving Ukraine. Please ask, please ask Mr Sax if he thinks Germany is violating the two plus four agreement, and what should be the consequences if yes, but vital question. The two plus four agreement, and what would be the consequences if yes. Well, let's just say that there's, by the way, a lot of water under the bridge at this point, under the destroyed bridges. Let's say, because there have been many agreements on both in Europe. We can add in Iran JCPOA, we can add in all the unilateral US departures from ABM, from the from the intermediate nuclear force agreement. We can add in the breaking of a mince one, and then mince two, which was backed by the entire UN Security Council. It's a miserable, miserable record. In my opinion, everybody's broken their word, but the underlying direction, the reason, the most fundamental reason for all of this is the complete failure of US diplomacy and the complete collapse of US diplomacy. What we are living through again, we're at the end of 30 years of US global hegemonic aspirations. This is the basic understanding of all the diplomacy. These fools in Washington got it into their head in 1992. We won. They lost. We run the world. This is very important to understand. It means we don't have to abide by any agreements. We don't have to abide by the most basic agreement we gave to Gorbachev and to Yeltsin. And I was there, by the way, was an economic advisor to Gorbachev's team and to Yeltsin face to face. And we said to them, NATO will not move one inch eastward. Well, by the time 1992 came, in other words, the ink wasn't dry. The promises were still there, still being made, by the way, when the Russians toured the NATO headquarters and so forth. They were cheating already. The United States undermined the whole spirit of the end of the Cold War by instead of saying, we both won by having peace. The United States said, we won, you lost, and now we do what we want. But it's important to understand, even then, if I could just go back one bit. That played into a deeper meme that goes back even farther, which is, it's not just the end of the Soviet Union. We want, it's the end of Russia. But we want break up Russia. And this is a deep meme also of American foreign policy and should be understood that 1992 was the moment of victory of this hegemonic aspiration. But now the plan was, we continue, we run the world. We need it most, I mean, at least a week in Russia, but maybe, you know, it will come apart at the seams. It will divide internally. We will support rebellions in the caucuses. We'll do other things that will surround Russia and so forth. So this goes back even further. I want to take it back to the 1840s, just to conclude, in honor of Alexander and taking it back to the real roots of hegemony, which is Great Britain, because never was there a hegemon with such ambition. And such a curious view of the world, but Britain wanted to run the world in the 19th century and it taught America everything that it knows. And I read the recently a book that I had not read before a fascinating book by a historian named Gleason Harvard University Press I think 1970. It's an incredibly interesting book called something like the origin of Russophobia. And the question is, where did England's hate of Russia come from? Actually, a little surprising, Britain has hated Russia, hated Russia since the 1840s, and it launched the Crimean War. That was a war of choice in modern parlance, a war of choice of Palmerston in the 1850s, because it hated Russia. So this author tries to understand where does hate come from, because it was the same kind of a tuplative hate that we have now. And by the way, we hated the Soviet Union because it was communist, but we hated Russia afterwards when it wasn't communist. It doesn't matter. So it's a deeper phenomenon. And he tries to trace where this hatred came from. And the fascinating point is Russia and Britain were on the same side in the Napoleonic Wars from 1812 to 1815 from the Battle of Moscow and Russia to Napoleon's defeat in Waterloo. They were on the same side. And in fact, for many years, the relations were great, but they were kind of normal. And so this historian reads every snippet of the newspapers, of what's written of the speeches to try to understand where the hatred arose. And the key point and I'll end here, there was no reason for it. There was nothing that Russia did. Russia didn't behave in some perfidious way. It wasn't Russian evil. It wasn't that bizarre was somehow off the rails. There wasn't anything except a self fulfilling lather built up over time, because Russia was a big power and therefore an affront to British hegemony. This is the same reason why the US hates China, not for anything China actually does, but because it's big. It's the same reason until today that the United States and Britain hate Russia, because it's big. So the author comes to the conclusion that the hate really arose as of around 1840 because it wasn't instantaneous, and there was no single triggering event. The British got it into their crazy heads that Russia was going to invade India through Central Asia and Afghanistan. One of the most bizarre phony wrong headed ideas imaginable, but they took it quite literally. And they told themselves this, where the imperialists, how dare Russia presume to invade India when it had no intention of doing so. So my point is it's possible to have hate to the point of war, and now to the point of nuclear annihilation for no fundamental reason. To each other. And that point, we'll, we'll let Professor Jeffrey Saxco I have all of Professor Sax's information in the description box down below. Now we'll add as a pink on it as well. Thank you very much. Thank you. Wow. I must get hold of this book by Gleason. It sounds like the most interesting action. Yeah, it's one of the one of the most popular questions we always get, isn't it? Yeah, there's a very good, it's actually a terrible book. I'm going to call all the land of barges about the Crimean War, which I don't like at all, and I think is completely wrong. But it does have a chapter, which I suspect is taken from this book by Gleason, which I was unaware of, by the way, which gives you a whole series of extracts of British newspaper articles about Russia in the lead up to the Crimean War. It is absolutely extraordinary to read these articles because they are identical to the articles we see today. All the same memes, all the same tropes, all the same stereotypes about Russia, they're all there, already in existence back in the 1840s. And one thing that Professor Sax is absolutely right about is that we've gone now into the archives. It's absolutely clear that the British engineered the Crimean War, and that their objective, and Lord Palmer's objective, was to break up Russia. In other words, exactly the same thing that we hear and see all about today. And they failed, of course, totally. They got bogged down trying to capture one single Russian city, which was Sevastopol, and it took them two years to do it. And by the time that they did that, their economies were exhausted and everything got completely wrong, and they had to try to extricate themselves from this wall. And they did so by threatening to start a general European war by getting the Austrians to issue an ultimatum against the Russians. The story of the Crimean War, the real story, has not yet been written, and it's one of these events which demands proper historical reexamination. It's still still being written today. Okay, well, let's, we have a live stream with Garland Nixon in an hour. So, let's answer the questions that we have, Alexander, and we'll get on to the next live stream with Garland. Let's see here. It's interesting, Alexander, as I pull up the questions, because all the British people that I know get along really well with Russians, like the people get along. Where you have the government elite has this obsession with breaking apart Russians. It's really bizarre to see, and the same can be said about America. Americans get along with Russians on a people-to-people level, but it's the governments that are. Actually, I mean, I saw one occasion, I mean, where there was a group of Russians, and this is before the conflict in Ukraine got off back in 2022. But there was a group of Russians, you know, sitting in a cafe in Covent Garden in London, and there was a group of young British men nearby. And then they just went over to this table, and they said, you know, I just want, we just want to tell you that all this vitriol you hear against your country from Britain, most British people don't feel it. No, that was, you know, that was just a demonstration of that. And, you know, British people are quite shy and difficult talking to strangers. So this group obviously felt like they look like students, actually, they obviously felt strongly enough about it that they want to do it. All right. So, but I know Brazil says they will manipulate Europe, pay for the war against Russia for years now from proof or accountability proof. So, jungle jin says, has the promotion of the Ugandan judge Julia sepatinde to vice president of the ICJ compromised the court. Was this promotion a reward for dissenting. We will have to wait and see. I mean, I'm pretty sure that the powers that be in Europe and the West were not happy with the last ICJ decisions. So, all kinds of things probably have been going on. But of course, overall, there's still a, I think, a majority on the ICJ and courts don't like once they made a decision to sort of reverse themselves. So we'll just have to wait and see how that works out. All right, Oracle says love, check for your sex. Thank you for that. Oracle fractured says on the sleep for work by the time this starts. Enjoy yourselves. Thank you for that. Spiren says, cheers, cheers to you, as well. And from the Subarena Brazil until USA elections, we will see the war going on. If Trump gets elected, elected, will he be able to make the war stop, or there will be mechanisms not to allow him doing it. Staltenberg is trying to create one now. He's trying to get a fund together from NATO, $100 billion, which is nowhere near enough, by the way, for what he's to go to continue this war, $20 billion a year, $100 billion over five years to try to keep the war going, well, presumably for five years. But my own view is that the power of the United States exactly as Professor Sacks was saying is strong enough that if we got into this kind of situation where Donald Trump really wanted to end the war, and he had the support of the whole of the US government behind him. We could do it. The great question is what happens in Washington. And there are, there is a lot of rumor now that the next Trump administration is going to be a lot more joined up than the first. So let's wait and see. Malias, thank you for that. Super sticker, also says Staltenberg, if we can convince Moscow, it cannot win on the battlefield, is he ends mentally up to it. Lincoln is also talking about Russian defeats. Well, I think what Staltenberg needs to do is to read the one of the latest article in Politico, where there are all these Ukrainian military officers who are coming along and saying quite straightforwardly the war is lost. They're not going to defeat the Russians. They're too many of them. They've got, they're too well armed. They're too well equipped. They're too well organized. And if the $61 billion package passes, it's not going to make any difference. And if the F16s arrive, it's not going to make any difference and the West doesn't have the weapons and the technology to change things, the outcome of the war. And if the Ukrainian military officers, these are actual Ukrainian military officers, I'll tell you telling Politico that what Staltenberg is talking about is absolute nonsense. I think you should speak to these people. Yeah, Staltenberg could have watched the Duran over the past couple of years as well. So, but Renault Brazil says, do you believe Israel is putting itself in a dangerous corner? They say they will attack Lebanon. Anyway, will the chances of USA be drawn even more to the conflict increased troops on the ground. They're becoming more reckless and more desperate and more dangerous all the time. And, you know, I say that with very carefully because I think this is absolutely the case. And we've had this utterly irresponsible attack on a consulate in Damascus. And irresponsible is the mildest possible word you could use to describe it. It's clearly, in my opinion, intended to create a crisis with Iran hoping to get the United States involved in that crisis. They've also, there's also been this attack on these, I think it's a bakery, whatever it was, the thing that they need, the OWC K thing in Gaza, which whatever the exact facts. I mean, it suggests either immense negligence to the point of indifference about what they attack, or, or well, I mean, there's now suggestions that it was an intentional attack, which if true is just shocking. There's talk always about wars against Lebanon, against all sorts of people. So I mean, they are getting very reckless and they're getting very dangerous. And I think the reason for that, there are multiple ones. Firstly, the economy, Israel is contracting. Secondly, the war in Gaza has gone a much longer, I think, than anybody anticipated in his far from one. And thirdly, they're sensing their international isolation, and we've had that ceasefire resolution passed through the Security Council, and they're becoming nervous about the situation in the United States. So it's very, very reckless behavior by a government that dust is starting to think that it's back is up against the wall. Well, they brought it on themselves. And of course, they're not without allies and friends in Washington, and it looks as if rather than think and stop and try and find some kind of sensible way out. They've dropped doubling, tripling, quadrupling down and behaving in exactly the way that Professor Sykes would say. John D. Welcome to the drag community. Dan Wilde says, I noticed Lieutenant Colonel Tony Shafer, how did Iran hoodie. Good choice. I have on myself. Keep up the good work. Thank you for that. Awesome. Thank you very much. Yes. Yes, I have seen that video with his hoodie. Great guest. Lieutenant Colonel Shafer. Great guest. Akash says, crudely Biden is not making the decisions. Who is Obama, Clinton, Blackrock. In foreign policy, the person who makes the decisions is Jake Sullivan. I think this is widely accepted now, who Tony Blinken has sold this. He's a genius, by the way. Remember, remember in our, if you go back to the Durant shows, like maybe like two years ago, we were actually calling Sullivan President Sullivan at a time. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. He makes decisions for our policy. Mr. Moreno, welcome to the drag community. Michael think that's super sticker. Martin says absolute power corrupts absolutely is human nature checks and balances that limit power have been removed by wealthy elites. Should we identify and restore checks and balances which ones. That's all of them need to be reestablished. The first one that the things we need to do urgently is clean up illegal systems. Because if the legal systems aren't working, then of course checks and balances by definition start to break down. And we see the law fair in the United States. We see the Assange case in Britain. We see all kinds of shocking things. We see a new bill, which is being passed by the Scottish Parliament, which is clearly intended to restrict speech and criminalize vast chunks of speech and it's unbelievably vaguely drafted. So that it's all clear to people when they're committing the crime that they're alleged to be committing. So we need first of all to sort out the legal system to get the legal system under control. And if we can do that, then that's that's perhaps the first step because without it, as I said, there is absolutely nothing. And that in order to get the legal system under control, the law and bar associations of the various countries need to start getting organized. And this is urgent. And of course there's no sign of it happening at the moment, but it really does need to take place and it needs to take place soon. And it says great work that the random body professor sacks to bring sanity and provide a critical insight to these mad, this mad era and geopolitics will live in. Well done guys. Elvis Elza says Mr sacks did you meet the new colleague Professor Newland for some academic exchange she is such a great expert in international affairs joke. I'm sure they have a lot to discuss. OMG puppy says, I read Ukraine has some one third of Russia's military ships in the Black Sea I'm skeptical, but I believe it is difficult for them to replace lost ships so they may be chipping away at the fleet. Now, first of all, that isn't true. I mean, you get all these claims and, you know, the Black Sea fleet no longer operates. Don't take that seriously. This is propaganda that you read in the media. We don't even know exactly how extensive the ship losses are, because of course the Russians don't always tell us, but suffice to say the core part of the fleet, the missile corvettes, the modern missile corvettes, the bull yarns and that kind of thing. And the new frigates, the Admiral Markov class frigates, the Ukraine's have never been able to touch them. So I mean, and of course the six submarines that operate, you know, something they haven't been able to touch them. And the answer about the Russians being able to replace warships, they can actually, they not only can, they can, they've actually reinforced the Black Sea fleet. But just as many times that Russia builds warships, it sounds extraordinary to say this deep inland. And they have this enormous network of huge rivers and canals that link up these rivers. So, one of the big shipyards, which is called the Krasnoye-Sormov ship yard, is initially Northgorod, foreign land in the North of Russia, on the Volga. So they build warships, including submarines, including missile corvettes. They sail down the Volga, they then interconnect with canal, our various canals, and they can then arrive through the dawn, another river. They can actually arrive on the Black Sea. Sounds astonishing to say this, but it's been done. Many towns, actually. Robin R. says Bonjour, Monsieur, High Valley. It's good to see you again. Danielle, thank you for that super sticker. Jungle Jim says eminent jurist Jeffrey Robertson was convinced Putin should be tried for war crimes, even before the ICC's ruling was handed down. How can such a knowledgeable person of his repute be so effing dumb? Well, I'm going to say this. I mean, I don't want to say too much about Jeffrey Robertson because we've never met. I don't share the view that he is eminent. I mean, he is eminent in the sense that he gets, you know, he's very highly positioned in the legal system, but I'm not a fan of his. Let me say that straightforwardly, or of the chambers where he operates from, or of his general ideas about war crimes law and all kinds of things of that kind. I think it was an absolutely, I read the article, it was in the Daily Tannograph. The thing to understand about this is that there is a whole group of lawyers in the UK, in the United States, in France, in all sorts of places, who have become very much part of the system of international tribunals. A lot of their work revolves around this, and they sit on these tribunals as judges, they participate in the work of these tribunals, and putting aside their beliefs, and I'm prepared to accept that their beliefs on this on January. They have an interest anyway in expanding this whole network of tribunals, cases and all that kind of thing. And that's why they continuously lobby for it. My own view is that they do an enormous amount of harm. And I also say this, if you ever find yourself in a case where human rights are an issue, do not go to people like this, you know, the human rights lawyers, go to good criminal lawyers. I think you'll find you get a much better outcome from them than you will from the human rights war crimes lawyers that we've just been talking about, just say. The black cat, thank you for that super sticker. Thank you for that super sticker. Enricas says, if NATO was to declare war on Russia, what would be the goal of their operations capturing Moscow is no longer possible. We've reached the point where you had for a bomb shelter, because this is a lunatic situation for NATO to do with a person like Stoltenberg in charge, unfortunately, the risk that that's something crazy like that might happen does exist. It is a ludicrous idea. I think most people now who followed the war closely understand that in conventional military terms, just talking about ground troops, NATO is not in a position to take on the Russians, at least not in territory close to Russia or in Russia itself. He says hope there's a Nuremberg trial for Netanyahu at all Zionist congressman and senators should be forced to watch and listen a la clockwork orange using the little bit go. It's unlikely to happen. I don't think he's completely impossible. The rhetoric that's coming out of Israel and the actions are making it more possible all the time. From jam says Gonzalo brought me to you. Thanks Gonzalo rest in peace. Rest in peace Gonzalo. Elena says Anthony Beaver, what does Alexander think of him? I'm not a huge fan. I think you can get far better historians about the Second World War than he is. I mean, Anthony Beaver is a former British Army officer as I understand it. And I think that his political biases, sorry to say this, are too strong and they affect the character of his books. What part of the war do you think can be blamed on Russia considering all the mistakes the West made, what could Putin have done differently? Well, I think what the Russians could have done differently, well before the crisis, the 2003 Orange Revolution crisis, and even before that, is they could have taken Ukraine a lot more seriously. I mean, for example, when before the situation in Ukraine began to get out of control, the Russians had a practice of parking in Kiev political figures who had lost out in power struggles in Moscow. So for a time, the former Prime Minister Viktor Tjona Medin, Yeltsin's Prime Minister, was Russia's ambassador to Ukraine. I mean, he was uninterested in the job. Then there was another person who I can forget his name now, who was completely incompetent and essentially sided with the Ukrainian government against his own britness. He was a liberal politician who'd also lost out in a power struggle in Moscow. Whereas what Moscow had needed, what Russia had needed throughout the 90s and the 2000s, was a strong embassy, strongly led by a competent and able diplomat and somebody who would be able to reach out to the Ukrainian political establishment and build bridges with them and work with them and keep Moscow properly informed about what was going on. So I think this is this is a major mistake. And I think it's one that the Russians now repent deeply. Thank you. Thank you. Super sticker. Sparky says presents key had such a hatred of Russia that he provoked the invasion of Afghanistan then had the the gall to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics, two teammates who missed those Olympics. Yeah, absolutely. I remember it. Well, I mean, he did have a he did have a complex about Russia. At the very end of his life. I was beginning to rethink him, by the way, but by then, of course it was too late. Nick, thank you for that super sticker and thank you for that super sticker. Elsa says, imagine the better world of Western leaders will listen to the Duran. Thank you for the best hundred percent. Thank you for that. Sparky says when I was in the US Army in the 1980s we didn't hate Russia, at least us listed men. We wanted to rescue them from communism. I thought at the time I was naive and after the Cold War to believe it was all about communism. I mean, that was what I thought it was all about. Yeah, Tabernach said, Helas would speak, Helas would speak Persian today if Xerxes hadn't sent the best of his army straight into the teeth of the phalanx sort of vegan line is the modern day equivalent. Interesting. Bruma Jim says, how can you explain the irrational hatred of Russia? Could it be possible that the same world leaders are on video at Epstein's island or some or some other blackmail scenario? Well, I mean, I think Professor Saks pointed out that this hatred of Russia has very, very deep roots and in certain Britain, I mean, it's the extent to which it dominates political discourse is unhealthy. I mean, well, that's an understatement actually. It's morbid. Yeah, dangerous. Don't rule out money either. A lot of people want the resources and money of Russia. Anyway, Christian, think of that super sticker and Orlando says, great work. And one more Alexander on Odyssey question from EU tech health question is Trump part of the Rothschild or Sydney globalization or, or do you think he is not really in the club. He's not really in the club. I mean, it's entirely obvious. I mean, if he had been a member of the club, he would have been treated completely differently. I mean, the fact that he's the subject, the target firstly of a completely ludicrous hoax story that he was, you know, the Siberian candidate and all that. And then when that's discredited, he's now the target of a whole new series of equally ludicrous in my opinion, law fair case. That tells you quite straightforwardly. He's not a member of the club. All right, let's, let's end it there because I've got to prepare for another stream. We've got to prepare for another stream. I've got to get everything up with Garland Nixon. Thank you. Once again to Professor Jeffrey sacks. I have all of his information in the box down below and I will add it as a comment as well. Thank you to everyone that watched us on this live stream. Thank you very much to our moderators. Take care. See you soon. See you soon. [BLANK_AUDIO]