Horror Vacui

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
I never knew it, by the way. So I Well ,

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Yeah, because why would you as a Russian, right?
.

Speaker 3 (00:05):
.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
The Islamization is Islamism. The Islamization

Speaker 3 (00:11):
.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
People have been asking me to make sense of
what's been going on lately. SoI invite them down to the
studio and we sit down and theyget to say, I'm going to ask
you a bunch of questions, and Iwant them answered

Speaker 3 (00:24):
Immediately. Give these people air , give these
people air. Come

Speaker 2 (00:33):
On co Hagen , give these people Air

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Bon Hungry

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Bon .
Dimitri,

Speaker 1 (00:40):
How are you

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Today? Alright , how you doing? Good.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
So let's continue.
It is our second podcast. Yeah.
And I think I have even morequestions than I had , uh, last
time. That's

Speaker 2 (00:53):
The mark of a good conversation, right? You end up
with more questions than , uh,answers.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
I think that the topic for this conversation, if
I may. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Of course.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
There are so many things that I do not
understand, and I would like tohear your opinion. So the
subject of this , uh,discussion, I would say is my
curiosity. So I have so manyquestions and I want to hear
that from you, . Now,just to recap, the , our
previous discussion was abouthow good Trump is or bad Trump
is, and we understood that it's, uh, very subjective, if I may

(01:29):
say.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Yeah. I mean, what I always like to tell people is ,
uh, except for on very specificcircumstances, I'm not gonna
say whether someone is good orbad for sure. Uh , for me, it's
all about, okay, tell me whatyour policy objectives are, and
I will tell you if their planof action meets those policy
objectives. And then of course,we can have a separate
conversation about, okay, areyour policy objectives good or

(01:51):
bad? That's that. But I guessfor the specific thing about ,
uh, yeah , last conversationwas that, okay, this is their
stated policy objective,whether or not it's or not, you
know, we can have that as aseparate conversation. Yeah .
But even if you accept a policyobjective at face value, it's a
bad plan. It doesn't fit thepolicy objective.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
I agree. I agree.
Okay. Let me ask you this, justto warm up. Mm-hmm
. There were somany things happening in the
world since our last , uh,meeting. It looks and sounds
overwhelming. Right? Is itoverwhelming for you?

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Uh , just yes and no. Okay . I mean, it's kind of
like you gotta keep things inperspective. And also, like, I
kind of know what their planis, so I try to separate the
wheat from the shaft mm-hmm . And then , uh,
you know, basically stick to,okay, these are the specific
things I need to focus.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Okay . So you do know the plan? That's a good,

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Well, no , I don't know. I , I , I don't wanna say
I know the plan. It's not likeI'm some, like, you know ,
right .

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Lost . At least you understand. You feel where it
should be going to, and Yeah .

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Okay . Well, yeah .
Well, part of it is because Iknow how Trump thinks, because
again, like I said last time isI grew up, you know, as a kid
in the 1980s and 1990s aroundTrump. So I have a very unique
perspective now. I'm being kindof like, maybe fool of myself,
but I feel like, you know,people, my generation and older
who lived in New York City, weknow intimately what Trump is

(03:23):
all about. Because I mean,frankly, like he's a simpleton,
right? And he , he hasn'treally changed so much since
the 1980s to the 2020s. So weknow exactly what he's about.
Everyone else is trying torationalize what he's saying.
But like, if you're a NewYorker and you lived in the
eighties and nineties, you knowexactly what Trump is doing.
It's the same stuff.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
And my question is about a different thing. Let's
forget for for a second aboutTrump. Yeah. Being an American,
have you ever seen the samedensity of events in American
history?

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Never. Maybe with the exception of, I guess 1776,
but of course, obviously youweren't alive then. .

Speaker 1 (03:59):
Yeah. Yeah. But , uh, and , and this is my
question. How does it, how's itfeel for you? You are abroad,
but still, how does it make youfeel being American these days?

Speaker 2 (04:12):
No , it's like , it , it's tough. I kind of like to
equate this to , uh, I'll ,I'll give a couple of different
examples. I know specifically,'cause I have a lot of friends
, um, well, yeah, friends, butthey're not my contemporaries
that're older, like Gen X . Butbasically in New York, we had
to have several like Gen XIranians, and they would
describe how they felt, becauseIran, back then it was like

(04:35):
pretty proper country. And thenthe 1979, you know , Islamic
revolution happened, andthey're just like, okay, what
the hell is going on with mycountry? I'm Iranian, this is
my identity. But now, like, mywhole country has flipped. Do I
maintain my Iranian identitywith the new Islamic Republic,
or do I maintain the old wayand try to, you know , uh,
insulate my Iranian identityor, you know, Iranian American

(04:59):
identity based on the old ways.
And then, you know, you havesimilar things like , uh, the
Turks with Erdogan , when hecame into power, it's like a
similar thing. I mean, itwasn't a complete full blown
Islamic , uh, revolution, buthis, the Islamization is
islamis, whatever that word , , the Islam, ,
it's like banana. You don'tknow about that . But , okay ,

(05:20):
the islamization of , uh,Turkey under Adon was a clear,
maybe not as clear as Iran,obviously their break . 'cause
that was very stark. But the, Imean, it was more gradual in
Turkey, but still, like youhave a lot of, you know,
secular old guard Turks fromlike, you know, a Turk and
like, okay, this is theiridentity. But then now, you

(05:41):
know, it's like, okay, well nowturkey's kinda like a pariah
state. 'cause nowadays it kindalike bounces back and forth
between pariah and friend basedon whatever , uh, international
policy is going on. But, youknow, so they're saying like ,
okay, well what is my identity?
And then I imagine this is thesame thing for like , uh, this
is how like Germans felt in ,uh, world War I , right ? Or in

(06:02):
even World War ii , actuallyduring , um, social studies
history class, when we were inlike junior high school, for
example, in America, we weretaught, obviously we were
learning World War I . And itwas like interesting, like our
teachers were telling us that ,uh, 'cause back , you know,
world War ii, obviously, okay,Germany's bad, we all know
that. But World War I wasn't so, uh, clear cut . I mean, if

(06:23):
anything, the Germans, you canargue like they were to quote
the good guys, right? Becausethey were defending the
Austria-Hungarian with theunprovoked tactic against the
arch Duke Ferdinand. Right? Andthen, so of course , nevermind
the fact that everyone hated rStu Ferdinand, but that's not
an entirely different podcastepisode, like history and
whatnot . But the thing islike, okay, in America, you had

(06:45):
the two biggest immigrantgroups during the 19, early 19
hundreds, like 1908 and 10,whatever, is that you had the
biggest group was Germans. Andthe second group , uh, biggest
group was the Irish who hatedthe Brits, right? Especially
like, you know , potato, famineand all that other jazz. So
there was a strong, popularupswell, if you will, of

(07:07):
Americans being sympathetic tothe German Empire, right?
Again, when I say Germanempire, I mean like , uh,
Bismarck, Wilhelm not, youknow, Hitler not Third Reich,
right? So, so there was likereally, I guess like our
teachers were telling us, likethey were even like showing old
newspapers and stuff on microfish film, right? 'cause back
in the day, we used to do that.
And uh, we show like a lot ofthe , uh, the newspaper

(07:30):
headlines about trying to formthe public opinion. I mean, the
default one was, okay, we gotan ally with the Brits. Right?
You know , that was the easyone. But because you had these
large Irish and Germanpopulations, there was a really
big push to , uh, ally with the, uh, with the German side. And
then , now this is not part ofour, our lessons, but I imagine

(07:51):
part of the isolationism of theUnited States was because we
couldn't figure out which sideto be on, because there were
two big groups within theUnited States, and we couldn't
really decide. And that'sprobably why we waited until,
you know, sinking of the Lucitaand then all that other jazz.
And then finally they made the,the decision on going, you
know, allying with the Brits.

(08:11):
But , uh, I forgot what I wassaying , but yeah, but
there was like a big group.
Yeah , there was a big upswellof saying like, Hey, we could
have very realistically joinedon the sides of Germans. And
then history would've beenobviously very different. But
why were we talking about this?
I

Speaker 1 (08:27):
Forgot my question.
Original question. How does itfeel to be, oh, right , right,
right , right . Yeah , sorry.
And then you started aboutIranians, and then he continued
with , uh, Turkish. Yeah ,

Speaker 2 (08:35):
Yeah ,

Speaker 1 (08:35):
Sorry. No , no , that's okay.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah. So my point there is that, okay, you have
big portions of the UnitedStates specifically in the
north, where it's like,basically like it's, it's
Germany, right? It's like NewGermany. You even had in states
like, you know, Minnesota andthe Dakotas and whatnot , where
like school was taught inGerman, not in English, right?
Because again, like up untilrecently before Trump said it ,

(08:58):
that we didn't have officiallanguage. And I don't , I don't
even know if, like, we stilldon't him , because I don't
think the president canactually declare that. I think
that's a congressional thing,but, you know, I'm not a legal
expert. But anyway, back thenyou had little like schools and
communities where everyone wasspeaking German. So I imagine
there's a big portion of thepopulation of Americans we're
like, okay, this is my Germanidentity. I'm very proud, I
speak German, you know, blah,blah, blah . And then all of a

(09:19):
sudden, then we enter on theside of , uh, the Brits against
the Germans, how would theyfeel? Right. And it's probably
even more stark, obviously,with World War ii . So you had
that. And then , uh, then Ifeel like I'm kind of like that
right now. It's like, okay, isthis just some temporary hiccup
that we're gonna like rectifyand self-correct? Or is this
the beginning of holy crap, youknow, America may no longer be

(09:44):
the quote leader of the freeworld. Are we going to be a
pariah state? And that,frankly, yeah, that scares me,
obviously. 'cause I don't wantthat to be the case.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
So what is your personal feeling? Where would
America go? Is it the beginningof , uh, of the next new era,
or is it just a hiccup as youmentioned?

Speaker 2 (10:04):
Well, obviously I can't answer that 'cause I
don't know the future. Okay .
But I, I would very much wantthis to be a hiccup. .
Yeah . Okay . Okay . Especiallybecause, again, as a former
government employee, if youwill, at the very base sense of
the word, they're basically,right now, they're dismantling
my entire, my adult life'swork. Right. I spent a lot of
time either through themilitary or through diplomatic

(10:26):
means or whatnot , working onbehalf of strengthening
America's image abroad andstanding abroad. Right. And
then now it's all like , uh,basically being erased right in
front of me. So it's like, whatwas the point of everything I
did during my , uh, okay .
Adult life.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
I understand.
Speaking about hiccups.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
Yeah. Hiccups.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
Do , do you think that , uh, how many, two or
three weeks ago already, thatEpic Friday with three people
in one room was at a hiccup, JDVance , Trump, and , uh, Mr.
Zelensky, thousands of people,if not millions of people , uh,
spoke about that and sharetheir opinions. I wanted to
hear yours.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
No , I , I mean, whether or not it's a hiccup is
irrelevant because it's , uh,it's happening right now and
we're dealing with theramifications of it. I guess
whether it's going to be ahiccup is really based off of ,
uh, what are going to be thepolicy decisions. And then is
this going to be a fundamentalshift or like a realignment of

(11:28):
United States with the axis ofevil as George W. Bush would
say? Or is it going to be , uh,in order for it to be a hiccup,
it basically has toself-correct. So right now,
it's not self-correcting. We'redefinitely on a path where, I
mean, especially with the unvote, United States is voting
with, you know, Russia, NorthKorea, rn , that's pretty
ridiculous. And then also youhave the Europeans saying,

(11:51):
okay, we're going to act onthis. Now, of course, is Europe
actually going to be doinganything ? 'cause there's a lot
of talk, but typical of theEuropeans, they're not really
doing much separate the wheatfrom the shaft . There's a lot
of talk in the news, but I'mlike, okay, whatever. That's
just talk. I wanna see actualconcrete actions. I see
concrete actions from UnitedStates, but I don't see

(12:13):
concrete actions from Europe inthe sense that Europe is
saying, oh, we're going to helpUkraine now , blah, blah, blah.
Yeah. But they haven't beendoing that yet. And United
States, well , they pulled theintelligence , uh, sharing with
Ukraine and sure , theyrestored it, but the damage is
already done. 'cause obviouslythe salient is essentially, I
mean, depending on when thisthing's released, it's gone or

(12:34):
it's , it's about to be gone

Speaker 1 (12:36):
Still. Let's come back to that particular day.
Yeah . Was it a setup in youropinion?

Speaker 2 (12:44):
I,

Speaker 1 (12:45):
Or it just evolved due to the emotions , uh, and
finished, I'm speaking aboutonly one day, only one meeting.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
I, I mean, obviously I can't really, I wasn't in the
room, right? I mean, of coursenot. But we saw what was going
on. But what I can say isthere's definitely a push.
There's a , definitely an antiUkrainian sentiment or
pro-Russian sentiment withinthat administration. And, and I
think there's a lot of naivetewithin the lower portions of

(13:14):
the administration, as well aswith the media to excuse a lot
of the things that werehappening. Because basically,
if you're having diplomaticconversations, especially at
the head of state level, youhave these things in closed
door . You don't invite peopleover. Like it's a , you know, a
wrestling match. Right. Andeven like, I mean, this is,
again, Donald Trump, again,he's a simpleton . To anyone

(13:35):
listening who's a New Yorkerfrom the eighties and nineties,
they know exactly what's goingon because this is what Trump
does. He loves, he loves tv, heloves ratings, he loves drama
and stuff like that. And evenmentioned again, 'cause he is
a, and he just blurts out thesilent parts out loud. He says,
this is gonna make for greattelevision. Right? And he was
like laughing about it whenthese are like real
consequences. But normal, youknow , adults in the room, you

(13:55):
would have, okay, you have yourfirst photo op where, you know,
everyone shakes their hand andeveryone takes the pictures.
Then you have the closed doors,you iron out the discussion and
you talk, blah, blah , blah,blah . And then afterwards,
then you open it back up andthere's like a grand signing,
pomp and circumstance, andeveryone takes pictures again.
Right? So all the ugly makingof the sausage is supposed to
be behind closed doors. And notin front of everyone. We're
here. This was in front ofeveryone. I mean, I'm

(14:18):
definitely more sympathetic tothe setup style, but again, I
can't really just likeflippantly say that because for
most of the meeting, like 44,50 minutes of it, it was like
relatively cordial. Of course,at the end, you know, it blew
up. But it was also kind ofnaive to say, oh, well it just
blew up. And like a lot ofpeople were saying like, oh ,
you know , Zelinsky, he , uh,he didn't handle himself. I was

(14:39):
like, you know what? Excuse me.
Yeah . He's being egged onhere. And he's like, he has to
push back at a certain pointover the , uh, specific
accusations that they'regiving. 'cause the point is
like, he's not there for makingquote television, as Trump
said. He's there to secure themilitary support of the United
States so that they can reclaimtheir land. So at , at a

(15:02):
certain point, you have to comedown to brass tacks and also a
general Kellogg, right? Who wasthe specific advisor for
Zelensky told them , oh yeah,you should come to the White
House to do this thing. Andagain, like, I don't know about
Kellogg himself. And then , youknow , and this is all
completely personal. If you'rea former general and you're
working for the Trumpadministration like this,
you're a freaking traitor. Imean, I'm , I'm just gonna say

(15:22):
, you know , just say it likethat. And the way he's been
talking you , like , he'sbasically betrayed. I mean , I
guess we wouldn't say hebetrayed his oath to the
Constitution because he'sretired now. But what he's
doing is basically betrayinghis life's work as a general
and advising zelensky to go tothe White House before, or the
lower level diplomats haveironed a deal. You don't do

(15:43):
that. This is just, this islike diplomacy 1 0 1. You have
your low level underlings, ironout the deals, and then when
the heads of state come , it'slike, again, a pomp of
circumstance. The handshakes,the signing of the ink and
everything like that.
Especially with someone aserratic as Trump. It's like,
I'm sorry. Especially when youhave his main henchman, right?
JD Vance and Elon Musk clearlysaying anti Ukrainian stuff. It

(16:05):
was basically a setup . Soeither Kellogg is incredibly
stupid, stupid, and naiveright? By saying, oh, Zelensky,
you should totally go there andthen figure this out with
Trump. Or he was in on it. Andagain, that's not my position
to judge. I'm just looking atthe effects of it. 'cause
that's the only , the onlything I care about is what are
the actual effects.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
So you , you are saying that , uh, you have
known Donald Trump for like allyour entire life, right? Yeah .
You've grown up with him.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, I've grown up with him. Exactly.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
Now, do you remember if he ever, if he has ever been
sympathetic to anyone else? Imean, you mentioned , uh, like
couple of minutes ago that ,uh, he's sympathetic to, to
Russia. Has he ever beensympathetic to anybody else
before, like that?

Speaker 2 (16:52):
I'm giving a lot of , uh, I'm trying to be , uh,
cordial to him when I say he'sbeing sympathetic to Russia.
Sure, sure, sure. Right. But ,uh, but we do know, especially
like if you go back into theNew York Daily News or the New
York Post and things like that,or even like New York Times and
the like, local section of theNew York Times, which I don't

(17:12):
know if you can read in thelocal section outside of New
York City, but of coursenowadays with the internet, you
probably can. And alsoeverything's on like
microfiche, right? But anyway,the point is , uh, there was a
lot of the articles andreporting on Donald Trump's
real estate yields and the factthat no one, like , basically
the banks would not loan himmoney. 'cause he's basically
toxic and he is gonna lose allhis money. And it was only the

(17:33):
Russian mobsters. 'cause backin the day, the little Odessa,
it's funny that we call likethe , the Russian area , little
Odessa, you know , especiallywith the whole Ukrainian thing.
But , uh, you know, that's ,uh, I mean this is like New
York City, right? We have a lotof Russians in New York , uh,
in New York City. And , um,Brighton Beach also, you go
there, it's funny , like you goto Brighton Beach and then ,

(17:54):
uh, you see a lot of these oldRussian guys in like , uh,
Adidas tracksuits and giantcrosses. They're all like
sitting there drinking tea andplaying backgammon and stuff.
It's like, it's pretty wildback in the day. But , uh,
anyway, so like these Russianmobsters, 'cause back in the
day, the mob was pretty , uh,prevalent. Everyone knows about
the Italian mobsters, but , uh,people forget about the Russian

(18:17):
mobsters, I guess, because noone really, you know , Martin
Scorsese didn't make a movieabout the Russian mobsters.
Well , that's why people don'ttalk about them, but yeah. But
there was a lot of Russianmobsters and , uh, they were
like reporting on this thatthey were financing a lot of
his ventures. Right? And thenof course, now, I mean
obviously none of this can becorroborated until someone
actually like releases all the,the evidence and whatnot. But

(18:39):
you can put piece all thebreadcrumbs together. The
prevailing , uh, understandingis that yeah , he owes a ton of
money to these mobsters and alot of them based on oligarch,
he obviously he climbs all theway up to , uh, Putin and
whatnot . So it's beholden tothem somehow,

Speaker 1 (18:56):
Whatever he's doing right now towards Russia. Is it
, uh, just part of his regulargame that he used to play when
he was a businessman back inthe day?

Speaker 2 (19:05):
What exactly is he quote , dueling to Russia?

Speaker 1 (19:08):
Right. And that's what I want to disclose My
understanding how I understandthat he, as you, I like the
word simpleton . He does whathe promised during, and we are
coming back to our previousdiscussion. So when he was
saying that I will stop this ,uh, war for, yes, for 24 hours,
then for three days, thenprobably a couple of weeks, but

(19:28):
then he told that he wassarcastic saying that , uh, you
know, 24 hours, he needs a bitof more time, but he does what
he intended to do. But the wayhow he does it, that's what I'm
interested in how I see things.
Mm-hmm . You makea cut a deal with two people
who do not stand each other,who are in, in the state of war

(19:50):
with each other. So you pushthe first who depends on you.
Then at the same time, youdon't want to deteriorate your
situation with the second one.
So you please him as much asyou can. Once you get what you
want from the first one whodepends on you, you go to the
second one and say, okay, sohalf of the deal is done. So

(20:13):
it's just , uh, up to you tosign the whatever we agreed ,
and that's it. And you'll bethe greatest person on earth.
And , uh, you don't payattention to the situation. So
you , of course it is war andyou have to stop it. But there
is no aggressor or there is no,there is no victim. There are

(20:34):
two participants here. And youhave to play whatever it takes
to, to get what you want.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
Well, okay, so you're throwing a lot of
pronouns. Yeah. Yeah. It's veryabstract. So

Speaker 1 (20:46):
I'm specifically about three people here, Donald
Trump, Zelensky, and Putin.
Right. Okay. Now , uh, Zelenskydepends on, on the us and
that's why Donald Trump hasmore power on him, I believe.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
Well, that's, your statement is correct in the
sense that you have controlover Ukraine. Like, is your
policy objective to Dom , again, going back to the specific
things like what is your policyobjective? And then my answer
changes based on that. Is yourpolicy objective to dominate
Ukraine? Or is your policyobjective is to maintain the
international world order?
'cause if it's to dominateUkraine, yes, he has leverage

(21:18):
over Ukraine. But if it's, ifit's the opposite, it's to
maintain international order.
It's almost like Ukraine hasleverage over you. It's kind of
like, imagine like your son oryour daughter is competing in a
swim meet or, or tennis matchor whatever in school mm-hmm
. Right ? Likeyou train them and everything
like that. You try to give themthe best opportunity they can
so they can compete in thesport, but then once they're ,

(21:39):
uh, at the tennis court, oronce they're in the swimming
pool, it's on them. And thenyou're basically like hoping
that everything was going well.
So in this sense, like underBiden administration, it was
more like that, you know, yourson or your daughter is at the
swim meet tennis match. Whereasnow with Trump, it's more like,
no, this is my little pet andI'm going to dominate it or
whatever.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
Well, this looks different. Um , it is good that
you mentioned it because Iwanted to touch that point a
bit later, but since youmentioned it earlier, I don't
think that, I don't see thatthere is objection, there is a
goal of , uh, dominating theworld. Trump keeps repeating
that he doesn't want to dominthe world. He wants to make a
America great again. And , uh,he wants to get back home. Uh ,

(22:21):
focusing , uh, let's, okay ,let's park it for, for like
some time. All right ? I wantstill come back to what he's
trying to do again, how Iunderstand things, and I'm
super happy to understand yourposition here. He doesn't want
to ate the world. He wants tosolve this conflict as he
promised during his electioncourse mm-hmm .
So that he can come back homeand , uh, continue doing what

(22:44):
he wants to do at home. Right?
I want to ask later on, on howyou feel about that. But now my
question is, do you feel thatthe way how he manages this
conflict is , uh, efficientenough to get whatever he wants

(23:04):
to do? First of all, do youunderstand what he wants to do?
Do we both understand it thesame way?

Speaker 2 (23:09):
Yeah . So you're asking me to take what he's
saying at face value, assuminghe's being truthful? Yes .
Okay, fine. We can, we can playthat game. All right . Let's
assume everything he's sayingis truthful. Well, then you're
basically trying to mediatesomething between Russia and
Exactly. And , and Ukraine.
Fine. Okay. We'll , we'llaccept that. It is , but we'll
accept it. Okay. Oh , nice.
Nice. All right . Okay. So ifyou're doing this, why are you

(23:30):
having a public discussion withZelensky? But everything is
private and very opaque andobtuse with Russia, right?
That's one.

Speaker 1 (23:39):
I have an answer for that, by the way. So mm-hmm
. I asked myselfthis question a hundred times,
and I think I know the answer.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
Sure. What ?

Speaker 1 (23:45):
Because Zelensky, and that's what I mentioned
already, Zelensky depends onyou. So you want to show
everyone, you , you control thesituation 100% with him. Mm-hmm
. And that's whyit's opened and it's home
discussion. You do not controlthe situation with the Putin.
So it's not public yet, and youkeep it private until you are

(24:05):
able, until you're sure you'regonna control him fully. Mm-hmm
. And then ofcourse you will make another
show. That's my position.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
Okay, fine. See, but the premise of what you're,
what you're explaining there isthen basically you're
automatically making it sothat, okay, I control zelensky
, but I don't control Putin. Soif I'm going to stop this war,
basically I have to suppressZelensky and then let Putin do
what he needs to do. Soalready, if we're going back to

(24:36):
treating this as at face value,you're already bargaining from
a weak position, and supposedlyfor someone who's a deal maker,
your client, if you will,right? Solinsky is , you know ,
uh, he's Trump's client ,right?

Speaker 1 (24:48):
To some extent. Yeah , yeah , yeah .

Speaker 2 (24:49):
Kind of, right?
You're basically, you'republicly exposing his
weaknesses. And then theantagonist, like the person
across from you who you'resupposedly deal making with is
Russia. Basically you'reshowing all the cards to, to
your , uh, antagonist. And Imean , antagonist in the , uh,
in the clinical case, not likeas in bed , right? Just the
person across from youbasically sees all the negative

(25:12):
cards that are on the table forthe client that you supposedly
represent. So from a bargainingstandpoint, already there's an
asymmetry. And if there's anasymmetry that the antagonist
can build on, well then that'sgoing to keep moving the, the
accepted outcome more and moreto the favor of the antagonist,
and then less and less to yourclients . So you're not being

(25:32):
an honest client here , uh, andyour , or excuse me, a faithful
client here in trying to createa deal that is equitable for
both sides. If, again, we'retaking things at face value
here, the policy objective,even when you accepted a face
value, the policy objectivedoes not match the actions
being taken. And just moreconcretely to move this outta

(25:52):
the abstract a bit, is that thegoal is to have a ceasefire
here, right? You want Ukraine,he

Speaker 1 (25:59):
Repeat it all the time. Yep . Right?

Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yeah. That's what he says. Yeah. He wants to have a
peace deal , a ceasefire. Well,if you allow, actually, it's
funny that we're talking aboutWorld War I , because it's a
good , um, it's a good reminderof a history because when the
arm diss was signed andeveryone said, okay, we're
gonna stop at 1111 on November11th, right up until that day,

(26:20):
there was an increase infighting because basically
every side, they were basicallytrying to grab as much land as
possible before the ceasefireday ended. And actually,
there's a really nice , uh,clip, I won't call it nice, but
whatever. There's a , there's aaudio clip of like all the
artillery going, and boom,boom, boom, boom , boom ,
massive chaos, and then 1111and everything stops. And all

(26:41):
of a sudden you start hearingthe birds chirping. And this is
when the arm , this was , uh,put into effect, but it just

(27:11):
shows you that there wasn'tthen a decrease in fighting
when the ceasefire wasannounced. There was actually
an increase. So in this case,if you know that there's going
to be increase in fighting withthe ceasefire, why would you
hamstring, Ukraine's ability tofight when you know that
Ukraine's gonna get, or whenthat Russia's going to get more
and more land? And we'veactually seen it with Kursk

(27:32):
when he pulled theintelligence, right? The
Ukraines didn't know what wasgoing on, and then the Russians
cut through the kis Salient,

Speaker 1 (27:39):
Super quick answer here, if I may. Uh , yeah .
Because you don't care aboutwho is right, who is wrong in
this war. You don't , uh, careabout who started and who is ,
uh, protecting himself ordefending himself. Yeah. And in
this case, in order to stopthings, you need to, sorry,
sounds terrible, but stillSure, sure. You support the one

(28:00):
who started to let him getwhatever he wants as to , to
the maximum. It's not, again, Ithink he doesn't really support
Putin, but he wants to stop thefire. He , he wants to seize
the fire. So let me give ananalogy. Um,

Speaker 2 (28:16):
Hold on Dick .
'cause the thing is, aceasefire implies that both
sides want to stop fighting.
There's no incentive for twoparties to have a ceasefire
unless they both feel like theycan't accomplish anything more
. I mean , okay, we'reaccepting a lot of things at
face value and giving a lot ofcredence to, you know,
statements. But we have to stopthe , we have to draw the line

(28:36):
somewhere. Sure. Maybe andbasic , okay . We have to agree
that a ceasefire can only beimplemented when both sides
feel like they've had enough.
Okay? So hobbling, I mean, Iget what you're trying to say
here, but hobbling Ukraine atthe expense of Russia, that
doesn't give incentive forRussia to do a ceasefire. So
that's contrary to your policyobjective of establishing a

(28:58):
ceasefire. And in fact, Trumpeven said that in the
beginning. It's like, okay, I'mgoing to arm Ukraine as much as
possible to force Russia tomake a ceasefire that made
sense. But of course, he didn'tdo that. Instead, he did the
complete opposite and hobbledUkraine so that Russia could
gain more and more land. So inthe current timeline that we're
living in, there is absolutelyzero incentive for Russia to

(29:20):
sign ceasefire because they're,quote winning.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
And , uh, Russia never wanted, never claimed
they wanted to take over thefull country Ukraine. Right.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
Okay, fine. We , we'll accept that even though

Speaker 1 (29:32):
Again, I am not defending , uh, them now , uh,
I just want to say that how Isee things, and if you, okay,

Speaker 2 (29:40):
Well, okay, well , at the very least you could say
this, we can hang our hat onthe fact that under Russian
Federation law, Crimea, Donbas, Luhansk , and , uh, Isha ,
yes. Right? Are all , uh, part

Speaker 1 (29:54):
Of the,

Speaker 2 (29:55):
Are all part of the Russian Federation. Yes. And ,
uh, with the exception ofCrimea, the other three oblasts
are not fully under Russiancontrol. Yes. So we can hang
our hat and sense that rightnow, according to the Russian
perspective, their , theirterritory is occupied. So they
have an incentive to quote ,liberate those , uh, three
oblasts according to theirlegal , uh, perspective. So,

(30:19):
okay, we can argue aboutwhether Russia wants to take
over all of Ukraine, fine, butwe have to agree on the fact
that these four OBLs have to bepart of Russia according to
Russian .

Speaker 1 (30:29):
And that's what Trump does. He lets them , uh,
lets Russia take over theseliberate, right? Liberate,
yeah. Right . Those , uh, allblessed , quote unquote all
blessed . And this is where itstops, at least as it sounds.
Mm-hmm . Again, Iaccept that probably it sounds
a bit strange. Well, notstrange, but as you mentioned,

(30:52):
right . Your words. Yeah . AndI'm super happy, more than
happy to jump to your point ofview on that. But let's finish
this.

Speaker 2 (30:59):
Sure. Yeah .

Speaker 1 (30:59):
This, this picture for now, I'm coming back to my
original question. Trump, whathe does, he oppresses one part
who depends on him, he pleasesthe second one who started all
of that. All , all , all ofthat crap. Yes . ,
whatever, . And , uh,just to make the draw line

(31:24):
saying, okay, you have eatenenough. You never told that you
want to take more, youliberated what you wanted. This
is where you stop . Thank you.
And the second one, you don'tjust give him any voice because
he depends on you. And he hasalready stopped. So this is how
he plans to finish theconflict. This is how I, it is
seen probably for common peoplelike me, , for , for

(31:47):
the rest of the world, again,before, before judging even.
Does it sound like accomplishedpicture or does it sound like
a, like a plan? Like , um, likea plan? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
By the strictest definition, yeah. It's a plan.
But by doing this again, whatexactly is the policy
objective? I keep going back tothat because mm-hmm
. Doing thisdoesn't make sense and says ,
okay, you get these four OBLs ,right? And then what's next?
Because Ukraine said no matterwhat, they're not accepting it.

(32:22):
Right. So those four OBLs aregonna be constantly under
threat, either through girlactivity or whatever. And the
thing is, where's the incentivefor Russia to stop? Because
they said they're going tostop. Right? But they also said
a lot of other thingsbeforehand, whether it's the
Munich agreement ,

Speaker 1 (32:37):
A lot of people said a lot of things

Speaker 2 (32:38):
Here. Yeah. Right.
So I know we said we're gonnapart this later, but I think
this is a good transition tostart to go into, into the
Let's go. Yes. Yeah. Becausethe thing is, okay, I can't
answer this question because Idon't know the mind of , uh, I
, I mean, I have a reasonableassumption and guess of the
mind of Putin, right? But thething is, we can't possibly
know the minds of theindividual state actors, but we

(33:00):
can look at what is thegoverning philosophy behind
their actions. And the thingis, by accepting the four
oblasts to be under Russiancontrol, you essentially cede
territory of one sovereignstate to another sovereign
state. Right? And you basicallyundo all the international

(33:21):
rules based order where we allcommitted in 1945 to say, Hey,
we're gonna stop having thesewars of conquest. Okay? So on
one hand you're saying, okay,well if war of conquest, it's
uh , that's back on the table,boys, right? Go at it so
everyone can start fighting andeverything like this, which
means now, now all of a sudden,all this , uh, diplomatic high
ground that we had with Taiwan,because again, according to

(33:44):
Trump, right? According topolicy objective, this is to
accomplish Obama's pivot toAsia. Although he'll never
admit its Obama's. 'cause youknow, he has his own things
against Obama, but that'sneither here nor there. This is
the pivot to Asia so thatUnited States can focus on
Taiwan and China. But the thingis, if you accept and allow the
fact that , uh, wars ofconquest are now back on the
table, well then China can justgo into Taiwan and everything

(34:07):
about us saying, Hey, no , youcan't do , uh, war of Conquest.
Those things don't applyanymore. And then more
importantly, you're talkingabout hegemony. One of the
things about the United States,you know, 'cause there's a lot
of people, especially like onthe far left , uh, they like
talk about , oh, America's anempire and everything like
that. And then in that case,you know , in a lot of cases

(34:28):
they're not wrong. But thething is, the American Empire
Project, if you will, is anempire of alliances. So our
strength comes from ouralliances and our interactions
with , uh, different countries.
We don't actually control themlike, you know, traditional
empires in the past do . Sowhen you seed like these
international agreements to theconcept of war of conquest,

(34:50):
then you actively diminish yourown American empire, which goes
contrary to this quote Americafirst policy objective. And
you're basically reestablishingthis hegemony. 'cause like
right now, we have , we can sayfor , we're talking about like
America first, again, in thepure like Steelman argument.
Well then, right now we're in aunipolar world, essentially,

(35:10):
where America's number one,nobody can match or counteract
against America. And basicallyeveryone pretty much listens to
what we do. And we say it's agreat, it's a great system
except China. Right? But no,but America, yeah , China is a
rising power, right? That'strying to counteract that. So
then our point is, if wemaintain the international

(35:30):
rules-based order of these ,uh, empire of Alliances, then
China will have a harder timeto , uh, establish their own
hegemony on the global stage.
'cause their aspiration is to ,to match the United States. But
if we're basically, if we're ina unipolar world where we have
our alliances are strong, fromthe diplomatic perspective,

(35:51):
there's going to be a verytough time for China to
actually challenge the UnitedStates. They can only challenge
through the military. And ifthe international rule-based
order prevents military meansto rise to power, well then
America's dominance is secured.
Again, we're just taking thisfrom the America first.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
Probably more questions from my side. Sure.
Well, so first, do you believethat Trump wants to get back
home without any globalaspirations? He wants to focus
on what is happening inAmerica, and he doesn't want to
spend his time and efforts onthe rest of the world.

Speaker 2 (36:29):
What I believe is what Trump wants to do, he just
wants to sit around and golfall day. Which, if you look at
this presidential schedule,okay , that's what he's doing.
He doesn , well , he's lettingall these other people handle
this, and then he comes in andsigns stuff and make these
things. His whole goal was toavoid all his legal issues that
he, he was having. And now thathe's prison , he , he's
basically New Yorkers, we callhim Teflon Don , because

(36:50):
nothing ever sticks to him. And, uh, and sure enough, he lives
up to his name all he had allthis stuff that was going on
and all these legal problems,and now they're all gone away
'cause he's president. Sothat's all he cares about. So
if this is everyone else doingstuff , if

Speaker 1 (37:02):
We follow your, I I like your example. Uh , if you
follow , uh, if we follow yourexample, he, whatever is
happening right now in theworld is not letting him play
golf as he used to. So he justwant to eliminate all of those
distractions so that he cancome back home and spend more.
I've heard that he has spentmore than several hundred

(37:25):
millions getting back home forplaying golf during his
presidency during the last, Idunno , couple of months. Yeah.
Since he became a president. Soagain, coming back to your ,
uh, analogy, he wants toeliminate this dissection to
play golf safely. I mean,

Speaker 2 (37:42):
Sure. But he also has obligations, again , when
we're talking about , uh, his ,uh, obligations to his Russian
backers who bailed him out alot of things. Well, now, now
they're calling in thereceipts. So , uh, again, if ,
if you're coming from this,from the perspective of a, of a
New Yorker from the 19 nineeighties and nineties. Yeah ,
you understand, and you knowthis obviously it's hard to

(38:04):
prove unless you actually, youknow, go into the FSB and pull
out these files . But ,uh, but the point is like,
yeah, the chickens have comehome to roost, if you will, and
they're asking for, for him topay, pay back on all the
support that they've given him.
So there's that, there's alsofrom the, his conservative
backers who've bankrolled hisentire campaign, right? They

(38:27):
have their, also their , um,their interests that they are ,
um, that , that he has tosatisfy with all these laws and
tax breaks and dismantling of ,uh, of the government because
of their own techno fascistphilosophy, which I guess we
can talk about in a , I guessin a different conversation.
But, so he has all theseobligations that he has to do.
And there's also, like somepeople, he's been saying

(38:48):
because of his simpleton mind,he stated this in the past
before, where he doesn't likeanything that Obama has ever
done, and he has his owngrudge. It's completely bonkers
and insane. But again, we haveto deal with the person that
we're dealing with. And this isTrump. And this is , and a lot
of times when he says things,they are kind of the truth,
right? Maybe not. The theactions that he is going to see
in the future are not thetruth. They're lies. But his

(39:11):
justification for things, ninetimes outta 10, he's saying the
truth because he's just, Imean, some people call it like,
you know, narcissisticpersonality disorder, but
whatever. But the point is, heblurts things out. And he is
specifically said numeroustimes in the past that he wants
to dismantle everything thatObama's done. And he's, and the
fact that, and one of thethings people were saying is

(39:31):
that , well, he said , uh,well, Obama has a Nobel Peace
Prize. So in his like weirdsimpleton, naive mind, he's
like, oh, if I bring, you know, a ceasefire, then I can get a
peace prize again. It'scompletely bonkers. Insane. But
you know, this is

Speaker 1 (39:44):
Speaking about peace prize . Why does he care about
a peace prize? Some , because

Speaker 2 (39:46):
Obama won it. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (39:48):
That's

Speaker 2 (39:48):
It . That's , that's there . There's no more further
analysis.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
No, no, no, no, no.
Noble peace prize is some, somemetal from the European
institution. He doesn't careabout European institutions.
It's just , uh, old slacker.
Well, he's also old, but , uh,useless people from the old
continent. They inventedsomething. He can, he can do
his own noble peace prize withtwice as much as gold with

(40:15):
statues of him standingeverywhere. Why does he care
about Noble Peace prize?

Speaker 2 (40:21):
Because Obama got it. You're trying to inject
logic into something wherethere's no logic. Okay .

Speaker 1 (40:27):
Okay. So he still compares himself to previous
presidents. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:31):
I mean, even the inauguration, right? They moved
it indoors. 'cause he knew hewasn't going to get a big crowd
out there, and they made theexcuse of cold weather. And
nevermind the fact that, youknow , other inaugurations have
been ridiculously cold too.
And, and for him, again, likethis shouldn't matter about the
crowd size shouldn't matter.
Like , but again, in hissimpleton mind, it's like quote
ratings like a television, andhe wants to have better ratings

(40:54):
than Obama did. Okay?

Speaker 1 (40:56):
Now , um, and

Speaker 2 (40:58):
Again, it's completely stupid and bonkers,
but again, this is the personthat we're dealing with mm-hmm
. You can't tryto, for , and this is my
criticism of, of news reportersand analysts and all these
supposed quote experts tryingto inject logic. And I think
it's like some people are usingthe word sane washing , which I
really like. They're trying tocreate sanity of veneer of

(41:20):
sanity over Trump when he, hedoesn't have that. And again,
don't take my word for it. Askany New Yorker who's lived
during these times, they willtell you the exact same thing
when we lived through this. Weknow the type of person he is.
This is how, how he is. There'sno, you cannot inject logic
into something, into a beingthat does not operate under
logic.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
Which means for me that he's solving the issues of
today without thinking aboutthe long future.

Speaker 2 (41:47):
Oh , of course not.
Okay.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
That's a good point.
Because , uh, that will beprobably our transition to my
next question. Mm-hmm . Which I raised
already, he stated severaltimes, or at least I understood
it, he stated several timesthat , uh, America is , uh, not
going to dominate across allthe globe. And he stopped

(42:09):
financing and funding quite alot of global organizations all
across the globe because hedoesn't understand what they
do. Right. He doesn'tunderstand the profits, he
doesn't understand the meaning.
He doesn't understand anything.
So he just closed quite a lotof usaid , by the way, how is ,
uh, correctly pronounced USAIDor U-S-A-I-D ?

Speaker 2 (42:30):
I would say SAID , but yeah, U

Speaker 1 (42:33):
Okay. Matter . I always thought it was usaid,
but , uh, no .

Speaker 2 (42:36):
Well , yeah, yeah .
I mean , because it's morecutesy that way. I know, but I
, I mean, when I was workingwith the State Department, they
always say A ID, but yeah,USAID sounds , uh, usaid . I ,
I guess 'cause USAID US gives alot of aid . Yes. So when
you're talking, okay , do youmean US aid on the general
concept, or do you mean theactual organization? So I think
what I've always dealt withState Department people, okay .
And they've always said a ID tome,

Speaker 1 (42:56):
So he, whatever you call it, he closed funding
almost everywhere. At least,again, at least as it's seen
right now, according to you. I, I believe I stopped asking
these , uh, naive questionslast time, but I , I would
still want to try it a coupletimes more. Do you think it's a
good idea?

Speaker 2 (43:15):
No, of course not.
It's a stupid idea. Stupididea. By , even again, even if
you take his his point at facevalue, it just, it doesn't make
sense because you're saying,okay, you wanna pull back, but
yet at the same time you wannapivot towards China, like,
which one is it? Do you wannapull back and let China do
whatever they want to do? Or inRussia want do everyone they
wanna do, like, you know ,you're talking about trade and

(43:35):
everything like that. If youwanna pull back, fine. But that
means everyone's gonna be ableto do wars of conquest as what
they want to do , and they'regonna be able to do trade as
they want to do. So if that'syour policy objective, then why
are you starting all this otherthings? Why are you doing
trade? Why are you doing thesetrade wars? Why are you trying
to antagonize China overTaiwan? They're not congruent.

(43:55):
The stated policy objectivedoes not match the actionable
well actions theactions that we see on the
ground. So that's why it'simpossible to quote saying ,
wash this, because there's afundamental disconnect between
the, the objectives and theactions taken. And I have the
cynical, which I think is acorrect answer, but it doesn't

(44:19):
make sense other than theaspect of he's catering to all
these different interests thathe has, whether it's the
Republican conservatives,whether it's the tech bros who
bankrolled his , uh, campaign,or whether it's the Russian
oligarchs who bailed them outduring all these past decades.
And they all have competingobjectives. And he's just
basically, I don't wanna dealwith any of this. I got what I
need to do, which was get ridof all these criminal charges

(44:42):
off of me. And now, yeah, sure.
I'll just sign whatever thehell you guys need me to sign,
and then just leave me alone.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
So, obviously American, okay, go ahead .
Mm-hmm .

Speaker 2 (44:54):
U-S-A-I-D is essentially, it's the extension
of the Marshall Plan. Youremember the Marshall Plan?
Mm-hmm . Right ?
The general thing is, okay,after World War ii, everyone
was pretty much destroyed.
United States pretty much hadall the gold, because back then
we had gold standard, and theyhad all the means to actually
finance everything. And also wehad the industrial capacity.
And then basically Britainseeded their role as the

(45:15):
preeminent superpower and fellonto United States and we're
like, okay, well, let's rebuildeveryone and also make a lot of
money and jobs for Americans byrebuilding Europe. Right? And
then you had the Marshall Plan,which was specifically about,
okay, let's rebuild as much ofEuros as possible so that they,
so that they don't fall underthe sphere of influence of the
Soviet Union. Mm-hmm . Mm-hmm
. And then afterthat all ended well , they said

(45:37):
, Hey, this is a really goodthing and also is really good
for peace, and it's also reallygood to counteract the Soviet
Union. So let's create anorganization, which I think
started under JFK. Well , I'mnot quite sure. I think it was
1961 if I remember, but someonecan fact check me on that. But
anyway, the point is, okay,Marshall Plan has ended, let's
actually institutionalize thisand make this a permanent
fixture of United StatesForeign Policy. 'cause A, it's

(46:00):
good for diplomatic relationswith countries, and B, it's
good because it counteracts theSoviet Union's influence. And
that's what we did. And thennow of course, the Soviet Union
collapsed, but it's still agood thing because the first
policy objective of U-S-A-I-D ,which is, you know, good
diplomatic relations withpeople is obviously still
relevant. And also, if youreally wanna look at this from

(46:22):
a eternal class struggle, ifyou will, between communism and
capitalism, okay ? Soviet Unionmay have collapsed, but the
People's Republic of Chinastill exists, and they're
trying to now expand with theirown economic interests, right?
With the One Belt One RoadInitiative and whatnot . So
U-S-A-I-D is a concreteinstitutional function that's

(46:43):
very cheap, right? Like theirbudget, I forget what their
budget is, but it's only likein the couple billions, which
is like very tiny compared tothe One Belt One Road
Initiative, or at least thestated , uh, one Belt One Road
Initiative. Because I mean, youcan't really trust anything
that comes out of the ChineseCommunist Party's mouth. But
the point is, it's a goodcounteraction. It's , it's a
very, I like to use theirwords, a quote efficient

(47:06):
institution that counteractsglobal communism, which before
it was Russian based and nowit's Chinese based . So from
that perspective, USAID D is agood thing. Yet they candid
course , those of us that cutthrough the SANE washing , we
know why it was canceled,right? Because it a, from a
Republican , uh, destroying the, uh, size of the government

(47:26):
perspective, there's that. Andalso from Elon Musk, he's his
own weirdo crazy guy, and hehas his own grudge against USID
because apparently they didsomething for one of his , uh,
projects, which I don'tremember. 'cause again, I'm not
trying to get into the wholedrama and soap opera of this
whole thing, but he, he had agrudge and , uh, ax to grind
with the USID . So he, hecanned him as , as petty and

(47:47):
ridiculous as that. This isgoing back to the original
questions. This is why I feellike it's so embarrassing to be
American because the thingsthat they're doing are just so
petty. They fundamentally donot make sense on the
international scale or foreignpolicy , uh, scene. So just
petty actions that have graveconsequences for people.

Speaker 1 (48:08):
Okay. I now better understand your original
sentence when you say that itis , uh, probably not so nice
to be American these days. But, uh, what if , uh, it is the
right time for America to stepdown a bit and probably, I
don't want to say Euro , but uh, for example mm-hmm
. Just , uh, justfor as a crazy thought, let

(48:30):
someone else step in.

Speaker 2 (48:32):
Sure. That's great.
Again, as a self-admittedtransatlanticists, again, my
days in working in NATO reallyformed a lot of my , uh, adult
perspective on life. And Idon't like labeling myself or
labeling others, but if you hadto put a label on me, I'm a
very firm trans atlanticist,right? I believe in the
philosophical underpinnings ofthe NATO alliance, there's a

(48:54):
lot of people when they thinkof nato, they think, oh ,
military article five, blah,blah, blah. No, the real power
from the NATO alliance is thedialogue and close interaction
and integration of Canada,United States with the European
continent and where global ,uh, the liberal, and I don't
mean like, you know, left wingliberal, but like liberal, like

(49:15):
philosophical liberal, theliberal world order has a
platform to flourish throughour specific institutions. NATO
being the biggest or sexiestexample of it. So from a
self-admitted transatlanticists, uh, perspective, if I'm gonna
be like, okay, if I'm gonnatake off my American hat, which
is very difficult to do as anAmerican citizen, but fine, you
force me to take off myAmerican hat. What matters is

(49:37):
the liberal world order , theinternational rules-based order
codified with the Declarationof Rights of man and citizen
and the UN charter, right? Ifwe look at that, sure, United
States can take a seat back andEurope can now lead. And I'm
perfectly fine with thatbecause then this international
rules-based order still has achance to flourish and continue

(49:58):
and everything's good. Well ,one A, if you do that, the
first thing is it runs afoul ofthe America first policy
objective.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
And I don't understand why, to be honest,

Speaker 2 (50:08):
Because again, America is an empire, right? If
you take the far left , uh,assertion, again, it's not a
territorial empire like in thepast, whether it was the
Russian Empire or the GermanEmpire or the British Empire,
it's an empire based onalliances and bilateral trade
and everything that they'redoing. This administration is
doing a, it's killing all thesediplomatic , uh, connections

(50:30):
and precedents that we've had.
And also it's destroying thesebilateral trade networks. So
he's actively self-harming thisAmerican empire and this
empire, it's economically, isbacked by the US dollar as the
global reserve currency. Sowhen you retreat from the
world, then there's no need forthe US dollar to be the global

(50:51):
reserve country because you'renot actually out there doing
trade, doing things that work .
Mm-hmm . Again ,the US dollar, your currency is
basically the economicmanifestation of your economic
power. And the American Empirebeing an empire of business
trade and diplomatic alliancesby retracting trade and
diplomatic relations, U-S-A-I-Dbeing one, like you mentioned,

(51:15):
then there is no economicincentive. Again, forget about
the diplomatic part for asecond. There is no economic
incentive for countries tohoard and hold onto US dollars.
And when you do that, youweaken the US dollar stance as
the reserve currency and thepeople are going to be looking
at other currencies. Andtherefore that further erodes.
And it's kind of like apro-cyclical feedback loop of

(51:38):
diminished economic might ,which destroys the quote
American Empire. So if yourstated policy objective is
America First, this is activelyharming that America first
policy objective. Now thebroader points of Europe. And
now, okay , now I'm gonna , I'mglad you brought this up 'cause
this is what I really wanted totalk about is that Yes, take

(51:58):
off my American hat, put on mytrans Atlantis hat. It doesn't
matter what America's doingbecause Europe can pick up the
slack and everything's good togo. International rules-based
order is still good to go, buteven Europe is not acting in
the best interest of a, theinternational Rules-based
order. And Europe in generalbecause as much as I love what,
for example, Macron is sayingabout willing to fight and

(52:21):
everything like that, and , uh,they're not actually doing
anything to help Ukraine rightnow.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
No, they don't.
Yeah,

Speaker 2 (52:28):
I mean , it , it's a lot of talk and maybe again,
like , I don't wanna on Macronright now, you know, frankly.
'cause I , you know, a , I lovein this country , but
also like , I generally likewhat he's, at least what he's
saying and the actions thathe's taking for France and for
Europe. And I'm 100% on boardwith , uh, international Macron
. Right. I know a lot of , evenlike some of my French friends

(52:49):
here are saying domestic Macronwe hate, but International
Macron we love, right. ,

Speaker 1 (52:54):
Interestingly enough , uh, my French colleagues say
that , uh, unfortunately hesucks both , uh, domestically
and , uh, internationally.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
Oh, really? Why?

Speaker 1 (53:03):
Because , um, it's interesting that we're
discussing that, but , um,first it was, I think it was
last Friday when he , um, heapproached the nation with a ,
with a speech of like 20minutes and he mentioned that
Russia is threat and , uh, theyhave to start fighting. And I
was terrified. And the firstthing I did, I tried to text

(53:23):
three or four of my Frenchcolleagues mm-hmm
. It was like eight o'clock inthe evening. 8:00 PM uh , last,
not this Friday, but onebefore. And , uh, none of my
French colleagues respondedback to me at the same time. So
they waited for a couple ofhours and the earliest was ,
uh, saying me. Um , but that's, uh . They, he does it from

(53:43):
time to time. Don't payattention to that. And the rest
French confirmed it.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
What do you mean the grandstanding? Yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah. He does that. Yeah,exactly. That's also

Speaker 1 (53:52):
Three or four times he did it. And he doesn't mean
a thing to be honest, accordingto French, I mean, it , it's ,
yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
Yeah , I've heard that . I've heard that too.
Exactly. Yeah .

Speaker 1 (53:59):
So whatever he says, whatever Europe says, doesn't
mean a lot because they don'twant to get out of the comfort
zone by all any means.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
Yeah. That jives with what I've been hearing and
also like seeing as well. Andthat , that goes back to the,
you know, the point that wewere talking about here is the
stated policy objectives ofEurope do not match their
specific actions. Or rather,it's more of lack of actions.
Because if your goal is to A,maintain the international
rules-based order and b usurpthem , uh, the mantle of global

(54:37):
superpower for the EuropeanUnion from the United States,
what they're doing right now isnot accomplishing either of
those things. Because lemme askyou this, what's stopping
anyone, any country from goinginto Russia right now, because
clearly their military iscompletely like decimated,
right? And they can barely movelike a kilometer in Ukraine.
What's stopping any countryjust grow rolling up into

(54:59):
Moscow and just deposing Putinand then ending this whole
thing?

Speaker 1 (55:03):
Because , uh, um, it's

Speaker 2 (55:06):
One word and it starts with no , and it starts
with N

Speaker 1 (55:10):
Nato. No, no ,

Speaker 2 (55:11):
No

Speaker 1 (55:12):
Nonsense. No ones .

Speaker 2 (55:15):
No , no, it's not .
It's very basic. What'sstopping any country from going
into Moscow right now? Nuclear.

Speaker 1 (55:20):
Nuclear.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
Yeah. Nukes.
Exactly. Okay. Right . So thisis the point, right? It's that
the stated policy objective ofthe Europe, 'cause now we're
just talk focusing on Europeright now, is that they want to
prevent nuclear war, right?
Mm-hmm . Sothey're trying to do this
half-assed support of Ukrainebecause they recognize
Ukraine's in the right, butalso more importantly is they
don't wanna start in a nuclearwar, correct? Mm-hmm

(55:43):
. So if your stateof objective policy objective
is to not have nuclear war,which means it's not just
Russia, it's the entire globe,right? We need to address
nuclear non-proliferation. Andwhen you say incentivize
countries not to have nukes.
Yes.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
Correct. Right ?
Yes.

Speaker 2 (56:00):
'cause if I'm wrong, please stop me because No , no
, I'm building up my case here.
So if that's the state ofpolicy objective of Europe,
well, how did this entire messwith Ukraine actually start? It
started in 1994 with theBudapest member . Oh , right,
yes. Right. Okay . Yeah .
Ukraine gave up the nukes. Now,okay, you can argue. Well, and
they never actually hadphysical control. I mean, they

(56:21):
had physical control, but theydidn't have have the codes for
it. You know, blah, blah , blah. But from an international
diplomatic standpoint, Ukrainehad nukes, and both us and
Russia both signed andagreements saying, Russia will
take these nukes, but inexchange, the sovereignty of
the Ukrainian territory,including Crimea will be

(56:43):
maintained. And this was asignal 'cause . And this is
obviously, you know, good forUkraine, Russia, United States
and everything like that. Butmore broadly, again, from the
international rules basedorder, which is what Europe
supposedly cares about, thiswas a signal to other countries
basically saying, Hey look, youdon't need to build nukes
because the countries that dohave nukes will protect you.
And the most important thing isyour territorial sovereignty.

(57:06):
And we've all made a commitmentthat the biggest countries,
nuclear powers have all agreedthat everyone's nuclear
sovereignty is the mostimportant thing. So please
don't invest in nukes. We don'tneed more nukes. Nukes are
already destabilizing enough asthey are, and it could end
mankind as we know it. So let'sstop doing that right now. We
have this ill, the sin of nukeswith nuclear nations. We don't

(57:28):
need to add to that sin. Andsure enough, we've started to
reduce our stockpile from 1994to now, like , as you know,
Russia and the United Stateshave been reducing their
stockpile nuclear weapons,right ? So this was a signal to
everyone. The reason why theinvasion of Ukraine by Russia
is so egregious, especially tothe European mind , because it
goes against this understandingfor the rest of the world

(57:51):
saying that don't build nukesbecause your territorial
sovereignty will be maintained.
And the United States hasfailed on that by not actively
intervening. And if Europe isgoing to pick up the mantle,
well then Europe needs to say,Hey, look, we are against
nuclear proliferation. We don'twant nuclear war. The very
reason why we're not marchingto Moscow because we don't want

(58:11):
nuclear war is exactly the samereason. Like you can't have it
both ways. You either march inthe Moscow right now and risk
nuclear war, or you have tomarch into Sevastopol and kick
Russia out. Because theagreement, again, not just the
Ukraine, because yes, on paperit was the agreement to
Ukraine, but the broaderagreement that the signal to
all the other countries likeSouth Africa, South Korea,

(58:33):
Japan, Australia, New Zealand,is that your country's borders
will be maintained. Do not putnukes because we will protect
it and make sure that theinternational rules based order
exists. And this is a grossviolation and betrayal of that
work where you now you havecountry like South Korea's
talking about building nukes,South Africa and Brazil. Were
like, Hey, you know, oh really?
I didn't hear about that. Yeah,obviously, I mean, they're all

(58:55):
like rumblings. And of course,you know , think of what it is,
but the fact that people areeven talking about this, and
this is actually making thenews. Mm-hmm .
This is disturbing. I mean, howeven Japan, the country that
got bombed twice by nukes, whowas the most anti-nuke, you
know, nation in the world areeven there are people in their
media, right? And in their ,um, what's the name of their ,
um, parliament's called, Iforget the , I forget the word,

(59:17):
but their parliamentarians are, um, actively talking about
it, but they're breaking thetaboo of not mentioning the
word nuke. And they're , uh,and they're talking about, Hey,
you know what, maybe we shouldhave nukes too. So that's from
an international rules-basedorder standard, this betrayal
of not supporting Ukraine bynot being steadfast. It's like,
no, the Bud Pest memorandum isbigger than what it is . 'cause

(59:40):
remember, like in school andclass you talked about like
Pizza West failure 1648. Andthat was kind of like the big
break between the old way ofdoing things in the Middle
Ages. So like now there's likeinternational sovereignty thing
that we have inherited today,this legacy of international
nation states. It's kind oflike similar to that. I feel
like the Budapest memorandum ison an equal footing of

(01:00:02):
humankind history, significanceas the piece of Westphalia in
the sense that we've collected,decided nukes are bad, nuclear
war is bad, and we need tominimize the, the threat and
advancement of that. So that'sthat. Now, secondly, just for
on Europe's standpoint, whetherit's Macron or Ursula Vander
Lane or or whoever else, youknow, they're all saying, okay,
we want the European project.
We wanna build you four , youknow, the European Union forces

(01:00:25):
and move more towards afederalized European Union
where we can maintain theEuropean power. Okay, well ,
right now you have an invasionright on your doorstep and
you're not doing anything aboutit. And we know, again, based
on how we talked about justpreviously in like half hour
ago or whatever, is that theseceasefire conditions are not
sustainable because you'rebasically hamstring Ukraine and

(01:00:48):
bolstering Russia's ability tofight that allows Russia to
continue to menace and harassthe territorial integrity of
Europe. So you cannot tell meyou are a pro-European
politician, pro-Europeanstatesman by allowing this
situation in Europe tocontinue. You cannot tell me
you are a pro-European andallow invasion of European

(01:01:10):
sovereignty. I mean, sure. Likesovereign doesn't exist. But
you understand what I'm sayingis like the policy objective,
the stated policy objective ofthese pro-European statesmen is
to have a more centralizedEurope or Europe. First make
Europe great again . Make yourgreat again mega . Yeah
. Right? So you can't tell meyou want that, but then allow

(01:01:33):
all the stuff to happen. Thisis why I'm kind of like mad at
what Macron is saying. 'causehe's having all these heads of
state get together for thislast week on , I think it was
on the 13th, they got alltogether to discuss what we're
going to do after thisceasefire. But no, you can't do
that. 'cause ceasefire justfreezes the conflict. At the
best case, it freezes at theconflict, and it has a menacing

(01:01:54):
threat on European doorstepsthat is not good for
sovereignty of Europe. Europeis under attack right now. Not
only is Europe under attack,but the international
rules-based order is underattack. The concept of nuclear
non-proliferation is underattack. You cannot allow Russia
to re-arm, you know, do aNaville Chamberlain peace in
our time thing. And you know,after taking Czechoslovakia and

(01:02:16):
then wonder, oh my God, nowthey're marching through Poland
again, this has to stop. Andyou cannot say, oh yeah, we
agreed to a ceasefire. No,there is no ceasefire because
there's a commitment on theBudapest memorandum that this
will not happen. Full stop.

Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
But we haven't heard about Budapest for quite a
while already.

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
Yeah, of course. And that's what's infuriating.

Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
Well, okay, that's true. We are hearing about more
Minsk and , uh, coming back toTrump, you cannot say that he
is not right when he says thathe wants to stop people die.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
No . No, I'm sorry.
That's wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:02:49):
Okay, very nice.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
'cause people are dying right now. The oppression
of what's going on , I mean,this is why Putin and Lara got
the warrants done on the ICC,is that Ukrainians right now
are dying

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
And he wants to stop that. He says he wants to stop
that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
No, if Russia is holds this territory, they've
already shown that they'rekilling the locals or, and even
ethnically cleansing them. It'sgoing to continue with Russia's
having permanent control overit over these territories.

Speaker 1 (01:03:17):
But then, okay, now we're coming back to other ,
that part of that , uh,possible deal. Um, the
statement is that they want tostop the mass killing so that
people stop shooting at , ateach other. And , uh, they want
to stop the people dyingthousands and thousands a day.

(01:03:40):
I think what is not being saidis that , uh, even if they
seize this fire, and I totallyagree with you, there will be
some murders from time to timeor on a regular basis, but not
in this , uh, not to thismagnitude again, sounds

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
Awful. No . Okay.
Well ,

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
It does sound awful, but as I hear people, what
Trump wants to say, and again,he's not saying I , I think
he's a , he's wise , well wise,not wise, but , uh, he's not,
he's to some extent, he's asmart guy. He understands that
people will keep killing eachother, but he wants to stop
that mass murder.

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
It's very easy to stop the mass murder. Russia
can just go back home andRussia, and again, like, okay,
fine, we'll

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
Accept That's what Biden wanted . That's what
Biden was saying.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
Okay. But then why are you we having a ceasefire?
Why is there not a peacetreaty?

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
Ah , that's a good point.

Speaker 2 (01:04:30):
That's just a good point is the point . The point,
okay. Because if your statedpolicy objective is to stop
people from dying, well thenyou have like a peace treaty.
But we're not having a peacetreaty because obviously you
cannot have peace in this typeof situation. It is a , it is .

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
So the first step , the first step is that you ask
people not to shoot at eachother, and only then you'll be
able, will you be able to start, uh, discussing peace.

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
Okay , now we gotta go back to some historical ,
uh, yes, please. Historicalexamples here. So at the Air
Force Academy, we learned a lotabout , uh, specific doctrines
of warfare mm-hmm . Right ? You know, you learn
about like sun Zu , Kitz , uhoh, yes. You know , um, du hey
and things like that. But , um,one of the modern doctrines is
, uh, Powell Doctrine, youknow, Colin Powell mm-hmm

(01:05:14):
. And , uh, I'm avery big advocate of the Powell
Doctrine. And Colin Powellbasically said that war is the
most destructive thing thathumans can ever do to each
other and the public, becauseespecially within democracies
where the public are the onesthat are the leaders, if you
will, because the public electswho should represent them. And
these representatives thenenact the policy on behalf of

(01:05:36):
the people. It is an imperativefor people to understand the
dangers and the horrors of war.
We always say like, our job atthe end of the day is to
destroy buildings and to killpeople. And we don't mince
words about that because thepublic needs to know that war
is horrible. And by knowingthat war is horrible, that we
should do everything in ourpower to prevent war from

(01:05:58):
actually happening. But onceyou've made , so you basically,
there's kind of like a pushinglever, if you will. Like, you
can push the lever very, veryfar and just prevent war,
prevent war, prevent war. Butonce you finally make the
decision, you've exhausted allother possibilities. And war
happens. It is imperative thatthe public understands the
credible threat. That war isterrible, that you make war as

(01:06:22):
destructive and brutal andterrible as possible to
minimize overall suffering. AndI know that's very like
counteractive, like what , likewhat you're saying. But the
thing is, like a long prolongedwar, like you could especially
see with , uh, Palestine andIsrael and whatnot going on,
causes more human sufferingthan a very pronounced,
precise, destructive focusedwar. Because you cannot

(01:06:46):
sanitize the brutality of war.
And that's why, again, you tryto prevent it as much as
happens, but once you make thatdecision that war is going to
happen, you need to put allyour focus on destroying the
national will and means the warfinding means of the enemy
mm-hmm . To bringpeace as quickly as possible.
Because the more focus the waris a, there's less of a

(01:07:07):
spreading of the violence, butalso the actual amount of
violence, you know , fromcalculus, like the integral, if
you will, is a lot lowerbecause then the war ends
quicker. Having prolongedgraduated wars are actually
more destructive because whenyou focus it on the enemy or
the military than the military,the ones that bear the brunt of
the destruction and thekilling, and that's, again,

(01:07:28):
that's what's supposed tohappen, right? That's what the
militaries are for. But whenit's a prolonged war, then the,
the suffering and the , uh,killing and the destruction
starts bleeding into thecivilian population. And the
point is, with Genevaconventions and the hate
conventions is about tominimize as much as possibility
to destructive aspects to thepopulation. So having this ,

(01:07:50):
uh, spread out war or gradualwar, it causes more human
suffering. And that's what youwant to limit. And there's a
very clear example of this withthe Vietnam War, because
obviously, okay, yeah. UnitedStates laws hahaha, right? But
the thing is, the concept ofPowell doctrine was very much
on display within the VietnamWar because yes, North Korea,

(01:08:12):
or excuse me, North Korea,north , um, north Vietnam back
then mm-hmm .
They had the upper hand andthey were winning. And the
United States was basicallyfighting in the concept of
operation Rolling Thunder,where basically, okay, we don't
want it . Same like today, wedon't want to antagonize the
Soviet Union. You , we don'twant a World War III happening.
So we're going to limit ourstrikes into North Vietnam and
only focus on the , uh, line ofdemarcation and avoid hitting

(01:08:35):
North Vietnam as much aspossible. Mm-hmm
. Like Hano and whatnot, andfocus on a , the Vietcong and
also the fighting mostly inSouth Vietnam, which is
incredibly destructive to SouthVietnam. And also it , it
isolated North Vietnam from thehorrors and the effects of the
war. So that they were able tocontinue to produce their war
fighting capability. And ofcourse, obviously we were
losing. And the thing is, atthe certain point then the

(01:08:57):
Nixon finally came into powerand he basically said, 'cause
he was like a hugeanti-communist. And he
basically said like, I don'tcare about, okay , obviously
I'm like simplifying a lot ofthings here , right ? Mm-hmm
. But hebasically said like, you know
what, I don't give a rat'sabout the Soviet Union. I want
to end this war, and we're notgonna do this by this piecemeal
rolling thunder. And this iswhen he busted out operation

(01:09:18):
linebacker. And linebacker wonin linebacker two, where he
took our B 50 twos, loaded 'emup with bombs, and he said,
weapons free , drop as muchammunition and destructive
power on North Vietnam, whatthe Soviet Union says. And we
are going to bring the NorthVietnamese down to their knees.
Because the context behind thiswas that obviously North

(01:09:40):
Vietnam was winning, butbecause they knew they were
winning, refused to sign apeace deal or a ceasefire. Does
this sound kind of familiar tosomething? Right ? Familiar .
Yep . So they refused to sign apeace deal because they were,
had the upper hand . And thenNixon said, screw it, air Force
go bomb the out of them. And itbasically, in a very like
limited sense that cleareddestructive and focused power

(01:10:03):
against North Vietnam madeUnited States quote , win the
war in the sense that thepolicy objective now was for
United States to basicallyleave with a peace treaty in
hand. And, and it worked likea, after the Tet Offensive,
obviously Vietcong werecompletely eliminated. They
were no longer a viablemilitary force, but the amount

(01:10:23):
of destructive power andbombings that we've done with
our bombers, specifically likeB 50 twos, that was the big
thing with linebacker twospecifically the North Koreans
didn't see any , or I keepsaying North Koreans, 'cause
obviously Vietnam, northVietnam , north Vietnamese, yes
. Yeah , the North Vietnamese,they never saw this amount
destructive power. Andpredictably, I mean, okay,

(01:10:44):
that's arguable the wordpredictably. But the Soviet
Union didn't interfere withthis and, and enforce the North
Vietnamese to sign a peacetreaty with the South
Vietnamese and the Americans.
So that basically America wasable to come out. Of course
afterwards, then the NorthVietnamese rolled in. And once
we stopped , uh, providingsupport to the South
Vietnamese, but that's aseparate issue. The policy

(01:11:04):
objective was we need to getout. This war is destructive
and it's causing lots of humansuffering. So the way to to
actually end itcounterintuitively is to reign
massive firepower anddestruction in a concentrated
area, in a concentrated time sothat the opposing party
capitulates the point ofsigning a peace deal. And
that's what brings peace. Sothose lessons that we learned

(01:11:27):
from rolling Thunders , uh,operation Linebacker, it was
codified with Colin Powell. Andthis is exactly what we did
with the Gulf War , uh, withthe first Gulf War, because
again, he was , uh, he was incharge of this and this spread
out to most of the generals.
And again, the fact that I as acadet was learning about it,
you can see that it was , uh,it institutionalized the point
that now most Americanofficers, military officers

(01:11:49):
learned about this and say that, Hey, we do not mince words
around here because we don'twant the population to think
that, oh, war is like thisHollywood thing where it's
like, oh, it's all fun and it'sall fun and games like, no, war
is horrible. You need to knowhow horrible war is so that you
don't willy-nilly make us gointo war. But once war happens,
it needs to end quickly. Andthe only way for it to end

(01:12:11):
quickly is if you have aconcentrated destructive force
so that it minimizes overallsuffering. And right now,
Ukraine is suffering, Russia issuffering, everyone is
suffering because of thisgradual piecemeal thing. And
if, okay, United States isgonna step back, great, but
Europe needs to come in thereand basically Europe needs to
end this thing and Europe canend this thing. They don't even
need to do this themselves. Allthat really needs to happen is

(01:12:34):
Macron basically says if hewants to actually put his
actions behind his words, hesays, Hey, look, we're gonna
give you your long rangeweapons. You can go hit inside
Russia, you can do thesethings. Hell, you can even make
, uh, an excuse of like, oh ,we need to protect the nuclear
, uh, power plants of Ukraine.
So we're gonna come in here andas like a trip wire force and
you know, or peacekeeping sothat Ukrainians don't have to

(01:12:54):
man the border of like Belarusor whatnot . And more of them
can go down and actually fightand end this thing and actually
end this war.

Speaker 1 (01:13:01):
Believe Europe has , uh, enough of , uh, power and
will to, to do that

Speaker 2 (01:13:06):
Power. Yes. Will no . Okay. And that's the sad
part. We can end this war rightnow. And again, according to
the Powell Doctrine of War, youneed to have the will to bring
violence in a concentratedfashion to end the human
suffering. Because right now,again, three years we've been
going on this three daymilitary operations now over
three years, and the amount ofhuman suffering on both sides,

(01:13:28):
I mean, arguably we can getthat in a separate
conversation. Arguably Russiahas suffered less because most
of the people who are dyingare, you know , again, we can
go the whole racism issue of,you know, it's mostly like the
, uh, you know , non quotewhite Russians that are being ,
uh, killed from the outermm-hmm . Of
federated states. And also youpretty much emptied all your
prisons and all the prisonersare dying. So actually it's

(01:13:49):
kind of like a net positive forRussia, but I mean, that's
neither here nor there. Justeconomically, obviously you can
contest that this more than Ican like your friends back
home. Like economically,they're suffering, right?
Everyone's suffering. Ukraine'sobviously suffering this war
needs to end. But you don't endit by having like the
ceasefire, especially aceasefire that's lopsided in
the sense that you hamstringyour own clients and allow to

(01:14:11):
give all the signals for theantagonist to have more and
more incentive to keep going.
That's not how Ceasefires work.
Again, we didn't do a ceasefireor peace treaty with the North
Vietnamese by saying, oh yeah,come on, come in and everything
like that. 'cause we tried toget them to, that was the whole
point. If you looked throughthe Nixon Library, there was
discussions that they tried toget to North Vietnamese, to ,
to the table because UnitedStates wanted out. We realized

(01:14:33):
, okay, yes, we lost the war.
Let's just get out in adignified way. And they're
like, no, we're winning. Whythe hell would we sign a peace
treaty with you? We're goingall the way. And it wasn't
until Nixon said, this, bombthe hell out of North Vietnam.
And I know civilians are gonnabe listening. Oh, this is so
horrible. Yeah, no, it'shorrible. That's the whole
point of the Powell doctrine.
You as a citizen of ademocratic nation need to

(01:14:55):
understand war is destructiveand horrible. You should not
want to go to war. But oncethat decision's made, it has to
be done and it has to be donedecisively and quickly. 'cause
that's the only way peace willhappen. And that was shown in
countless wars. Vietnam isobviously the most classic one,
but the entire United Statesmilitary doctrine, again, as a
cadet, I learned this. So, youknow, it's filtered all the way

(01:15:16):
down. This is the way weoperate.

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
But the question here is , uh, now I understand
the Powell's doctrine, andthank you very much for putting
that very clear to me. Do youthink that somebody can just ,
uh, take a stand and explainthat to Trump?

Speaker 2 (01:15:29):
No. A he can't understand it and B, he doesn't
have an incentive to do thatbased on all his interests that
we've talked about before.
Okay. He is , again , we can'treally prove this right in a
court of law, but for allintents and purposes, he is a
Russian asset.

Speaker 1 (01:15:44):
Okay. You really believe that?

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
Yeah. I mean, I guess belief is the only thing
we could say. 'cause again, Ican't really prove it, but all
indications whether from backfrom the 1980s to now, you can
debate whether he's a willingasset or not, but it is the
case.

Speaker 1 (01:15:58):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:15:59):
So any attempt of sane washing this into saying
like America verse is like, no,I'm sorry it's wrong,

Speaker 1 (01:16:04):
But then he can be easily impeached.

Speaker 2 (01:16:07):
Well, yeah. I mean that's what's crazy about
what's going on in the UnitedStates. Yes, there are
institutional constructs inplace in the United States
where none of this should be aproblem, but as we see the
legislative , uh, branchescomplicit. So yes, he could be
impeached, this could all endtomorrow. But of course it's
not. And that's why there's alast time we talked about
efficiency versus robustness,right? Yes , yes. Systems,

(01:16:31):
again, difference betweensystem and processes. Systems
don't fail. There's a very fewsingle point of failures. There
has to be multiple failures.
And they call , it's like acascading failure mm-hmm
. Right ? Wheremultiple things fail within a
system. And that cascadingfailure causes the entire
system to collapse. And that'swhat we have right now, is that
you have a bunch of smallfailures within the system,

(01:16:53):
within the government and allof those things. Now because
they're all neutered,essentially we're witnessing a
cascading failure. And thiswill determine ultimately, back
to our original question,whether this is going to be a
hiccup or a permanent change inwhat United States is in
history of two, 300 years fromnow. Because the Supreme Court

(01:17:14):
has been compromised, theCongress has been compromised,
and now the executive iscompromised. And in a sense,
the media, which is, you know,the quote , the fourth pillar,
right? The fourth state is alsocompromised based on who owns
the newspapers as well as this, uh, constant need to sane
wash things and then checklogic where is none.

Speaker 1 (01:17:33):
But , uh, there is good reason behind that. Uh, it
didn't happen within a month orseveral months . No . Yeah , of
course not. You cannot do itthat quickly. Yeah. It was
happening

Speaker 2 (01:17:43):
Since like 1980s.

Speaker 1 (01:17:45):
Yeah. So whatever we are having right now is the
logical conclusion of what hadstarted back in 1980s, as you
say,

Speaker 2 (01:17:53):
As an American citizen. I don't want to admit
to the , to that answer, but Imean, yeah. I have to admit,
yes, that's correct.

Speaker 1 (01:18:00):
But do you know who first pulled the trigger? So
who started this domino effect?

Speaker 2 (01:18:05):
Yeah, it was , um, God , what's the guy's name
from Fox News?

Speaker 1 (01:18:10):
Uh ,

Speaker 2 (01:18:10):
Not Murdoch, the other guy.

Speaker 1 (01:18:12):
Yeah, yeah. Uh , the main interview.

Speaker 2 (01:18:15):
CCEO . Rod Roger Ailes. Yeah. Yeah . Roger
Ales. Yeah. So it was like ,uh, I dunno ,

Speaker 1 (01:18:20):
The guy,

Speaker 2 (01:18:20):
Basically, okay, so when Nixon resigned, like Roger
Ailes came to the Republicans ,uh, and basically said, Hey
look, we cannot have this thingever again. The reason why this
happens is because the news iscalled Biased against Us. And
so we're going to establish a ,a media platform that only
caters to right wing talkingpoints. It all started from
there and then balloon intoother things. And where now you

(01:18:42):
have like, think tanks, likethe Heritage Foundation and
then , uh, this whole conceptof uh, lower taxes on the rich.
'cause like our, like top taxrate was like 90% or something
because we didn't, we , youknow , we don't want kings, we
don't want hereditary wealth,right? Because we, we fought
against the king, so we'reagainst that type of
aristocracy. But that wasslowly dismantled way . So they
had more and more power. Youknow , that's a whole long

(01:19:03):
other discussion. But yeah. Sothis all started with after the
resignation of Nixon and thebig first , uh, fruit to bear
was the Ronald Reaganadministration where they were
able to enact a lot of thesepolicies and then slowly things
kept going. And then you had ,uh, another key point was in
2000 between Bush versus Gore,where , uh, the rank was court

(01:19:26):
basically said , uh, 'causethey were like trying to say,
okay, do we count the votes inFlorida or do we not count the
votes in Florida? And then theysaid the five four decision was
basically all the Republicanthat conservative judges said,
we're not gonna count the votesin Florida. But because again,
the things like with SupremeCourt, any decision they make
has the bearing of precedencebecause it's common law. Mm-hmm

(01:19:46):
. It's not acivil law like in most of
Europe. So basically whateverthe court says is supposed to
be part of law where precedentmatters. But they specifically
injected a line there, saysthat this decision will not
have precedence for any otherfuture situation, which is
completely like bonkers andunheard of and is flies against
the face of anything commonlaw. 'cause the whole point of
court decisions is they carrythe away to precedents. But

(01:20:08):
basically they're saying, Hey,we don't want, we know this is
a decision, but we're going todo it anyway. But you know,
just so you know, this doesn'thave any precedence. 'cause
they knew it was wrong, just

Speaker 1 (01:20:16):
A temporary fix.

Speaker 2 (01:20:17):
Yeah. And of course, like other like , uh, news,
some like independent sources,I think they finally, they
recounted the actual Floridavotes and you end up finding
out that Gore actually would'vewon if they continued , uh,
counting the , uh, votes. But,you know, that's a whole other
discussion. But they , so there, so you had George Bush win
that thanks to the court andthen further eroding, and then
of course Obama. And thenthere's like shenanigans there

(01:20:39):
with not allowing Obama to fillhis , uh, judges and whatnot.
And then you have likegerrymandering and the like
removing of the citizens unitedwhere money was introduced back
into elections. So to yourpoint, there's many different ,
uh, failures in the system thatwere able to manifest
themselves for a cascadingfailure to , uh, manifest
itself. But

Speaker 1 (01:21:00):
All of these chain of of effects, it seems to me,
and again, I'm not quiteliterate there, but it seems to
me that , uh, all of thesefeathers, as you say mm-hmm
. Were in favorof Republicans. Yeah . So
Democrats never overused it assuch. Uh , I mean it never
served them.

Speaker 2 (01:21:19):
I , so this is Okay , personal opinion. I call this
the Spaceballs theory. Have youseen Spaceballs? Yes, of
course. Okay. You remember thescene at the end where , uh,
they're fighting with theirSchwartz? Yes. And then , uh,
my Schwartz

Speaker 1 (01:21:31):
Is longer than yours. Yeah ,

Speaker 2 (01:21:33):
Yeah , yeah. Exactly right. . And then , uh,
and then he says, okay, oh, yougot me like here, let's
handshake. And then he smacksthe Schwartz ring from his
hands from lone star's ring.
And he says, haha, this is whyevil will always win. Because
good is stupid. Right? True

Speaker 1 (01:21:47):
To true. I remember that .

Speaker 4 (01:21:49):
I can't believe it, man. So lone star now you see
that evil will always triumphbecause good is dumb.

Speaker 2 (01:22:00):
Right . And that , that's , so I call the Space
Wall series that Democrats arejust stupid and they allow the
Republicans to win because they

Speaker 1 (01:22:08):
Play by the rules.

Speaker 2 (01:22:09):
Yeah, exactly. Where the Republicans don't just like
what Russia's doing right now,Russia's not playing by the
rules, but Europe is insistingon playing by the rules with
this Ukraine situation. Butthat's just my thing. And you
could say, okay, that's atheory. But from a broader
perspective, we don't have aparliamentary system in the
United States. So when we sayRepublicans versus Democrats,
it's not really like thatRepublicans have managed to

(01:22:29):
consolidate themselves as oneparty. It's kinda like a FD in
Germany, or , uh, like front ,or excuse me, Mont Nael here in
France. They don't wanna becalled front Nael anymore.
. But even though Istill call 'em front Nal ,
'cause that's what they are ,right? They're a bunch of
Nazis, but whatever. So theRepublicans are basically like
one party, whereas theDemocrats in a parliamentary

(01:22:50):
system, if you put it on, theywould be like multiple parties
together. 'cause you have theprogressives, you have the
social Democrats, you have theneo libs, and then you have
what the blue dog Democrats,which are basically like
Republican light. And they allexist under this quote ,
democratic tense . And that'swhy there's constant fighting.
So the Democrats can neverreally organize themselves into
one cohesive voice like theRepublicans can, because if you

(01:23:12):
put them actually in aEuropeans parliamentary system,
you would see that they wouldquickly devolve into multiple
parties. So I would say likethe Democratic party, yeah,
they look like they're oneparty, but from a European
perspective, they're actuallylike five different parties.
And that's why they don't havea , a clear voice like the
Republicans do. And of course,in a democracy, a group that

(01:23:33):
has a clear voice is alwaysgonna win against one that
doesn't have a clear voice. Sothat's another aspect of it
too. But you know, I like thatmy space polls theories better
.

Speaker 1 (01:23:43):
Interesting. Okay.
Yeah . Now we have , uh, spentquite a lot of time touching
quite a lot of topics , uh,today. Yeah . And yeah, I see
that we don't have , uh, muchtime left. But , um, I have ,
uh, just to start , uh,probably not very small wrapup
, but I've heard quite a lot ofthings that I'll be thinking
about in the future. So firstof all, I could never admit the

(01:24:07):
fact that Trump doesn't thinkabout the future at all. But ,
um, well, you clearly statedthat it apparently looks like
that. I mean, this short term ,uh, goals are clear by the way.
Do you think that he willachieve them, those short term
goals as he sees them?

Speaker 2 (01:24:24):
Yeah , I , I hope not. Right. Again, this goes
back to your original question.
Okay . I hope this is a hiccup.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:24:29):
Okay. But of course I don't, I mean, to be
realistic, I don't see wherehis , we just had the perfect
opportunity where the Democratscould have filibuster, which is
basically stalled the , thelegislation for the funding
from this year's funding andbasically stopped Trump in his
tracks. But they just, theyseeded their right to
filibuster. And now it lookslike it's going to be passed,

(01:24:51):
this budget's gonna be passedwith all these disastrous
government cuts as well as taxbreaks to the super rich. So
the one piece of control thatthe Democrats still had, they
refused to use it against spacewall theory. They're stupid.
'cause they justify this , ohno, we'll be blamed, blah,
blah, blah, blah . And it'slike even the opposition has
self neutered themselves to thepoint that there's no credible

(01:25:14):
opposition, there's no concreteinstitutional opposition
against him. So yeah, it'slooking pretty bru . Yeah . I
mean, I , yeah, I mean,personally I'm scared. I want
this to be a hiccup. I wantthis to be like rectified, but
I don't see it happening. Andthe one chance that we had this
past week is the Democratsrefuse to use it completely

(01:25:36):
insane. But here we are.

Speaker 1 (01:25:39):
So to my understanding, I'm not
American. That's why I'm notashamed about that. Yeah. But I
, I think that , uh,realistically Trump will
achieve his goals and whateverhe has been doing recently, he
started eight years ago, and asyou mentioned, it's had started
even before mm-hmm

Speaker 2 (01:25:59):
.

Speaker 1 (01:25:59):
There's no chance that it'll just stop abruptly.
It'll continue and it'll end asit should.

Speaker 2 (01:26:05):
Right. Where's the guardrail? Where's the pressure
back? I mean, if you can showme some sort of institution
that can provide pressureagainst it, fine. I'll
acquiesce the point. But wedon't see that.

Speaker 1 (01:26:15):
And neither do I.
Neither do I. So this is theone thing that I took out of
today's conversation, and thathe doesn't have the long-term
goals. The other one,interestingly enough that you
mentioned space ball theory.
Mm-hmm . That's anice one. Yeah . Especially
that I can relate to thatmovie, which I liked a lot.
There was a time when I waswatching it every now and then,

(01:26:36):
so I remember probably everyscene after this movie. Yeah .
. It's a , it's a greatmovie. One more thing that I
never thought of, and thanks toyou I'm getting there, is , um,
that several failures , uh,system crash, which started,
when exactly did it start? Youmentioned , uh, after

Speaker 2 (01:26:57):
Nixon resigned. Okay . Was it 1972

Speaker 1 (01:27:01):
Seventies? Yes. Uh , I don't remember the exact
year, but seventies , uh, withthis ex , uh, Fox News guy.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:27:07):
Roger Ailes .

Speaker 1 (01:27:08):
Roger Ailes. Right .
Okay. It's not clear fromtoday's standpoint, and I'm
coming back to my opening.
There are so many thingshappening right now, and we are
so focused and preoccupied,what , what is happening today?
We did not see the biggerpicture. So it's like whatever
is happening in the oval , uh,in the White House, the guys

(01:27:29):
are really pushing all of usto, to run as fast as we can
without thinking. Yeah . Europeis too lazy with all my respect
to the places I live, right?
Europe is too lazy. They tryto, and I seek examples in my
enterprise life because thereare departments so academic,

(01:27:51):
they, okay, so we have aproblem. Let's, let's spend a
couple of months understandingthe definition of what we want
to solve. Then let's spendother six months understanding
what is in scope and out scope.
And then by the time we defineand , uh, do the scoping, we'll
be passed by somebody else.

Speaker 2 (01:28:09):
It's like the ants in Lord of the Rings. Remember
the trees, the tree herders?
Yes. Yes . They're likediscussing and everything like
this . Meanwhile, everythingaround them is being destroyed.

Speaker 5 (01:28:19):
They must have decided something by now .

Speaker 6 (01:28:23):
I did . No , we only just finished Good morning. But
it's nighttime already.

Speaker 1 (01:28:39):
No, but I don't accept this , uh, comparison
because in the end, thosereally , uh, opposed. So they

Speaker 2 (01:28:44):
Yeah, but only because Mary and Pip, the
Hobbit told them like, lookaround you , open your eyes,
stop this .

Speaker 1 (01:28:50):
Ah , right. Okay. So we're missing those small guys.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:28:52):
We're missing the hobbit .

Speaker 1 (01:28:53):
We're missing the Hobbit.

Speaker 2 (01:28:55):
Yeah .

Speaker 6 (01:28:59):
Yes . Cannot hold back this storm. We must
weather such things as we havealways done.

Speaker 7 (01:29:08):
How can that be your decision?

Speaker 6 (01:29:11):
This is not our war,

Speaker 7 (01:29:14):
But you're part of this world, aren't you? You
must help, please. You must dosomething.

Speaker 1 (01:29:35):
And um , final thing, which I wanted to
clarify today was around thefuture, the future of America,
since you're American still,what do you think about the
global American domination?
Whether whatever is happeningright now contributes to that
or not? You're saying not, andbasically how does it, it

(01:29:55):
controverts the whole idea ofTrump where he wants to oppose
China and make America greatagain? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:30:02):
You can always say, oh, you're biased that , and
like, accuse me of things likethat. I say, not you, you, but
like anyone . Yeah . The royalyou. But I always go back to,
okay, what are your statedpolicy objectives? Gimme that.
Then we could see whether theseactions are congruent with
those policy objectives. Youknow, in the military we have
this thing called, it's calledcommander's intent, where again

(01:30:23):
, this is the way NATOoperates. It's not the way the
Soviet Union operates orex-Soviet militaries do, which
is part of the problem withUkraine. But that's the
different story. The thing islike, okay, the Soviet way of
warfare is okay, you havespecific orders and you carry
out those orders the way thatthey were received, and you
don't question it and you don'tdo anything like that. Whereas
the NATO way of warfare is thecommander doesn't tell you how

(01:30:44):
to actually do something. Theysay, this is the specific end
state I want. Okay. Rememberlike I said, policy objectives,
that's the diplomatic order .
In military, we call it the endstate. The commander says, this
is the end state I want toachieve. Then it's up to the
lower level of commanders tounderstand that intent, the end
state interpret on their ownwhat that intent is. Right. And

(01:31:04):
then create a military plan ofaction that satisfies that
intent, which is again,nebulous what achieves the
concrete end state that thecommander wants. So if you
carry that over, thatcommander's intent, that NATO
way of warfare.

Speaker 1 (01:31:18):
I knew it by the way. So

Speaker 2 (01:31:19):
I Well , yeah, because why would you as a
Russian, right,

Speaker 1 (01:31:22):
,

Speaker 2 (01:31:23):
Well , so welcome to Europe. Now you're learning
stuff . But from adiplomatic or a public policy
standpoint, you could translateit over and say, okay, again, I
say, what is your policyobjective? And then from there,
work back to see what specificactions you need to take. And
right now, obviously the UnitedStates is not doing that. And
as much as I would like Macronand Europe to do it, I don't
actually see the actions ofEurope doing that, that

(01:31:45):
achieves those policyobjectives.

Speaker 1 (01:31:47):
Okay. Doesn't sound like a very positive ending of
our conversation, but , uh,

Speaker 2 (01:31:52):
Hopefully it's a hiccup. Right. ,

Speaker 1 (01:31:54):
Let's see, let's see. The, the velocities .
We're moving so fast. Yeah . Weprobably will see by our next
discussion we'll see where itgoes to.

Speaker 2 (01:32:04):
Yeah. And that's why I always say, forget about all
the distractions in the news.
Look at actually what they'redoing specifically those
specific actions. Yeah. So thatway you can kind of like
contextualize things. And Iguess , uh, just one last
thing. 'cause you're talkingabout like what can people do
in democracies? It kind ofbrings me back to, there's like
this one episode of , uh, starTrek Next Generation. No,

Speaker 1 (01:32:24):
This is , uh, no, I haven't watched that .

Speaker 2 (01:32:26):
No. So there's this thing where it's this episode
called Drumhead where, youknow, like next generation's
supposed to be this humanutopia thing. Mm-hmm
. Right ? Well,apparently there was like the ,
the Federation, they'refighting against the Rolins and
the Rolands. They've injectedthemselves within the, the
government of the Federation.
So nobody knows who's a traitoror who's real. And so there's
like this paranoia courts goingaround, accusing people, oh,

(01:32:48):
you're a rolin. You're a rolin.
Right. It's kinda like, almostlike Stalins purges. And at the
end, you know , finally thecaptain John Luke Picard , he
says like, enough of this,we're not doing this. We're not
accusing everyone of thisunless you have some concrete
proof. You can't , uh, condemnthis man. And then , uh, and
the head security guy, hisname's wharf , he says , uh, so
I'm sorry Captain. I was soworried about protecting the

(01:33:09):
federation that he forgot whatthe federation meant because
the federation is not justmm-hmm . Mm-hmm
it's not thisinstitution. It's the ideals,
which is these liberal ideas of, uh, like the , in the UN
charter for example. And thenCharlie Picard, he says like ,
yeah, you know, the enemy youhave to understand doesn't come
to you. They're not gonna cometo you like twirling their
mustache looking evil thoughtrue enemy is usually much more

(01:33:31):
insidious. And then, then awharf is like, well, what can
we do against such a, such aevil , uh, manifestation? He
says, well , uh, he says, like,and I'll never forget this,
like the card says like,vigilance Mr. Wharf , that is
the price we must continuouslypay.

Speaker 8 (01:33:48):
You think we've come so far torture of heretics,
burning of witches, all ancienthistory. Then before you can
blink an eye, suddenly itthreatens to start all over
again. Mr. Wolf, villains whotwell their mustaches are easy

(01:34:11):
to spot. Those who cloththemselves in good deeds are
well camouflaged.

Speaker 9 (01:34:18):
I think

Speaker 10 (01:34:20):
After

Speaker 9 (01:34:21):
Yesterday, people will not be so ready to trust
her

Speaker 8 (01:34:25):
Maybe , but she or someone like her will always be
with us waiting for the rightclimate in which to flourish.
Spreading fear in the name ofrighteousness, vigilance, Mr.
Wolf, that is the price we haveto continually pay.

Speaker 2 (01:34:52):
And that really wraps up the essence of this
liberal international world.
Order is like humans, citizensthat you have to be vigilant
because yes, there's gonna bealways threats, but in order
for democracy, in order forliberalism to survive, it
survives based on the strengthof the people. And the people
have to be vigilant. It's theprice we continues to pay every
day to maintain our way oflife. Great. Tinning , thank

(01:35:17):
you very much. Uh , thank you.
If you would like to comment onthis podcast or on the topics
covered within it, or you'dlike us to raise a new topic in
our next episode, please feelfree to leave us a message or
voicemail on www.codbsm.com.

(01:35:37):
That's charlie oscar deltabravo sierra mike.com . Thank
you for listening and see youat the potty rta .

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