March 4, 2022
E12: Ukrainian Roulette - Part 6: When Ivan Comes Marching Home
This is Part 6 - the final part of a multi-part series on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. After looking into what Ukraine could do in the face of a Russian onslaught in Part 5, we now explore what diplomatic efforts the broader international community could do to divert Russia's destabilization efforts and what this conflict means for the geopolitical future of the USA in her "Pivot to Asia".
Chapters
00:00 - Intro
02:22 - Slicing the Salami
15:50 - Euro Trip
37:38 - A Rose by Any Other Name
58:46 - The Day the Nukes Went Silent
01:22:52 - Old Man Uncle Sam
01:32:43 - Pacifying the Pacific
Transcript
WEBVTT
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Welcome to part six of what we can now confirm to be the final episode of our multi-part series on the Russo- Ukrainian crisis.
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For those of you who have stuck with us from way back in part one, I want to give you my sincere thanks for listening to what became a ridiculously long series, that I honestly thought would only take about 40 minutes.
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When we first started recording back in the first week of February with this in mind, I want to personally thank my producer, who tirelessly spent most of February editing and producing this multi-part series, all while juggling her own life and professional obligations, and who is now probably sick of hearing the sound of my voice.
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With this in mind, obviously, the invasion has since started, which we seem to have accurately predicted back in part two of our series.
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So if you haven't listened to that one, please give that one a listen too.
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But right now I think it would be premature for me to discuss the current events on the ground, given how fluid the situation is.
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But if there's a considerable interest from you, listeners, I may spin out a quick epilogue for this series, discussing the actual invasion that's unfolding right now.
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As for this episode, we just finished discussing in part five, what Ukraine could do to halt a Russian onslaught and briefly introduced the concept of"Ratchet Diplomacy".
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In this episode will dive more into what I mean by this term, and more broadly, what the West should do in Ukraine, and even more broadly, what the US should do in the World.
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Until then, sit back, pour yourself a glass, light up your cigar for Part 6 of 6 of Ukrainian Roulette.
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Let's have a listen.
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Come On, Don't Bullshit Me!
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Everyone likes to shit on us, but once shit hits the fan, the first thing people do is run to the United States-- the supposedly youngest country in the world.
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It's pure and utter Bullshit.
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Welcome to"Come On, Don't Bullshit Me!", where we peel away the messaging of talking heads to get to the crux of today's issues.
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So I keep talking about these Russian ratchets and how they destroy international stability.
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These ratchets just like a ratchet wrench, right?
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The whole point of a ratchet wrench is you can only go one direction, but then you can't go back the other way.
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So every minute turn of the wrench counterclockwise, for example, prevents the wrench from ever going back clockwise in the opposite direction.
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And this is essentially what I call ratchet diplomacy, which is what Putin's doing.
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Well, yeah, is doing, but more importantly, has been doing since, essentially ever since he's gone into power, but definitely ever since 2008, where he doesn't make overt actions, because overt actions are something that Americans or the West can easily see and encounter.
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Basically, if you give the US military a target or a threat, it's very easy to galvanize the public and also galvanize the military and the government to attack that specific threat.
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So the point is to do all these little small mini threats that aren't actually really threats.
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It's like, oh, Putin's doing something, is that really a threat?
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But then you can always just whitewash it away or spin away like, Oh no, well he has a right to do that.
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I mean, this is exactly what Hitler did in the 1930s, where he would just take these little places he here and there.
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It's like, Oh well, these were formerly German lands and Oh, the Czechs are attacking us and we don't really have a way to defend ourselves, so we need the Sudetenland land and Oh, well the Austrians and the Germans are the same people, so we need to be together and all this, all this.
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And everyone's like, well, okay, technically he's not saying anything wrong.
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Yeah, I guess he's right.
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And then you can always justify it.
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But the most important, part about this, which is the ratchet part, is that all these small steps mean you can't go back because they're cemented.
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Once he takes the action and you accept it, there's no turning back.
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It's not like the Afghanistan war or the Iraq war, where things are constantly moving.
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It's like, Oh, we got, uh, Al-Fallujah, but then, you know, oh, we lost Al-Fallujah a couple weeks later or, Oh, we've gone, we went into Tikrit, or we took over this village and we wiped out ISIS or the Taliban, but then like a week later they go back.
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You know, that's not really a ratchet.
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The way I like to think of these Russian ratchets is I look at it through the lens of, Al Qaeda and ISIS.
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In that in Bin Laden's fatwa against the United States.
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Yeah, okay, there was a 9/11 part, but the main thing that he wanted to do was spring up this concept of stochastic terrorism, which is random terrorist attacks.
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And he hinted at this in the beginning, but because he had these grand designs of the large international terrorist organization, where he was commanding the faithful, he could direct the terrorist attacks, but then, as he began losing his power base structure, he started increasingly leaning back on his original premise of the stochastic terrorism.
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Some people might call like"lone-Wolf attacks" or whatever, but basically it's just random terrorist attacks by random sympathizers of the Al-Qaeda or Salafist Islamic cause.
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So that countries, governments, and intelligence, and police organizations couldn't exactly target them or couldn't anticipate these attacks.
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So and it didn't have to make any sense: they could happen to any time, anywhere, at any place.
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These're just random chaotic terrorist attacks that wear down the resolve of the infidel and at the same time galvanize and improve the morale in standing of the Wahhabi faithful or overall this presumed futuristic Caliph that he was dreaming about.
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And Putin does a similar thing.
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In my mind, I look at this stochastic terrorism, and then I look at Putin, and I say, well, what he's doing is essentially stochastic diplomacy, where he doesn't take outright military actions, Crimea notwithstanding, but even that he didn't even do, because, if you remember, that was the whole thing when I was talking about earlier about, Oh, these troops, they were just on vacation and the Crimeans want to come to Russia, so we're just here protecting their interest.
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So even there he didn't fully recognize that it was a military action.
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But again, the point here is that he does all these little random diplomatic actions throughout the World, or at least throughout his sphere of influence, that are kind of tiny at the surface so that it doesn't prompt a visceral response from the West.
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And because the West is so emphatic about peace and stability and not going into a war, despite what the internet might say, like, Oh, we're such war loving people, and we always constantly are trying war this and war that.
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Well, no, that's not really the case.
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Otherwise Putin's strategy would never work.
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The point here is that the West is so predisposed to wanting peace at the expense of stability, that there's a overreaction to any type of event that could upset that status quo.
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So he takes these random diplomatic, uh, I would call them attacks, but random diplomatic actions throughout his sphere of influence, that don't incite a visceral response from the West, and cements through tacit acknowledgement by the international community.
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And once the international community acknowledges it, there's no way of going back.
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This is what happened with, uh, I keep talking about Georgia and Moldova is that, even though no one has recognized South Ossetia city or Aphasia or Transnistria, the fact that they're allowed to exist and there hasn't been any repercussions for their existence, it legitimizes their existence.
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And from an international framework standpoint, because one of the preconditions through joining NATO and or the EU is territorial stability by having these instability in countries and by having the West legitimize these instability by allowing them to perpetuate, it cements that ratchet, where, again, you can't go backwards, because the status quo now is the instability of these countries, which means they can't go back to a stage where they were on the path to the EU or NATO.
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They're stuck in this timeline, if you will, where they will never be able to go towards these Western institutions, namely NATO and the EU.
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And no matter how much diplomatic effort the West tries to put into reverse these, the fact that they've been essentially militarily cemented, means you can't go backwards.
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And it's not just these...
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These ratchets are not just in his sphere of influence in a physical or territorial space.
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These ratchets also exist in cyber space as well to include not just internet and telecommunications, but also one of the actions of telecommunications, which is supporting the modern digital economy.
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That means money that's being laundered out to a lot of right-wing or anti-establishment organizations in the West.
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Classic case uncovering of the fact there's substantial Russian funding of the Brexit campaign, not just monetarily for the campaign within the UK, but also funding in the sense of using Russia's cyber offensive capabilities, which the public knows as these troll farms, to go towards laying the propaganda battle ground for allowing Brexit to succeed.
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And then obviously not only the funding of the Trump campaign, but also the funding of the anti-Hillary campaign, because not only is Trump in debt, literally in debt to Russia and its oligarchs, but also that Putin holds a specific grudge against Hillary Clinton in that, back when she was secretary of state, there was that whole"Obama reset" thing, where she gave the reset button, said, Hey, we're gonna go reset this hostile relationship that we have between each other.
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And he thought that meant he was gonna be able to go ahead and do what he wanted to do.
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And of course, the Obama administration through Hillary Clinton being secretary of state put kibosh on that.
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And of course, not only did he felt betrayed by that, but also the fact that she was a woman doing that.
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And of course in his whole masculine Alpha-male bravado image that he likes to bring about, he was threatened by being emasculated by such a woman.
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And it was a serendipitous and convenient act, that Trump was the Republican candidate.
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But it was mostly a payback towards Hillary Clinton.
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And so all this funding of not only Republican campaign, but also the right-wing media within the United States.
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And again, it's not just the funding on United States territory.
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Just like with Brexit, there was the funneling of local resources of these troll farms to incite this disinformation campaign to undermine the legitimacy of the United States political system.
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And we saw this again with France with Front National with Marine Le Pen and them trying to incite the French Brexit, which I guess we'd call, uh, some people call it Frexit, but I think that's stupid, because if it's going to be a French exit, it should be French name.
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So I always like to call it"adiEU": A D I, capital EU, I think that's a better thing than"Frexit".
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But anyway, that's besides the point.
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So there's that.
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And then this is not just some new, super advanced technique that Putin just pulled out of his ass, because he's such a genius.
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This is something that's been going on since the beginning of the Soviet Union.
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Well, I don't know about beginning, but definitely since the early days of the Soviet Union.
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I forget if it was the Czech dictator, I think it was the Hungarian dictator during the Hungarian socialist Republic, but there's this terminology called"salami tactics".
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And the whole thing about salami tactics is that, okay, salami is really rich, expensive meat, or at least it's a rich expensive meat in the communist states.
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And the point that you don't just eat the entire salami, you have to cut very thin slices, and then you eat those, and that's the only way to consume a salami.
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So the point of salami tactics in geopolitics is that you, yeah, I'm pretty sure it's Hungarian, but anyway, the whole point of salami tactics is that you do these small diplomatic actions throughout the world, that the West could, quote,"digest".
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'Cause if you do an overt major action, you know, that's akin to not being able to digest the action, and of course that is met with a military response.
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So the point is do all a lot of these thin small either military incursions, but more like diplomatic incursions, and let the West digest them to the point where it's accepted as now the new norm.
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Some people call that, in political discourse, there's the shifting of the Overton window.
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That's another concept that's close to the salami tactics.
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Some people say"horizontal diplomacy", as opposed to"vertical diplomacy", where you just do these diplomatic efforts all over the place.
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But I like to call it stochastic diplomacy, because the point is, you don't have an overarching goal of where you want these diplomatic efforts to go.
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It's more about just doing these random diplomatic attacks to undermine the status quo.
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So there doesn't have to be an end goal in it.
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And this was the problem that a lot of people were disillusioned with during the Trump presidency in that they would say, oh, well, Putin wanted Trump to win, and he's a puppet of the Russian government.
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Well, it's not exactly really that case.
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Was Trump under the influence of Russia because of all of his private business debts and whatnot?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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But the goal of Putin wasn't to get Trump on board or to get Trump elected.
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The point was to cause this random political attacks.
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That just serendipitously it happens to be that Trump was thrust into the white house.
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He just got lucky in the sense with Trump, but it was more about just undermining the credibility of the political system, which obviously he succeeded at, because the United States, the public are at each other's throats, and there's no common ground for anywhere to do discourse.
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So the point is, it doesn't have to make sense.
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He would attack the Republicans just as much as he would attack the Democrats.
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Again, he didn't have an overarching goal, the point was to erode confidence in the whole system, from both sides.
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To combat these Russian ratchets, this salami tactics, this spastic diplomacy, what we need to do in the West is do the same thing to him.
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And again, they don't have to have a rhyme or reason.
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I mean, I'm gonna present a rhyme or reason, but that's besides the point, the point is you have to spread his attention.
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And also, more importantly, his financial resources into defending against random attacks to his legitimacy and also the territorial integrity of Russia.
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'Cause that's what's gonna threaten him.
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But again, you don't do this through a military or, you know, overt action.
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You take these small actions, just like he does, through propaganda, through manipulation of the global telecommunications network.
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We have to present opportunities for these random diplomatic events to foment into a success for the West or failure to Russia.
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By this I'm picturing the map of Europe in my head and I'm gonna go counterclockwise, starting from Finland.
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The big issue here is: what are we talking about with Ukraine?
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That, okay, we're not defending Ukraine, because Ukraine's not part of NATO, right?
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Yes, we wanted to invite Ukraine to NATO, but before they could come into NATO, they had to shore up their government, stamp out the corruption, and put in institutional frameworks within their government to make it more of a liberal Western democracy.
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And of course, obviously Putin was threatened by this.
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And that's the whole Crimea thing, we've already discussed about this ad nauseum.
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But we have to make the point here that yes, we are not sending troops into Ukraine.
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Not only from the standard practice of that by saying this, it potentially prevents World War III from happening, but more importantly, this has to be a signal.
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Ukraine has to be a signal, an example to the other European nations that are holdouts into the Alliance, and saying, like, look, we have all the intention of defending the entire territory of the Alliance, but if you're not part of the Alliance, you're on your own.
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And it's kind of like a tough love type of, I mean, obviously it's just, fortunately the fact is that we don't wanna do this with Ukraine because we don't wanna have world war I three happen.
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But again, I'm not saying don't provide weapons, obviously.
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Yes, definitely provide weapons.
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I mean, I've already talked about this ano about providing military aid Ukraine.
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Of course we will provide military aid, but we are not going to put troops in there.
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We're not going to defend Ukraine because Ukraine is not part NATO.
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And this sets a signal to Finland specifically right now.
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'Cause I'm talking about Finland is that, look, we've been wanting you to come to NATO since God knows how long and you steadfastly stubbornly refuse to join.
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And you're saying, Oh no, you wanna be neutral and everything.
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And you don't wanna antagonize Russia.
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Okay, fine.
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We can respect that.
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'Cause NATO is a voluntary Alliance, right?
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We're not like Russia here, trying to coopt Belarus and Ukraine into their own Russian sphere of influence.
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We're not trying to do that with NATO.
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Of course it's voluntary.
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It's your decision.
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But Finland see what's happening in Ukraine?
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You can no longer afford to be neutral anymore, because even if you're neutral, just like Ukraine, it was neutral, if Russia perceives you to be a threat, again, you don't actually have to be a threat,'cause obviously Ukraine wasn't a threat to Russia, but it was purely on the whims of Putin to think, Oh, I believe that Ukraine is a threat, and therefore I'm going to invade Ukraine.
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Well, Finland, even though you're saying, Hey, we're neutral or we're not a threat to Russia, when's it gonna be the case that now Putin, for example, turns his head North and perceives you as a threat?
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Again, you may not have been doing anything and you could shout it until you're blue in the face, that you're not a threat, you're not doing anything.
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But no amount of convincing is going to change.
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Putin's mind, should he decide to put his sights on you.
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So you can either wait around, and in that case you're gonna suffer the same fate as Ukraine, where yeah, we'll try to provide military aid as much as we can, but you're gonna be on your own,'cause the Alliance is purely a defensive and we're not going to break that.
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We're not gonna start doing offensive operations and undermine 70 years or so of credibility of the Alliance.
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And of course, Finland may say, Oh, it doesn't matter, we're on the fast track: the moment we say we want to join the Alliance, we'll be able to come in.
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But even that: nothing is instantaneous.
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It's gonna take some time.
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And this is exactly the point, what happened with Ukraine is that they never thought in their wildest imagination that Russia would invade Ukraine.
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And so they were taken completely by surprise with Crimea.
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And Russia denied it and still denies it to this day, that they never attacked Crimea-- it was just the local people and, you know, and"soldiers on vacation".
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This is the whole like little green man trope.
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But that's the point: Ukraine was completely caught by surprise,'cause why would anyone attack a peaceful non-threatening non-aggressive nation?
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But sure enough, Russia did.
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And the moment that happened meant that no longer did Ukraine have territorial integrity, which meant it was ineligible for joining both EU and NATO.
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Now of course they were ineligible for other reasons, like corruption, et cetera, et cetera, and Finland doesn't suffer from that.
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But all it takes is, again, another Russian soldier vacation, where all of a sudden now Finland's territory is no longer secure, and they can't join the Alliance.
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So you can't just rely on the fact that you'll immediately come in, because if there's a preemptive strike by Russia, which again, that's their whole M.O.
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They realize this, this that's what happened with Georgia, that's what happened with Ukraine.
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There's no reason to now believe that it's not going to happen with Finland.
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So Finland, you either get your ass together and join the Alliance, while Putin is distracted, or it's on you-- you're gonna suffer the same fate as Ukraine.
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Now I shouldn't put the blame firmly on Finland, because Finland-- it's been longstanding policy of Finland where they say, Hey, look, we don't have anything against NATO, yeah, we may actually want to join NATO.
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But the thing is, we're never going to join NATO by ourselves.
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If this is going to happen, it's going to be Sweden and Finland together, joining the Alliance.
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So really we have to now look at Sweden as well.
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So now we're talking about again stochastic diplomacy, now we're moving a little bit counterclockwise on the map here.
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We're moving now towards Sweden.
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So we say, okay, well we want Finland to join the Alliance.
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Then they say they won't join without Sweden.
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And now Sweden also says we won't join without Finland.
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So they're lockstep together.
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And not only are they locked, but historically their policies have been lockstep with regards to NATO, but even more so now with the recent election of the Swedish prime minister, being a woman.
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I'm not trying to make like a whole gender thing about this, but there was a press event or something going on, when the two prime ministers met each other.
00:22:02.730 --> 00:22:07.990
And of course they were both female and all their aids and whatnot were, and their cabinet staff, they were all men.
00:22:08.319 --> 00:22:17.099
And there's this thing in the European news about how the two prime ministers went to the press and said, Hey, let's leave the men outside and let us, women, talk indoors.
00:22:17.319 --> 00:22:22.059
And they basically left their staff and cabinet outside and had their own private discussions.
00:22:22.060 --> 00:22:27.259
And everyone's like, oh, it's such a funny thing, because woman putting the men to the curb, and ha ha ha.
00:22:27.480 --> 00:22:35.809
That's like a funny little anecdote here, but it just further reinforces the fact that now, more than ever, Sweden and Finland are lockstep together.
00:22:36.190 --> 00:22:41.650
So any type of Ascension into the Alliance is going to be done jointly.
00:22:42.029 --> 00:22:47.690
And there we have to put the same designs on Sweden and saying like, look, see what's going on?
00:22:48.089 --> 00:22:57.119
I know you have this neutral stance, but if Russia decides to do something to Finland or to you, we're going to be staying out of it,'cause you're not a part of the Alliance.
00:22:57.460 --> 00:23:07.480
And now of course there has been some development in recent years of Sweden breaking their neutrality and actually joining in as a coalition partner with NATO.
00:23:07.480 --> 00:23:17.630
Specifically, I remember Libya was the big example of their first foray into war, where they actually joined the coalition to protect Libyan civilians.
00:23:17.740 --> 00:23:19.589
They helped to enforce the no-fly zone.
00:23:19.809 --> 00:23:29.230
So that was a big deal in this, I think like 60-some odd year time period of Swedish neutrality, where they broke that to enforce the no-fly zone.
00:23:29.730 --> 00:23:35.059
So their are steps where Sweden is now warming up to the possibility of Alliance.
00:23:35.599 --> 00:23:53.799
And putting this diplomatic pressure, I wouldn't want to call it pressure,'cause you don't wanna pressure them, but putting these stochastic diplomatic breadcrumbs out there, not only to the governments, but also from a media standpoint to their citizens to really hammer in the fact that, Hey, we're not helping Ukraine out, because they're not in Alliance.
00:23:54.059 --> 00:23:58.960
And the Alliance is first and foremost a defensive Alliance, and we will never break that.
00:23:59.099 --> 00:24:02.240
So you either join us or you stand on your own, and that's on you.
00:24:02.740 --> 00:24:05.470
And just let that hang there, let their public debated it.
00:24:04.980 --> 00:24:16.470
Again, the more that's in the media cycle, the more the public debates it, and the more, should Putin invade the Ukraine this time around, this is something that will be on the forefront of the public's mind.
00:24:16.970 --> 00:24:21.630
And Finland, Sweden being democracies, obviously is going to be on the government's mind as well.
00:24:22.569 --> 00:24:47.369
And should Sweden join the Alliance, particularly Sweden, but obviously it benefits Finland as well, is there, is that the Alliance now controls the Danish Straits, where it effectively closes off the Baltic Sea to the Russian Navy and also to the Russian economy, Russian fright shipping, should there be international sanctions towards an invasion.
00:24:48.150 --> 00:24:56.130
And we already have Denmark, but of course ever since the split of Denmark and Sweden, the Danish Straits are no longer unilateral straits.
00:24:56.131 --> 00:25:00.369
They're not like the Turkish straits down in the Mediterranean, where it's owned by one country.
00:25:00.829 --> 00:25:09.559
Now the Danish Straits are essentially, it's a Danish, slash, Swedish Straits and you need both sides to be able to shut down that maritime passage.
00:25:10.299 --> 00:25:28.430
So, and by having Sweden as part of the Alliance would go a long way into threatening Russia and putting the pressure on Russia from future aggressive actions, by shutting down access to international maritime trade by shutting down the Danish Straits.
00:25:28.890 --> 00:25:32.710
And at that same point, we should look at Turkey and consider that yes.
00:25:32.779 --> 00:25:33.069
Okay.
00:25:33.070 --> 00:25:39.670
There's the mantra convention where it prevents the shutting of the straits, but that's only during times of peace.
00:25:39.809 --> 00:25:52.420
During times of war Turkey could be convinced to interpret the Montreal convention loosely enough to say, Hey, just because we're not at war doesn't mean that, uh, this is not a time of war.
00:25:52.640 --> 00:26:03.740
So the way we interpret the convention is okay, Putin, if you declare war on Ukraine, now there's the stipulation of Montreux Convention, that in times of war Turkey can close the straits.
00:26:03.920 --> 00:26:11.130
And therefore,'cause I know one of the things from the West, and you got a lot of these War Hawks saying, Oh, Turkey should close down the straits, Turkey should close down the straits.
00:26:11.569 --> 00:26:13.089
Turkey does not want to close down the straits.
00:26:13.269 --> 00:26:16.049
As much as it would seemly be beneficial for them.
00:26:16.050 --> 00:26:19.890
Because for them that is needlessly antagonistic toward Russia.
00:26:20.269 --> 00:26:27.569
And right now it's a way for Turkey to exert neutral influence on Russia without antagonizing them.
00:26:28.180 --> 00:26:40.200
So you can't just pressure Turkey into closing down the straits, because once Turkey does that and violates the convention, it opens them up to a reprisal from Russia, either militarily or economically.
00:26:40.440 --> 00:26:49.480
Because of gas, exports-imports, as well as again, a famous telecommunications troll farm of destabilizing Western governments.
00:26:49.819 --> 00:26:51.720
Now of course, Turkey is a dictatorship right now.
00:26:51.721 --> 00:26:55.680
So that's a little different, but that's a separate issue, we could talk about some other time.
00:26:56.099 --> 00:27:05.230
The point here is that now if by convincing Turkey to interpret the Montreux convention, saying in times of war you can shut the straits.
00:27:05.829 --> 00:27:19.390
Well now you shut Russia's maritime access from the Black Sea to the Med to overall maritime global shipping, as well as up north with the Danish Straits, closing them access to the Baltic Sea.
00:27:19.529 --> 00:27:25.460
So when you close the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, essentially, you've effectively landlocked Russia.
00:27:26.259 --> 00:27:28.339
Well, North Sea doesn't really count, because of the ice.
00:27:28.799 --> 00:27:34.700
Now of course there's Pacific ocean with Vladivostok and whatnot, but that's literally the other side of the World.
00:27:35.440 --> 00:27:52.809
And oh, by the way, when we're talking about Vladivostok, if Putin's talking about, Oh, well Ukraine has been historically part of Russia, and Ukraine and Russia are inexorably linked, well then take his rhetoric and throw it right back at him.
00:27:52.810 --> 00:28:05.559
'Cause again, he plays this propaganda and he is very good at it, and the West seems to be powerless about it, because we seem to think that every diplomatic message that we have to provide has to have some sort of purpose to it.
00:28:05.660 --> 00:28:12.519
But if Putin's doing sarcastic diplomacy, he's doing the salami tactics, we have to put the salami tactics right back at him.
00:28:12.940 --> 00:28:18.680
So you take his words right back and say, Oh, well Ukraine is inexorably linked to Russia.
00:28:19.269 --> 00:28:20.799
Well, let's look at the Kuril islands.
00:28:20.980 --> 00:28:24.400
The Kuril islands have been inexorably linked historically to Japan.
00:28:25.109 --> 00:28:31.470
And if you don't know, the Kuril islands-- those are those four islands on the long island chain, north of Japan.
00:28:32.009 --> 00:28:35.390
And Japan believes that they're part of the Hokkaido prefecture.
00:28:35.809 --> 00:28:44.349
And Japan has always had a gripe about losing the Kuril islands-- as it being a traditional Japanese territory-- after they've lost the World War II.
00:28:44.690 --> 00:28:49.059
And maybe now it's time to incite that type of fervor in Japan.
00:28:49.390 --> 00:28:55.140
Again, this doesn't have to be the purpose of having Japan reclaim the Kuril islands.
00:28:55.359 --> 00:29:10.410
No, the point here is to divert Putin's attention from looking directly at Ukraine and force him to expend energy and resources in other parts of Russia or other perceived threats.
00:29:10.920 --> 00:29:17.490
It's kind of like that scene in the"Lord of the Rings", when Aragon wanted the men of the West to assault the Black Gate and they were like, what are you crazy?
00:29:17.500 --> 00:29:18.329
We're gonna get slaughtered.
00:29:18.359 --> 00:29:25.930
He's like, no, we need to do this so that Sauron's gaze could be on us, so that Frodo and Sam can go into Mount Doom on unopposed and destroy the one ring.
00:29:26.579 --> 00:29:36.519
So, you know, we could do the same thing diplomatically here, where Biden could say:"A day may come when the courage of NATO fails, where we forsake all our bonds of friendship.
00:29:36.660 --> 00:29:38.000
But it is not this day.
00:29:38.329 --> 00:29:51.480
Where the hour of Russian armies comes and the atrial democracy comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day, we do states craft by all that you hold dear on this good continent.
00:29:52.240 --> 00:30:00.119
I bid you stand! Nations of the West! Stand and advocate!" And then instead of Frodo, he says:"For Zelensky!"
00:30:03.970 --> 00:30:11.069
The may come, when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship.
00:30:11.450 --> 00:30:12.309
But it is not this day.
00:30:14.450 --> 00:30:43.670
An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand! Men of the West! For Frodo.
00:30:59.970 --> 00:31:07.440
Again, it doesn't have to be a tangible threat, where obviously Japan's not gonna go invade Russia and try to reclaim the Kuril islands.
00:31:07.500 --> 00:31:08.319
No, of course not.
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