- 5/4/2025
As the U.S. heads toward a pivotal 2024 election, Ukraine is no longer just Biden’s war—it’s Trump’s problem now 🇺🇦➡️🇺🇸.
In this high-stakes discussion, John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris, and Glenn Diesen explore how the Ukraine conflict is being reshaped by shifting U.S. politics, deepening divides in Washington, and growing war fatigue among voters 🗳️.
Is Trump preparing to end the war—or will it escalate under his return?
What does this mean for NATO, Russia, and the future of Europe? 🌍
🎥 Don’t miss this must-watch panel of strategic thinkers exposing what’s really happening behind the headlines.
👇 Comment below: Should Trump end the war—or double down?
🔔 Subscribe for elite geopolitical insight and uncensored debate.
#UkraineWar #Trump2024 #Mearsheimer #AlexanderMercouris #GlennDiesen #Geopolitics #USPolitics #BidenVsTrump #NATOWar #UkraineCrisis #ForeignPolicy #WorldAffairs #UkraineConflict #WarFatigue #TrumpWar #UkraineDebate #GlobalPowerShift #RussiaUkraine #Election2024 #RealistAnalysis #UnfilteredTruth
In this high-stakes discussion, John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris, and Glenn Diesen explore how the Ukraine conflict is being reshaped by shifting U.S. politics, deepening divides in Washington, and growing war fatigue among voters 🗳️.
Is Trump preparing to end the war—or will it escalate under his return?
What does this mean for NATO, Russia, and the future of Europe? 🌍
🎥 Don’t miss this must-watch panel of strategic thinkers exposing what’s really happening behind the headlines.
👇 Comment below: Should Trump end the war—or double down?
🔔 Subscribe for elite geopolitical insight and uncensored debate.
#UkraineWar #Trump2024 #Mearsheimer #AlexanderMercouris #GlennDiesen #Geopolitics #USPolitics #BidenVsTrump #NATOWar #UkraineCrisis #ForeignPolicy #WorldAffairs #UkraineConflict #WarFatigue #TrumpWar #UkraineDebate #GlobalPowerShift #RussiaUkraine #Election2024 #RealistAnalysis #UnfilteredTruth
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NewsTranscript
00:00:00Hi everyone and welcome. I am joined today by John Mersheimer and Alexander Mercuris
00:00:06to discuss the recent developments taking place in Ukraine. So we have quite a few developments
00:00:13lately. That is, Zelensky decided to sign the minerals deal and shortly thereafter, probably
00:00:22quite related, the United States announced that it would engage in weapon sales to Ukraine.
00:00:30So this has been a difficult balancing position for the United States to both be a leading
00:00:36participant in this war with Russia and also at the same time being a mediator. Is this
00:00:43collapsing now or is this Trump's war, I guess?
00:00:47Well, I think it has collapsed. I mean, there was an announcement today by the State Department
00:00:52that they ended their mediation mission. And having been a mediator myself in many negotiations,
00:01:00I mean, that was one of the things I used to do. I mean, the idea that you could be both
00:01:05a mediator and a party is absurd. I mean, it is impossible. I mean, it completely contradicts
00:01:13the whole concept of what mediation is. You cannot be a mediator and at the same time a
00:01:19party to a conflict or someone who is deeply involved with one of the parties to the conflict
00:01:27in the way that the United States has been. And I think that is one of the reasons why
00:01:32this attempt at negotiations ultimately failed, because the United States is much too close
00:01:39to this conflict to be able to actually fulfill a successful mediation role. I think presenting
00:01:47this, you know, in an effort to achieve a peace agreement, presenting it as the United States
00:01:54conducting some kind of mediation exercise was misconceived. And as I said, was one of the
00:02:01things that caused the whole process of negotiation to come to the impasse, which it seems to me
00:02:07it is now in.
00:02:09Yeah, I would agree with Alexander. I don't think that the United States was a mediator. I mean,
00:02:15what we have here is a war where Russia is on one side, Ukraine, Europe, and the United States
00:02:24are on the other side. The United States has been an active participant in this war. It's done
00:02:30everything but pull the triggers. You know, it's not a mediator in any meaningful way. I think what was
00:02:37going on here is that Trump thought that he could work out a deal with the Russians. And once that
00:02:46deal was worked out, he thought that he could impose that on the Europeans and the Ukrainians,
00:02:53right? When you talk about mediation, it's like the United States is in the middle and the Ukrainians
00:02:58and the Europeans are on one side and the Russians are on the other side. I don't think, again, that's
00:03:04what was happening here. The United States is a full-fledged participant on one side. And it was
00:03:11trying to work out a deal with the Russians. This is what Steve Witkoff was trying to do. Steve Witkoff
00:03:18wasn't talking to the Ukrainians. He wasn't talking to the Europeans. He was talking to Putin because
00:03:23the two of them were trying to work out a deal. And then they thought they could sell it to the
00:03:28Ukrainians and the Europeans. But the problem here is that not only were the Europeans and the
00:03:34Ukrainians completely uninterested in any meaningful compromises, much less the deal that the Russians
00:03:41demand, but the American national security establishment and the Trump administration
00:03:49is honeycombed with all sorts of super hawks who want to continue the war. So, you know, Trump and a
00:03:57handful of his lieutenants were interested in cutting the deal, but there was so much pressure against
00:04:03that inside his own administration that he couldn't even pull off that part of the story. And let's
00:04:10assume he had done that. Let's assume that Putin and Trump had worked out a deal, which basically
00:04:16would have involved Trump conceding on all the major demands that the Russians make. Let's assume that
00:04:22that happened. He could have never sold it to the Ukrainians and to the Europeans. And the question
00:04:28then is, where would that have left us? And the answer is nowhere.
00:04:34A key problem, though, by selling or perceiving this war as being a war between Ukraine and Russia is, you know,
00:04:40taking the US and Europeans out of the equation. Now, for me, a strange thing about the whole negotiation, as
00:04:47as you said, the idea that they have to impose this on the Ukrainians. Why was it that all of
00:04:53this had to be imposed on the Ukrainians? I mean, the idea that they had to pressure Ukraine to accept
00:04:58they wouldn't be a part of NATO, why would this be Ukraine's decision? Surely NATO and or the United
00:05:03States as the leading country in NATO could have said, could have written a deal with the Russians saying
00:05:10America will not accept any NATO expansion. It just seems as if we're setting ourself up for another,
00:05:17you know, not another inch to the east, which could be broken in the future. Why? Same with the security
00:05:22guarantees. Zelensky demanded security guarantees. But the United States could have, you know, move this
00:05:29forward as well. They don't, you know, they don't get to veto this today that they get American security
00:05:35guarantees. It just seems like a lot of this could have been dealt with between the Americans and the
00:05:39Russians if there was a will. I'm not sure how the two of you explain this, the need, the fact that
00:05:46there was the Ukrainians who had to renounce NATO. Why couldn't NATO renounce, I guess, Ukraine as a
00:05:51member? Well, I think actually, John has partly answered this. For the Americans, for Trump to have
00:05:59negotiated a deal like that with the Russians would have been incredibly difficult politically to do.
00:06:06And I don't think he was prepared to take the risks. And I don't think he understood that in order to
00:06:13achieve a deal, he would find the Russians as determined in their stance as he expected. I think
00:06:22he thought that he could provide a framework agreement, that the Russians would accept the
00:06:26framework agreement, that the Russians would make significant concessions as well, that they would accept
00:06:32some language on NATO, and that they would accept part of the territories, and all of those things.
00:06:39And I think he was disappointed and surprised that the Russians said, no, we have to have something
00:06:44much more concrete. And the that, I mean, John has said in the past that as far as the Russians are
00:06:52concerned, what they would probably want is some absolute guarantee that the United States will not be
00:07:00involved in security issues in Ukraine at all. Now, that's almost certainly, I'm sure, something like that,
00:07:09maybe not in exactly, those terms would have come up over the course of the various discussions that took place
00:07:16with Whitcomb. But there is no conceivable way that this could have been sold in Washington, or could have been
00:07:22sold, certainly to the Europeans, or to the Ukrainians either. So I think this is approached in the wrong way. I think that
00:07:30what Trump needed to do, if he was going to move forward, is that he needed to put Ukraine to one side, seek a
00:07:41normalization of some kind, with Russia, reopening embassies, getting dialogue going, discussing things with the Russians,
00:07:52in that kind of way. And then gradually, maybe out of that, some kind of steps could have been taken that might
00:08:00eventually have led to peace in Ukraine, especially if the United States quietly started to stop supplying
00:08:07weapons. But Trump wanted to do it all very fast. He needed it all to happen in 100 days. He wildly
00:08:15overreached. He greatly underestimated the difficulties. And this is where we are.
00:08:22Yeah. And just to build on what Alexander said, you, Glenn, focused on the NATO issue.
00:08:28And there's no question that's an important issue. And there's no question that we are unlikely to
00:08:37give an ironclad promise that Ukraine will never become a NATO member. That's, I think, part of the
00:08:45problem. But there are two other big problems, in my opinion. One is the territorial issue. One could
00:08:52argue the territorial issue is by far the biggest issue. We live in the age of nationalism, and
00:08:58territory is inevitably sacred. If you think about how the Chinese think about Taiwan, Taiwan is sacred
00:09:04territory. And for the Ukrainians, understandably, eastern Ukraine is sacred territory to them. Crimea is
00:09:12sacred territory. They don't want to give it up. And how do you square that circle? And then we don't
00:09:18give them security guarantees. Okay. But the third big demand that the Russians have is that Ukraine be
00:09:25demilitarized to the point where it has no offensive military capability. Now, you can understand why the
00:09:31Russians want that. But you can also understand why the Ukrainians, if they don't have security guarantees,
00:09:37at least want to have the capability to build up their defenses to protect themselves. I mean,
00:09:43that makes perfect sense from their point of view. But again, how do you square that circle? So,
00:09:48there are three big problems here that I don't think have any solution. And this is why I don't think you can
00:09:57have a meaningful peace agreement.
00:10:02Yeah, no, this is, I think the demilitarization of Ukraine was, it's probably a step too far for the
00:10:07Russians. Again, if they get no security guarantees, then it does seem reasonable that they should at
00:10:12least have their own military. Maybe not as huge as the one NATO built up since 2014. But, but if the
00:10:21Russians would negotiate on something, that seems like something they should allow. But again, we have all
00:10:26these complicated issues. You have the neutrality, you have the territorial issues, you have the
00:10:32demilitarization. Why was so much of this negotiation of pressure on Zelensky focused on Crimea? I don't
00:10:39recall the Russians really asking about this at all or caring that much about the extent to which the
00:10:45Western countries actually would recognize or Zelensky would recognize Crimea as Russian. Again, this was 11
00:10:52years ago, they said, you know, primarily the neutrality issue and territorial issues. And of
00:10:57course, there are these other ones, but why, how did Crimea end up being such an important part of this?
00:11:03Well, just to say about things like demilitarization and all of those things,
00:11:09if there had been a proper process of negotiation, which might have taken a very long time to do,
00:11:15one, two, three years, something of that kind, over the course of those kind of negotiations, as perhaps some
00:11:26degree of goodwill and trust is built up over the course of negotiations, some flexibility on each
00:11:35side might have gradually developed. I've seen that happen over the course of negotiations. But Trump wasn't
00:11:43interested in negotiations of that kind. He didn't pursue actually a conventional negotiating strategy.
00:11:54He wanted to have the deal done quickly, apparently in 100 days. And it is unrealistic to expect that
00:12:02sides that are entrenched in a conflict of the kind that John has described are going to actually
00:12:09compromise on their fundamental positions in that sort of way. He was in far too much of a hurry.
00:12:20Probably, actually, what he's done is that, in fact, he's probably caused each side to dig in more strongly
00:12:29into the positions that they already had, which is the risk you run if you conduct negotiations of this
00:12:36kind of way. Now, as we're bringing up Crimea, again, I wonder whether he thought that this would be a
00:12:41simple thing, that, you know, the Russians already controlled Crimea. So you recognise Crimea as Russian,
00:12:50and that will please the Russians. And the Ukrainians have lost Crimea for 10 years, and they won't care very
00:12:58much. And he thought that he was giving the Russians something that might persuade them to give ground
00:13:05on other things. And of course, that didn't happen. I mean, the Russians didn't give ground
00:13:10on other things. Because as you rightly say, they haven't really brought up the issue of Crimea at all.
00:13:16And for the Ukrainians, it was a concession that was completely unacceptable, as they made completely
00:13:21clear. I have to say, I have to say this, there was a huge amount of amateurism in the way this
00:13:30negotiation was conducted. Negotiations of this sort should not be conducted in this kind of way.
00:13:37Negotiations need to be conducted through proper negotiating teams, working through all of the issues,
00:13:44taking their time, arguing with each other, reflecting the ebbs and flows and eddies of opinion
00:13:52in their various countries. And eventually, an agreement is done. But just to think that one individual,
00:13:57one man, Trump, and one negotiating partner, Wyckoff, can somehow get this all sewn up in 100 days.
00:14:05I mean, it just wasn't going to happen. And as I said, it may have made things worse.
00:14:09Let me respond to two of the points that Alexander may just embellish them. But before I do that,
00:14:18let me just say, I think he's absolutely right about Crimea, they thought that was the low hanging
00:14:22fruit that they could get an agreement there. And then they could build upon that. But of course,
00:14:30it might have been the low hanging fruit, but it was not hanging very low. They got nothing,
00:14:35and they had nothing to build on. But my two points are this. First, it's very important to understand
00:14:43that what is going on in Ukraine is from Russia's point of view, an existential threat. And it is from
00:14:50Ukraine's point of view, an existential threat. The Russians are an existential threat to Ukraine.
00:14:56And Ukraine and NATO is an existential threat to Russia. And when countries feel that they are facing
00:15:05an existential threat, first of all, they're willing to take great risks, and they'll do almost
00:15:11anything to protect themselves. And furthermore, they're going to be highly unlikely to be willing
00:15:19to make any concessions at all. Because again, they're facing an existential threat. And one of the
00:15:25problems that we have in the West is that we refuse to accept the fact that the Russians see NATO
00:15:32expansion into Ukraine as an existential threat. We just refuse to accept it. And we don't fully
00:15:39appreciate the Ukrainian position as well. We don't understand just how much the Ukrainians fear the
00:15:46Russians. And the end result is you have this mentality where people think there's bargaining space
00:15:54between the two sides. And all you have to do is reduce that bargaining space, get to some sort of
00:16:00agreement, and we'll live happily ever after. And most people in the West, when they talk about cutting a deal, they
00:16:09miss the fact that this is almost impossible to do because you have two adversaries that think the
00:16:15other side is an existential threat. And I think if we had recognized that from the beginning, we would
00:16:22have understood that this was a Herculean task to bring this war to an end. And it had to be done very
00:16:29carefully, which gets to my second point. To say that the Americans are amateurs, Alexander, is a gross
00:16:36understatement. It's hard to believe how incompetent this administration is. I mean, Steve Witkoff, who has
00:16:46zero experience as a diplomat, is put in charge not only of the Russian portfolio or the Ukraine portfolio,
00:16:55he's in charge of the Iran portfolio, and he's in charge of the Netanyahu portfolio. He has three
00:17:01separate portfolios. He has no experience. And furthermore, he has no staff. He goes to these
00:17:09meetings pretty much all alone. He's kind of the lone ranger. There's no question that he's close to
00:17:15Trump, and that is a huge advantage. But at the same time, you would think for tricky negotiations
00:17:21like the ones involving Ukraine, and by the way, the ones involving Iran as well, that you would have
00:17:28a skilled and experienced diplomat in charge. But you don't. And then there's Marco Rubio,
00:17:37who's now the National Security Advisor, as well as the Secretary of State, as well as the head of USAID,
00:17:45and he has a fourth job as well. I can't even remember what it is. But Marco Rubio has hardly any
00:17:52diplomatic experience. And furthermore, what he's most known for these days is he's done
00:17:58a 180-degree turn on all his views just to appease Donald Trump. And a person who doesn't really
00:18:06have firm positions that he or she is willing to stick to is not likely to prove to be a reliable
00:18:13advisor to Donald Trump, who has to hear some hard, cold truths. But anyway, that's what you have
00:18:21here in the United States. And the final point that I would make to you is that we are dealing
00:18:27with so many different big issues that President Trump can barely keep his eye on any one ball for
00:18:34very long. He's got the Iran issue, he's got the Palestinian issue, he's got the Russia issue,
00:18:40now we have the India-Pakistan issue, then he's got the tariff issue. And if you look at what he's doing
00:18:45domestically, you know, with Elon Musk and so forth and so on, there are just all sorts of issues at
00:18:51play at the domestic level. And this tells me that the chances that we're going to be smart enough
00:18:59to come close, just to come close to working at a deal with the Russians is not in the cards.
00:19:05I think the approach was similar to that of a person negotiating over a property or something,
00:19:11that, you know, you can always push it a little bit up the price or down or, you know, something.
00:19:16But again, as I know Alexander has also pointed out, these negotiation skills don't always translate
00:19:22into politics. And especially, as you say, when this is seen as an existential threat, it's not as
00:19:28if, you know, they can convince the Russians that only a little bit of NATO presence in Ukraine will be
00:19:34fine. I guess it was from day one, very evident that there was very little room for
00:19:42in maneuver on both sides. But that's why, initially, I was kind of optimistic when Hegseth came along and
00:19:48said, well, there will be no NATO expansion, no security guarantees, no return of territories.
00:19:54It kind of seemed that he recognized that there was no room for a negotiation on the Russian side.
00:19:59And I thought they would be leaning heavily on the Ukrainians, because Ukraine can't really
00:20:04survive without America. So it's either this horrible deal or collapse. But yeah, now it looks
00:20:12Trump's been, well, he's been saying again, this Biden's war, but it is now a Trump war as well. I'm just
00:20:20wondering to what extent, because I think, yeah, saying that it's Trump's war now in Ukraine,
00:20:25I think it's fair. But to say that it's indistinguishable from Biden, I think that would
00:20:31be an exaggeration, because Biden is a bit overly enthusiastic, especially in the escalation.
00:20:39Even though this becomes Trump's war now, I don't see him being as enthusiastic about this war,
00:20:46or willing to invest or give away money. If anything, I think he sees more the opportunity of
00:20:51selling weaponry, perhaps. I'm not quite sure. I'm wondering if, yeah, how are you to view this?
00:21:00Like, what will his actual involvement be here if he's not mediating, but is still participating in
00:21:05the war? To what extent? I think I'd say two things. Firstly, I think to say that he's unenthusiastic
00:21:13about the war is actually understates it. I think he absolutely wishes this war would go away.
00:21:20I don't think he's interested in it. I don't think he's interested in the issues. He sees it as a
00:21:25problem. He doesn't want to involve the United States in it much more. And as I said, I don't think
00:21:33he's enthusiastic about it at all. But at the same time, as he's Donald Trump, and as any president of
00:21:42the United States, probably in his same position would no doubt feel, he doesn't want to see a
00:21:49collapse, a catastrophe, a breakdown, a defeat happen whilst he's president. So if you ask him,
00:21:57I think, at this precise moment in time, what exactly are you going to do from this point on?
00:22:02Are you going to go on supporting Ukraine so as to prevent it collapsing? Or are you gradually going
00:22:08to reduce support for Ukraine? I don't think he knows himself. I don't get any sense that he knows
00:22:15himself. He's been saying things like, you know, that he's looking to extricate the United States
00:22:21from the war. At the same time, he's licensed a sale. It is a sale. It's not a transfer, you know,
00:22:27the, you know, the $50 million of weapons to Ukraine. He signed this investment fund deal,
00:22:35which is, by the way, very different from what we had before. It's much more like a sort of
00:22:41classical investment fund idea. But he's now published, had published on the White House
00:22:47website to think that this is a sign to everybody that the United States still has
00:22:53skin in the game, that it's still there, that it's still a friend of Ukraine and wants to rebuild
00:22:58Ukraine. So I do think he really himself is clear about what to do. I think that what will probably
00:23:06happen is that events on the battlefield are going to shape his future reactions. And as those events
00:23:16unfold, which they will, then gradually we'll start to see which way he's going to go.
00:23:23I think it's very difficult to predict at the moment exactly what he is thinking or will do,
00:23:31because I don't get the sense that he has much idea himself.
00:23:36Let me just piggyback on what Alexander said. I think there are three options here that he had
00:23:43from the very beginning. One is to cut a deal, you know, to shut this war down. The second
00:23:50was to try, and once he fails, to walk away in effect. Let the Ukrainians, with help from the
00:23:59Europeans, take the Russians on in the future. And the third was to become Joe Biden the second,
00:24:06which is to, you know, put Trump-supported or Trump-sponsored weaponry into the pipeline and
00:24:15keep the war going. Behave just the way Joe Biden was doing. Well, I think we all agree that the
00:24:21first possibility is now off the table. You're not going to get a deal, unless they're doing something
00:24:26behind closed doors that we don't know about, which is extremely unlikely. Let's hope it is happening,
00:24:32but it doesn't look that way. That leaves you with two options. Either he walks away or he becomes
00:24:38Joe Biden number two. And as Alexander said, this war is going to evolve over the next couple months
00:24:45in ways that favor the Russians. And Biden is going to have to make a decision whether we step in,
00:24:52we meaning the Americans, and try to stem the tide or maybe even reverse the balance, which is what you
00:24:58would have expected from a second Biden-slash-Harris administration. Or we just say goodbye, we're
00:25:06out of here. And of course, if we do that, what that means is you're going to get Saigon April 30th,
00:25:151975 at some point. There's going to be a collapse of the Ukrainian military. It's going to lose a lot of
00:25:25territory. I don't think the Russians are going to end up conquering all of Ukraine the way the
00:25:30North Vietnamese conquered all of South Vietnam. But I think the Russians will end up winning a
00:25:36clear-cut victory. The Ukrainians will lose much more territory, and it will be seen as a devastating
00:25:43defeat for the West. But if Trump doesn't want that to happen, what's the alternative?
00:25:49be Joe Biden all over again? That's certainly distasteful. So he has no good option here.
00:25:57His only hope was to shut this one down. And it looks to me, and I think you guys both agree with
00:26:03me, like he blew it. Yeah, no, I think that's a technical term for it. He did blow it.
00:26:11He invested so much of his political capital, and the main theme he has of being this peacemaker,
00:26:24because he's not pulling it off in the Middle East, quite obviously. And he's not being able
00:26:30to make some good deal with the Chinese. I thought this was going to be his one big thing. But given
00:26:34that he's been speaking about peace for so long, I know he's good at walking away from
00:26:41walking back previous statements, but it must be very hard. A big part of his base has been openly
00:26:48mocking Zelensky. They said Ukraine is ripping off America. They kind of fell in line with this rhetoric.
00:26:55So for Trump to be Biden the second now, wouldn't this be a Herculean task?
00:27:01I would have thought so. I mean, obviously, I'm not, you know, there in the United States. I don't
00:27:09have my finger on the pulse, certainly not MAGA people. But I would have thought it'd be very,
00:27:15very difficult for Trump to simply turn around and say, well, look, the Russians have not played
00:27:21ball with us. So we must go on supporting this heroic figure, Vladimir Zelensky, and Ukraine against
00:27:28the Russians. And we must go on giving them more and more weapons, more and more
00:27:33money after he's already been complaining about how much money and how many weapons have already
00:27:38been sent to Ukraine. I mean, I'm not saying it's an impossible sell, but I would have thought it
00:27:43would be a difficult one. And it would be politically damaging because people would remember that he's
00:27:51said the opposite before, and his political opponents inevitably would use it. So I can't
00:27:57see that becoming Biden the second is actually an attractive choice at all. I would say it was a very,
00:28:04very, very difficult one. But I don't think he wants Saigon too. I mean, I think that is clearly
00:28:11not what he wants. I think that he hasn't made a decision himself. And I think it's a very difficult
00:28:20decision for him to make, given that he's a politician. My guess is that he will go quiet
00:28:26over the next few months and play for time and see what events on the ground dictate.
00:28:33I wonder whether if this goes back, by the way, to something that John was saying in an earlier
00:28:40program, if there is a breakthrough, Russian breakthrough over the course of the summer,
00:28:46which, by the way, is starting to look more and more likely. I mean, you know, we're not going to
00:28:51talk about the details of the war, but my sense is it is starting to look more and more likely.
00:28:56Then maybe, maybe come the autumn, conditions for some kind of peace settlement, much more
00:29:08favorable to the Russians, might be more attractive to the Ukrainians and to the Europeans than they
00:29:16would be today. Because today, as of now, Ukraine is still there. It's still fighting. It's still in a
00:29:24position to say no. And if that changes, it's a five, six months time, perhaps he can revisit this
00:29:33whole question and agree the deal then that he tried to achieve today and found that he couldn't
00:29:40achieve. But that's far from sure. And it's far from sure that in six months time, the Russians will
00:29:46be more amenable either. I mean, they might be, they might have increased their demands. In fact,
00:29:51they quite plausibly will have done. Well, I think, Alexander, they'll then control
00:29:57more territory. And you'll be, the West will be in a position, the Americans will be in a position
00:30:04where they're asking the Russians to give up that additional territory beyond the four oblasts.
00:30:10And if I were in the driver's seat in Moscow, I would not give up that territory. If I controlled
00:30:16Odessa and Harkiv, I would not under any circumstances give up the territory for strategic
00:30:22reasons. Because I would be worried about the Americans changing their mind in four years,
00:30:28two years, six years. And the Ukrainians, of course, will want to reorder the existing
00:30:36territorial divide forever. So if I'm the Russians, I take as much territory as I can
00:30:44conquer and manage to occupy. But I want to make just another point about the whole Russian-Ukraine
00:30:53case. I think it's important that we don't look at it in isolation. Because you want to understand that
00:31:01there are other balls in the air. And there could be big trouble on other fronts that limit what
00:31:10Trump can do in the late summer or in the fall regarding what's happening in Ukraine. And the
00:31:19best example here is Iran. We could talk a little bit about that, but I don't think you're going to get
00:31:25a deal on Iran. I think the same sort of foolishness on the Americans' part regarding Russia is playing
00:31:33out with regard to Iran. And if you don't get a deal, Trump has said that we will use military force
00:31:41against Iran. I find it hard to believe he would do that, but he may have no choice given the power of
00:31:48the Israel lobby in the United States. And just given the power of the right in the United States,
00:31:54all the hawks that we have in the administration and outside the administration, all the Lindsey
00:31:59Grahams running around. Well, if he attacks Iran with military force, we all know the Iranians are
00:32:07going to counterattack. And where that all leads will be to a disaster, right? And if he has a disaster
00:32:13over Ukraine, that's going to really complicate what he can do with regard to Ukraine. So the Iran
00:32:25business and the Ukraine business go together. And by the way, if we don't work out a deal with
00:32:30the Russians over Ukraine and relations between Russia and the United States deteriorate in the
00:32:36months ahead, that will give the Russians an even greater incentive to cooperate with the Iranians
00:32:41against us. And that further complicates things. And then there are the tariffs. Almost everybody
00:32:48believes that there's a tsunami coming at us, that we're going to get hit really hard by these tariffs.
00:32:56And even Trump himself admits we're going to suffer some significant pain. He argues it's in the short
00:33:03term and in the long term, we'll be better off. But that short term is going to include a good year
00:33:10or two. And in that short term, when we're suffering here in the United States from tariffs,
00:33:16that will have an effect on what kind of maneuver room Trump has with regard to Iran and with regard
00:33:22to Russia. So you can tell a plausible story where Trump is in big trouble on a lot of fronts
00:33:29come the late summer, fall and 2026. And this could really complicate matters regarding Ukraine.
00:33:39Well, this goes to the idea about Trump being Biden too. I'm not sure if it's possible for him to be
00:33:46Biden too, because as you said, there's economic trouble at home. The economic war with China isn't
00:33:53going well either. The Chinese appear to be waiting this out and just watching the chaos play out in
00:33:59the US. And of course, we have the huge problems in the Middle East, the potential of war with Iran.
00:34:06So even if he would want to be Biden too, which I don't think he wants to, the resources aren't really
00:34:14there. There's no hidden weapons depot, which Biden left untouched. Which is why I guess it's
00:34:22interesting to look at this whole minerals deal. Is this just transactional? He's selling some
00:34:28weapons now because he got some hands on the Ukrainian resources. And not to widen the question even
00:34:36further, but what actually is in this minerals deal? Is it as extensive control? I mean, is Ukraine
00:34:44becoming now an economic colony of America or is it not that extensive?
00:34:49Well, this is a problem because what has been published appears to be one of only three documents.
00:34:59And I've read through that document. It doesn't provide a huge amount of insight as to what exactly
00:35:05has been agreed here. And I was hearing, I don't know whether this is true or not, but that the
00:35:10Ukrainian MPs who are supposed to ratify this agreement are themselves not being shown the whole
00:35:18agreement in its entirety. But my sense of it is this. The Ukrainians first proposed this back in the
00:35:28summer and early autumn when they were basically looking for some kind of long-term security commitment or
00:35:37even guarantee from the United States. I mean, that was what Zelensky was talking about. He said, look,
00:35:44you give me this, give me your unqualified military support going forward. I will give you in return
00:35:50all these mineral rights. Trump wasn't prepared to give Ukraine that kind of unqualified military
00:35:57support or guarantee that Zelensky was asking for. The Americans wanted essentially complete control
00:36:05over Ukraine's natural resources. The Ukrainians say, well, you're not even giving us a security
00:36:10guarantee. So why should we give you complete unconstrained control of our natural resources
00:36:17and our mineral rights? So what we've ended up with is a much more conservative, much more conventional
00:36:26agreement, basically an investment rights agreement. So you set up an investment fund to develop various
00:36:34parts of Ukraine's economy. It doesn't come with the security guarantees the Ukrainians wanted.
00:36:41And it doesn't come with the absolute control of Ukraine's natural resources that the Americans
00:36:47wanted. So it's a very, very conventional agreement, or at least that is what the part of it that I have
00:36:57seen suggests that it is. So neither side in the end got what they were looking for. I suspect that
00:37:05probably they decided to agree this because a failure to agree would have been an indication that
00:37:13relations had completely broken down and might have led everybody to think that, you know, relations
00:37:19between Ukraine and the United States were now irreparable. And perhaps they didn't want to give
00:37:26that impression. But what I've seen at the moment seems frankly, shall I say, rather
00:37:37inconsequential relative to all the other things that we've been talking about today.
00:37:42I mean, I qualify that. There may be all kinds of hidden clauses and secret deals and commitments
00:37:50that I'm not aware of. I like your use of the word inconsequential, because that's the way I read
00:37:56it as well. Not a big deal. But the problem in the West is that the media is hyping this as evidence that
00:38:04we are tying ourselves to the Ukrainians. This is sort of a de facto security guarantee of some sort or
00:38:12another. But I don't think that's true at all. I think the Americans have made it very clear there's
00:38:18going to be no security guarantee. And if you look at what's happening in terms of just American policy
00:38:24towards Europe in general, we are reducing our footprint there. And we are interested in turning
00:38:32over European security to the Europeans. And we want the Europeans to deal with Ukraine. And we want to
00:38:39sort of get out of the business of dealing with Ukraine. Maybe we'll help on the margins. But we
00:38:44want that to be a European mission. So the idea that we're getting closer to the Ukrainians, this is
00:38:50some sort of meaningful security guarantee. I think that's a myth that's being created in the West
00:38:57to perpetrate this idea that we shouldn't abandon and we are not abandoning Ukraine.
00:39:03I found it fascinating that JD Vance actually had to tell the Europeans that we don't want vassals,
00:39:11we want partners. So when the Americans are telling us to stop behaving like vassals for the Americans,
00:39:19you know, it's not, we're not in a good place. But both of you had some, you know, interesting or very
00:39:26good points on all of the problems building up, you know, between the Russians, Ukraine, Russians,
00:39:32Ukrainians, United States. But, but you can bring in another element here, though, to this conflict
00:39:37in terms of it not being sustainable. And that's within Ukraine, there's a lot of problems with him.
00:39:44I mean, only the last few weeks and days now, we see Zelensky put, you know, sanctions on Poroshenko,
00:39:49his own former advisor, Prius Arstovich. He also, the guy who, his biographer, put sanctions on him as
00:39:58well. You see now that, again, there's some more tensions, it seems, between Zelensky and the Nationalists.
00:40:06At the same time, only the last 48 hours, you see some huge collapses on the front lines,
00:40:12you know, in many places, from Pokrovsk, also the Toretsk region. And it's, no, this can't,
00:40:23it looks like something's gonna crack at some point. If, let's say, Trump continues to finance this war,
00:40:32or he does it through sales, you know, being very transactional, nonetheless, how can this continue?
00:40:39Because it doesn't seem like, yeah, it's only about American, America supplying weaponry.
00:40:47Well, it cannot indefinitely continue. At some point, Ukraine will crack. It cannot continue the war
00:40:59indefinitely, for exactly the reasons that you are saying. And undoubtedly, the fact that the war is
00:41:07being fought with all the terrible losses that it's causing, and is being lost, is causing extreme
00:41:14stresses within the Ukrainian political system, exactly with the results that you described.
00:41:20And I'm afraid I've come to the same conclusion, well, I've reached the conclusion, which I suspect
00:41:26John always had, which is that these stresses are never going to be sufficient to persuade Ukraine
00:41:33to agree to a peace that the Russians would accept. Because the Ukrainians do see this as existential.
00:41:40For them, if you like, this is a war of liberation. This is the war that is going to make that make their
00:41:48nation. And that is a very, very difficult thing for them to give up, or as they would say, betray.
00:41:56So we can be very rational about this from London and, you know, wherever we are. But I think that
00:42:04we have to accept that even as the tide goes further and further against them, even as, you know,
00:42:14they start being pushed to the wall in all sorts of places, even as their economy breaks down,
00:42:19they're out of, they've got no gas in their reserves. There's issues about whether they can
00:42:25cover their budget expenses, and they might even be facing a financial crash later this year.
00:42:34That may not be enough to get them to sit down and negotiate, you know, on terms that might be,
00:42:42that might be acceptable to the Russians. And if you want to parallel, the American Civil War often
00:42:49offers one where, um, the South never, um, never surrendered and never negotiated. It just went on
00:42:58right up until the moment of its eventual collapse.
00:43:03Losers never forget, uh, and the Ukrainians are going to lose this war and they're never going to
00:43:09forget and they're going to do everything they can. Once you get a frozen conflict, uh, to change the
00:43:17situation on the ground to get back that territory. And the Russians fully understand this. I think if you
00:43:24think about where this war is going, uh, there's just unending trouble ahead. Uh, I think the Ukrainians
00:43:34and the Russians are never going to come to any meaningful agreement on the territorial divide. And that
00:43:41issue alone means that these two countries are going to beat each other's throat, uh, forever and ever.
00:43:47Uh, it's just a terrible situation. Furthermore, it's very important to understand that there are a
00:43:55series of flashpoints in Eastern Europe that are superimposed on this conflict. There's the Arctic,
00:44:03there's the Baltic Sea, there's Kaliningrad, there's Belarus, there's Moldova, and there's the Black Sea.
00:44:12You can imagine trouble, conflict actually breaking out in each one of those issue areas, sort of
00:44:19independent of what's going on in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Uh, so you just have a number of potential
00:44:30points where this one can blow up moving forward. To take this a step further, if you look at what
00:44:37the Russians are doing, I'm sure both of you saw this big Wall Street Journal story about how the
00:44:43Russians are developing their military and where they're deploying it. Uh, I tend to disagree with the
00:44:49Wall Street Journal, which seems to think that these, most of these new forces the Russians are building
00:44:55a design to fight NATO. I think the Russians will take care of business on their front lines with the
00:45:02Ukrainians first and foremost. Then they can worry about war with NATO. But I do think the Russians are
00:45:09worried about a war with NATO. I think they view NATO as a long-term threat. They view the Europeans as a
00:45:19long-term threat. I want to think about what that means, right? Uh, the Russians here don't believe
00:45:26that this conflict in Ukraine is going to be settled in any meaningful way. And the frozen
00:45:32conflict you're going to get is one where they have to be prepared that the frozen conflict heats up again.
00:45:39So the Russians for the long-term are going to maintain powerful military forces to protect themselves,
00:45:45which is going to cause the Europeans to respond, which is going to cause the Russians to respond.
00:45:50And all of this is going to take place in a poisonous political environment. The Russophobia,
00:45:56as we've talked about before in the West, is profound. And of course, the Russians have gotten
00:46:01to the point where they, uh, they really loathe, in many cases, people in the West. All you have to
00:46:06do is listen to Sergei Karaganov talk about the West. He hates the West in the way that many
00:46:13of the Russophobes in the West hate Russia. This is going to be the political environment.
00:46:17And on top of that, you have this unending conflict in Ukraine, plus these other conflict
00:46:23scenarios that I described. This is a catastrophe. The decision on April, in April, 2008 to bring
00:46:32Ukraine into NATO is a catastrophically foolish decision. It's hard to believe.
00:46:37Yeah. No, I, I watched a talk you had with, uh, Sergei Karaganov and I, yeah, also, yeah,
00:46:44noticed that, uh, the resentment now growing is quite interesting. Uh, again, I used to work
00:46:48with him in Moscow and, uh, the, the tone used to be very different, but of course this war has also
00:46:53changed things there. There is, there's a lot of anger growing, but, uh, while I understand the,
00:47:00certainly the Ukrainian side that they don't want any negotiations that, you know, again, losing 20% of your
00:47:06territory after all this suffering and a humiliating peace, I can understand why, uh, you know, they
00:47:12want to roll the dice, even though it doesn't seem to be any good, uh, alternatives. But what is
00:47:18perplexing to me though, is the Europeans, uh, this makes very little sense to me. And, uh, we can,
00:47:26for example, use Germans as a case study, all this talk now about spending money. They don't have
00:47:31to build a huge army, which would even alienate other Europeans potentially. And you have German
00:47:38generals on TV arguing, um, well, for example, that the Russians are building up, uh, forces near
00:47:45Finland and they're using this as evidence that the Russians are preparing to invade or to, to fight
00:47:51NATO. And it's very strange because, you know, when Finland joined NATO, uh, Putin warned, well,
00:47:58now we're going to have to build, uh, you know, restore some, uh, uh, yeah, military bases there
00:48:03to protect us from this huge NATO frontline. And now the Germans seem to be pretending as if this
00:48:08happened in a vacuum that now the Russians are preparing to invade us. It's just, uh, it's hard for
00:48:15me to understand where this is coming from, but also the reluctance to accept any peace negotiations.
00:48:21I mean, what Trump put forward again, I, I'm all, I always make the point there. I don't think it's
00:48:26a very, it's a very bad deal for the Ukrainians to get nothing of what they wanted, but again,
00:48:32it's the alternative. There is no good alternatives anymore. And that's why I also agree very much
00:48:37without a storage saying, you know, he say, I would give away those four territories because
00:48:40the alternative is we give away eight territories. So this is what's going to happen. So I, I understand
00:48:46from the Ukrainian side, why it's, as you said, uh, this is sacred, uh, the issue of territory,
00:48:52especially for, you know, within nationalism, but, but, but for the Europeans, uh, that they know
00:48:59we're losing to war. We know that if we don't strike a deal, the outcome will be much worse for us
00:49:05and still no alternative, no support for the Americans. Instead, what we're going for is now let's
00:49:12continue the war against the world's largest nuclear power. It is very strange. I don't see
00:49:19any rationality here though. Well, you, we, we've been talking a lot about the Americans
00:49:25or the program and we've been making various, very, I think valid criticisms of a lot of what
00:49:30they have done. I think you can multiply your criticisms of Europe many times fold. I mean,
00:49:37this is our own continent. This is our own region. Russia is absolutely a part of this region. It's
00:49:43part of our history. I mean, that we have allowed ourselves to get into this situation is incredible.
00:49:52I mean, the, the, the decision in April 2008 to the, that, that John was alluding to basically
00:50:00about, you know, Ukraine joining NATO one day, uh, it was a catastrophic mistake of American foreign
00:50:09policy. And it was an even more catastrophic mistake of European foreign policy to accept that.
00:50:17And the extraordinary thing is Merkel herself, who was of course there and who ultimately went
00:50:23along with the decision, knew it at the time. And she didn't find a way to say no, which does seem
00:50:30extraordinary. And we see this pattern of failure, inability to think beyond, um, you know,
00:50:40our own visceral feelings and to look at the long term. I mean, just a few weeks, about two weeks ago,
00:50:46there was one of these endless meetings that the Europeans now like to have. And there was an,
00:50:51there was a row between, uh, Sanchez of Spain and Kaya Callas. Sanchez says,
00:50:58we need to appoint a high representative to go to Moscow and speak to the Russians and to conduct
00:51:04diplomacy with them. And Kaya Callas says, why do we need to appoint anybody? I'm the person who's the
00:51:09high representative. Why shouldn't I be doing that? And anyway, the outcome was that they agreed that
00:51:16there would be a high representative. And then a short time later, Macron apparently comes along
00:51:22and says, well, let's make it me. What has he done? Has he called Putin? Has he visited Moscow?
00:51:30Has he conducted any negotiations at all? No, none, none, none at all. So yes, I, I, I agree with you,
00:51:39John. And of course, the scenario that John described, which is to be clear, not just a plausible one,
00:51:48but perhaps even the probable one is it is bad for the United States. And it's very bad for Russia.
00:51:57It's very bad for the United States too, because the United States wants to be in all sorts of
00:52:02different places. But if there's this kind of conflict, permanent conflict in Europe, how can
00:52:09the United States not be involved, at least in some way? But anyway, this outcome bad for the United States,
00:52:17very bad for Russia, a catastrophe for Europe. We're already seeing the decline of our societies
00:52:25and our economies. We're talking about remilitarizing them, as you rightly say, with money we don't have.
00:52:34Locked, it seems, into a permanent confrontation with the Russia that we don't want to negotiate with.
00:52:42Every single political leader in Europe ought to be striving to avoid that outcome. And we see that
00:52:50there's no apparent ability, at least amongst the great powers, the big powers, Germany, France,
00:52:57and Britain, which are the ones that matter to do that. Maybe, possibly, that will change.
00:53:05After all, we had, you know, Willy Brandt and Ostpolitik and all of that after the first 20
00:53:11years of the Cold War. But I'm afraid, again, there are voices, dissident voices, and they're growing in
00:53:19strength. But I think it will take a certain amount of time, probably a long time, before it plays itself
00:53:25out. And even then, repairing the damage is going to be the work of a lifetime.
00:53:34Yeah, you know, it's very interesting. But if you look at how the Europeans acted during the Cold War,
00:53:41let's say for, you know, maybe the first 15 years after the Cold War ended, the Europeans acted in a
00:53:51very hard-nosed way when it came to dealing with the United States. I mean, people like Helmut Schmidt,
00:53:57Conrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle. These were tough-minded individuals who stood up to the
00:54:04United States when they thought the United States was pursuing full policies. And you really had a
00:54:10sort of dialectical process taking place inside NATO between the Europeans on one side and the
00:54:17Americans on the other side, which I think was quite healthy. And as you pointed out, Alexander,
00:54:23in 2008, Merkel was opposed to NATO expansion into Ukraine. And by the way, so was Nicolas Sarkozy,
00:54:30the French leader who was also there in Bucharest. And before that, in 2003, there was significant
00:54:39opposition in Europe to the Iraq War. Both the Germans and the French thought the Iraq War was a
00:54:44really foolish idea. But something happened, you know, after 2008, where the Europeans evolved in a way
00:54:53where you ended up with leaders like Keith Starmer and Francois Macron, who go along with almost
00:55:03everything the Americans want. And then when they decide that they're going to switch gears and oppose
00:55:12the Americans, they pursue remarkably foolish policies. You sort of wonder what's going on here.
00:55:19You know, the wisdom is that the Russians are raising anywhere between 30,000 and 40,000 new troops
00:55:32every month. You alluded to this earlier, Alexander. Well, in three months time, three months time, the Russians
00:55:41raise more troops than are in the German army, the French army, and in the British army. These are tiny
00:55:48armies. The idea that they have the forces that could go fight in Ukraine or do anything meaningful
00:55:55in Ukraine is a joke. Those armies pale in comparison to the Russian army. The Russian army
00:56:02is a juggernaut compared to those three tiny armies. Yet, Starmer and Macron talk as if they had this really
00:56:11powerful military instrument in their hands that they could use in Ukraine and all sorts of ways to
00:56:18stymie the Russians. They have no cards to play. The Russians hold all the cards here. The Europeans don't
00:56:25hold the cards. And as we've talked about, the Ukrainians don't either. The Ukrainians are in real
00:56:30trouble. But the idea that the French and the British are going to serve as the cavalry and come
00:56:35to their rescue is a laughable argument. Again, the Russians raise more troops in three months than are
00:56:42in either the French, the German, or the British army. And so you sort of wonder what's happened here.
00:56:50Why aren't the Europeans thinking in a cold and calculating way? Why aren't they behaving
00:56:56strategically? Because it's certainly in their interest to do so. They live in perilous times,
00:57:03right? This is a major conflict that has to be settled here. And we need strategic thinking.
00:57:09And you're getting exactly the opposite from Macron and from Starmer and from other European leaders
00:57:16as well. It really is puzzling.
00:57:20Well, if Russia was the only issue, which is very troubling, the fact that we're now
00:57:26at the final stages, it seems, of a collapse in which we're fighting now more or less almost
00:57:32directly with the Russians. At least that's the impression you got from the recent New York Times
00:57:38articles, which shows how deeply involved the West has been in this since day one. But it's not just
00:57:44Russia. You see similar collapse in morality or strategic thinking in other parts of the world,
00:57:52too. And look at what's happening in Gaza. In Germany, they openly support Israel's genocide.
00:57:58If you protest it, they will send the police and crack your heads. It's quite absurd. Assyria,
00:58:04you know, the person, Jolani, who previously recognized as a jihadist, you know, we have bounties on his
00:58:12head. Now, when he was massacring the Alawites, the EU posted out tweets where they condemned the
00:58:18Alawites for provoking the massacre, coming to the defense of their jihadi friends in Syria. And,
00:58:24of course, Iran, they see the possibility now of a possible Israeli-American attack on Iran,
00:58:30which would, well, make the world unrecognizable. They could stop, you know, shut down global trade.
00:58:37It could set the whole Middle East on fire. And they don't seem to have anything they want to say.
00:58:41They're not leaning in nothing. And, of course, I think a huge problem is the idea that the Europeans
00:58:47don't really know what to do. On one hand, they want to remain valuable partners for the Americans,
00:58:52so America do not leave us. On the other hand, they recognize that they also have to diversify if
00:58:58America's going to go other places. So they end up doing both things. And China is the best example.
00:59:04You know, they're threatening the Chinese with the economic warfare, but also suggesting that China's
00:59:10a threat, you know, bringing in NATO into the conversation. And then next, inviting the Chinese
00:59:17to come to Brussels to talk about how we have peaceful relations for all these decades. And then
00:59:24we act surprised when the Chinese don't want to come. I mean, it's just there's no direction here.
00:59:29There's no thought. And the irony, of course, is that our liberal democratic values were supposed to
00:59:37set the foundation for unity in Europe to temper our competing national interest. And it's all out
00:59:45the window. It's just very hard to understand what exactly has cracked here. But, you know, things are
00:59:51going very wrong economically, politically, and even societies are becoming quite unruly, I guess. So
01:00:02it's hard to see how this is going to end up.
01:00:05Well, it is. I'll just make my last point on this, which is, I think we've actually touched on this,
01:00:12both in this program, but also before. One of the things that explains, not the whole of it,
01:00:18but one of the things that explains European behaviour is this general concern, this fear
01:00:25that the Americans might go away. So you are as pro-American as you can possibly be,
01:00:34as loyal to the United States as you can possibly be, as helpful to whatever it is the Americans are
01:00:41doing, as you can possibly be, because of your concern that if you're not, then the Americans
01:00:48will say, look, the time has come. We've got lots of other things to think about in our own country
01:00:55and around the world. You're a rich and powerful continent. You can start looking after your own
01:01:00defences. And as we've discussed in many programs, this is a great fear for Europe, even if it's an
01:01:10unspoken fear, because Europeans have no history of being able to get on together peacefully for any
01:01:22extended period until the Americans came. So this is probably, I think, at some level,
01:01:32part of the problem. I don't say, as I said, that it's the only thing that's there,
01:01:37but I think there's also something else, which is that in Europe we have
01:01:43been happy to work with the Americans for so long that it is anyway very, very difficult
01:01:52to start thinking independently of what we assume the American mainstream to be. So political leaders
01:02:00like Adenauer, Schmidt, de Gaulle, people of that kind, they remembered a Europe before the Americans,
01:02:10when countries like France, Germany, Britain had a diplomacy, a foreign policy that was independent
01:02:19of that of the United States. People like Starmer, Macron, and Sanchez, and people like that,
01:02:28have no such memory. For them it is axiomatic that the foreign policy that Europe follows will be that
01:02:36of what the Russians call the collective West. So I think these are probably some of the reasons why
01:02:42we have all of these things happen. It doesn't excuse the total failure of statesmanship in Europe that we have seen,
01:02:53which is on a scale that is without parallel, at least since the end of the Second World War.
01:03:00Yeah, I think that's well put, Alexander. Also, Glenn, I think your point about what's happening to bedrock
01:03:08liberal values, especially because of European and especially American support for the Gaza genocide,
01:03:18is right on the money. I don't think most people understand the damage that is being done here
01:03:23to the bedrock, liberal foundation that has been so important in the West for so long.
01:03:34It's just absolutely horrible what's happening in Gaza. And the Americans and the Europeans not only
01:03:40don't say anything, they throw people in jail, or they send them to El Salvador, or what have you.
01:03:46If you protest, it's truly remarkable. The consequences of this for the future of liberalism
01:03:57are not to be underestimated. But I want to ask Alexander one question about Britain. I mean,
01:04:03we've talked a lot about foreign policy and lack of strategy on the part of the people like Starmer and
01:04:09Macron and so forth and so on. But you know, when I read about the state of British society today,
01:04:15when I read about the British economy, and sort of where things are going inside of Britain,
01:04:21I just say to myself, I think these people are in real trouble. Now, I'm not an expert on that
01:04:27matter. I don't do British domestic politics or the economy in Britain. But it seems to me that
01:04:34Britain has major league problems inside its borders. And that always makes me wonder, why are they talking
01:04:43about increasing all the increasing defense spending, building forces to send to Ukraine,
01:04:49and so forth and so on. I mean, we agree at a purely strategic level, they're chasing windmills.
01:04:56But when you're chasing windmills, when your house is on fire, that's even worse. And that's what it
01:05:02looks like to me. And I was just wondering what you, as someone who lives in Britain and pays careful
01:05:09attention to these issues. Where do you think my analysis is right?
01:05:13You are absolutely right. And I get to say something else. I know an awful lot of people
01:05:17who would say the same thing. Keir Starmer, apparently, as Prime Minister, this is before
01:05:25Trump came in and the negotiations or talks over Ukraine began, was already spending around half
01:05:32his time on foreign policy, which seems remarkable, given the realities of Britain today. Well, we
01:05:40now are starting to see the electoral consequences. I mean, probably it's not been widely reported,
01:05:47but we've just had local elections here in Britain. Both the Labour and Conservative parties
01:05:53have seen their vote shares collapse to levels that have never been reached before. Starmer, I believe,
01:06:02is the most unpopular Prime Minister since polling data began. I may be wrong about this, but this is what
01:06:09I've heard. And the Labour Party has just lost what used to be a rock-solid seat in a parliamentary
01:06:16by-election to the reform movement led by Nigel Farage, who was, to be very clear, once upon a time,
01:06:25not so long ago, just a few years ago, a person who spent all his time in town halls and pubs talking
01:06:33about the European Union, with no one taking him seriously. The idea that he might even be poised for
01:06:41power, as some of our newspapers today are saying, to anybody who is familiar with his story, seems
01:06:49incredible. So yes, you're absolutely right. It is extraordinary that the political class, not just
01:06:56in Britain, but in Germany, in France, right across Europe, is so obsessively focused with these issues,
01:07:08even as the house that they live in collapses all around them. I think that on top of everything
01:07:18else that you were describing, John, the sort of nightmare scenario, which, as I said, I'm afraid,
01:07:24I think isn't just plausible. I think it's actually probable. We also have to look forward to the very
01:07:31real possibility of major social and political discontent developing in Europe in the next
01:07:39couple of years. It is not a good picture at all. And again, it's extraordinary that the political
01:07:47class in Europe can't see it. Yeah. And I would just add to that, you shouldn't be surprised if we
01:07:56have significant domestic turmoil in the United States. Remember, there's this MAGA base that
01:08:03elected Donald Trump, and he told them that he was going to improve their lot in life. One could argue
01:08:09that when the tariffs begin to hit, the opposite is going to happen. And cutting all these social
01:08:16services and cutting the welfare state may sound attractive to these people if Trump is able to
01:08:23identify the welfare state with liberalism, and they see liberalism as the enemy. But in fact,
01:08:29the welfare state actually serves their interests in profoundly important ways.
01:08:34If you start cutting Social Security and other services in a meaningful way, this is going to
01:08:40have a huge impact on the MAGA base. And then when the tariffs kick in, almost everybody agrees that,
01:08:47you know, the price of everything is going to go up. And for people who are now having trouble
01:08:52putting food on the table, buying a car, finding a house, they're going to be in worse shape,
01:08:58not better shape. And I wouldn't be surprised if there is, at some point, significant domestic
01:09:06unrest in the United States. I'm not saying that's likely, but I would not be surprised.
01:09:12Well, I guess this is a wider problem, though, because after the Cold War, the whole
01:09:17world order was based around the liberal hegemony. That is, of course, the concentration of power in the
01:09:21West, which would organize the world. But it was legitimized, this rule, by our liberal democratic
01:09:27values that we knew what was best for the world, that the world kind of had to be remade in our image.
01:09:35But the fact that we're seeing this collapse at home, I think it has two problems. One, of course,
01:09:40it delegitimizes all the Western rule, but it also, of course, fuels social problems within the West.
01:09:47Now, just look what's happening around Europe now. Le Pen again, being arrested and banned from
01:09:55running. Again, the main opposition in France, Romania, you have the one who won the election,
01:10:00not just reversing or annulling the election outcomes, but also banning him from running again.
01:10:06In Germany today, well, over the past few weeks, it was revealed that the AfD, a party that until that
01:10:14recently didn't even exist, now polled as number one. This is before Mertz even takes over. And a few
01:10:22hours today, they announced that the AfD has been designated an extremist organization,
01:10:32which seems could be a stepping stone towards banning it. The most popular party in Germany,
01:10:38the main opposition party, they might ban the whole thing. Again, so far, they're only talking
01:10:43about this in the media and among the politicians very openly and justifying it. But at least now,
01:10:48they already designated it as an extremist organization. Meanwhile, Mertz, again, the house
01:10:55is on fire. And what is he talking about? Not that different from Starmer. How can we ramp up hundreds
01:11:01of billions of euros, money we don't have, so we can fight Russia? This isn't going to last very long.
01:11:08This is just a lot of self-harm and destruction. So, no, I'm not very optimistic on Europe either,
01:11:16these days. So, I think whatever problems you have in the United States, as Alexander said,
01:11:21you can multiply if you want to see what's happening in Europe now. So, it's going to be
01:11:26some rough months ahead, I think. Anyways, any final thoughts before we wrap this up?
01:11:32Well, we've had another pessimistic program, just to say. I mean, eventually, eventually,
01:11:40I think I will say this, in Europe, we will eventually come through this. There'll be an
01:11:48awful lot of damage, I'm afraid. An awful lot of damage has already been done. And unfortunately,
01:11:53we may have to experience an awful lot more. In the United States, I think they're in a much better
01:11:58place, in spite of everything, in spite of all the tariffs and problems there. Because,
01:12:04well, they're resource rich, and they have the oceans, and they have still a lot of industry,
01:12:10and an enormous amount of science and finance. But in Europe, we really do start needing to think
01:12:17about what we must do to get ourselves out of this hole. And eventually, we will. But the longer we
01:12:23leave it, the more damage, we will see to the fabric of our societies.
01:12:30I don't have anything more to say than what Alexander just said. And I thoroughly enjoyed
01:12:35the program. It was depressing, for sure. But I think analysis of the situation is basically on the
01:12:43money. And I'm sad to say, then it probably won't be, you know, a few more months of
01:12:50trouble, but a few more years, maybe even a few more decades. I think we're sailing into
01:12:56turbulent waters. I should say we're sailing into more turbulent waters than we're in now.
01:13:02Yeah. Well, on that depressing note, thank you both for your time. It's been a great pleasure. Thank you.
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