The Duran Podcast - Europe-Russia, two-century failure w/ Jeffrey Sachs (Live)

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

Europe-Russia, two-century failure w/ Jeffrey Sachs (Live)

All right, we are live with Alexander Mercuris, and we have with us once again an honor and a privilege, Professor Jeffery Sachs. Professor Sacks, how are you doing today? Very good. Thanks a lot. Although the world was a little shaky, but otherwise, all fine. We'll discuss it and we'll jump right into it because we have a limited amount of time. So let's get started, Alexander, Professor Sacks. By the way, I have Professor Sacks' information in the description box down below where you can find his excellent articles and all in the excellent work. We strongly recommend following Professor Sacks. Alexander. Professor Sacks,

let's jump into it. Let's, let's indeed, because we've got lots to talk about today and at a time of dramatic events. And if I can just say Professor Sacks, who is always plays an outstandingly good game, is absolutely at the top of his game over the last few weeks as far as I'm concerned. So he has done two extraordinary contributions. One was a address. best he made to the UN Security Council, an exceptionally important meeting, in my opinion, altogether, but this was the highlight of it in terms of what people said about the situation in Venezuela. And also, I would like to discuss, if we have the time, an extraordinary piece, a brilliant piece that Professor Sacks has written about Europe's relations with Russia.

But let's start with Venezuela and let's start with what you said to the UN Security Council. We have limited time. So I think the right thing to do is to go directly over to you. Professor Sacks, tell us about what you said and provide us with the context of the situation with Venezuela. Yeah, well, thanks a lot. Basically, this was a session, of course, on the U.S. attack on Venezuela and the U.S. statement that it runs Venezuela. So the U.S. has bombed Venezuela, killed many people, kidnapped. president, brought the president and his wife to custody in New York, and claims that it runs Venezuela

and will run Venezuela. And in particular, it will take its oil and use the revenues of that oil as it sees fit. All of this is extraordinary. And I had some very basic points. First, the UN Security Council is the international institution that is charged with keeping the peace and avoiding the scourge of war. And this is operating under the UN Charter, and the core of the UN Charter is Article 2, Section 4, which says that no state may threaten or use force against another state threatening their in territory, their territorial integrity or their sovereignty. And of course, what the United States had done is precisely to threaten and attack Venezuela openly, both its territorial integrity and its sovereignty.

And I said in the Security Council that the job of the Security Council was not to judge the government of Nicholas Maduro, or whether the U.S. action, which is a continuing act of war with a naval quarantine and many other illegal measures, in my view, was a good thing or a bad thing or good for the Venezuelan people are bad, the job of the U.N. Security Council is to uphold international law. And international law at the core is about the protection of countries from attack by other countries, and the fact that the threat and use of force is illegal. And the only legitimate uses of force are either in self-defense of an armed attack, which is Article 51 of the UN Charter, or the use of force as sanctioned by the UN Security Council. Then I went into a little bit of the history. The fact of the matter is Trump is not alone in this behavior.

This is core to American foreign policy. It is absolutely core to American foreign policy, especially after World War II, where one can count around 100 regime change. operations by the United States. In fact, this is an addiction. Most countries in most of history, if they didn't like another country, would have to live with it or negotiate with that other country or do something practical. But the United States, if it doesn't like another government, tries to overthrow that government. And 100 regime change operations is not a small number.

There's a wonderful book. I think we've mentioned it in our discussion. before by Professor Lindsay O'Rourke of Boston College, a PhD student of John Mearsheimer, who published a book in 2018 called Covert Regime Change, which I recommend everybody, because she very carefully documents 70 regime change operations by the United States between 1947 and 1989, taking the Cold War period. I then elaborated for the security. Council briefly, that nothing stopped with the end of the Cold War. The United States has overthrown governments left and right, and I mean that both geographically and politically, it overthrows governments when it wants something from that country. It obviously overthrew

the government of Iraq in 2003, overtly. In 2011, Obama tasked the CIA with overthrowing the Syrian government, something that took 14 years and hundreds of thousands of lives lost in that adventure. The United States overthrew the government of Libya in 2011. The United States worked very hard to overthrow the government of Victor Yanukovych in the so-called Maidan Revolution, which was the Maidan coup in February 2014, which was the prelude to the war that has now raged for 11 years going on its 12th year soon in Ukraine, stoked by a U.S. regime change operation. So this is nothing unusual. It's horrible, in my view. What Lindsay O'Rourke documents is that this does not even lead to America's cynical objectives being met. Almost all of these regime change operations

lead to ongoing strife, civil wars, coups, political assassinations, economic crises. They don't even deliver America's own objectives, much less anything that would be remotely the goals of the population at large. And now we see people cheering in the streets of Caracas. Well, they cheered in the streets of Baghdad also in 2003, and that was followed by years and years and years of disaster. So I then went on to the Venezuelan case, which I happened to know pretty well through a long engagement with Venezuela over 30 years, though not recently hands-on in any sense. But the United States in some way participated in a coup attempt already back in 2002 against Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chavez.

The U.S. doesn't like a left-wing regime or left-wing government, let me put it that way, in the Western Hemisphere. And it routinely tries to topple such governments. And it already started in the case of Venezuela back in 2002. Then Venezuela had the typical disaster. In the late years of the first decade, around 2007, it was confirmed that Venezuela, sitting on the largest oil reserves in the world, none other than the U.S. Geologic Survey documented 300 billion barrels of reserves larger than the Saudi reserves, more expensive because it's heavy oil, but nonetheless the Orinoco Belt is vast. That is ironically often, by the way,

going back to Herodotus and others noted, that's often the prelude to disaster, a discovery of wealth, because all the greed comes out. Now, the first thing is that the Chavez government said, well, this is our oil, so we're going to require that we control the industry. You can imagine how the Americans felt about that. What the heck are you talking about? And already a huge blowup occurred with ExxonMobil, which went on for years and years of litigation over basically whether Venezuela controls its own oil or not. In the first years of the next decade, the United States, in my interpretation and view, tried a color revolution in 2014, it stoked an opposition to the Chavez Maduro government.

You know, the NGOs showed up in the streets, the protesters. There's money involved. There's the National Endowment for Democracy. There's the National Democratic Institute. There's OSI. There's all the different organizations that we saw out in the Maidan, the same way. And so a lot of people came out to protest. The government cracked down on the protests.

And then Obama put on sanctions in 2015. and declared in 2015, 2016 that Venezuela was a threat to U.S. national security. Whoa, a threat. This is also how the U.S. foreign policy behaves. Trump came in and Trump being Trump actually had an amazing dinner that I was told about by two Latin American presidents independently in September 2017. I didn't elaborate to the Security Council, by the way, I have to say, but there's a lot behind all of this. In a dinner in 2017 on the margins of the UN General Assembly in September in New York, Trump sat down with Latin American presidents and openly said to them, why don't I just invade Venezuela to overthrow the government?

So this was not subtle. This was Trump. Trump at least is in your face. You know, there's no subtlety about it. And two Latin American presidents independently told me the story of the evening and how they had to talk the president down saying, maybe, Mr. President, that's not the best idea. Maybe this would lead to a lot of instability. So what Trump did instead was put on comprehensive crushing sanctions on Venezuela. and the sanctions were to crush the oil sector because this was Venezuela's basically only export.

And between 2016 and 2020, Venezuela's oil production, the physical production fell 75%. According to the IMF data, the national income per person, the GDP per person, fell by 62% between 2016. and 2020. Then that didn't bring down Maduro. And so in 2019, another Trumpian move, which somehow was treated as normal, Trump announced one day, well, Maduro's not the president. Juan Guaido is the president. We all had to get online.

Who's Juan Guido? Never heard of him. Well, he was someone in the National Assembly that the United States just decided they would make president. So that was a regime change attempt as well. Amazingly, because this world's pretty weird, dozens of countries immediately signed on behind the United States said, yes, Mr. Guido is president of Venezuela. So this game is so crass and crude. It's been going on now for more than 20 years.

Trump came in, determined again to overthrow the government. And this time, he just mobilized the armada and just did it militarily. We are still in the very early days of this because they couldn't figure out how to really bring down the government. So they kidnapped the president. They keep the quarantine. Trump literally, I mean, he thinks the oil is his, maybe in. the most personal terms, even, which is typical of this administration, but maybe just of the United States, because he says Venezuela is going to sell us 50 million barrels, which, by the way,

is under contract to India, to China, to other countries. But no, it's going to come to U.S. refineries, and I'm going to control the money. And that's where the news is up until today. Now, at the Security Council, I went through all of this and I said, well, honorable members of the Security Council, it's up to you. Do we have international law or do we have anarchy? And our good friend John Meersheimer, very brilliant political scientist who says we have anarchy in the world, also says it leads to tragedy. leads to great power conflict. And so his great book is called The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. What I said to the Security Council was, well, yes, if you select anarchy, that's one thing. It will be tragedy. And in the nuclear age, maybe the ultimate tragedy, the end of humanity itself. Or you could try to save the United Nations. This is admitted. fragile and difficult. It's the second attempt of humanity to put international law above

anarchy. The first one failed disastrously in the 1930s, the League of Nations. This is the second attempt. Many people already say the UN is dead. I say it's not dead, but it is on life support right now because of the country that founded it ripping up the UN charter. But most of the world, actually wants to live according to peace and international law rather than the law of pure power. So I said that's their job. Are they going to defend international law? Now, of course, we know it's extremely interesting. I think most governments know what Trump has done is a no-no,

that it's dangerous. It's quite stunning, and we should reflect on this. Trump has openly, brazenly, proudly threatened at least six other countries with similar action in the last week, including Mexico, Colombia, Denmark, claiming that it is going to take over Greenland, including Nigeria, Cuba, Iran. So this is not the end of the story, not only with regard to Venezuela, which is in its early days of the U.S. attack, but it is also a worldwide phenomenon. I also pointed out the United States has bombed seven countries in the last year, bomb them, not just threaten them, bomb them, not one of which was with any UN backing at all,

or even attempt at UN backing. So I view the situation as very dangerous and very dire, but you watch the reactions. The reactions almost everywhere were, we don't want to say anything. We don't know. Mr. Starrmer, I don't know. Let's find out. what the U.S. says. You can't even imagine, not that I have to convince both of you, Starmer is more pathetic than any, anybody I can ever recall having any claim to anything in British politics. It's unbelievable. So you have Starmor, you have Macron saying, well, you know, Maduro wasn't legitimate. You have, you have the EU formally saying, well, that was, you know, was an illegitimate government. Then they say, oh my God, look what he says about Greenland.

Oh, my God. That would be illegal. So it's pathetic. Basically, Trump being Trump is trying to scare the shit out of the world. And he is for a lot of countries, no doubt, scaring them. But the fact of the matter is that we're not at the end of this. And it's extremely dangerous. And to my mind of everything, Greenland is one thing. I do believe they're going to just claim Greenland one day. And it's not even going to be a military adventure. It's just going to be saying it's ours. And Denmark will say, no, it's not. And the United States will say, who the heck are you? And it'll be over. So that'll be one but I'm much more worried in practice about Iran because I think we're about to have a war in Iran. Israel, there's not a day that's gone by in 30 years that Israel hasn't salivated about overthrowing the Iranian regime.

Trump and Netanyahu chortle about it last week. There's a kind of color revolution underway or attempted revolution underway in Iran. First, you crush the economy, then you get the unrest, then you stoke it. And if that doesn't work, what they're saying now is if the government cracks down on these protests, then Trump says we're locked and loaded and ready to go to war. That one, by the way, that could end up with the big one, because unlike Venezuela, Iran directly brings in multiple superpowers in a nuclear armed. region. And so it's extremely dangerous. So this is where we are right now. Absolutely. So lots of points that you've made are extremely important and outstanding points. I just want to say just very few things. Firstly, I am astonished about the fact that Latin American presidents told you

that Trump was talking about invading a country so blatantly and openly so long ago and, well, he's gone ahead and done it. That's one thing. I mean, unusual, even for American president, to talk so openly about things like this to other presidents, regional presidents in that way. So that is one thing. The second about the extraordinarily weak reaction of European leaders and of Kyrs Stama, for example. I can remember Margaret Thatcher, whom I did not like and did not support about, strongly a poster, absolutely furious after the United States invaded and overthrew the government of Grenada, calling up Ronald Reagan.

They had a furious row about it. She made absolutely clear that she didn't support it. There has never been a more pathetic and terrible government than the prime minister in this kind of scenario than the one we have today. But the key overriding point I want to make, which is one which I think many people seem to struggle to understand, is that the reason the United Nations was created,

the reason international law, was developed, was in order to preserve peace. The point is that this is an attack on peace itself. This is where, this is exactly where we're heading. If you look, if you listen to the language, the rhetoric that is coming out of the American government at the moment, it is about power. It is about, it is about, it is about, it is about the will of the United States. It is about the United States acquisition of the resources of other places. The word peace never appears. It has been almost abolished from American political discourse. That is incredibly dangerous and an attack on the UN system. And this is an open, full-fronted assault on the UN system.

which underpins the whole structure of international law, is an attack on peace which affects everyone, wherever you are. Because if there is no peace, I don't think it's just anarchy. The opposite of the condition of peace is a condition of war. And that is precisely where we're heading towards. So over to you on these points, Professor Sachs. No, I couldn't agree more. And, you know, I have a running discussion with John Meersheimer, whom I love and respect and admire.

But he's, you know, a super realist. And he tells me, well, there is really no international law. And we debate that because I am, you know, desperately trying and clinging to the UN. And I've worked with the UN and I've advised three secretaries general over the last 25 years. And I love the idea of the UN. And John says, well, come on, you know, this is not really how it works. And he may be proved right. But John does not say the UN's a bad thing.

He says, no, it can't work. And he doesn't say anarchy. In other words, no supervening or superior authority such as international law is a bad idea. he says that the state of nature of nations is a tragic one. Because his entire body of thinking and the great book, which I mentioned, the tragedy of great power politics, is how an anarchic international environment leads to tragedy. My point to John all the time is in the nuclear age, it's unbelievable. We're not going to get another chance and another chance.

So this is our last try, actually, in the nuclear age to avoid complete disaster. One of the features of our time in recent years is the deliberate attempt by our governments to try to stop us from thinking about the nuclear realities. We know that our security agencies in the fall of 2022, in a war that absolutely never should have taken place and was completely avoidable, the Ukraine war, did raise a significant possibility according to the assessments of our own governments to a nuclear war. They never told us that. They wouldn't tell us that. when George Bush, I mean not George Bush, when Joe Biden, excuse me, mentioned that in a private retreat with donors in that period. And it was reported that he said, we're on the road to nuclear Armageddon. He was excoriated by the press the next day. How dare you say such things?

In other words, not only is the tragic possibility real, but we are blocked. from discussing it, from thinking about it, from talking about it, from understanding what is really going on. And when the risks become very high, the mainstream media is clamped down even more. And if somebody says something out of line that there's a danger, that is itself what is attacked rather than the actual circumstance of the danger. So this is an extremely dangerous time right now. The brazenness of Trump is amazing. He doesn't have, you know, any self-control. This is a personality issue. The point I would make is that we have a deep state. We have a military industrial system in the United States. I say that we are post-constitutional in the same way that

when the Roman Republic ended with Augustus in 27 BC, and he was very careful. He just claimed the title, Princeps, the first citizen rather than emperor or king or anything else. The myth of the Roman Republic continued for decades, even though looking back, we dated while it ended on such and such date. We're past our constitutional system. This has been going on for a long time.

We have a secret state. It's not a conspiracy theory. It's 100 regime change operations. It's designed that way. And it's been that way for quite a long time. But usually there is self-restraint a bit by presidents. This is the difference. All presidents have grossly abused American power and international law, all of them,

even nice people like Barack Obama. Barack Obama oversaw the CIA instruction to overthrow Syria, to topple Libya, and to topple Yanukovych. So there's no saintliness in this at all, believe me, though he's a nice man. He's actually a nice man, but he was told on the job, this is your job. Get out of the way. So he did. other presidents like Bush Jr., mainly because of Cheney and the neocons of the day, saw their moment, seven wars in five years, and we're going to do all these great things and so on.

So Bush was, you know, for particular sort, but generally, the presidents at least like to give a cover that, well, we must do this because of international order or this is, they go. to Congress for an authorization of the use of military force, or they do something. Trump just is a personality on top of the deep state that is a completely impulsive, out of control, ill-informed, manipulable, and manipulated individual. And so this is really something quite different. This is not a system, by the way, that has any regulatory governance right now. And I mean, even inside the executive branch, Hegset, Rubio, Kushner, Trump, are you kidding? My God. This is why nothing works.

Even when they want to end a war, they can't end a war in Ukraine because it's so haphazard, so un-sistening. But now Trump is unleashed and he's unleashed with these threats everywhere and with the bombings and with the stealing resources. And so this is really a different situation. Absolutely. And I just wanted to quickly add to this and it leads directly to the next point, which is that anybody who believes that you can replace a system of international law with a system of spheres of influence and great power equilibrium and all of those things. and preserve peace that way is misreading history. That kind of system, all that it does is it fosters militarisation, great power competition, fear, terror and ultimately war.

And that is the lesson that one should draw from what happened in Europe. And you've written another superb piece, absolutely superb. here I think it's more a study about European-Russian relations. And this goes directly to the heart of the point that we're making, because the Europeans have never wanted to create a system within Europe that is inclusive of Russia. This goes all the way back to the 19th century. And what has that led to?

It has led to great power competition, instability in Europe, militarization and war, periodic wars, periodic, entirely unavoidable conflicts, all of which have left Europe impoverished and weaker and more militarized than it would have otherwise been. So again, could you just elaborate on that article a little, Professor Sachs, in the time that we have? Yes, just thank you very much. You know, I watch the European politics right now, the Russophobia in Berlin with Chancellor Mertz, the Russophobia in London, of course, with the Starmor, the Russophobia, completely as crude as can be in Brussels with Vanderlay and then Kayakhalis. And I think how utterly self-

defeating this is how Europe is almost on a suicidal path to provoke as much war possibility as possible with Russia rather than understanding anything about the roots of what has happened. But then I reflect, this has been going on for a very long time. And this kind of Russophobia is deeply baked into the rhetoric, the belief, the belief, leaf systems, the behaviors of European governments. So very quickly to just reprise this, first, one has to say something about even the words, Europe and Russia, Russia's part of Europe for all intents and purposes, at least up to the Urales, according to the geographers.

And of course, in its real orientation, its history and so forth, Russia has been intrinsic part of Europe. So what I mean by Europe versus Russia, of course, is drawing a line arbitrarily somewhere down central Europe, where the part of Europe to the west of that has been in a relentless and almost addictive and self-fulfilling antagonism to the line east of that. And that has been going on for two centuries. Now, Russia was part of the alliance with Britain that defeated Napoleon in 1815. Of course, Napoleon attacked Russia as would Hitler and as with other expeditions from the West attacking Russia in the last two centuries. So Russia was part of the victorious alliance.

and it was part of the so-called concert of Europe that was created after 1815 to find a peaceful system of negotiation and diplomacy in place of the war that had just laid waste to Europe. It raised a puzzle. By the 1840s, Russia was the enemy of Britain. And a wonderful historian named Gleason did a study published in 1910. which people can find online. It can be downloaded as a PDF called The Origins of British Rucophobia. And he asked the question, well, we were allies, the British and the Russians in 1815, but by 1840, Russia was the enemy. What happened? What did Russia do? And so he studies everything of those 25 years. And his conclusion is Russia did nothing. It was all the British attitude.

What was happening? The British were aiming for an expanded global empire, and any large country that could somehow challenge the British Empire was therefore an enemy. So without Russia doing anything, Russia became an enemy. And when the Ottoman Empire was fading, the sick man of Europe in those years, the 1840s and 1850s, and there was contestation in the Balkans and so forth, Russia was the enemy of Britain. And Russia took a, got into a colloquy three-way France, Russia. and the port, the Ottoman Empire, in the 1850s about who controlled the Christians in the Ottoman lands and in the Holy Land in particular. And this led to tensions and then Russia backed off.

And what's interesting is as Russia backed off, the British and the French said, aha, now we go in for the kill. And so rather than allowing diplomacy to actually keep the peace after a period of tension in 1818, In 1952, Lord Palmerston in Britain and Napoleon III in France said, now we attack. We can get rid of this enemy. And that was the first Crimean War. And what's so interesting about the First Crimean Wars that the war that we're in right now is the second Crimean War. The purposes, the aims, the baloney about it is just like 1853. This was a war of choice of the West against Russia in the 1850s, and it's a war of choice of the West against Russia in 2014 till today.

In the first case, it was to banish Russia from the Black Sea. That was the goal of Britain and France. In this case, it is to banish Russia from the Black Sea, because the whole point of NATO enlargement And Brzynski was a student of history. This is his design. It was to surround Russia with NATO in the Black Sea. So think of 2008, the Bucharest NATO summit where the United States insisted that Ukraine will join NATO. It was also that Georgia will join NATO. And so the goal was Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Georgia. kind of completely surrounding Russia in the Black Sea and thereby doing what Palmerston and Napoleon the third, or fourth rate power. Okay, back to the Russophobia. They did the war. As these things go,

about 20 years later, the real issue in Europe was the rise of Germany. Suddenly France says, what did we do? We can in Russia. We need the Russia on the other side because we now face a, a different enemy, Germany. And the Russophobia stayed with Britain, but it expanded to Germany itself. And World War I in many ways was about German fear of Russia, that we have to attack now before Russia becomes too strong. So World War I has a lot of roots in German Russophobia, not because of what Russia did, but because of what Russia might do in the future if we don't, attack them now. Then, of course, World War I was a devastation for Europe and for the world, but for Russia. It led to the overthrow of the Romanov Empire. It led to the Bolshevik revolution.

And what happens? Immediately the West enters with expeditionary forces. It invades Russia. Well, that's kind of remembered, that it was the United States and Britain and several other countries that invaded Russia. It's forgotten now. We talk about the Russian Civil War and so forth, but the role of the West in those years was very, very significant and not forgotten by the Russians. They say every time we're down, someone tries to invade us from the West. And that is part of the mindset and strategic understanding of Russia. Then I go up to the 1930s, and I strongly recommend a brilliant trilogy written by Professor Michael Jabara Carly of the University of Montreal. He spent 30 years on this.

And the point is that in the 1930s, with the rise of Hitler, Stalin repeatedly reached out to Britain and France saying, we have a threat. Let us get together to stop this threat. amazingly and devastatingly, the Russophobia was so strong in Britain and France that as Hitler was rising, the argument in elite circles in Britain was, well, better Hitlerism than Bolshevism. And this absolutely blocked what could have been an alliance to stop the fascist onslaught. but it was rejected until 1939 by the West, not by Russia. And what is also extraordinary is the country that rejected it till the end, in addition to Britain and France, was none other than Poland.

And Poland, unbelievably, as Hitler is massing to destroy Poland, Stalin is saying, let us have a transit of troops in Poland so that we can defend you against Hitler and so that we can have a French, UK, Polish, Soviet alliance. And the polls say no. And so Poland in its Russophobia destroyed itself. And one of the things that this history shows is how twisted we are in our understanding of history. We are taught from school days onward that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which was an agreement, a shocking agreement in the summer of 1939 between the Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany, basically to create spheres of control in Poland, was the perfidity of Stalin. And the actual history is almost exactly the opposite. The West had rejected

Stalin's call repeatedly for protection against Hitler. And this was a desperate last-ditch effort of the Soviet Union to put some buffer space between Hitler and what Stalin and the Soviet leadership knew to be an impending invasion. So it's so important to read this trilogy and understand how the Russophobia was completely suicidal for Europe. Then comes 1945. It continues. Before the dust settles, Churchill is asking his military command, how about invading the Soviet Union? Our ally that just lost 27 million people.

It's not a myth, by the way, Operation Unthinkable, was actually not an instruction for an invasion, but a request to the high command. could we have an invasion even using former Wehrmacht forces? And the answer was, no, we're not ready for that invasion. And Russia won't be ready for war until 1952, so we have time to build up. And one of the things that the West decided right away was we will remilitarize Germany so that we can fight or defend against the Soviet Union, the ally in World War II. By the way, the only American leader that truly understood the right approach was Franklin Roosevelt.

And he died April 12, 1945, and Harry Truman became completely an instrument of the emerging military industrial state of the United States. So I document from 1945 through the end of the 1950s how every attempt again of the 1950s how every attempt again of the Soviet Union to find peace based on a demilitarized and neutral Germany was rejected by the West in favor of a militarized and divided Europe. The Cold War could have been avoided. The Cold War could have ended. But the Russophobia said, no, no, we'd rather have a divided Europe than to have a demilitarized Germany. Then came an attempt at peace because things spun out of control. That is the tragedy of great power politics and nearly ended in nuclear annihilation in the Cuban missile crisis. And President Kennedy in 1963 said enough. We nearly saw the destruction of the

world and we got to do something different. And he went on a campaign for peace that I've spent many years researching and thinking about and trying to understand as best I could. And he did create the conditions for ending the Cold War and he was killed. And I think there's good reason to believe he was killed from the inside and precisely in some sense for his peace initiatives. He was doing many things, the deep state, especially the CIA, strongly objected to, and they knew that he had talked about cutting the CIA into a thousand pieces, splintering the CIA, and I think they took them out. This is an unresolved issue, obviously, but I think that there is increasing evidence that Mr. James Engleton knew a lot about what was going to go down in Dallas in

1963. So just one final episode that I recall, and that's the one that we're living in now, because I happened to be, as a much younger person, involved in the Soviet and the Russian economic reforms, I had one main message in those days, which was help these reforms so that we can keep peace, because I learned from John Maynard Keynes and from the economic consequences of the piece, which he wrote in 1919 after the Versailles Treaty, don't crush your opponents, magnanimity. And so I spent 1990, 1991, 1992, 1992, begging the West, help the reforms under Gorbachev and then under Yeltsin, but the answer was niet. And I was extraordinarily frustrated, but the main point I want to make is they're

absolutely could have been peace at the end of the Cold War. Russia was not aiming for anything else other than peace, normality, and economic recovery from disaster and economic development as a normal country in the world. And I sat with Boris Yeltsin, and I know, and I sat with President Gorbachev and I know, and they wanted peace. And interestingly, when the West wants something, well, it promises a lot. And in the first 10 days of February, 1990, Helmut Cole wanted German reunification. So they sat with Mr. Gorbachev day after day. We will not take advantage of you. We will not expand NATO, even into East Germany, much less into Eastern Europe. We will not take advantage of the dismembering of the Warsaw Pact.

And these were now, there's a whole industry in the West denying this and, oh, this was trial balloons and this was just quips and so forth. This was the core of diplomacy for German reunification. And people should read the National Security Archive of George Washington, Unification. a website called What Did Gorvatov here? And you can read more than 40 documents, if I remember correctly, explicitly detailing the commitments that were given to the Soviet Union about no expansion eastward. Well, again, like so many times in the West, the Russophobia dominated the chance for peace or the hubris and the arrogance dominated. So already by 1992, the Americans and the Germans were talking about NATO expansion. Germany absolutely vulgarly lied. Germany, the great beneficiary of these promises,

championed NATO enlargement right away from 1993 onward. And the U.S. deep states said, of course, we're going to do this. They're weak. Why won't we do this? And so what began with the promise of peace and cooperation absolutely legitimate of the Soviet and the Russian side was taken by the Western powers as weakness and therefore we dominate. And if people really want to understand this carefully, read Brzynski's The Grand Chess Board 1997 book because Brzynskiy lays it out. that Eurasia is the center of the world. This is the McKinder theory.

And Ukraine is the linchpin to make Russia a third rate or fourth rate power, maybe even divide Russia into pieces. And all we need to do is grab Ukraine and we're going to do this. So this is a deep state initiative project that goes back 30 years. And I want to link this back to the Venezuela coup, because that is a 20-year effort also. People think, well, this is Trump being Trump. Yes, it is in its weird way, you know, the way that the theater plays out. But this is a deep state that has long, deep, persistent roots.

And we have no democratic control over this in the United States. Public opinion doesn't matter. nothing is explained about this. Anything that's explained is phony. The unprovoked Russian attack in 2022. Are you kidding? After 30 years of what has gone down. But this is how this game works. And this is why for Europe, my God, they're suicidal. They do it again and again and again. And if they would learn a little history. And the biggest shame of all, by the way, of all. Starmor, frankly, I don't expect anything of.

And Britain, the delusions of empire last a very long time, I'm sorry to say. But the one that really bothers me in this is Merz. A German chancellor should understand something different from what this one does. Historical responsibility. and I'm talking about the 1930s and 40s, and I'm talking about the 1990s. And by the way, how about 2015 when Chancellor Merkel was to be the guarantor of the Midsqqqa agreement so that there wouldn't be a full-fledged war in Ukraine. Germany has misbehaved in this repeatedly.

And the Chancellor of Germany, the first responsibility, is to, understand this and then to have diplomacy with his Russian counterpart before everything blows up. Professor Sachs, this has been outstanding. I know that you're working to a very tight schedule. We could speak for hours about all of these things, and I would be delighted to speak with Barrage. I hope we can sometime. But we don't have those hours. So this is where I say thank you for joining us today, providing us with these extraordinarily interesting words. And, well, thank you. And we'll see you again soon.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks so much. Thanks. Bye-bye. How you doing it, Alexander? I'm doing, bye. Well, I feel that my mind has been expanded.

We put it like that. That's how I feel. So let's let's. I'm sure you've got other comments. Yeah, yeah, we have. We have some excellent questions in college. Let's get to them. Let's start off with, one second, with Nikos.

Alex, you made your clown world of the year video, but you forgot one crucial moment. I have a friend working in Belgium who witnessed the farmer's protests. The protests that day were more horrific than they showed. I cannot think of a moment more fitting to close the year than the Russian Asets Summit as Brussels burned. Ursula gave Zelensky 90 billion euros after all the corruption scandals that we are going to pay.

Very Nero-like of her. No words. What you add to that, Nikos? That's an exceptional comment, by the way. And you're absolutely right. Thank you. Spot on. Justi Berger is a new member of the Duran community.

Haruko, thank you for that. Super Chat. Musasal, thank you for that. Super chat. P232 is a new member of the Duran community. Gio Stone says, Mr. Sachs, let's be honest, this has been U.S. policy for decades across the world. The only difference is Trump is telling the truth to the world. Thank you.

Well, that's exactly what Professor Sachs have said. I do think the fact that the mask has been dropped in the way that it has been over the last week is important, and it will be seen to be important in future time. But your underlying point is true, obviously. Andrew Byrd is a new member of the Duran community. Paul Walker says leaders posturing for the fall of Ukraine, deniability and to proportion blame on each other, the Coalition of the Willing case in point deflect.

Well, the Coalition of the Willing is an attempt to prevent any kind of negotiated settlement and any kind of understanding between the Russians and the Americans. That's what it's all about. There's also Russophobia, the kind of thing, that Professor Sachs was talking about and an unwillingness to face up to the realities of the complete failure of project Ukraine. But it's strange that the Europeans are so persistent with this

because, to be frank, I think, this is my own view, that whatever moment might have existed for a negotiated peace in Ukraine disappeared at the end of last year. What did you make of yesterday's Coalition of the Willing? letter of intent for boots on the ground. The UK is going to put boots on the ground. Germany said they might also put boots on the ground. Whitkoff and Kushner were present and they praised the event though the United States did not sign up to the letters of intent. But the fact that

Whitkoff and Kushner were there and they're saying that we're close to getting the security guarantees all wrapped up. Who are they negotiating with? Who are they discussing all of this with? What What kind of theater is this? It's worth mentioning. It's also worth mentioning, Alexander, that Ukraine has about 30 security guarantees already, which they signed a year and a half ago, not to mention a minerals deal with the Trump administration as well. Because Whitkoff was also talking about a deal with BlackRock for Ukraine as well. Exactly.

It is complete theater. Who they're negotiating with, it's very easy. They're negotiating with each other. they are assuming a deal which is never going to happen because every proposal that they have made up to now, the Russians have already rejected. It is extraordinary how this fact doesn't seem ever to get through. And I agree with you, by the way,

that maybe Putin ought to be more aggressive in explaining this and the fact that he doesn't explain it so aggressive, as aggressively as he might do, probably fosters these illusions. But it still comes back ultimately to the fact that Western leaders, including the Americans, simply don't listen. Gio Stone says, Mr. Sachs, Trump is the Mussolini of our generation? Not a bad comparison, I'm sorry to say.

Mussolini was a very clever man, but again, he was addicted to theater and performative politics. It's often forgotten that Mussolini was a journalist and a newspaper editor before he became a politician. And many people are saying that basically he ran Italy as if he was running a newspaper, in other words, all headlines. And there is some element of that, I'm sorry to say, about the way in which the United States under Trump has been behaving.

Iranian kiddo says, Roman Republic loyalists believed in the Republic, until the very end. Kato the younger refused to abandon his principles and died by his own sword. His last famous words were, now I am my own master. That's absolutely true. Iranian Kedoreen, I'm always impressed by your knowledge of history. You're absolutely correct. It is an enormously moving thing. It was well remembered in Rome, but of course, the empire still came. RMV 177,

Hope, Hope Jeff for security guarantees, thanks. Hope Jeff for security guarantees, thanks. Black Thai says, give us a super sticker. Thank you for that. Nick Mastilovich says, Mir Bojishishi Christos Seradi.

Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to all the... It is, absolutely. It is. Celebrating today. Iranian kiddo says, Stalin had territorial ambitions. Malthatov-Ribbentroth pact, was it about him being snubbed by the West?

Well, I would advise you to read Professor Carly's book, which, by the way, I've just next to me. I've been reading it through. I put the name in the chat. It is a gigantic full-volume thing. It is an absolutely monumental study. And you read, they're all about, what it's based on, I should say this very simply. It is based on a study of the Soviet archives, which are widely open here. So we have the foreign ministry archives.

We know what the Soviet ambassadors were communicating to Moscow, what Moscow was communicating back to them. We have all of the internal discussions that Moscow was itself conducting Stalin's discussions with his key officials. We have it all. It's all laid out. So all of these ideas about the Soviet Union pursuing some kind of program of territorial expansionism before the Second World War, it flies in the face of the actual chronicled, archived, incredibly detailed evidence. And I've discussed this with others. I've discussed it with Jeff Roberts, for example, who's also a academic historian.

And it's very strange and very revealing the extent to which all of this huge amount of historical data and knowledge never seats through and is never allowed to influence the popular understanding both of Soviet and Russian policies and of what happened before the Second World War. Elsa says, I guess the Europeans are afraid to criticize the U.S. for their actions in Venezuela because they might end up like Maduro. Please take marks. Well, that's exactly correct. But I mean, I think there's something else, which is that in Europe, they're still so obsessed with the Russians, I should say. I said the Soviets. I meant the Russians.

That they, and they also know their own growing weakness relative to the Russians, that they still say to themselves, We can't afford to quarrel with the Americans. We can't afford to quarrel with Trump because if Trump gets angry, he will sacrifice Ukraine and we'll be left with the Russians by ourselves. Of course, the alternative to speak to the Russians continues to be unacceptable. Jamila says, hi gentlemen. I'd love to see you all.

A question for Europe. Can Europe fight with America if Trump takes Greenland? they won't fight you know what they'll go to do there's going to be lots of protests some of some european governments are going to be upset uh the danish government is going to feel deeply portrayed but i'll tell you what will happen germany will say well in spite of everything it's important that we still have the americans on side and you know these are regrettable and unfortunate things and the british will say the same and what has green what has denmark really lost i mean greenland is big that there's hardly anybody there. Let's not sacrifice this entire, this vital essential alliance

we have with the Americans, which is supposedly kept the peace in Europe, only though we have no peace in Europe. But anyway, let's not sacrifice this great alliance merely because the Americans have seized the territory of one of their NATO allies. That is what I predict they will do. I mean, these are pathetic people. They're not going to discover a backbone, simply because Greenland has been taken. They will engage in further appeasement, because this is what it will actually be, and of course, that will work out badly for them, and it will reduce the respect, the world, and their own populations feel for them. But when did they ever care about that? Empire, we are. All U.S. wars since the coup of July 26, 1947, have been

wars of choice. My Russian family in the U.S. was Tsarist and Soviet. The Cold War was also a U.S. war of choice spurred on by the Brits. Yeah, I'm going to say, 1947 is when all the various laws were passed in the United States, the National Security Act and all of those, which basically created the current, the existing foreign policy mechanisms that exist today, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency, all of these organizations date from that time. And you are profoundly correct. It is an absolutely seminal moment in the modern history and development of the United States. And I would just push back in one respect, which is that some of the things that we saw develop after 1947 were already happening before.

Jamila says, Clown of the Year, Macron and the Canadian president. I agree with her. Absolutely. And Chivan Bloom is a new member of the Duran community. Gio Stone says, Alexander, how did the Cold War end from your point of view and how will this dirty war end? Thank you both of your hard work throughout the years. I did the Cold War has ended. I mean, I thought at the time it had.

I thought that it ended. I didn't think it had ended, by the way, with the fall of the Berlin Wall. My own sense was that it ended in March 1989 when the Soviet Union conducted elections, proper contested elections to the Congress of People's Deputies. I mean, that was the seminal moment. It's extraordinary that people never talk about that. But that was the key moment when, as I said, the Soviet Union ceased to be the Soviet Union that it had been before and started to become the Russia that it has evolved into and became a much more. democratic, open society, perhaps not fully democratic, but then which country anywhere is. So that was for me the great moment of promise. I thought then this is going to be the end of the Cold War, where at last going to see peace,

the wars that had begun and which had scarred Europe through the 20th century was ending. I was profoundly wrong of the Cold War. continued and in fact it escalated and here we are. J.M. Woods says at this stage, what do you gentlemen think were the perspective post-war Russo-Ukrainian borders will lie? And do you think Zillusioni is still poised to supplant Zelensky in the foreseeable future? No, I don't think Zalusini. I think Zalusini has never been as much of a threat to Zelensky as many people suppose

because I think Zalusinianing has the personality and the drive to oust Zelensky and he's never made any serious attempt to and to be frank if he did become leader of Ukraine I don't think he would know very much what to do with it his own background

and his own political allegiances are very, very much with the ultra-nationalist faction I call them that I mean you could use stronger words to describe them Anyway, those are Zillusioni's own allegiances. So I don't think Zaluzni is going to come in.

And as to where the borders will lie, Putin is the one person who knows this. I think today, as of now, as of this morning, the Russian plan is to capture the entirety of the four regions. They don't expect that there will then be a peace. once they capture the city of Zaporosia, they will advance westwards towards Adela. I think this is the plan and they will take control of the entire Black Sea Coast. I don't think for the moment, as of today,

their plan goes beyond this. Harka, also perhaps, but that's less important than the Black Sea coast. I think that what the Russians will find is that if they do take that enormous step, It's going to be very difficult for any kind of Ukrainian state to function. And there is a risk of a power vacuum developing in Ukraine and of destabilization. And, well, there are, I know, people in Russia who are already saying this,

and they say we must be prepared to take us all. Rani and Kido says, to be clear, I said that it wasn't just about Staltern being snubbed by the West, although that was certainly a big factor. Yes, I know. But as I said, what we've now gradually come to realize, I'll just show you the kind of studies. Let me just get these. I'll give you a sense of what an enormous number of books these are.

There's a lot of books. Yeah. It's a huge, huge study. It's huge. It is an enormous study. And, I mean, I've been working through it. and certainly the early chapters. And one of the most fascinating things about this

is that pre-1939, there's no real sign, there's no sign, there is no sign that Stalin had any territorial ambitions of the West at all. It's overwhelmingly focused on security, of the security of the Soviet Union. And of course, by extension, that meant, on the security of the Soviet regime and it himself. That was his overriding concern. Iran and Kido says,

Nikos mentioned Nero. It bothers me how Nero's image is tarnished in history books by Roman elites and Christian historians that we use his name in such a negative way. And no, he didn't burn down Rome. No, he didn't burn down that. That's absolutely correct. And you're absolutely right.

In many respects, he was a culturally seminal figure. He promoted the arts, the sneering about his interest in arts and culture has been massively misrepresented and he was not the ridiculous buffoon and Sybaritic figure that he's made out of it. He was also completely incompetent as a political leader and massively inexperienced and he did do violent and cruel things. But Iranian kiddo, one day you and I will get together. We will meet and we will talk about these things.

great leisure because classical history, I can see it's a great interest of yours, and it obviously is also of mine. From Buddy, perhaps Putin does not push back hard at the ongoing peace plan negotiations is because he is happy for the West to waste as much time as possible without presenting anything he has to react to while the Russian armed forces press forward unhindered. The ground situation appears to be running ahead of any changes in the proposals. Yeah, you know, you're completely correct about this. and it's certainly an important point to understand.

I don't think it is ever quite like this. I don't think Vladimir Putin sits down and says to himself, what is the best strategy we can follow in order to take as much of Ukrainian territory as possible? Let's spin out negotiations and pretend to peace and act like we're not going to be bothered if missiles are launched to us because it's going to work out to our advantage. I don't think political leaders behave like that. I don't think even someone like Putin thinks and works in that way. But I think that is very much the product and consequence of what is happening.

Because what the West is doing is putting up proposals all the time that don't remotely come close to satisfying Russian core interests. And that enables the war to continue, which leads to the Russians becoming stronger. And that, I think, is the dynamic of this war, but it's a very dangerous dynamic because it also leaves open the possibility of further escalation. Because the West says to himself, Putin is committed to negotiations. That means we must find ways to pressure him through oil sanctions, through missile strikes, through attacks on refineries, because this is somebody who wants a negotiated outcome. and we can take those kind of risks because he's unlikely to escalate in return.

Apocalypse gifted 10 Duran memberships. Iranian Kiddos is contrary to belief Nero was a beloved leader among commoners. He maintained a steady flow of grain from Egypt, which kept the poor fed and organized games and chariot races. Absolutely. And by the way, they continued to revere his memory long after he was dead. and there were several people who came and pretended that they were Nero and they were impostors and they weren't the real Nero at all and the Roman populace supported them. So you're quite right, a very complicated, very interesting man,

but as I said, he mismanaged relations with the army and with the Roman elite and precipitated a major crisis within the Roman state, which ultimately led to his form. Marco says as someone with much hope in DJT for 10 years, I thought he'd be a triumphant Basil the second reconstitating his nation. Instead, he's Manuel Comnenos, fettering away the empire's resources and begging for a rerun of Mirio Kefalon.

Well, I don't think he is a battle to second. I mean, a person, two people more unlike, it would be difficult to imagine than, you know, Trump and that particular Byzantine emperor. But can I just just, say you obviously have a great deal of knowledge of Byzantine history, which is very, very wonderful for someone like me who feels very close of Byzantium is absolutely part of our history. And, you know, it bothers me how neglected it is and unknown it is by people in the West.

And just to say again, your comments basically are true. I mean, he's doing what he's doing is not putting America first in any productive and creative sense. He's not rebuilding the United States. He's becoming absorbed in the usual regime change operations, and he's frittering American power away. Lisa says, U.S. negotiation, one, make big promises in public. Two, in private demand of the other unilateral concessions. three, when requested reciprocity accused the other for the unwillingness to negotiate, and four, blame the other for negotiation failure.

Even in the last months of the Soviet Union, I remember reading amongst Russian officials, they were saying that the United States always demands concessions, promises that in return it will reciprocate. And then when the concessions are made, instead of reciprocating, it comes back and demands more concessions still. And they were trying to get Gorbachev to understand this, and he simply wouldn't listen. And I remember this being discussed in the Soviet Union at the time. And, well, I don't think anything's changed, and it's basically the point you're making. Tool Faith says happy New Year's, happy New Year folks. Question, is Trump going to survive this year?

He is now making enemies on so many fronts, including narco-cartels and other smaller groups. He is also dividing the American people even more. Well, can I just say on the last point, I've seen the first opinion poll about the Venezuelan operation. And if you're talking about the a plurality of Americans, they don't like it. I mean, Republicans sort of do. I mean, you know, 76% of Republicans generally support it, but independents don't like it. Democrats don't like it. Young people especially don't like it.

And he won the election in 2024 because independence and young people swung heavily behind it. So on the last point, I think you're right. Where Trump will win or lose will be on the economy and about whether Americans feel better. They don't feel better at the moment. And we can already see that support for him is ebbing. And if he thinks that these kind of operations are going to turn that round, he's completely wrong. Apocalypse gifted another 10 Duran memberships. Thank you for that.

Uber Todadina, welcome to the Duran community. Gio Stone says, how will Cuba handle the aggressive U.S. blockade? This is an excellent question. There's an article in the Financial Times, by the way, about this today, which does admit that the regime is solid, though it also says it's ossified, which is not entirely unfair, by the way, or so it seems to me. I mean, the Cubans need to start thinking very hard about what they've been doing up to now. I mean, Venezuela has been a huge trap for them.

They got the oil from Venezuela, Fidel Castro, and Hugo Chavez, made this arrangement back in the 1990s. And the Cubans became over-invested in it because they thought that through getting a secure flow of oil from Venezuela, they could play an independent game and wouldn't have to become dependent again on great powers like China and Russia. And of course, that caused Cuba's own economy

to atrophy and basically stagnate and led to a crisis. And now, of course, the oil has gone. So they need to revisit all of that. They need to think very hard about the fact that they need to make friendships with people in other places. I sense that there is still quite a lot of support within Cuba for the socialist regime there. I think a plurality of Cuba,

probably still support it. It has significant actual achievements in healthcare, in education, that would solidify that support. And it's been able to keep conditions ticking. I mean, I read in the Financial Times this article, the comparison between Cuba and Haiti. Cuba is nothing like Haiti, just to say. So I think that there is still support. And I think that there is, as I said, a solid government. there. But they are going to be under attack. They've lost 30% of their oil, which is coming from Venezuela. They now need to make deals and accept offers of help from people like the Russians, and by the way, the Chinese, and they need to start doing that fast. They better get to it. They don't have much time. No. Iranian Kato says Nero made a lasting

peace with Parthia over Armenia that allowed Parthian prince to rule Armenia with the approval of the Roman emperor. Trojan violated the treaty and annexed Armenia. Adrian later went back to the old deal. Absolutely. Nira was, again, a very, very skilled diplomat and negotiator. He ran Rome's foreign policies very well. Where he failed was in his handling of domestic affairs and of relations with the military, when I say domestic affairs, I mean elite relations within Rome itself. And of course, he did also do something else, which is that he carried out the first devaluation of the Roman currency, though it's difficult to judge today from all the perspective of our time, what effect actually economically and politically that had. M.D. Bousier is a new member of the Dran community.

Zareel says, thank you, gents, and sorry, I couldn't help much today. No problem. Thank you, Zaryl, for that. David Littmeyer says, what was the name of the trilogy, Love from Sweden? The trilogy, the one that I've just been talking about. The one that you just brought up. It's not a trilogy.

I've still got it next to me. It's four, it's actually a four volume book. The one is, yes. But, I mean, they're basically about Soviet foreign policy at that time. It's Stalin's foreign policy. And they have different titles. So Stalin's Gamb. Stalin's failed alliance.

But it's Michael Jabara Carly. You can see, you can see it there. I've got the hard copies, but you can also buy them. I believe you can also go paperback versions, and I'm sure that you can find them on Kindle and, you know, those things, Apple and all. Yeah, absolutely. It's on Amazon, yeah.

Marcos says on that basis Alexander is Victor Suvrof's thesis in his work Icebreaker nonsense then clearly the Soviets had considerable forces in Poland when Barbarossa was launched

in 1941 thank you yes it is I mean I don't say it's nonsense nonsense is too strong a word but he's wrong and by the way I mean I remember reading

Icebreaker when he came out just a long time ago and it struck me immediately that Suvorov clearly didn't have access to the inner cancels of Stalin and the Polyph Europe. We do now, and we do know. We know an awful lot about the tensions that existed within the Soviet leadership at that time. And the fact that they were very uncertain what to do,

and that they were still hoping in some way that some kind of deal with the Germans could actually be patched up. And so they were moving truths. to the border areas. They were, the military, the military leadership was talking about carrying out preemptive strikes in case of a German attack and all that sort of thing. But there was never any clear decision and certainly none on Stalin's bar to initiate an attack on Germany, the way the people have said and the way that Suva had said.

Erradi and Kido says the biggest criticism one can make of Nero is that he devalued the currency and this issue began with him. It only got worse to the point. point of no return by the third century. You know, you know, it's an interesting, you've mentioned this, it's an interesting point this, because Nero did devalue the currency, though not by very much. I mean, he reduced the silver value of the denarius, which is the, you know, the main Roman coin.

He improved the quality of the minting. So, you know, the, the coins become very attractive. and thereafter, the Roman currency remained stable at the level that Nero pitched it for over 100 years. So you can't really say that this created a real crisis in Rome. And the Roman history is never talking about it. So again, it's difficult to judge what exact effect it had. RMV-177 says, Can we say from historical bird view that the West in some way has created the Soviet,

then Cold War, then Russia's re-arming. Thanks and Merry Christmas. Yes, I think that this has been a fundamental issue. It's a good issue. Because again, talking about the Soviet Union and talking about his foreign policies and saying that they were never aggressive in the way that the West always claimed,

including, by the way, in the decade after the end of the Second World War, the decade that led to the emergence of the Cold War. One of the points that Professor Sacks makes in his article is that we now know that the Soviet objective after the Second World War was a neutral disarmed Germany. And that Stalin categorically opposed efforts to communise Germany because he said that the Germans

would undoubtedly resist it. And he didn't want German division either. But saying all of these things, always makes you sound like, you know, you're saying, you know, that everything in the Soviet Union itself was fine, and that Stalin himself was a benevolent figure, when, of course, the reality was that there was the, there were the camps, there was the terror, the repression did it take place, there was the persecution, especially before the Second World War, in Stalin's time of the church. A lot of the Western narratives about the internal politics of the Soviet Union are true. even as most, there is almost complete misunderstanding and misrepresentation of its foreign policy.

And I will say that given the realities of the kind of regime that Stalin ran in the 1930s and 1940s, there is perhaps at least some understanding of why Western leaders at that, time were very, very wary and nervous about doing long-term deals with it. So I would make that point, but it doesn't alter the key thing that, as I said, Stalin, it turns out, was much less aggressive in his foreign policy. He wasn't basically aggressive at all. Matthew says, just want to say a massive thank you for what you do. Thank you, Matthew, for that super chat. Sparky says, have you heard about Per Quinofaso stopping Akkuplat and Ibrahim Traore recently. Yes, I did.

And it is interesting. It's not a topic we can come to in programs that we do on the Girardi. So the trouble is there are these big events, Ukraine, Venezuela, now, Iran, unfortunately, very likely before very long, which dominate the media space and which shape events and other important events, what's happening in West Africa. the Sudanese civil war, the crisis in Yemen, and the conflict between Saudi Arabia and the UAE that is now developing, the arguments between Japan and China, that we just don't have the time to address and deal with in the way that we would like to. Apocalypse, thank you for that. Amazing super sticker. Thank you so much for that.

Marcos 588 says, Alexander, if you enjoy Byzantine subjects so much, a friend of mine once recently did an interview in England, discussing Heraclius to 1204, would you care to watch? If so, how can I link you to it? Well, just, just, you could attach it on the thread here, or you could send it to us at editor that you ran and do one of those things.

Iranian Kiddo says, I read Bakkei by Yeripides over Christmas after it was suggested to me by Alexander some time ago, I thought I owe my Parthian ancestors as they two reenact. did the play reportedly.

Wow. Thank you for that. They did indeed when they defeated the Romans at the Battle of Karai and they were watching Bacai. The Parthian ancestors did exactly that and they produced

over the course of the play the head of the Roman general, just to say. Zareel says Apropos Silver 8256 announced newest highest record newest record high in two days. There is a lot going on in the markets. I'm not a market analyst, and I'm not going to pretend that I understand it all,

but there's an awful lot going on in the markets, and I wonder where it's going. Iranian-Kedos is very interesting, Parthian and Eastern Iranian language from the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea is now extinct today, and it has more loan words in the Armenian language than it does in Persian. That is so interesting. Thank you.

Thank you for that. Zizi Karayani, thank you for that amazing super sticker. Gio Stone says, does this increase Bricks' importance or does it weaken it? Well, I think what it makes more important is the core alliance, which is at the base of Bricks, which is the alliance between the Chinese and the Russians. Of course, they pretend that it's not an alliance, but everybody can see increasingly that it is. The events in Venezuela are going to make Russia more important for China. So it works to Russia's advantage relative to its power balance with China

because the Chinese are going to need Russian oil more. And they also will want even further to secure their positions in northern Asia, northeast Asia and on their border. their northern bulges. Supernova says, what is the origin of the phrase the big game? It has been assumed that the game means play. However, if the British geopolitical decision makers of the time of the Crimean War and UK-Afghanistan campaigns were coming up with the definitions,

would it not mean prey for the aristocrats' favorite pastime hunting, one can imagine them standing over a map of the world, looking at Russia thinking, there to be hunted. What is your view? Well, as far as I know, I'm not a huge expert on this, but as far as I know, the expression great gain, the conflict between Britain and Russia over purported control of Central Asia, those words were first coined by the British poet Rudyard Kipling in a poem.

At least that is what I've heard. It may be that he picked up an expression that was already around. Kipling was of course born in India and he was very much involved with those British imperialist circles. What we know about the great game and you may be right that there may be some element of hunting and gaming law

playing out there. I mean, I've never seen anybody discuss this. But what we do know is that the British were playing this conflict. They were playing at this conflict with the Russians in Central Asia. They thought that they were involved. in some kind of a deal with the Russians and Central Asia.

The Russians didn't even know about it. This is what's so extraordinary about that. Again, we know an awful lot now about Russian foreign policy in the late 19th century. The Russians weren't even aware that they were supposed to be involved in some kind of contest with the British in Afghanistan and Central Asia. I mean, they were pursuing their own politics there. And they had no conception that this formed part of some kind of epic,

between them and prison. Tool Faith says, keep up the great work. You guys are essential for those who seek the truth in this river of manipulation, propaganda and utter nonsense. We do live in interesting times. Thank you. Thank you for that. Yes, we do.

We have an interesting times. And on that note, Alexander, I think we got to all the questions. Well, I think I have questions. Well, this has been an absolutely outstanding program, a wonderful live stream. Just to remind everybody, I'm doing another live stream later today.

on locals at 1,400 hours ESD, 1900 hours London time. It will be the... No, I think it's the second. The second, it's a second. The second live stream I've done on locals this year. But anyway, we got lots to discuss, so I look forward to see you all there again. That is exclusive to locals, everybody.

That is exclusive to locals, yeah. Yes. All right. Thank you once again to Professor Jeffrey. Thanks. Thank you to everyone that watched us on Odyssey, Rumble, YouTube, Rackfin, and the locals, the durand.com. And Sparky has a comment here, a question. President Trump's understanding and way of going about foreign policy reminds me of Spanish conquistadores dealing with indigenous people in the new world, primitive while insightful. Well, indeed, yes, absolutely true, except, of course,

that there was a massive preponderance of power on the side of the conquistadores, which there is, of course, in relation to Donald Trump. Much of this really is a throwback to 19th century colonial and imperialist politics, which, by the way, were disastrous for Europe, just to say, and disastrous for Britain itself. But this is a huge subject and one to discuss maybe another day. One, a CD says, have you listened to the warnings from Metropolitan Nelfitos? Scary how they are unfolding before our eyes.

No, I haven't, but I'll look out for them. Thank you for that. Okay. Okay. That is another great live stream. Yes. And we will have videos out today. And Alexander's locals exclusive live stream later this evening, London time.

Take care, everybody.