The Duran Podcast - Make NATO Trump - Proof w/ Jeffrey Sachs (Live)

Episode Date: April 4, 2024

Make NATO Trump - Proof w/ Jeffrey Sachs (Live)

Okay, we are live joined by Alexander Merkiris and the one and only Professor Jeffrey Sachs. Great to be with you. How are you? Great to have you with us again. And let's just jump right into the many topics that we can discuss. A lot going on in the world. A big hello and shout out to everyone that is watching us on Rockvin Odyssey, Rumble the Dren. The durand.locos.com, YouTube, and thank you to all our amazing moderators.

Alexander, Professor Sachs, what in the world should we discuss? We could discuss lots of things, but I think there's one unifying thing that brings everything together, and that is that the great powers are not talking to each other. There is no effective diplomacy going on, and the reason for that is because the most important and powerful great power of all, which is still the United States, won't engage in it. We had news of a call just the other day, from Biden to Xi Jinping. I've readout, both the American and the Chinese.

It seems it was just a restatement of old positions, no real movement at all. And of course, on Ukraine, all the talk now is not a diplomacy. It is of another $100 billion that this type. NATO is going to cook together. Now, Professor Sacks has done an absolutely brilliant article on the need to rediscover diplomacy, the art of diplomacy at a time when the world's situation is becoming more dangerous by the day, with wars in the Middle East, wars in Europe, in Ukraine, and with the Chinese Xi Jinping going out of his way to use the words red line when talking to Biden about Taiwan. I mean, one got the sense of a rather exasperated Xi Jinping. At least that was my

sense from the Chinese readout. But no diplomacy at all. So Professor Saks, let's talk about diplomacy. Let's talk specifically, I think, about diplomacy over the conflict in Ukraine, which is in Europe, which is now causing increasing nervousness, talk of sending troops to Ukraine, talk about, you know, $100 billion being put together by NATO to try to, you know, Trump-proof Ukraine. I mean, absurd ideas, in my opinion, dangerous ideas. But where are we? And why are we not seeing diplomacy happen? And what exactly is diplomacy?

Because I think maybe that's our starting point. Because people have seen so little diplomacy recently. I don't think they fully understand what it is. They think that just picking up the telephone and speaking to the other side is diplomacy in its totality. When, of course, what you say over that call is what diplomacy really is. But Professor Sachs, you're a veteran at this. Tell us a bit about this. Tell us a bit about your article.

Well, first, picking up a phone or pressing the button and making a Zoom call, it would be a start. There has not been, as far as we know, one discussion between Biden and Putin since the beginning of 2022. To my mind, it's absolutely extraordinary. Diplomacy at the most basic fundamental level is indeed speaking with the other side. And frankly, I'm at least a tiny bit relieved that a phone call took place between Biden and President Xi Jinping. It's unbelievable what's happening in that relationship as well because the U.S. has boots on the ground in Taiwan right now. Of course, they're on training American military on Taiwan.

So this is so stupid what the U.S. is doing is so much adrift, so dangerous, introducing so many new trigger points and areas of fundamental misunderstanding that could go completely awry as happened in Ukraine, that even a phone call is a little bit of relief, even though, as you say, not much transpired. but there hasn't been one discussion, as far as we know, between the leaders of the United States and Russia since 2022. Now, we also have an absurdity, of course, a tragic absurdity every day where the Russian leadership, whether it's President Putin or Foreign Minister Lovov, say we're open to negotiation. We're open to negotiation, and the United States repeats, yes, yes, we know there's no one to talk to. Yes, we're open to negotiation. Yes, we know. There's no one to talk to. This is a willful, again, absurdity of the United States. And it really behooves us to ask, where has this come from? I think the weakness of U.S. diplomacy is, has actually developed over time to the point where there is essentially none, which is the point that I've written. Yes, we have a Secretary of State who talks to, quote, friends and allies.

We have a Secretary of State who goes into a room with the Russian Foreign Minister and makes a point that we don't speak to you. We leave the room. The G7, like children, have left the room when the Russian and foreign minister is there when the whole point of their job is to speak with each other. So this has deteriorated dramatically over time. What's happening is the question. And it seems to me that there are at least two parts to this. One is a long-term deep part, which is that the U.S. has an agenda. The agenda is hegemony.

This is absolutely not hidden. And it's clear it's written in every U.S. strategic document. It's written in every defense document. It's written in every intelligence assessment document. The goal is hegemony. They sometimes call it primacy. They sometimes call it full spectrum dominance. But the U.S. has a, again, I think an extraordinarily dangerous, misguided,

ill-conceived, hubristic strategy of dominance. It believes in that, actually, to some extent, because they don't understand. They don't listen to your show. They don't know what's going on in the world. They don't talk to anybody else. So they kind of believe it. But when you believe in dominance,

the second point is you believe you don't have to talk to anybody else. There are no red lines on the other side. There are no interests on the other side. You can have interests. You can have red lines. You can have spheres of influence. You could say, we'll blow up the world if you try to establish a military base in the Western Hemisphere.

But if it's on the other side, that makes no sense. How could you object to Ukraine being in NATO because we're the dominant hegemon? It's an open door. It's up to us. it's not up to you. So part of it is this very deep attitude that is 30 years old, completely decrepit, an utter failure filled with fools as far as I'm concerned, but still there. And then there's the specific of a president who was too old for the job, probably incapable, personally, of detailed discussions.

and negotiation because in the end, heads of state really do negotiate with each other. Of course, their aides do everything to prevent that from happening. But there actually are meaningful discussions between heads of state that change the world, sometimes save the world. Sometimes it's even back channels between heads of state that saved the world as in the Cuban missile crisis because the AIDS would have gotten the world blown up. But the two heads of state, Kennedy and Khrushchev, figured out. how actually to save the world despite their own advisors.

So that is important. And Biden, I think, is probably not mentally up to it at this stage. It's a guess. I don't know. I don't speak to him. We just watch him day by day. But I don't think he's in a position to be president myself. And that is a very harrowing point.

I love him to prove me wrong. If he wants to prove me wrong, I offer every day. Here's my phone. Call your counterpart. You want my Zoom account? I'll give you my Zoom account. What is the matter with you, Mr.

The world is at the edge of nuclear war, and you don't even try to have a discussion with the other side. So this is the basic point. I think it's a mechanically a complete failure because I don't know if Lincoln, Sullivan, certainly not Newland, and others understand even the rudiments of diplomacy. The arrogance says we don't need diplomacy,

and I don't think Biden is up to it, though he did make a call to his counterpart of China. So that's actually a good point. I think you actually put your finger on the whole issue, because if you're pursuing hegemony, then that is an issue of power. I mean, you're basically applying power, whereas diplomacy is about something completely different. It is about preserving peace.

And in order to preserve peace, you need diplomacy. And when you go back to the Cuban missile crisis, and this is actually, in some ways, it ought to be the Locust Classicus of study of how diplomacy is conducted. The point about the Cuban Missile Crisis, what happened there, is that the two sides did, engage in diplomacy against each other, with each other, in order to preserve peace, in order to save peace. And they succeeded. Krushchev and Kennedy communicated directly. They didn't have telephones in those days that they could use, but they were sending messages backwards and forward. Crazy, teletype that took hours sometimes. Absolutely. And at a time, you know, extreme

intention, you know, with warships moving and missiles deployed and all that kind of. They did that. They were working through the night constantly. And of course, the president's brother, Robert Kennedy, who was a member of his administration, was in direct contact with the Soviet ambassador Dabrenin in Moscow. Sorry, in Washington. And they were also talking to each other. And over the course of those hours, an agreement was hammered out. And it preserved peace. It didn't just preserve peace. It preserved humanity, at least, I mean, because we literally were on the brink then. But it could be done then, and both sides understood the importance of talking to the other. It's so important to study that one occasion because it does illuminate everything about our situation and fate.

There's, by the way, a phenomenal book written by a great late historian Martin Sherwin called Gambling with Armageddon, which goes hour by hour of the Cuban Missile Crisis in a way that no historian had previously done. And it's absolutely brilliant. And there are a couple of points worth emphasizing about this. One is that Kennedy and Khrushchev not only communicated to save the world, even from their own advisors at that point, but they had been in a private communication by letter writing, actually, the old-fashioned way. From the time of Kennedy's election in November 1960, they wrote letters back and forth, which are compiled and are absolutely fascinating to read, incidentally.

For example, when the CIA and Kennedy made the disastrous step of the Bay of Pigs invasion, of Cuba in 1960. In the spring of 1960, Khrushchev wrote to Kennedy in one of these back letters. Mr. President, pyr radical elements of your government have committed an international crime invading Cuba. And Kennedy wrote back one of the stupidest letters of, I think, of an American presidency, saying that's not true. This has nothing to do with the United States. These are Cubans who are attacking their own country. And Khrushchev wrote back after that a blistering letter saying,

Mr. President, don't ever lie to me like that again. This is your government. You know it. Do not talk to me that way. So they had this very strong give and take. for almost two years before the Cuban Missile Crisis. This made a difference. There was a human element.

One of the facts that Kennedy arrived at at some moment in the middle of this intense crisis was, my God, Khrushchev's probably facing the same pressures I'm facing. It seems like a basic insight. But Kennedy, at a moment, came to understand that the two leaders were in. imprisoned by their own sides who were rooting for war. And that's when he reached out. Now, a second story that's absolutely important about the Cuban missile crisis, one of the things that led Khrushchev to realize we have to settle this was Fidel Castro calling Khrushchev, them speaking with each other, and Castro urging a nuclear attack on the United States. And this is also,

telltale Khrushchev was horrified. This is the client state. This is Cuba. This is the Soviet Union protecting Cuba. And he realizes this guy's completely out of control. Well, frankly, Zelensky and the others are completely out of control as well. They would do anything. They want to bring in the United States into complete disaster. So this is something that happens in the same dynamic. Israel is completely out of control. A genocidal state bombing diplomatic missions of other countries? Unbelievable. But this is what happens with these client states or these states that want the big powers to do their bidding. They're not in control. So that's the second thing that one learns from this. A third thing that one learns from the Cuban Missile Crisis is that something that game theorists have discovered experimentally over many decades of experiments. When you have a crisis like Ukraine or the Cuban Missile Crisis, you have a situation called a strategic dilemma.

A strategic dilemma means, hey, there's a better way than nuclear annihilation or a better way than outright war to solve this. For example, with Ukraine, the way to have avoided this war or to have ended it in March 22 was, for Biden to call Putin and say, okay, the whole idea of NATO going to Ukraine, that was crazy. The idea of putting Aegis missiles all over your borderlands, that was crazy. You stop the invasion. We stop NATO. We get back to some kind of peace. That was completely achievable.

In fact, I beg Jake Sullivan, do that. Stop this, avoid this war. Okay, that's a strategic dilemma because one side might say, In fact, they do say it because they're a little, the U.S. a little primitive. And it's thinking, oh, you know, how are we ever going to enforce that? Russia will never keep its word when the U.S. is the one that lies all the time, by the way. But in any event, the idea of a strategic dilemma is there's a better way out. And if we could trust the other side to do it and we honor it, we both gain.

That's, it's called prisoners dilemmas, one example, and so forth. Now, what's been understood in experimental as well as historical cases is that when two people are negotiating over a strategic dilemma, they can generally find a way to solve this. But when two sides are doing it, the dynamic is much worse because in group dynamics, each group says the other is going to cheat on us. And so this is why the advisors say, go. to war, bomb them, first strike and so forth, when the leaders can sense, okay, we need that individual diplomacy. It's a human being on the other side and it's humanity on the other side. And then there's one last absolutely completely fundamental point about the Cuban missile crisis that needs to be understood and is almost unknown and is one of the most, I mean,

it is the most harrowing event in world history, actually. And I think that's not an exaggeration. As some will know, after the two leaders had resolved how the crisis was going to be ended, the U.S. pledging never to invade Cuba, and by the way, it never did again because it lived up to its pledge, the two sides agreeing to remove their nukes, the Soviets from Cuba and the United States, nukes from Turkey. After they agreed on how the crisis would be wound down, we almost had World War III. And the reason was that there was a disabled Soviet sub in the Caribbean. and that disabled Soviet sub was out of communication. These were times more than 60 years ago when pretty primitive.

But it happened that that disabled sub had a nuclear-tipped torpedo. Not all of the subs did, but this was the lead of a squadron of subs. And it was disabled. It was in the bottom of the sea and it was reaching temperatures internally that the sailors were fainting away, it had the surface. And when this sub began to surface a jackass in the U.S. Navy as a kind of joke and game, instead of dropping depth charges on the sub to signal that it should come up, drop live hang grenades on the sub.

And the commander of the sub said, we're under attack. there must be war above, load the nuclear-tipped torpedo, and prepare to fire. And under U.S. doctrine, any attack by any atomic weapon would have unleashed the full arsenal of atomic weapons. The estimate of the U.S. military is it would have taken out about 700 million people. We have some reason to believe it could have ended all human life on the planet through the so-called nuclear winter. Be that as it may, we were actually within basically a second of that. And what happened on the sub was, by coincidence, because again, not every sub in the squadron had this, there was a party official who was senior to the skipper and who said,

I don't think it's a good idea to fire. And at the last moment, countermanded the order. The submarine reached the surface and nuclear annihilation was avoided. The point is miscalculation. The point is events outside of the control, even of the two leaders.

The idea is that these, idiots because I really resent them playing with our lives. These idiots in the Pentagon, in the CIA, in the security services, in the White House, who don't know what they're doing, don't act like grownups, bring us to the brink thinking, what could possibly go wrong? So you talk to the other side. And one final point, which maybe is obvious, but it's actually remarkable. In these security dilemmas, which have been studied now since the prisoner's dilemma was proposed as an object of analysis back in 1950 by the Rand Corporation, so we're 70-plus years into this. Experiments have shown that near talk between the two sides, even if it's not

binding, even if it doesn't prevent the cheating. Mere talk raises the probability of a cooperative solution dramatically. And so this is why no joke I've said to the White House first directly and then on our discussions every day, talk to the other side. Talk, just talk. You don't understand. you don't know what you're doing. You can't figure this out unless you talk to the other side.

And maybe, sorry for the soliloquy or the rant, but one more point that needs to be added. We have an idea, a big lie that adds to the idea of why you don't talk. And it is rolled out on every occasion by these fools. They are fools, by the way. When you know them, it's not to respect them. By the way, they are absolutely without knowledge of what they're doing. And I know them. I know them personally.

Occasionally, they were my students. Come on. I'm telling them, get on with reason. What we have in our daily narrative is you can't talk to the other side. They will cheat you. You know, Neville Chamberlain talked to Hitler. And that caused World War II. And it's an insanity of misunderstanding everything about that historical event.

But it's also the most simplistic misapplication of some garbled, jumbled, foolish account of Neville Chamberlain's negotiation with Hitler that is then used to. say, don't talk to the other side. So of course, the story is Neville Chamberlain negotiated with Hitler at Munich in 1938, came home, declared this is peace for our time, and Hitler cheated and took over Czechoslovakia and launched World War II. And the moral of the stories never talked to the other side. The footnote or the lemma, if you were a mathematician, is every counterpart is Hitler. we're told again and again. Well, Putin's Hitler. Xi Jinping, he's Hitler. Saddam Hussein, he's Hitler. Bashar al-Assad, he's Hitler.

Omar Khaddafi, he's Hitler. So this meme, don't talk to the other side, is also underpinned by this fairy tale version of history. And this is also very annoying because it's used to say there's no one to talk to. There's no one to talk to. He's just Hitler is going to cheat. And the basic of the story is Neville Chamberlain was naive, but he wasn't wrong to talk. And he was right to negotiate in 1938.

He was wrong to come home and declare that this would be a self-enforcing agreement. But the point that I make in this article, which I think is important in history, is that it was the attempt to negotiate with Hitler. It was Hitler's brazen, brazen, of course, the most brazen imaginable, breaking of a public agreement that led the whole rest of the world to understand what is this about and that enabled Churchill to face down Hitler by saying to the British, we did try to negotiate this counterpart does not negotiate. They tried.

That enabled Churchill to keep power, even at a critical moment in May 1940, when the cabinet itself was divided, and Churchill said, no, we need to fight because we tried the other way. If you don't try the other way, you can never make that argument. And you can never win the public opinion

either what we have in the world today. And I promise I'll stop this monologue at this moment. I'm traveling the world, as you know, every week, basically. I'm speaking to world leaders. Nobody believes the United States. Nobody believes the U.S. is trying. Nobody believes the narrative that we give, that Putin's a madman, that this is completely irrational, Peter the Great,

rebuilding of the Russian Empire, that Putin is a Hitler. Nobody believes that around the world. Nobody believes that Israel is trying to make peace by rooting out Hamas. Everybody knows what's going on. So the U.S. is also in an incredible bubble. Anyway, that's the problem. We have a miserably weak team. We have a miserably weak president who may be not even in capacity to be president, and we're not having diplomacy. I completely agree with every point, and please don't apologize for taking time to set them out. Just on the 1930s, two points to make. I think you're absolutely correct. The fact that Hitler violated the Munich Agreement meant that Britain went into the war, a united country. It would not have done otherwise. This is a point which people don't

understand. And the second is that, of course, you know, human history is very long. The way people talk about 1938 and Munich, you'd think that the whole of previous history is basically limited to a period of a few years in the 1930s. Alexander, it's, there are 2,500 years of known, detailed diplomacy. And this is the only snippet that in a twisted way is rolled out all the time. You can't have diplomacy. Munich, 1938. Unbelievable. It is unbelievable. It is absolutely unbelievable. And of course, I think the point that you can't fully control a situation when it becomes as dangerous as it can do is absolutely correct, because of course, you're not dealing with machines. You're dealing with people. People make decisions. They can never be fully predicted. You can't always be

sure that one person isn't going to do something which might result in the whole situation getting out of control. Look at how it is out of control. Look at the German case of the four German generals discussing the Torres Missile Strike. What is that? Either Schultz's outright line. Either he's a sap and doesn't know what his own generals are saying, which is absolutely possible. In our world right now, we absolutely have multiple channels in government. These are not united governments. Any government is not united. And especially when you have a CIA-driven deep agenda, which the United States has with its German intelligence counterparts,

you have the possibility of things spinning out of control because even the ones that we think must be in control are not in control. Look at France. By the way, with France, President Macron has said to me, over time, face to face, exactly the opposite of what he says in public. It's absolutely, and by the way, he sometimes has done it privately to me in, and then the next week in public, the opposite. Okay, they lie. This is not exactly a revelation. But the instability of it, the lying of it, the multiple channels of power within any government, the fact that NATO is this bizarre alliance where you have utter hate speech.

I mean, hate coming from much of NATO right now, you have a president of Latvia tweeting Russia, Delenda asked Russia must be destroyed, you know, in Cato the Elder's phrase about Carthage. A president of Latvia next door to Russia tweeting that Russia must be destroyed, we're in a land of absolute foolishness, absurdity, pariet behavior. And this is where a president of the United States actually has a job to do. And we don't have that president doing that job right now. Absolutely. One very last comment from me because we're up to 30 minutes.

But just wanted to say this, anybody who has been in a negotiation and wants to achieve a good outcome in a negotiation understands one very important thing. And that is that negotiations must be conducted in good faith. Lying to the other side is a disastrous mistake. We saw that with Cruz Chef and Kennedy from that letter exchange that you were discussing. It's been understood. If you look at the manuals of diplomacy going all the way back to the 17th century, the one by Caillard, which is the one I sometimes cite,

he makes that point. You know, you might gain a small advantage for a short time by lying, but you leave poison behind you. That is exactly what's so true. And our friend John Meersheimer, you know, is written brilliant. about this, that leaders lie relentlessly to their own people, but not to each other, actually. It's fascinating because the states are so high, lying to your own people. Well, that's politics in our modern practice.

But lying to the other, you better be damn careful, which is why it's worth to talk. Absolutely. Professor Sachs, that's me. Thank you. And I said, never apologize for giving us your views so eloquently and so well. Thank you very much for coming on our program. I'm going to hand over to Alex. As I said, we've done 30 minutes.

Yeah, we're low on time. But can you answer two questions, Professor Sacks? Of course, of course. Fantastic. From Sobarano, Brazil. Will Israel drag the USA to a regional war? Boy, Israel is trying to do so every day. The American people are absolutely turning

steadfastly, by the way, this is Jews in America, non-Jews in America against Israel, because Israel is being genocidal right now. And we have, again, a president who mumbles, a secretary of state who rings his hands. He brings himself to tears, let me say, when he talks about what Israel is doing. Oh, please don't do that. And Netanyahu reminds them, I run your government. You don't run your government. The Israel lobby runs it.

So it's extraordinarily dangerous, the mindlessness of it, the cruelty of what Israel is doing, the absolute recklessness of what Israel is doing. It could drag the U.S. into a wider war. It's trying. The U.S. leaders do not want a wider war. They actually don't. But they prove themselves not to be in charge day by day. They wring their hands.

You know, I don't think, by the way, it's complete theater when Biden says, and when Blinken says, we don't want Israel to do that. It's not just faking it. It's more pathetic. What they're saying is, we're only the president and the Secretary of State. They're Israel. They've got the lobby. They've got the campaign contributions. It's grotesque. So what happens every day, you can't be sure. don't think it is the desire of the United States, given the state of the world, the state of its stockpiles, the state of the military, the state of public opinion, to want a wider war, but it's not impossible. Israel really needs to be stopped from what it's doing. And there is a way to do it, incidentally. The way to do it is exactly the United States says, we're not arming you tomorrow. Israel cannot go one day to the next. I mean it. Yes, of course, it's got a little bit of stockpile, but it cannot go one day to the next without the active military support of the United

States. The U.S. can stop this at any hour. And again, I'd like to remind them in the White House, that's the job of the U.S. president is actually to stop wars. My theory of America's, the war machine is always revving, certainly among our vassal states or the ones that rule the United States, however you see it. And the job of the president of the United States is to be a grownup and to keep the foot on the break. So they could stop this war at any moment because Israel, cannot prosecute this war, this genocide, in my opinion. We'll see what the International Court of Justice says soon. But it cannot do this even day to day without the U.S. active logistics, munitions, intelligence, military support.

One more question. From Rick F. Is the recent one-hour phone call between Shogu and the French Defense Minister an encouraging sign or just damage control? from French saber rattling. Your thoughts? I think in the gist of what we've been discussing, it's better to have it than not to have it. I'm glad that it's taking place.

And I think it's worth basically just a couple of minutes about the whole diplomacy issue. I do believe that at the beginning, Macron and Schultz tried diplomacy and wanted to head off the escalation that took place in February 2022. Again, the war started in February 2014. This is important to understand. The war did not start with the special military operation in February 22. The war started with the violent overthrow of Yanukovych in which the United States played a major role. But the war was 10 years on and Macron and Schultz, I believe, tried to head it off. And I think President Putin's

reaction at the beginning was, well, fine, but where's the American counterpart that leads your military alliance? I don't hear from the U.S. because the U.S. had directly rejected diplomacy over a draft security agreement that President Putin's put on the table in writing, online, you can find it, December 15, 2021. So the U.S. said, no, we're not going to negotiate over that. Schultz and Macron, in my understanding, said to Putin, well, NATO's not going to enlarge. And Putin said, why should I believe you? I need to hear from the United States. And the U.S. wasn't saying that because the U.S. didn't believe that at the time. The U.S. absolutely totally believed NATO is enlarging.

It may even believe it today because they're fools. But in any event, so at the beginning, I think Schultz and Macron tried. I think they went to the wrong capital, frankly, because my advice back then was that Macron, Schultz, and Draghi. so Italy, Germany, and France, go to Washington and say under no way, shape, or form, is NATO enlarging to Ukraine? Are you crazy, Mr. President? Is your intelligence service crazy? Are your neocons crazy? Is Victoria Newland crazy?

What is it? It should not, must not happen because otherwise we risk complete disaster in Europe. That's what they should have. done. So rather than going to Moscow and saying that, which was fine, except President Putin's answer reportedly was to Schultz, when Schultz said, NATO will not enlarge as long as I'm Chancellor, he looked at him and said, well, how long are you going to be Chancellor? You know, he absolutely batted it back. But what he meant was, look, this is a U.S. military alliance. And so we need with the United States some grown-up talk.

And that never happened. And so I think the huge mistake of Europe, the huge mistake was the inability to stand up to the United States. This is the pathetic side. Well, of course, the U.S. has its influence, its power. The CIA has its influence. the U.S. the money side, the carrots and the sticks in European capitals. But the truth of the matter is that Germany, France, and Italy, if they stood together, could say to the United States, stop wrecking Europe. They could. They don't. But they could. And that is what failed. So at this

point, Macron's gone over to the other side rhetorically. It's weird because he's told me exactly the opposite in private. He told President Putin the opposite. He knows, I believe, that this whole NATO enlargement business, which is alive till today, because we also hear it from the absolutely foolish, idiotic words of Jens Stoltenberg all the time, a man who does not have one moment of sense in him, but tells the truth. actually. You know, he tells the truth about what he and NATO believe, which is quite interesting because he says, yes, of course, this is a war over NATO. But I believe that Macron knows all of this. But for whatever political reason, maybe the European elections, maybe his misperceived

politics, maybe whatever slight he feels, who knows, he's doing something different right now. But to answer the question, good that there was a call because every call at least establishes the possibility of some diplomacy, but the real diplomacy should be Europe extricating itself from the absolute recklessness of 30 years of hegemonic aspirations, unipolarity. And Europe knew all of this. European leaders have told me all of this how reckless the U.S. is. European leaders opposed the 2008 invitation to Ukraine and to Georgia, for God's sake, that's a North Atlantic country, to join NATO. And they've known all of this all along, but they don't have the capacity, or they haven't had the capacity, I should say. Burkle did a bit, a bit.

but not Schultz and Macron, Draghi left. Anyway, they did not find the way to say this. Just one last piece of this. Dear Schiegel ran actually an extremely interesting account of the 2008 NATO decision to invite Ukraine and Georgia to become members. And it got it right. I know a lot of the inside story, and it got it got it right. It's a very interesting read. And it's even entitled something like when the war really began, because it recognized that it was the

invitation to Ukraine and to Georgia to join NATO, or better said that they would become NATO members, that was the basis of this war, which now I think everybody except the bubble. acknowledges. But the article's really weird because it describes how Merkel tried to stop it. It describes how the French tried to stop it, stop this invitation. And in the end, there was this mish-mash compromise that, yes, Ukraine and Georgia will someday be members, but we won't have a plan right now of exactly how to do it. So the worst of all words, But then Der Spiegel concludes by saying, you see, Merkel was engaged in appeasement. Crazy.

The whole story is how they tried to head off a disaster, how they tried to head off a war. And then it's called appeasement. Now, I don't know whether that is something that Der Schmigel has to say to fit into the prevailing opinion or whether it's another demonstration of the twisted mindset that we have in Europe right now over this. But in any event, it's a real account that shows that European leaders have known how dangerous and reckless the U.S. unipolar mindset has been how reckless

the expansion of NATO to Ukraine and Georgia as an idea has been but they don't stand up and that's the sad point. Brussels is owned and operated by the United States. It's not an accident that the capital of the European

Union and the headquarters of the EU and the headquarters of NATO are in the same city, not an accident. Not a good idea for Europe, but not an accident. But the major powers of Europe absolutely could have stopped this had they held together and gone to Washington rather than to Moscow to put down the line. With Moscow, frankly, we need the call from Biden to Putin.

It's so many years overdue. And that is absolutely what will end this war and save Ukraine, let's add. This is not about giving up Ukraine. This is about saving Ukraine. Please ask Mr. Sachs if he thinks Germany is violating the 2 plus 4 agreement and what should be the consequences if yes. But vital question, the 2 plus 4 agreement and what would be the consequences if yes. Let's just say that there's, by the way, a lot of water under the bridge at this point, under the destroyed bridges, let's say. Because there have been many agreements on both in Europe. By the way, we can add in Iran, JCPOA.

We can add in all the unilateral U.S. departures from ABM, from the intermediate nuclear force agreement. We can add in the breaking of Minsk 1 and then Minsk 2, which was backed by the entire UN Security Council. It's a miserable, miserable record. In my opinion, everybody's broken their word, but the underlying direction, the reason, the most fundamental reason for all of this

is the complete failure of U.S. diplomacy and the complete collapse of U.S. diplomacy. What we are living through, again, we're at the end of 30 years of U.S. global hegemonic aspirations. This is the basic understanding of all the diplomacy. These fools in Washington got it into their head in 1992. We won. They lost. We run the world. This is very important to understand. It means we don't have to abide by any agreements. We don't have to abide by the most basic agreement we gave to Gorbachev and to Yeltsin.

And I was there, by the way, it was an economic advisor to Gorbachev's team and to Yeltsin face. And we said to them, NATO will not move one inch eastward. Well, by the time 1992 came, in other words, the ink wasn't dry, the promises were still there, still being made, by the way, when the Russians toured the NATO headquarters and so forth. They were cheating already. The United States undermined the whole spirit of the end of the Cold War by instead of saying we both won by having peace. the United States said, we won, you lost, and now we do what we want. But it's important to understand even then, if I could just go back one bit. That played into a deeper meme that goes back even farther, which is, it's not just the

end of the Soviet Union we want, it's the end of Russia we want, break up Russia. And this is a deep meme also of American foreign policy and should be understood that 1992 was the moment of victory of this hegemonic aspiration. But now the plan was we continue. We run the world. We need it most to, I mean, at least to weaken Russia, but maybe, you know, it will come apart at the seams. It will divide internally. We will support rebellions in the caucuses. We'll do other things.

We'll surround Russia and so forth. So this goes back even further. And I want to take it back to the 1840s, just to conclude in honor of Alexander and taking it back to the real roots of hegemony, which is Great Britain, because never was there a hegemon with. such ambition and such a curious view of the world. But Britain wanted to run the world in the 19th century, and it taught America everything that it knows. And I read recently a book that I had not read before, a fascinating book by a historian named Gleason,

Harvard University Press, I think, 1970. And it's an incredibly interesting book called something like the origin of Russophobia. And the question is, where did England's hate of Russia come from? Because it's actually a little surprising. Britain has hated Russia, hated Russia since the 1840s. And it launched the Crimean War. That was a war of choice in modern parliaments, a war of choice of Palmerston in the 1850s because it hated Russia. So this author tries to understand where did this hate come from?

Because it was the same kind of bituporative hate that we have now. And by the way, we hated the Soviet Union because it was communist. But we hated Russia afterwards when it wasn't communist. It doesn't matter. So it's a deeper phenomenon. And he tries to trace where this hatred came from. And the fascinating point is Russia and Britain were on the same side in the Napoleonic Wars. From 1812 to 1815, from the Battle of Moscow and Russia to Napoleon's defeat in Waterloo, they were on the same side.

And in fact, for many years, the relations were great, but they were kind of normal. And so this historian reads every snippet of the newspapers, of what's written, of the speeches to try to understand where the hatred arose. And the key point out, and here, there was no reason for it. There was nothing that Russia did. Russia didn't behave in some perfidious way. It wasn't Russian evil. It wasn't that the Tsar was somehow off the rails. There wasn't anything except a self-fulfilling lather built up over time because Russia was a big power and therefore an affront to British hegemony.

This is the same reason why the U.S. hates China. Not for anything China actually does, but because it's big. It's the same reason until today that the United States and Britain hate Russia because it's big. So the author comes to the conclusion that the hate really arose as of around 1840 because it wasn't instantaneous. And there was no single triggering event. The British dotted into their crazy heads that Russia was going to invade India through Central Asia and after. Afghanistan, one of the most bizarre, phony, wrongheaded ideas imaginable, but they took it quite literally. And they told themselves this, we're the imperialist. How dare Russia presumed to

invade India when it had no intention of doing so. So my point is it's possible to have hate to the point of war and now to the point of nuclear annihilation for no. fundamental reason. Talk to each other. On that point, we'll let Professor Jeffrey Sachs go. I have all of Professor Sachs' information in the description box down below.

Now we'll add it as a pink comment as well. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Bye, bye. Bye. Thank you. Wow. Wow. I must get hold of this book by Gleason.

it sounds like most interesting actually. Yeah, it's one of the most popular questions we always get, isn't it? We always get. There's a very good, it's actually a terrible book by a man called Orlando Langeese about the Crimean War, which I don't like at all, and I think he's completely wrong. But it does have a chapter, which I suspect is taken from this book by Gleason, which I was unaware of, by the way, which gives you a whole series of extracts of British newspaper articles about Russia in the lead-up to the Crimean War. And it is absolutely extraordinary to

read these articles because they're identical to the articles we see today, all the same memes, all the same tropes, all the same stereotypes about Russia. They're all there, already in existence back in the 1840s. And one thing that Professor Sachs is absolutely right about is that we've gone now into the archives. It's absolutely clear that the British, British engineered the Crimean War and that their objective and Lord Palmerston's objective was to break up Russia. In other words, exactly the same thing that we hear and see all about today. And they failed, of course, totally. They got bogged down trying to capture one single Russian city, which is Sevastopol. And it took them two years to do it. And by the time that they did

that their economies were exhausted and everything had gone completely wrong and they had to try to extricate themselves from this war and they did so by threatening to start a general European war by getting the Austrians to issue and ultimatting them against the Russians. It's a, the story of the Crimean War, the real story, has not yet been written. And it's one of these events which demand. proper historical reexamination. Still being written today. Yeah.

Okay, well, let's, we have a live stream with Garland Nixon in about an hour. And now is so awesome. So let's answer the questions that we have, Alexander, and we'll get on to the next live stream with Garland. Let's see here. It's interesting. Alexander, as I pull up the questions, because all the, all the, all the British people that I know get along really well with, with Russians, like the people get along. Yeah. Where you have the government elite has this, this obsession with, with breaking apart Russia.

It's really, it's really bizarre to see. And the same can be said about America. Americans, like, get along with Russians on a, on a people to people level, but it's the governments that are. I see, I mean, I saw one occasion. I mean, where there was a group of Russians, and this is before the conflict in Ukraine got off back in 2022, but there was a group of Russians, you know, sitting in a cafe in Covengarten in London,

and there was a group of young British men nearby, and then they just went over to this table, and they said, you know, I just want, we just want to tell you that all this vitriol you hear against your country from Britain, most British people don't feel it. And that was, you know, that was just a demonstration of that. And, you know, British people are quite shy and diffident talking to strangers. So this group obviously felt, they looked like students, actually.

They obviously felt strongly enough about it that they went to do it. All right. So Barrenau, Brazil says they will manipulate Europe to pay for the war against Russia for years now. Trump proof or accountability proof. John Gengel Jin says, has the promotion of the Ugandan judge Julia Sepatinded to vice president of the ICJ compromise the court? Was this promotion a reward for dissenting? We will have to wait and see. I mean, I'm pretty sure that the powers that be in Europe and the West were not happy with the last ICJ decisions.

So all kinds of things probably have been going on. But of course, overall, there's still, I think, a majority on the ICJ. And courts don't like once they made a decision to sort of reverse themselves. So we'll just have to wait and see how that works out. All right. Oracle says love Jeffrey Sachs. Thank you for that. Oracle. Fractured says, I'll need sleep for work by the time this starts. Enjoy yourselves.

Thank you for that. Spirin says, cheers. Cheers to do spireen as well. and from the Soboreno Brazil until USA elections we will see the war going on if Trump gets elected

will he be able to make the war stop or there will be mechanisms not to allow him doing it well Stoltenberg is trying to create one now he's trying to get a fund together from NATO $100 billion which is nowhere near enough by the way for what he's to continue

this war $20 billion a year, $100 billion over five years, to try to keep the war going, well, presumably for five years. But my own view is that the power of the United States, exactly as Professor Sachs was saying, is strong enough that if we got into this kind of situation where Donald Trump really wanted to end the war, and he had the support of the whole of the US government behind him,

He could do it. The great question is what happens in Washington? And there is a lot of rumor now that the next Trump administration is going to be a lot more joined up than the first. So let's wait and see. Ballyas, thank you for that. Super Sticker. Elza says Stoltenberg, if we can convince Moscow, it cannot win on the battlefield, is Yenz mentally up to it? Blinken is also talking about Russian defeats.

Well, I think what Stoltenberg needs to do is to read one of the latest article in Politico, where there are all these Ukrainian military officers who are coming along and saying quite straightforwardly, the war is lost, we can't defeat the Russians, they're too many of them, they've got, they're too well armed, they're too well equipped, they're too well organized, and if the $61 billion package passes, it's not going to make any difference. And if the F-16s arrive, it's not going to make any difference. the West doesn't have the weapons and the technology to change things, the outcome of the war. So Ukrainian military officers, these are actual Ukrainian military officers, are telling Politico that what Stoltenberg is talking about is absolute nonsense.

I think you should speak to these people. Stoltenberg could have watched the Duran over the past couple of years as well. So Barano, Brazil says, do you believe Israel is putting itself in a dangerous corner? They say they will attack Lebanon anyway. Will the chances of USA be drawn even more to the conflict increase troops on the ground? They're becoming more reckless and more desperate and more dangerous all the time. And, you know, I say that with very carefully. I think this is absolutely the case. I mean, we've had this utterly irresponsible attack on a consulate in Damascus. And, you know, irresponsible is the mildest

possible word you could use to describe it. It's clearly, in my opinion, intended to create a crisis with Iran, hoping to get the United States involved in that crisis. There's also been this attack on this. I think it's a bakery, whatever it was, the thing that the... WCCC thing in Gaza, which, whatever the exact facts, I mean, it suggests either immense care... negligence to the point of indifference about what they attack.

Or, well, I mean, there's now suggestions that it was an intentional attack, which, if true, is just shocking. There's talk always about wars against Lebanon, against all sorts of people. So, I mean, they are getting very reckless and they're getting very dangerous. And I think the reason for that, there are multiple ones. Firstly, the economy in Israel is contracting. Secondly, the war in Gaza has gone much longer, I think. than anybody anticipated, and is far from one.

And thirdly, they're sensing their international isolation, and we've had that ceasefire resolution passed through the Security Council, and they're becoming nervous about the situation of the United States. So it's very, very reckless behavior by a government that does, is starting to think that its back is up against the wall. Well, they brought it on themselves, And of course, they're not without allies and friends in Washington. And it looks as if rather than think and stop and trying to find some kind of sensible way out,

they're doubling, tripling, quadrupling down and behaving in exactly the way that Professor Sacks was saying. John D.D. Welcome to the Dran community. Dan Walda says, I noticed Lieutenant Colonel Tony Schaefer, how did Duran hoodie? Good choice. I have one myself. Keep up the good work. Thank you for that. Awesome. Thank you very much. Yes, I have seen that video with his hoodie. Great guest, Lieutenant Colonel Schaefer. Great guest.

Akash says, clearly Biden is not making the decisions. Who is Obama Clinton, BlackRock? In foreign policy, the person who makes the decisions is Jake Sullivan. I think this is widely accepted now. Who Tony Blinken has told us. He's a genius, by the moment. Remember in our, if you go back to the Duran's shows, like maybe like two years ago, we were actually calling Sullivan, President Sullivan at a time.

Because he just said, yeah. Yeah, he makes decisions for our policy. Sobereno, welcome to the drag community. Michael, think of that super sticker. Martin says, absolute power corrupts absolutely, is human nature. Checks and balances that limit power have been removed by wealthy elites. Should we identify and restore checks and balances, which ones? lots of them need to be re-established.

The first one of the things we need to do urgently is clean up the legal systems because if the legal systems aren't working then of course checks and balances by definition start to break down and I mean we see the lawfare in the United States we see the Assange case in Britain we see all kinds of shocking things

we see a new bill which is being passed by the Scottish Parliament, which is clearly intended to restrict speech and criminalise vast chunks of speech. And it's unbelievably vaguely drafted so that it's all clear to people when they're committing the crime that they're, you know, alleged to be committed. So we need, first of all, to sort out the legal. system to get the legal system under control. And if we can do that, then that's perhaps the first step, because without it, as I said, there is absolutely nothing. And that in order to get the legal system under control, the law and bar associations of the various countries need to start getting organised. And this is urgent. And of course, there's no sign of it happening at the moment,

but it really does need to take place and it needs to take place soon. Elvis says, great work, the Duran inviting Professor Sachs to bring sanity and provide a critical insight to this mad era in geopolitics. Well done, guys. Thank you for that, Elvis. Elsa says, Mr. Sachs, did you meet to the new colleague, Professor Newland for some academic exchange? She is such a great expert in international affairs. Joke.

I'm sure they have a lot of discussion. Oh, my, OMG, puppy says, I'm ready. Ukraine has sunk one third of Russia's military ships in the Black Sea. I'm skeptical, but I believe it is difficult for them to replace lost ships, so they may be chipping away at the fleet. Now, first of all, that isn't true. I mean, they haven't sunk anywhere in it close to a third of the ships of the Black Sea fleet. I mean, you get all these claims and the Black Sea Fleet no longer operates. Don't take that seriously. This is propaganda that you read in the media. media. We don't even know exactly how extensive the ship losses are, because of course the Russians

don't always tell us. But suffice to say, the core part of the fleet, the missile corvettes, the modern missile vets, the bujans, that kind of thing, and the new frigates, the Admiral Makarov class frigates, the Ukrainians have never been able to touch them. So, I mean, and, of course, the six submarines that operate. They haven't been able to touch them. And the answer about the Russians being able to replace warships, they can actually. They not only can. They've actually reinforced the black sea fleet.

I've discussed this many times. Russia builds warships. It sounds extraordinary to say this deep inland. And they have this enormous network of huge rivers and canals that link up these rivers. So one of the big shipyards, which is called the Krasnoyosso. is in Nizhny Novgorod, far inland, in the north of Russia, on the Volga. So they build warships, including submarines, including missile corvettes. They sail down the Volga.

They then interconnect with canal, our various canals. And they can then arrive through the Don, another river. they can actually arrive on the Black Sea. Sounds astonishing to say this, but it's been done many times, actually. Robin R. says, Bonjour, Monsieur.

Hi, Valies, good to see you again. Danielle, thank you for that super sticker. Jungle Jim says, eminent jurist Jeffrey Robertson was convinced Putin should be tried for war crimes even before the ICC's ruling was handed down. How can such a knowledgeable person of his repute be so effing dumb? Well, I'm going to say,

I mean, I don't want to say too much about Jeffrey Robinson because, that we've never met, I don't share the view that he is eminent. I mean, he is eminent in the sense that he gets, you know, he's very highly positioned in the legal system. But I'm very, I'm not a fan of his. Let me say that straightforwardly. Or of the chambers where he operates from, or of his general ideas about war crimes law

and all kinds of things of that kind. I mean, I think it was an absolutely, I read the article, it was in the Daily Telegraph. The thing to understand about this is that there is a whole group of lawyers in the UK, in the United States, in France, in all sorts of places, who have become very much part of the system of international tribunals.

And I mean, a lot of their work revolves around this. And they sit on these tribunals as judges. They participate in the work of these tribunals. And putting aside their beliefs, and I'm prepared to accept that their beliefs on this are genuine, they have an interest anyway in expanding this whole network of tribunals, cases, and all that kind of thing. And that's why they continuously lobby for it. My own view is that they do an enormous amount of harm. And I also say this, if you ever find yourself in a case where human rights are in issue,

do not go to people like this, you know, the human rights lawyers. Go to good criminal lawyers. I think you'll find you get a much better outcome from them than you will from the human rights, war crimes lawyers that we've just been talking about. Just a black cat. Thank you for that super sticker. Abasi, welcome to the drag community. Good, good Darfarib. Well, thank you for that super sticker. E.M. Henrique says if NATO was to declare war on Russia, what would be the goal of their operations? Capturing Moscow is no longer possible. If NATO declares war on Russia, we're in World War III. It's a short answer. And I mean, at the time, at that point, we've reached the point where you head for a bomb show.

because this would be a lunatic situation for NATO to do. With a person like Stoltenberg in charge, unfortunately, the risk that something crazy like that might happen does exist. But as I said, it is a ludicrous idea. I think most people now who follow the war closely understand that in conventional military terms, just talking about ground troops, NATO. is not in a position to take on the Russians, at least not in territory close to Russia or in Russia itself.

Sparky says, hope there's a Nuremberg trial for Netanyahu et al-Zionist congressman and senators should be forced to watch and listen a la Clockwork Orange using the Levitko technique. It's unlikely to happen. I don't think it is completely impossible. the rhetoric that's coming out of Israel and the actions are making it more possible all the time. From Jam says Gonzalo brought me to you. Thanks, Gonzalo. Rest in peace.

Rest in peace, Gonzalo. Elena says Anthony Beaver, the Bavar the Hustorian. What does Alexander think of him? No, I'm not a huge fan. I think that you can get far better historians about the Second World War than he is. And if you want to follow the Eastern Front, for example, definitely go to someone like David Gans. I mean, Anthony Beaver is a former British Army officer, as I understand it. And I think that his political biases, sorry to say this, are too strong and they affect the character of his books.

GGI-1416 says, what part of the war do you think can be blamed on Russia, considering all the mistakes the West made, what could Putin have done differently? Well, I think what the Russians could have done differently well before the crisis, the 2003 Orange Revolution crisis, and even before that, is they could have taken Ukraine a lot more seriously. I mean, for example, when before the situation in Ukraine began to get out of control, the Russians had a practice of parking in Kiev political figures who had lost out in power struggles in Moscow. So for a time, the former Prime Minister, Viktor Genome Eden, Yeltsin's Prime Minister, was Russia's ambassador to Ukraine. I mean, he was, you know, uninterested in the job. Then there was another person who, I can forget his name now, who was completely incompetent and essentially sided with the Ukrainian government against his own because he was a liberal politician

who had also lost in a power struggle in Moscow. Whereas what Moscow had needed, what Russia had needed throughout the 90s and the 2000s was a strong embassy, strongly led by a competent and able diplomat and somebody who would be able to reach out to the Ukrainian political establishment and build bridges with them and work with them and keep Moscow properly informed about what was going on. So I think this is, this was a major mistake, and I think it's one that the Russians now repent deeply. And on Kalarisian, thank you for that super sticker. Sparky says Prasinski had such a hatred of Russia that he provoked the invasion of Afghanistan. Then, had the gall to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics, had two teammates who missed those Olympics.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I remember it well. I mean, he did have a complex about Russia. At the very end of his life, he was beginning to rethink him, by the way. But by then, of course, it was too late. Nick, thank you for that super sticker. Anna, thank you for that super sticker. Elza says, imagine the better world if Western leaders will listen to the Duran. Thank you, you are the best 100% confirmed. Thank you. Thank you. Sparky says when I was in the US Army in the 1980s, we didn't hate Russia, at least us enlisted men. We wanted to rescue them from communism.

Absolutely. And I thought at the time I was naive enough during the Cold War to believe it was all about communism. That was what I thought it was all about. Yeah. Tabernak said, Helas would speak Persian today if Xerxes hadn't sent the best of his army straight into the teeth of the phalanx. Sudo-Vican line is the modern-day equivalent. True enough. Interesting. Bruma Jem says,

how can you explain the irrational hatred of Russia? Could it be possible that the same world leaders are on video at Epstein's Island or some other blackmail scenario? Well, I mean, I think Professor Sacks pointed out that this hatred of Russia has very, very deep roots. And in certain Britain, I mean, it's, the extent of which it dominates political discourse is unhealthy.

I mean, well, that's an understatement, actually. It's morbid. Yeah, dangerous. Don't rule out money either. A lot of people want the resources and money of Russia. Anyway, Christian, thank for that super sticker. And Orlando says, great work. And one more, Alexander on Odyssey.

from EU tech health question, is Trump part of the Rothschild or Sydney globalization, or you think he is not really in the club? He's not really in the club. I mean, if he had been a member of the club, he would have been treated completely differently. I mean, the fact that he's the subject, the target, firstly, of a completely ludicrous hoax story that he was, you know, the Siberian candidate and all that. And then when that's discredited, He's now the target of a whole new series of equally ludicrous, in my opinion, lawfare case. That tells you quite straightforwardly. He's not a member of the club.

All right. Let's end it there because I've got to prepare for another stream. We've got to prepare for another stream. I've got to get everything up with Garland Nixon. Thank you once again to Professor Jeffrey Sachs. I have all of his information. The description of the box down below, and I will add it as a comment as well. Thank you to everyone that watched us on this live stream.

Thank you very much to our moderators. Take care. See you soon. See you soon.