The Ricochet Podcast - No Fly Zone

Episode Date: March 11, 2022

Though James-less once more, the founders are back with yet another fascinating discussion about the dizzying crisis in Eastern Europe. With us from his home in Budapest is John O’Sullivan, former advisor to Margaret Thatcher, to discuss the reignited Cold War. He gives us the mood in Hungary, considers the longevity of the West’s newfound resolve, and elaborates on the NATO debate. Source

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Innovate. The IT solutions people. Yeah, the problem is by 20 past, Rob and I will have solved everything. Yeah, it'll be all over. I have a dream this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. In fact, when I spoke to President Zelensky, I said, Billie Jean King sends you her regards and wants to know how she can help. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. This is the Ricochet Podcast. James Lylek is off this week. We have a long Ukrainian conversation with John O'Sullivan. Stay tuned. I can hear you! Hello and welcome to Ricochet Podcast number 584. Unbelievable. podcast number 584 unbelievable oh man uh and i never thought this is a you know here this is our is it our it's our second wartime well i'm not not really trying to think not quite our second war how many wars have we started we uh we podcasted um uh i'm rob long uh co-founder of ricochet i'm here in new york city join me as always as Peter Robinson in Palo Alto, California. Peter Robinson, how are you?

I'm fine, Rob. I want to know some... James is away. James is away. Mysteriously away. I don't know if I even know officially where James is this week. I think he's taking... It's spring break and I think he's taking his daughter on a trip. Right. Well, I'm sure we'll hear all about it um so we're in the middle later on we are view we are being joined by our old friend my old editor john o'sullivan who a former editor-in-chief of national review magazine now a resident denizen citizen of of the middle Europe, of central Europe, in Budapest, Hungary. I visited him and his lovely wife and was there many times. We're going to get a perspective on that and what's happening in Ukraine.

But first, what were you going to say? I want to ask you a few questions. James is away. Okay. It's you and me. Yeah. And I've been trying to spin up a couple of writing projects, and I thought to myself, you know, the person I know well, who in all my circle of friends, who as best I can tell, is just the best at compartmentalizing, at shifting from task to task to task, is my friend Rob Long. You hit your deadline for National Review every year for going on

three decades now. You've got a column in commentary. You do this podcast. There are background calls people won't appreciate. And actually, I don't want to burden anybody with it, but there are a lot of phone calls that take place in the background to keep Ricochet up and running. And you're always, not all, yeah, you're pitching show ideas. You're feeding Hollywood. That is just a lot to keep going. How do you... I mean, truly going how do you i mean i do everything at a if you do everything at a c minus level you have time if you throw out quality okay look you know we have a pot we have a deprecation at the moment we have a meditation app that is actually very helpful um that kind of you know in between things but really ultimately it isn't really there's no way to do it the answer

is the answer is no i don't hit my deadlines if john poritz was on here he would be um not even laughing i mean it's not even this funny thing where you roll your eyes and you say oh you incorrigible you it's angry i mean legitimately legitimately anger at at my inability to meet the deadline um which i'm trying to correct it's a but i'm also trying to figure out how to do things more efficiently because if you have small little writing projects to do every day or every week yes they will take entirely the entire week and you will never get ahead on anything that is simply discretionary so the stuff that i do that i really want to do you know i'm working on a play i have a script i want to write and so i'm not collaborating in any sense but you don't have zoom meetings with anybody um that stuff just gets pushed off

and it gets well wait a minute i thought you had the okay so you've correctly i'm trying succinctly identified the problem which is the old the old saw in business school is never let the urgent drive out the truly important yeah merely urgent drive out the true important and that's the problem you and i writers like us face all the time but i thought you had it figured out no no what i what i i'm moving towards right the idea that this podcast is the only appointment that i have on thursday and friday the only thing i'm going to deliver the only thing I have to talk to anybody else about. And I'm moving towards the Thursday, because I teach now on Wednesday mornings. What are you teaching? I didn't know that. Oh, yeah. I teach at NYU. I teach a class. I teach teaching 20-year-old, teaching sophomores in college, Peter. Peter, I'm hip with the youth,

don't you know? I'm down with the youth and youth culture. It's a writing class in Tisch School. I'm filling in for somebody. They asked me to do it last year, and i couldn't do it uh and then i said okay i could do it this year so i did this year it's kind of fun it's really interesting so so screenwriting or writing writing screenwriting i'd rather be teaching writing writing but screenwriting um okay uh yeah so i'm doing that and that so that that kind of breaks so i'm trying to to uh um quarantine to use the word that we love to use. I'm trying to lock down and quarantine all of the writing, the freelance writing assignments I have to Mondays and Tuesdays. Then I teach on Wednesdays.

Maybe something bleeds into Wednesday afternoon. That's okay, too. Thursday, Friday, sacred. I do not. I will not write. I will not write i will not i'm trying to actually not even respond to emails because all that stuff will take all day yes it will and if you just don't do it um and you say no to it which is really hard uh and i'm i fail at it but i'm trying um uh if you say no to it, you end up getting work done.

And so that is my Lenten, I mean, it's not a sacrifice, my Lenten commitment, which is to give up the distractions that I know are enabling the worst part of me, which is to put off the stuff I really want to do, which is probably hard and a little riskier. And instead, substitute that with some kind of, you know, it's not unproductive, but some kind of productive busyness, which really didn't need to take. I mean, I'm delivering 650 words to the Washington Exam examiner every week that's not an all-day project 650 words is not an all-day project um it can really come in all day it can become one yes right i know then you're looking up things up and oh you know and i mean yesterday for some reason yesterday i was i got angry at somebody was i mean john o'sullivan's here so we would definitely want to have him on. But I wanted to get a historical perspective.

I read some – maybe it was Prince William or somebody said, well, you know, it's so unusual to have this kind of war in Europe. We're used to it elsewhere, but not in Europe. Oh, yes, right. Like, I know he's young, right? Yes, he is where did one of his i mean i was you know look i'm not i'm not uh i was no i'm a dyspeptic conservative i was no fan of the people's princess necessarily um i thought she was kind of a loon but she was right about she campaigned against certain kind of minds i forget the kind of claymore minds of kind of minds that sounds right

that sounds right um and and she complained about she campaigned against them because they're used in yugoslavia they're used in the yugoslav wars and that was europe and that wasn't that long ago and that was a bloody horrible war 150 000 people died in that war right um right and but so i was i got i got mad about it and i looked it up and now i'm looking it up and i'm looking up everything and i'm like so how do you pronounce it srebrenica is it srebrenica where was the safe area and now i'm looking at the bosniaks and who were they and what so the the two of the armies were like really really closely named together um and that took at least two hours but you became an expert i did become an expert wikipedia expert and historical expert in in the

in the yugoslav war but all i wanted to remind myself was that it was a it was a major casualty war there are still people in prison in the hague for war crimes they were they richly deserve to be exactly there um and it happened on the doorstep not the doorstep of europe it happened inside europe and europeans and americans to be fair waited until everyone was dead and they had run out of munitions and money before we stepped in now that may have been the right thing to do strategically um as awful as that sounds but that's what we did uh so the idea that we could not turn around go oh this is so unusual it's not unusual at all it's if anything it's par for the course anyway thank god you're i feel minor impulse to stick up for bill clinton because

we did go in by air the united states did go that's true no big commitment of ground forces until the they'd run out of energy on the ground but we did go in by air anyway okay so like a lot of people like a lot of like a lot of i guess certain presidents clinton never met a small um deployment of a u.s military that he would say no to i mean there are he there are marines everywhere under Clinton. It's also useful just to go through the pattern. It's so interesting. The small anecdote, this will set up John, because John and I got to know each other when we were both speechwriters.

He was writing for Thatcher when President Reagan was being briefed on the one military action he authorized, the invasion of Grenada. And the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Jack Vesey, if I'm pronouncing it correctly, gave the whole plan to the President. And then the President asked him one summary question, tell me again how many troops and sailors are involved? And Jack Vesey named the number. And the president said, double it. If we're going to go in, we're going to go in quickly and we're going to win. And that was so different. Eisenhower,

the great general, during his eight years, we lost exactly one man to a sniper in Lebanon. Eisenhower put American troops on the ground briefly in Lebanon. And from Clinton on, presidents seem to have been very willing to engage in small-bore conflicts. I don't know whether you... Yeah, it is interesting. It's interesting to watch the pattern, sort of the area of focus, and we should get, we'll get John in here in a second. Yes, let's focus on american foreign policy right so it starts you know and reagan the you know obviously a heroic president the best president of certainly my lifetime um you know there was a you voted for him too didn't you i did not i did not i did not and what did he say when he learned

that you voted for walter mondale well you were one of the few is what he said to me in a very pleasant way he's supposed to anyway so he said to me in a very pleasant way. So he made a terrible error. They made a terrible foreign policy error in Beirut in 1983. They certainly did. And they sort of learned their lesson, kind of. And the next, I think, if I'm not mistaken, the biggest next deployment of American forces was in the, the late winter or the early, I think the late winter of,

of 1988 in Panama. It was, I don't, I think it was still vice president George W. H. W. Bush, I believe who ordered us troops into troops into panama uh and then uh and then

and then clinton and then there's a whole bunch of like a whole bunch of things there was the there was um yugoslavia and of course there was black hawk down there's somalia there's all sorts of deployments and when george w bush came in he came came in with two big foreign policy moves. One, or three, really. One, pivot to Asia. The pivot to Asia is George W., not Obama. Obama took it up, too, but every president's tried to do it. Pivot to Asia.

Benign neglect in the Middle East. That was the phrase. It was considered controversial at the time. Benign neglect. And the third one was, we don't considered controversial but nine neglect and the third third one was we don't do nation building we americans don't do nation building by september 12th that had all been turned on its head um it's just sort of interesting to watch this sort of americans kind of grapple with what what we can and cannot do in the world speaking of uh of what

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ricochet. Terms and conditions apply. We thank Outer for sponsoring the Ricochet podcast and it is in fact a joy to think of spring and that soon i'll be sitting doing these podcasts outside with a cigar the way god intended um we are joined now by john o'sullivan he is the president of the danube institute editor at large of national review that's where i met him of course and he was, editor-at-large of National Review. That's where I met him, of course, and he was the editor-in-chief of National Review.

He and his lovely wife, Melissa, have hosted me many times in Budapest, where they both sort of are the impresarios of the Danube Institute. We'll find out more about that. He is also, I mean, I don't know whether we have to, we should, we have to change your title, a commander of the Order of the British Empire.

That's right. Commander O'Sullivan is lovely to join us. And also, as we all know, advisor to Margaret Thatcher, author of The President, The Pope, and The Prime Minister, which seemed like a work of history, in which there was the triad of Reagan, Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II joining together in a very, very complicated block to destroy the Soviet Union, now seems like that's what we need now. We don't have really any of, well, we might have one of those three, and we can talk about that later. John, welcome. So, here's my question. what's the mood in budapest well it's a great

anxiety of course and that's the principal mood across central europe um all of these countries places in which tanks regularly roll through across to attack either the country itself or the country next door and um this has happened repeatedly in the particularly in two world wars and again in 56 and again against the poles in 1970 and in 68 against the uh the the checks who were ceasing to be communists and had to be brought back under control so um whenever that happens it has generally has adverse effects on the neighborhood as a whole, and that's what terrifies them. I'd say they're particularly terrified about one thing, which is they don't like talk of changing the borders of anywhere unless everyone is agreed that the borders will be changed. Otherwise, they just think it's going to lead to some further conflict down the road. But in Budapest, the president of Hungary, Viktor Orban,

has been a theoretical supporter of Putinism, I'll say, Putin-ish kind of behavior. I may be wrong, correct me. It does seem like Viktor Orban, along with certain American conservatives, have discovered that the idea of vladimir putin which seems sort of attractive in some ways is very different from the reality of vladimir putin so is that changing is the the slight tilt to putin and putinism uh changing or do i have it all wrong as usual john i think you have it all wrong. I won't add it. I'll add as usual. But you have it all wrong. The policies that Viktor Orban has pursued towards the Soviet Union are based, it seems to me,

solidly upon prudence. It's a big country next door, and obviously has, and he saw this some time ago, the rest of us see it now, it obviously has unresolved ambitions in relation to the neighborhood. And that became crystal clear, I think, in November last year, when the Russians sent the Americans, the Washington, this demand to completely rewrite the end of the Cold War, to reverse the result of the Cold War. And in fact, one of the demands, the most obvious one of causing anxiety here, of course, is that all the countries which joined NATO after 1997 would have to leave NATO. That's what they want. Now, obviously, that includes Hungary, it includes the Czech Republic, it includes Slovakia. It includes Poland.

And they joined NATO in the first place because they were frightened of the Russians. And what the Russians were demanding only last month, and that demand is still on the table, demonstrates the legitimacy and the realism of that anxiety. And what all the only big difference that Orbán makes, has made to that policy, and this brings him into slight difference with the Poles, is that the Poles are more convinced that Putin was determined to change things and more worried about that. In the case of Hungary, Hungary basically thought, well, the Poles were occupied in the 19th century by the Russians. And they were not.

I mean, this country, Austria-Hungary, this was part of Austria-Hungary. And that wasn't, in fact, occupied by the Russians and is never part of their near abroad, really. So the kind of atmosphere of let the Russians have some control of some kind over their near abroad, bad though that idea is, doesn't even apply to Hungary. So I think he thought, and I think he thought rightly in a way, the best way to deal with this was to always to be a member of NATO. He's very clear about that.

To support NATO and the EU when they reached a decision, to be part of that. Sometimes, of course, they didn't want a particular decision, but they always went along with it. And at the same time, do their best to be reasonably friendly in a diplomatic way with with and to deal with the russians and with putin well it seems to me that's although that is portrayed by his domestic opponents as being pro-putin doesn't seem to me to be anything other than what conservatives normally recommend in foreign policy namely prudence Prudence and sort of playing the hand that you're dealt. John? Yeah, Peter. Could I step back to two days before the invasion?

And I want to ask you about rights and wrongs here, because it bears on what happens next or what we should do next. And in this country, there's a debate. Well, you're well aware of this. There's always been a debate over NATO, but now that the Russians have moved in, there's a debate. Well, you're well aware of this. There's always been a debate over NATO, but now that the Russians have moved in, it's very sharp. And on the one hand, you've got the position, in my judgment, most brilliantly advocated by Stephen Kotkin, that this is Vladimir Putin's fault, that we didn't prompt them by expanding NATO, that the expansion of NATO

was necessary because of Russian history and Russian intentions. The causality ran, Russia bad, we took action to defend. The opposite view, and it really is quite sharply opposite, this is not a question of nuance, is what I'll call the Mearsheimer view. You're aware of John Mearsheimer, very distinguished political scientist, University of Chicago. We are not talking about a crank. We're talking about a very distinguished figure within the field. And he argues that Russia is Russia and political realities must be taken into account. And for a thousand years under czars and communists and now under Vladimir Putin, they have felt nervous to the point of what looks to us like paranoia about their Western flank, that the

expansion of NATO, incidentally, I found, I did an interview with Stephen Kotkin the other day, George Kennan warned about this when we expanded NATO in 1998. He was an old man, but he warned about it. Henry Kissinger, when the Russians moved on the Crimea, Henry Kissinger said that, put in print, that the West must understand that Ukraine can never be simply a foreign country to Russia. So that we sinned against prudence. We sinned against prudence and in one way or another brought this on ourselves. Now, all of this is relevant because the question now is, how firmly do we oppose the Russians in Ukraine?

But take that debate that's going on right now. Where does John O'Sullivan come down? Well, first of all, I would distinguish between the debate about were we justified in expanding NATO in relation to the period from 1989 to 2010. So when you've got people, most of the countries, but not Ukraine, as members of NATO. The Baltics joined in 2004, as I recall. That's the last big influx of members. Isn't that right? Right, but I, yes.

Hungary in 1998, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia in 2004. All right. Now, I listened to Steve Kotkinins discussions with you by the way which i thought were brilliant and generally speaking i would be on that side of the argument i would certainly be on that side of the argument and i suspect henry kissinger and others would be as well not all of them um and who who favored expanding nato to a considerable point but not to the point of Ukraine, because Ukraine is a different matter. But first of all, we must remember that we expanded NATO not because we were pushing NATO membership on Poland,

Hungary, Slovakia, and then later Romania and Bulgaria and so on. But because those countries were clamoring to come in. I mean, I covered that both as a journalist, but also because I helped to start something called the New Atlantic Initiative, which actively lobbied to try to persuade this to occur. And one of the people who was involved in that, at the outset, was Henry Kissinger. Another was Margaret Thatcher, and so on. So there was an anxiety at a certain point in the mid-1990s that somehow or other there was going to be really big problems emerging from Eastern and Central Europe. And it wasn't just, and at that point, NATO was seen as an organisation with which Russia wanted to cooperate. So the expansions of NATO, first of all, were the result of people

clamouring to get in, not NATO members forcing NATO upon them. On the contrary, you had to persuade the West Europeans, particularly, less the Brits, but to allow them in. I was taken, I mean, many a time at these conferences, somebody would put a fatherly arm around my shoulder and say, look, John, we're never going to let any of these people in. French diplomat said to me at a conference in Vilnius, which launched the Vilnius Declaration in 1998, I think, he said to me, look, at most, one of these countries is going to get into NATO. Well, in fact, they all got in. Why?

Because there was a sense that this was something that had to be done, that this was an area which had been in the past difficult and explosive, the cause of the First World War in the sense we had to bring these countries in. And secondly, that the Russians themselves at that point were not terribly opposed to this. I mean, some people made pro forma resistance. But the general idea at the time, and this is something we should consider, was the Russians thought maybe we'll be in NATO ourselves. That's certainly what Yeltsin asked for. Putin himself at a later stage said the same thing. Now, they couldn't be admitted in the

period we're talking about. There was no chance of it because, of course, the other new members of NATO were in NATO to defend themselves. So you couldn't let the fox in the hen house. Down the road, well, that was a real possibility, I thought and hoped. And it was something that some of the Russians certainly played with that idea. Why? What would have had to happen? Well, I think two things.

First of all, in order for the people in NATO, the new members to accept the Russians, they would have had to have been satisfied that they had given up their greater Russia neo-imperial ambitions. That was absolutely key. In 1991, the Russian leaders were saying, we want to be a normal country. Well, a normal country doesn't have constant designs on its neighbors. And the second thing was, so that would have, if they'd done that, then you could see down the road, not right away, but down the road, Russians coming in. Now, what might persuade them to do that? Well, I always thought, and I wrote this in some places, what would change things for the Russians would be the rise of China.

The rise of China was obviously on the cards. It's not something we only realized the other day. It's been happening steadily. And particularly, we saw it not as a threat to the West at the time, but as a threat to Russia, because it shares this long border with Russia. On one side of the border, you don't have much, and the other side, you have a self-confident, new, modernizing country. And when you look at the border, you can see very clearly which is Russia, which is China. And so you could see down the road an area of Central Asia, which is so, and the north of that, is so rich in minerals and things like timber, that would be a prize which might cause the two countries to fall out

in a big way. And when that even began to look like happening, the Russians might well see NATO as another protection. And we thought in those circumstances, it would be easier for them to give up their great power ambitions in order to achieve real security. Now, that never happened in the way that I think it might have done. But it was part of the calculation of many people. And you must remember, there were a lot of agreements which the Russians themselves signed with NATO. They did sign a treaty, a kind of semi-alliance. And it was the repository of hopes rather than real commitments at that time. But nonetheless, it was real enough. And in the

optimistic spirit of those times, it was possible to think of what I was just describing, namely NATO becoming something like a more powerful OS, an organization of security and cooperation in Europe, but with real weapons, real armies and nuclear weapons. And in those circumstances, things would be very different. Now, that's all gone wrong. And Ukraine has since become independent. And that independence was initially something that the Russians were, I don't suppose they were overjoyed with. But nonetheless, they accepted it. And indeed, the Budapest Memorandum in which Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in return for guarantees from three

powers. Those three powers included Russia, as well as Britain and the United States. So it was a very different state of affairs. And I've no doubt that we on our side contributed to the deterioration. We were all, this was terra incognita. We were finding our way in a new world. But the major change, surely, was the change from Yeltsin to Putin. The change of somebody who, in a sense, had given up not only on Bolshevism and the Soviet Union, but given up on hostility to the West, which, as it turns out, Putin had not. And so...

So, John, if I... So, that brings us to the crux of the debate, really. Mearsheimer, or the Mearsheimer position, I don't want to put words in his mouth. The Mearsheimer position is they were coming in our direction. They were wriggling their way out from under a thousand years of history, and it was all going to work out, could have worked out, just as you yourself supposed. And then we began to threaten them. We made them nervous. And Kotkin says, nonsense, it was Putin. Well, I tend to, first of all, I don't despise anything that John Mearsheimer says. I think he obviously is a very important commentator on this.

I think I differ from him, but you have to concede he knows a great deal about it. His judgments have got to be examined carefully and so on. Now, the same is true of Stephen Kotkin. And since they're on opposite sides, we really have to choose between two well fortified intellectual positions. My own feeling is that Stephen Kotkin is right. And the case he makes in his discussions with you, and I would urge other people to look at them. They're very interesting. Two long sessions of about an hour and a quarter or something like that. He is making, I think, a common sense point in this way. He's saying, look, Russia started in Kiev as we originally, as we know now. It expanded consistently over centuries. And at every stage, it was terrified it was going to,

in a sense, be the subject of attack. Now, as we know, it's very foolish to attack Russia, because there's a hell of a lot of it. And as the Russians retreat from an initial success, you, the Russians, are able to organize and get back in the game and deal terrible blows to them. The two obvious cases, well, the three obvious cases being, of course, the Napoleon and Hitler. First World War is a slightly more ambiguous case because, of course, under the rule of the Bolsheviks, they sued for peace. And so the end of the war was, in a sense, not determined by a Russian victory there. Now, so you have to say, first of all, if you're a medical man,

the idea that paranoia can be dealt with by appeasing it is a mistake. The paranoid simply reinterprets your assurances and even your concessions as a more clever way of dealing death and destruction to it. And that is a common sense way of looking, I think, at what what at the claims of Russia to be always protecting itself against attack. Yes, it has been attacked from the West. And yes, it has occupied large areas of Russia, of Western Europe, sorry, of Europe as well. I give you two examples. One was Lenin's attempt to take over Poland in 1990, which was defeated. And, of course, I'm sorry, I've forgotten the second one. But the fact is you don't have to think that the Russians are, in a sense, deluded when they feel uh when they fear attack obviously a great power always feels an attack

feels attack and there's no way you can always provide absolute security against that feeling but you're going to feel under under threat if you yourself live on threats to other countries. And the Russians have again and again showed the people around them, and they're still showing this, I mean, that they don't regard them as genuinely independent. It's not just Ukraine. The Baltics themselves have the sense that if things go badly for them, the Russians will move in. There are frozen conflicts all around the borders of Russia. Russia troops, Russia intervenes frequently in these cases or gives assistance or provides what are known as peacekeeping forces, which actually serve the interests, obviously, of the Russian government more than of the two countries where its forces

are placed. And at the moment, let me just give, I think, what's the most interesting example. We think of the central, the Stans now, as being free from Russia. And yet the other day, there was a clear exercise of Russian power that essentially stabilized the position of Kazakhstan as a subordinate member of the, not the Russian Federation, but of the Eurasian body of which the Russian Federation is the real expression. So, John, I'm sorry, I have to ask one more question. Rob is quite rightly champing at the bit to get back in here. But I have to ask one more question. I really truly, you're the man who's going to make me understand this if anyone can. Russia did have a chance.

Yeltsin, the oligarchs, they thought they all experienced the joys of getting rich. There was a moment when the Duma seemed to be a truly, not in the, they weren't turning themselves into Belgium and a peaceable welfare state, but there was a moment in the 90s when the, and it looked as though the Duma really would be a decision-making body, that they were going to become a normal country. And the bit that's so hard for me to understand, and I think for Americans in general, is why, when they have, we live a wonderful way, why don't they want to live the way we live? Why don't they want to become normal? Why did Putin revert to this thousand-year-old pattern, which is just miserable for them and inflicts

misery on all their neighbors? Why? Well, first of all, there were some terrible economic disasters in the 1990s for Russia, which created enormous unrest and discontent in the population. Something, the people's savings, when you had a ruble reform, their savings became not entirely worthless, but were much reduced. It took some time for the shock therapy that the Russians voluntarily accepted upon themselves to work at all, and it still hasn't worked in any way as good as well, rather, as the situations in Poland, which has done very well, in the Czech Republic, in Hungary. All of these places are now manifestly better off, more richer societies, with a higher standard of living,

even for the poor people in them. And that did not happen for a long time in Russia. And it gave Putin and the so-called Syloviki, the securocrats, we would call them in Northern Ireland, the people who rose. And there's a very important point here, and it relates to Jean Kirkpatrick's distinction between totalitarian and authoritarian governments. When Russia, too, went democratic in 1990, people said, Jean and Poland before that, people said that Jean's distinction had proved false. And yet, what you see, I think, when you look at societies that had experienced

communism for only a short time superficially, with the Soviet Union, which had experienced it for 70 years, I think you see a distinction. The totalitarian societies, well, sorry, the authoritarian societies, I should say, they were interested, in a sense, go about recreating elites, which were communist ones or authoritarian ones, in every area of life. They were just concerned with getting, keeping power. Now, in the Soviet Union, for 70 years, you had people who thought that the Communist Party had the answer to everything. It knew the best way to produce a ballet. It knew the best way to write symphonies. It knew the best way to run an army. It knew the best way to run agriculture. Well, that was the catastrophe, of course, the running of agriculture. Russia became a country, Soviet Union became a country that imported grain rather than producing it. So the conclusion from that was, if an authoritarian company becomes democratic,

a few people go to jail, but then life goes on for the rest of the society. But in a totalitarian country, if that goes democratic, all of a sudden, what you have is a lot of headless chickens in the rest of life. And therefore, the people who really took power at the end of the day in the former Soviet Union in Russia were the KGB. This is a KGB regime. And that's now they call themselves the FSB. But that's what it is. And that's what it is across Central Asia as well, the former stands.

I mean, those are the original strongmen who built themselves palaces and statues and put their faces on the currency. And then in the case of Turkmenistan, their mother's face is on the currency. She was the mother of the country for a long time um okay so john you just did this tour dory zon from uh harbin china the old russian uh capital in china uh to uh i mean past budapest i think we were in berlin or hamburg at some point um so let's just start from on the west are do the estonians have something to worry about oh i think the the well whether they have something to worry about all the baltic states are worried they're all worried so i mean and it's i mean we we have we have operated under this i mean depending on i

mean no matter what side you're on we've been operating under this theory that well you know say this about putin he knows what he's doing canny savvy operator that's what they that's what the the democrats said about the brilliant putin because he had trump by the uh short hairs and that's what even what trump said later yeah he's a savvy operator but he manages he's managed to accomplish something that no american president could which is not only to rearm Germany, but to steal the resolve and the defensive resolve of the former satellite nations of the Soviet Union against him. I mean, how explain how he wins? Well, first of all, I don't think he's stupid.

In this case, he's because until now, most of the risks he's taken have paid off. I mean, he went into Georgia. We kicked up a fuss about it. It paid off. He went. But what he did in Georgia was essentially what he did. He did two things in Georgia. I was there in 2008.

He did essentially two things. One, he took a sliver of land that he could legitimately hold because they were Russian-speaking and they didn't really identify with the country of Georgia. And he tattooed bombs by taking off from airfields in Armenia and Russian airfields, tattooed bombs around the BTC pipeline. He didn't bomb the pipeline. He just said, look, this is what I can do. Well, guess what I'm going to do when I really want to. He chose not to do that here. Well, it was the first postmodern war, because I think you as well as I was sitting in cafes.

Well, that's that's always the case. Hang on a second. This was two days after they'd gone in. I'm sitting in Tbilisi in a cafe at one in the morning or something, having a late dinner. And 11 miles away or kilometers away, there are the Russians. And life is going on extraordinarily normally. I was kind of both relieved and shocked by by this

there's a there's a party atmosphere maybe because the russians have actually stopped and aren't still coming in but nonetheless a very odd atmosphere um now what are you arguing that um now i would argue here that that like hitler um he, he's calculated very intelligently in all these cases. He's presumed, as each action he's taken has succeeded, that he's weakened the resolve at each stage. They might do something about Georgia. We don't. They might do something about Crimea. We don't. We don't. They might do something about Crimea. We don't. And so he thinks at each stage, well, I've taken a risk

here and it's paid off. I'll take a bigger risk here and the likelihood is it will pay off. In retrospect, should we have done something in Georgia and Crimea? Well, it probably would. We should have done. In fact, I think the Americans probably would have done, except Sarkozy, who was at that time the rotating president of the European Union, nipped into Moscow before George Bush or anyone else could and did a deal which was fundamentally favorable to Putin. I mean, for example, the Russians had never carried out the terms of that deal on the ground in Georgia.

And so the Americans were, in a sense, stymied if they wanted to take a stronger line. And I'm not sure that they would, but they might have done. So are we being, you know, depending on what you read, right, this is always the problem. And I'm sure that the Russian casualties are being, I'm sure i don't have no evidence of this but i'm pretty sure i'm right the russian casualties are being overstated that the uh um ukrainian victories are being overstated um i'm sure that there are parts of ukraine where you could still sit in a cafe at one in the morning and and

maybe go about your normal life not quite the way tbilisi was in 2008 but close i guess what i'm saying is do you think that putin is and the sort of the russian decision maker makers who i think are really mostly him are surprised at this do you do you think they were aware that they had escalated beyond the stair step, the wisdom of the stair step, just a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more, and before you know it, we turn around and the frog is boiling? It seems like this is a big, big step. If you're talking about the reaction of the West, they did. But why is that? They did miscalculate. But why is that? And the answer is because nobody expected the Ukrainians to be quite as successful in delaying the Russians,

and indeed at points defeating them, and demonstrating to everybody in a way that's undeniable, even the most skilled Kremlin propagandist, that they are a real nation, that they are not a gang of drug, what he called them, drug takers and neo-Nazis. And they have come together in a way that many people, I would say possibly John Mersheimer, would not really have expected because I would have thought his view of ukraine as partly russian in itself um which is also the view of solzhenitsyn for example um would have led him to expect a lesser resistance this resistance is very strong the i'm going back to sort of the what the sort

of the takeaway in the in the war colleges when they were uh trying to sum up the failures in vietnam they came up with this adage you can't want it more than they do and so the idea is that we can't want a free ukraine more than ukrainians do and the ukrainians have shown that they want it more than anyone which is actually appropriate right it's appropriate and furthermore it makes it very difficult for us to sell them out if we choose to do so. Now, are we going to? How do we get out of this? You could say that the failure to provide either a no-fly zone or to allow

them to be given planes to defend themselves by the Poles, is a kind of a sellout. And certainly one of the things that's happened in this campaign so far is a change in deterrence doctrine. We used to say, I'm sure Peter particularly will remember this, that you couldn't attack a country which had nuclear weapons. You couldn't attack it conventionally because they had nuclear weapons. And now we're beginning to say if a country has nuclear weapons, you can't resist it either, because if you were to go in to resist it, they might use the nuclear weapons. I don't think they would, and I think this argument is false, but there's no doubt that there's been, so to speak, a new red line. one red line erased and

another one behind it painted and that red line is the uh that when you can the meaning of deterrence so let's just get let's get so we're talking about two things right two different provocations and they are um they are they are they they they they amplify as you go up. The small provocation, which I mean I'm using the term provocation from the Russian perspective, is the delivery of MiG fighter jets used vintage Russian warfare equipment from, in some strange handoff, from Poland to an airfield, then to the Ukraine. And that was,

we, we, as America decided not to do that because that would be too much of a provocation. And then the secondary provocation, which is sort of much, much more by a factor, much,

much more intense, which is the imposition of a no fly zone above Ukraine. The argument against both of those things is we don't want to escalate this war because if we escalate it it will go nuclear and you're saying they're never going to press the button not saying no one will ever press the button i am saying that if you attack if a country attacks another country and a third country employing either an alliance, not in this case, or the right of a country to request assistance under the UN Charter, which is a right and which was the basis of our intervention in Vietnam, well, you know, American intervention in Vietnam.

Who's this we? Yeah, well, that's right. I was a sympathizer with the Americans on that very strongly. So once you've, if you say to them, well, we used to say that have to, and we used to say we would intervene in this case. And now we say we can't do so because of nuclear weapons. And then they say, by the way, those arms you were sending in, well, we've tolerated that. We haven't used nuclear weapons because you're sending in arms.

But we might use nuclear weapons if you send in planes. Now, that's, I don't think, the Russian logic at all. It's the Western logic that there's more and more things we can't do if you have a sufficiently ruthless enemy. Now, if that's the case, tell me why you are so certain if you're a Lithuanian or an Estonian, why are you so certain that the West might say, well, there's just been an attack, the Russian troops have crossed the line into Estonia. And, of course, we're against that. And we are not going to do it.

We can't use nuclear weapons. And, therefore, it wouldn't make sense to send in troops to assist Lithuanians. We will make a big fuss at the UN. In other words, once you begin to tell people in advance, we'll do nothing if you do that, at that point you put the Lithuanians, the Estonians, and the Latvians more and more at risk. Now, there is an answer to that, by the way.

The answer is very simple. What you have to do now is build up the conventional forces of all these countries and plant our troops and people there in various ways so that a conventional resistance can win, not simply delay the Russian victory, which seems to be the calculation is what's that's what's going to happen now in. So, all right. So just just just so I understand, I know you have to run. It's late there.

We're eating into your cocktail hour, John. I've been with you in Budapest. You don't feel, or let me ask you, do you think that the people who say well listen a no fly zone in ukraine is world war three are they um hysterically terrified are they do they need to get uh you know to man up a little bit um are they reading the room wrong um or are they unwilling to pay the price you need to pay? So is he going to use... I mean, we know that Putin's threatened it, pretty much. Well, no, he hasn't.

We've said he's threatened it, but what he's done is he's actually issued dark threats of a King Lear kind, and I will bring such destruction on you all as you cannot imagine. He hasn't actually threatened to use nuclear weapons. We've then said, ah, he's going to use nuclear weapons. He has established until now, I think it's breaking down, he has established a kind of psychological dominance against us.

And the things we're now sensibly doing, like Europe coming together and deciding it's going to seriously resist this one way or another, is a sign that that dominance is breaking down. We're not so afraid and we're not so afraid because the Ukrainians have so far fought the Russians.

I don't say it's a standstill, but they've really demonstrated the Russian army is not something to be despised at all all but it's not something that it's not 10 feet composed of people right right so um national security advisor john o'sullivan yes um you think that we should come up with some way to give the ukrainians planes they can fly oh yes that's what that would be the thing i would now support i think that's right would you support a no-fly zone well at this point probably not because we

have this other step to to take we have a step we can take before that um and i i wouldn't support it um gladly anyway so to speak it's not something I would want to recommend. It is dangerous. But at the same time, there are many other things we can do. For example, the Russians are very extended in these, what they call them, frozen conflicts. We could certainly supply arms. They're bringing in people from Chechnya. We could certainly supply arms and help and training of various kinds to the bandits that they have repressed and suppressed there.

It's not something I'm proposing, I'm just suggesting. I see. There are weak points. Since you brought up Georgia, which I think is an interesting 2008 interesting watershed moment. All eyes are on Ukraine. Some Eastern European eyes are on Putin.

But they must also be on us and what we're doing and what resolve we have and what resolve the countries to the west have. In the same way that Japan and Taiwan are now now and i think president xi is looking and saying well look the price of taking over taiwan just got much higher not by any direct calculation but by an indirect i think back of the envelope math would suggest

that now is not the time now it's not the time and so your previous point rob that um the the chinese have got to convince themselves that they want taiwan more than the taiwanese want to deny it to them right and i would suggest that the chinese playbook will be something along the lines of what they've been doing anyway which is to simply bolster up their political arm in Taiwan and their political allies in Taiwan until maybe Taiwan votes in a party that's a reunification party and they start talks. And, you know, in 50, 60 years, it's back, which is the Chinese can wait 50, 60 years. It's only the West that thinks 50 or 60 years is a long time. So let me ask you, I don't believe this idea that the Chinese mystical long term. OK, right. I think they're like us.

You know, they want to win. All right. Fair, fair point. So there's not much we can do about Putin and there's not much we can do about the defenses of Putin. You know, again, those countries have to want it more than we do what are we what what what is this a moment what what how would you describe the moment for american leadership abroad at a time when the american people are theoretically behind ukraine but do not want another foolish war uh they certainly don't on both both parties do not want and i'm not i'm not in america first but i mean they do not want an adventure abroad the iraq war was a mistake and a disaster and they don't want to do that again um how how how should how in an ideal american uh white house

what how do you show leadership and how is this white house succeeding or failing at that well i will answer that question but i just want to make a point that okay president z How do you show leadership? And how is this White House succeeding or failing at that? Well, I will answer that question, but I just want to make a point. President Xi, it seems to me President Xi is also someone who is looking not so farsighted at the moment. You know, he's the man who's taken a very successful strategy of subverting the West by buying their goods, being friendly, and by and large, giving a false impression. And now he's faced with the fact that we're onto his game, and he's lost the ability to charm us, and therefore he's lost the ability to provide easy victories for his people. Now, I would just say that Xi is Putin's most recent mark. February 5th was a con game for him. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. And I don't think we should make the same mistake with India. I think we should say to the Indians, we recognize that your abstaining on the vote against Russia was quite a big deal for you as opposed to supporting Russia,

because the Russians have been your solid supporters for a long time. And so, you know, we're giving you a pass. That would be the way I would handle that, probably more diplomatically if I was somebody else. um and then uh now what about what should um joe biden do well of course um you know like the old irish joker i wouldn't start with joe biden if i could possibly arrange for another president to be doing it but to me you gotta dance with the president of the brungy that's the problem yeah that's right so what what we should do is this or what you and the brits and the others should do is go to europe and say look there has to be a new deal in nato uh we really has to be not only we are we don't want the um

the nato to to we don't want strategic um for Europe. We, for, yeah, strategic, I'm forgetting the phrase, but anyway, it essentially means the ability to act completely independently of the United States. We don't want that because we don't believe in it. We don't believe you'll ever spend that amount of money. We don't believe you'll ever get that amount of unity within Europe. So we want to keep NATO structures alive, but reinvigorate them. And that means we work out really much, we work with you on the kind of spending everybody is

going to be doing in defence. It's going to be more for everybody, but it's got to be distributed intelligently. And there has to be greater participation and involvement of European troops. And there has to be the ability of Europe to transport its own people. They can't always rely upon American C-34s or whatever the planes are called. So this is a serious operation. It's reinventing NATO, doing it in a way that doesn't create two potentially hostile powers. We don't want a Europe cooperating with an America. We want a NATO in which all of the powers give as much as they can, but they work on common plans and common long-term strategic plans. And finally, there has

to be, to offset the pull that the concerns for Asia now exert on American policy, there has to be a revived Atlantic politics. It's not good enough to have a revived European politics. It has to be a revived Atlantic politics, the kind of common spirit that united NATO and Europe and America in the 50s and the 60s. And it started to go wrong in the 70s. And although Reagan revived it considerably, it was, I think, somewhat superficial revival. The moment that the West had won the Cold War, the tensions and fissures between the two sides of the Atlantic began to reemerge seriously. And I think that that's something that the statesmen have got to tackle. that at the moment there are some there are serious thinking going on from Johnson, from President Macron, now it turns out from Chancellor Olaf Scholz who is by any standard saying new and important things but we... Staggering. Staggering. But will they persist? I mean, that's the key, isn't it?

You can't, you can't, when once, you know, the headlines are no longer of Russian planes destroying hospitals and cities in Ukraine, when that has stopped happening, however, whatever the outcome, we don't want that spirit to just disappear. It will not be as fiery and as outraged as it is now, but it must be a decision and not simply an emotion. John, could I ask a last question? And I'm going to flop around on this one. I'm not quite sure how to formulate it, but you'll see what I'm trying to get at. My old friend Yuri Yarim Agaev, who was a member of the Moscow Helsinki group, once said to me, you Americans are essential in Europe because you're the only ones who aren't afraid of the Russians.

Okay. So, I remember that as recently as 1986, I think it was, when Pat Buchanan sent me on some cockamamie leadership tour, I was in a then communist Budapest. And what was so striking, we traveled the country, you couldn't see a Soviet soldier anywhere. And then at two in the morning, one night, a Soviet convoy rumbled through the streets of Budapest. They were there. And they reminded people in subtle ways that they were there. So, the question is this, and it is within the living memory of Orban's parents that Hungary was an occupied country. It is in the living memory of Scholz's grandparents that the Russians leveled Berlin. The Battle of Berlin, I remember having a conversation with Sid Drell, a nuclear physicist,

and his rough estimate was that if you add up the massive artillery, the Soviet shelling of Berlin, that they dropped as much explosive power on Berlin as we dropped on Hiroshima, for example. So this question of the inner psychology, so to speak, of the reptile brain, how do we address, how do we avoid permitting them to intimidate us? If as you say, we surrender this first red line, you can't attack a nuclear power, and then we establish this new red line farther back, well,, you can't attack a nuclear power, and then we establish this new red line farther back, well, actually, you can't resist a nuclear power either.

The game is over for the next century. I mean, China may have to do this, that, and... But fundamentally, if it becomes clear that the West will not resist a nuclear power, Iran will get nukes, North Korea is only just beginning the trouble it will cause, and China will have a free hand. We can't permit it. But there is this fear which is well-based, and I think harder for Americans to understand because this country never got, aside from Pearl Harbor, of course, but the Europeans

truly remember what could go wrong, do they not? I don't think the younger generation does, no. Oh, is that so? It's actually forgotten. It is forgotten. Well, I think so. I mean, there was a period in which people in the West, and I think probably in what was then Eastern Europe, were worried of the existence of nuclear weapons that might be turned on them. But that didn't in the end happen. And so it doesn't have anything like the force of the memories that you are rightly describing.

But so my feeling would be this, that on the narrow point about our attitude to our policies towards countries with nuclear weapons, which might attack us or invade another country, which is an ally, I think that when people are not fighting, there has to be a statement, a restatement of the nuclear doctrine by the President of the United States, which makes it plain that we cannot accept the idea that a country with nuclear weapons can simply rampage and we will do nothing about it. We will, in fact, resist. And that may sound bloodthirsty to some people, and many conservatives are very hostile to this kind of argument at the moment.

I realize that. I don't dismiss their concerns, obviously. No sensible person wants the risk of a nuclear war. But the risk of a nuclear war is there always, and it's probably more of a risk, more of a dangerous risk, if the other side thinks you'll do nothing, because the time will come, if he thinks that, he'll go so far that you do something.

And that point, there may be, you'll be in a weak position and he may decide to risk using nuclear weapons. So I do not dismiss that. But we have to establish that deterrence means deterrence. And deterrence in this case is that nuclear power can deter a power from using nuclear weapons. The possession of nuclear weapons does not mean the right to rampage, to invade and conventionally destroy another country. So that would be my view. Now, I also think, though, that the fear of the, by the way, I should say that the siege of Budapest was every bit as terrible as the siege of the destruction of Berlin and before that of Stalingrad and so on. People outside Hungary do not always appreciate that, but it does have deep memories. And that explains, I think, in considerable

measure, the fact that, you know, Viktor Orban's current most frequently repeated remark is, we are determined to protect the Hungarian people and the Hungarian economy. That's our policy. So, you know, that's something to be remembered. And I would say that he's expressing the view of not only the Poles, but also the Slovakians and the Czechs and so on. Now, does that mean we have no positive policy? I think not. I mean, first of all, we don't know what's going to happen in Russia. The Ukrainians may, I think, already have really inflicted a terrible wound on Russia. The Russians don't realize that yet, but frankly, with 16 days into a war, which was supposed blow and bomb their way to an end in which there's no organized fighting against them. But it will soon, if that happens, revive.

So they have to consider seriously how they can leave this conflict without looking like a bloodthirsty monster who failed. And that's the big danger for them. They are facing a real crisis here. And the easiest way for them to deal with it would be to dispatch Vladimir Putin and put the blame on him. But the longer the war goes on, the more difficult that will be. And I think that's why at the moment we should, one of the things we should do is we should not become anti-Russian as such. It's very foolish to tell the Russians we regard them as genocidal maniacs. We don't. We regard them as people who are being misled in a massive way. And I, for one, think that when all the facts are known, they will repent in a very, very serious way. I think that's what the Russians are like. They're not

ill-natured people. They have great flaws, as all nations do, but they're not people who want to simply destroy everything in their path. Right. John, thank you. That was a tour de force, and I can't thank you enough. It was really, really fascinating. And it makes me eager to get back to Budapest to see you. Oh, well, gentlemen, there's always a warm welcome for you. And I have to say, it is a warm, it's a fantastic city. It's gorgeous, but it also is super atmospheric.

I mean, if you're walking across a rainy night and a tram goes by, good Lord, you feel like Joseph Cotton in The Third Man. And also when it's sunny, there are a few places more beautiful, to stand on the Margaret Street Bridge and look at the Parliament on the left side of the river. It's extraordinary. You can eat well, you can drink well. There's hipster bars, there's beautiful restaurants. It's quite a place.

And thank you. So when are you coming back to New York? Because if we know your date, then maybe what I can do is I can promise to buy you a nice dinner and some drinks and we'll have a Ricochet member meetup, and you can give us the in-person voice from the front, or the near front, or we hope it isn't the front, but the next front. I don't know when. Oh, my wife shouts all the time.

Right, right, right. Well, maybe we won't wait until then. In that case, we'll see you this summer and i'm going to try and get over to the various coasts of america too okay yes please yes please thanks john all the best goodbye bye-bye uh yeah that was fantastic i mean i know he's did it was one of those things where you you um you know it's like kind of the benefit of being in the Ricochet community. You think to yourself, okay, who do we know?

Who knows something? Who's there? And it's O'Sullivan, who pops up like, if I didn't know for a fact he wasn't, I would absolutely be convinced he's the most venerable spy in MI6. If I didn't know for a fact, he was not. But I do want to get together with him. You know that for a fact. I think I know that for a fact. I do think that would be great.

I wish he was coming sooner. But we'll definitely do it in August. But there's got to be some way to... Because look, maybe we should do No Dumb Questions with him soon. If you are a member of Ricochet, you'll know what I'm talking about. And if um if you are a member of ricochet you'll know what i'm talking about and if you're not a member of ricochet you may know what i'm talking about but the way to join these things is to become a member of ricochet we've got upcoming events we've got new features it is a great time to join for instance um next week historian author friend of ricochet podcast and a longtime friend of ours victor davis hansen

he is a guest for a no dumb questions where that where that is sort of a free-for-all conversation between somebody and somebody else that you might want to listen in on, and you can ask questions, you can join in on that conversation. The idea of No Dumb Questions being, any question's okay. The dumber the better, everything's on the table. And this is going to be a no dumb questions between victor davis hansen and our all other old friend former national review publisher jack fowler who is this is a perfect perfect um uh pairing uh that is tuesday march 15th 7 p.m

eastern 4 p.m pacific bring your best questions but only if you're a member so if you're not a member this is a perfect time for you to join uh as you know, Victor is sort of a... I think, you know, I'm just going to listen in because I think Victor is going to provide slightly different, I think, a slightly different analysis from John's. I don't know, but it'll be interesting about Victor in Ukraine. But that's just one of the events and gatherings we have there are a lot more here's another one to keep in mind march 30th this is an irl one i believe very strongly peter in these irl meetings in real life because i personally think that covet is over former wisconsin governor scott walker is going to join ricochet editor bethany mandel and andrew gutman they are doing a podcast called take back our schools and they're going to record a live one scott walker at the young america's foundation headquarters in rest of

virginia which is just outside of dc great march 30 uh if you're in the area even if you're not in the area come in if you're a member we want to see you there these are just you know this is next two weeks it's going to be sort of busy also we have our new call-in show on the call-in app the nightcap with john gabriel um you can get the call-in app, the Nightcap with John Gabriel. You can get the call-in app. It's on iOS and Android. And eventually, it'll be integrated onto the site itself for members. And so join the call-in show, Nightcap, every weeknight, Mondays through Thursdays, 7 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Pacific. And we're all having a competition right now for the best Nightcap cocktail recipe.

So you got to go to rickshchet.com slash nightcap for more details. And you get a cool tumbler. I mean, or double old fashion glasses, I think. Whoa, there's bling? Yeah, yeah. You get some bling. So these are all things happening in the next three, four weeks. There are more things happening in April, more things happening in May.

It has never been a better time to join Ricochet. We have two missions in life. One is to create a great community, and the second is the smaller mission, which is to say we're all getting together again in person like people. And we are going to lead the way, and we want you to join us. So, Ricochet.com, please go and join. Are we to understand that Rob Long will decide the cocktail contest no i make by mixing and sampling each and every submitted recipe i will i'm gonna chime in peter i'm not gonna i'm not gonna keep my thoughts to myself so certainly i will chime in um but no i think

that's going to be john gabriel editor-in-chief john gabriel's gonna oh john is going to decide it all right but what i have for my from what i understand i'll start sucking up to john right No, I think that's going to be John Gabriel. Editor-in-chief John Gabriel is going to decide. Oh, John is going to decide it. All right. From what I understand. I'll start sucking up to John right now because I've got a father to myself. Did you submit one? You know, I'm going to. I just found out there was a guy. I was about to call him a kid.

He's no longer a kid. But he was a kid in the Reagan White House. He was a researcher. This is my old friend, John Dannerbeck. I have a story for you, by the way. And I'm coming to that in a moment. But John Dannerbeck now lives in Arizona, and he has his own tequila. It's his business. It's what he does now. He flies down to Mexico, which is where all real tequila comes from,

I'm told. And it's, oh my goodness, now I'm blanking. I haven't tried it yet. I just learned this the other day. It's Cosmo, Cosmos Tequila. Hold on. I'm typing. I want to make sure if I'm doing it. Tequila Comos, K-O-M-O-S. And I have of late discovered the pleasures of a very simple drink. Tequila, a little bit of fresh lime juice

and we have plenty of fresh limes out here in california this these days at this point in the spring over crushed ice and you sip that for a while and you know it's fine not bad is that too simple to submit to john i don't think so at all the simple the better i mean i personally don't do the tequila i don't drink tequila or agave this is you have to have some things I don't think so at all. The simpler, the better. I mean, I personally don't do the tequila. I don't drink tequila or agave. You have to have some things you don't drink. I don't drink tequila, agave for health reasons. I don't drink vodka because I'd rather drink gin. But I think the simple ones are the best.

Also, lime juice. I mean, the reason I would never drink that, aside from the fact that I don't drink tequila, is I couldn't resist not making the most delicious daiquiri ever, which is just rum and lime juice. A little bit of sugar. So good. Any other use of lime juice is not the best and highest used. I was going to say exactly right. Right. Hey, listen, you're about to do a plug and say goodbye to everybody, but I want to tell you a very brief story.

Oh, yes. Night before last, Edith and I went to a PRI event, Pacific Research Institute. Pacific Research Institute, spectacular organization. Sally Pipes runs it. And Edith and I are milling around, having a drink, chatting with, and several people march up. Our friend Erica, how's Ricochet? And I don't know about using names here, but I'm going to.

Marianne. Marianne loves Ricochet. And Marianne comes from Minneapolis. And she tells me that in the last 500 and some episodes, she doesn't think she's missed a single episode of Ricochet. Now, that's the good news. The bad news is that she's a Minnesotan. And of the lineup, the usual lineup of Long, Robinson, and Lilacs, I'm sorry to have to break it to you that Long and Robinson are not her faves. Not that she dislikes us, but she adores James. I believe that might be. And then Mrs. Cassidy, whose first name I couldn't read because

her name tag was under her lapel mrs k so people yeah do listen rob i have to be reminded of this from time to time but people do listen well john and erica are old friends so i mean yeah those are their first names and they're old friends and they're all support long time supporters of ricochet such delightful people yeah delightful um but it's always nice i find people some you know i've run into people on the street who like say i love their podcast and then i i have to ask them which one you know because you never really know and um and sometimes they're very huffy like i the ricochet one i don't listen to the others i'm which i'm not sure which one that is um yeah now look like uh 500 you do

something 584 times you know maybe you're either really good at it or you're really bad at it, but in either case, you've done it. You're not going to stop. But speaking of stopping, we probably should stop now. This has been a long one, but I think a really good one. I'm really pleased that we could connect with John because the dose of sanity he gives you is always nice

and from an incredibly experienced perspective. I should say that on March, I forgot to mention that March 16. I thought you'd never get to it. Yeah, that is the call-in show that you want to go to. So download the call-in app on iPhone or Android. Spelled? Call-in, C-A-L-L-I-N.

Call in all one word as an, you know, and, and get seven o'clock Eastern, four o'clock Pacific, John Gabriel's nightcap. His two guests will be our own Peter Robinson and David Sachs, who actually is the impresario CEO or whatever behind Colin founder, founder, among other things. He's, he's, he things. At this point, this is his third big invention. David is a genius, but don't tell him I said so. He doesn't need to encourage me. I don't think he needs that. But he also speaks very well about California politics.

He's very involved in California politics. And that is the day, on March 16, when the winner of the nightcap uh contest will be announced so there's there's all the more reason to join us on colin um and tumblers are the prize there really is a prize they are i think they're double i think double old-fashioned so they're not the tall tall okay okay you know they're rocks classes which i think is slight slightly more ricochet anyway of course um and I think we should wrap, Peter. Have a good weekend. I think so.

I think so. James knows how to get out. You and I are enjoying this. We'll just natter away until lunchtime. I'll be here all day. Exactly right. All right. Okay, so before we do wrap, I got to say, Peter,

that this podcast was brought to you by our new sponsor, Outer. That's the outdoor furniture. It sounds fantastic. Please support them for supporting uh and join ricochet today please take a minute to leave a five-star review on apple podcast that does actually really work and help us it allows new listeners to discover us helps us keep the show going and of course join ricochet and we will see you in the comments next week rob next week take care There's a growing feeling of hysteria Conditioned to respond to all the threats

And the rhetorical speeches of the Soviet Mr. Khrushchev said we will bury you I don't subscribe to this point of view Be such an ignorant thing to do If the Russians love their children too How can I save my little boy From Oppenheimer's deadly toy There is no monopoly of common sense

On either side of the political fence we share the same biology regardless of ideology believe me when I say to you I hope the Russians love

their children too There is no historical precedent To put the words in the mouth of the president There's no such thing as a winnable war It's a lie we don't believe anymore We share the same biology Regardless of ideology And what might save us, me and you Is that the Russians love their children too.

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