0:02 There's a lie the Germans started

0:03 telling after Russia invaded Ukraine. It

0:05 goes something like this. We Germans

0:08 because of the legacy of politique

0:10 naively put our faith in the precepts of

0:12 liberal IR theory which states that the

0:14 more countries do business with each

0:16 other the less likely they are to go to

0:17 war with each other. And it was because

0:19 of that faith that Germany intertwined

0:20 its industrial sector with Russian

0:22 natural resources in the hopes that it

0:24 would deter Russia from getting

0:25 aggressive with Europe. Sure, it would

0:27 make Germany more dependent on Russian

0:29 gas, but it would also make Russia more

0:30 dependent on Germany for hard currency.

0:33 There's one problem, though. The

0:34 Nordstream pipelines weren't built to

0:36 increase Germany and Russia's

0:37 interdependency. You see, the pipelines

0:40 weren't actually built to increase the

0:41 volume of gas going from Russia to

0:43 Germany. Physical capacity had never

0:45 been the constraint. Rather, the Baltic

0:47 Sea pipelines were designed to be a

0:50 replacement rather than an addition to

0:51 the network of already existing

0:53 overground pipelines. Because those

0:56 overground pipelines travel over Ukraine

0:58 and Poland. And since around 2004 when

1:00 Yuschenko became president of Ukraine,

1:02 Putin has throttled gas deliveries

1:04 through those pipelines as a political

1:05 tool, which in turn cuts off Western

1:07 Europe. The Nordstream pipelines are

1:09 there so that the German economy doesn't

1:11 get hurt when Russia gets into a

1:12 political dispute with Ukraine or

1:14 Poland. That's not an increase in

1:16 interdependence between Germany and

1:17 Russia. It's a decrease in

1:19 interdependence between Germany and

1:20 Russia on one side and Poland and

1:22 Ukraine on the other. If you go by the

1:24 theory of naive liberalism about how

1:26 trade reduces the risk of war,

1:29 theoretically what the Germans would be

1:30 doing is making a Russian invasion of

1:32 Ukraine more likely. That's why the

1:34 countries of Eastern Europe complained

1:36 so bitterly about the Nordstream

1:37 pipeline. It wasn't that the Germans

1:39 were naive liberals and the Eastern

1:40 Europeans were hard-nosed realists.

1:42 Rather, the Eastern Europeans saw it as

1:44 the Germans intentionally making a war

1:46 more likely according to their shared

1:48 liberal IR precepts, which is exactly

1:52 what the Germans were doing knowingly.

1:54 They just did it anyway because they

1:56 wanted the money. And it's easy to take

1:58 calculated risks with someone else's

2:00 country. The importance of that pipeline

2:02 wasn't that it made Germany vulnerable

2:04 to Russian economic warfare. The

2:06 importance was that it sent the signal

2:07 to Russia that Germany was ready and

2:09 willing to sell the Ukrainians out in

2:11 case of war. And that goes straight to

2:13 what the war in Ukraine is about. The

2:15 West and even the Ukrainian themselves

2:17 to some extent didn't take the job of

2:19 deterring a full-blown Russian invasion

2:21 seriously because they thought Putin

2:23 must have known somewhere deep inside

2:25 that Ukraine was a real country and that

2:27 a war to invade a country of 40 million

2:29 people could be made unwinable with

2:31 minimal effort. But the Russians don't

2:34 think Ukraine is a real country. So

2:36 unless the West pulled out all the stops

2:38 to intervene, they assumed Ukraine would

2:40 just fall over like a house of cards.

2:42 Deterring Russia would have required

2:44 something extreme, and no one wanted to

2:46 make that commitment.

2:47 The president is expected to warn

2:49 President Putin there will be real costs

2:52 if Russia invades Ukraine. We have made

2:54 clear to Moscow that we will respond

2:57 resolutely uh including with a range of

3:00 what we have called high impact economic

3:03 measures uh that we've refrained from

3:04 using in the past.

3:07 So Russia invaded Ukraine.

3:14 It started before dawn. Ukraine woke to

3:17 explosions around the capital K. The

3:19 monthsl long buildup of Russian troops

3:20 on the border with Ukraine has turned

3:23 now into an invasion.

3:29 But then a weird thing happened. To

3:30 understand it though, you have to

3:32 understand Russia's war goals. When

3:34 Russia first invaded Ukraine, they were

3:36 hoping to overthrow the government and

3:37 replace it with one that would be more

3:39 Luca Shenkoan, an action which the

3:42 Kremlin thought would be greeted with

3:43 either cheers or at least indifference

3:45 from regular Ukrainian citizens. When it

3:48 was clear that couldn't happen, what

3:50 then was Russia fighting for? Well, when

3:53 they're asked, they don't really give

3:55 straight answers.

4:04 They can't give a straight answer, of

4:06 course, because the real answer is just

4:08 too humiliating. If they were to just

4:10 cut their losses and withdraw back to

4:12 the February 22nd line, the Americans

4:16 would laugh at them. And clearly sending

4:18 hundreds of thousands of kids to their

4:19 death is preferable to that. But when

4:22 you're only fighting to save face, you

4:24 can do things like pretend you never

4:26 intended to sack the capital at all.

4:28 That losing the entirety of your special

4:30 forces behind enemy lines in a suburban

4:32 airport parking lot was just a masterful

4:35 gambit to distract everyone from the

4:37 real prize. Slovian's chromatoursque,

4:42 which they also still can't take.

4:44 Normally, this kind of ass covering

4:46 would not work. But in this case, in

4:48 this specific war, Russia found a

4:50 co-conspirator in its desire to push

4:52 this narrative. Ukraine. The Ukrainians

4:55 of course know exactly what they've been

4:56 fighting for. And it was at that moment

4:58 when Russia's attack on the capital

5:00 collapsed that they saw their ultimate

5:02 prize, the chance to roll back the clock

5:04 all the way to 2014. So when Russia

5:07 started saying that actually so long as

5:09 they didn't lose all the territory they

5:11 had won in the first few days of the

5:12 war, they were still winning the war,

5:14 Ukrainians were eager to agree that so

5:16 long as Russia still had a foothold in

5:18 Ukraine, it would still constitute a

5:20 Russian victory and therefore Russia

5:22 would come out of any compromise

5:23 emboldened to launch further attacks on

5:25 Ukraine and even other parts of Europe.

5:27 So hint hint, the West better send more

5:30 aid. This is not to say the Ukrainians

5:32 are wrong. At the end of the day, the

5:34 perception of power is power. If

5:36 everyone goes with the narrative that

5:37 Russia won, Russia will be emboldened to

5:40 do more stupid [ __ ] And for a while, it

5:42 didn't seem to matter. Ukraine seemed

5:44 poised to win outright.

5:45 Moving overseas, and Ukrainian troops

5:47 are making major gains in the country's

5:49 south and northeast, putting Russian

5:51 forces on the back foot.

5:52 Tonight, Ukraine is on the offensive and

5:54 quickly gaining ground, reclaiming the

5:56 largest swath of Russian controlled

5:58 territory since April.

5:59 But after the first few victories, a new

6:02 problem started to crop up. By winning,

6:04 Ukraine was whittling away its

6:05 opportunities to well, win. What was

6:08 working to Ukraine's advantage was that

6:09 the Russians were overstretched. The

6:11 Russians lost control of 7% of Ukrainian

6:14 territory, about 16,000 square miles,

6:17 and were forced back to the east side of

6:18 the Deniper River. But by being pushed

6:20 back across the river, the Russians

6:22 suddenly had 300 fewer kilm it needed to

6:24 defend and 16,000 square miles it no

6:28 longer needed to occupy. For any further

6:30 offensive, the Ukrainians would be

6:31 increasingly pushing a boulder uphill.

6:34 But conversely, Russia's in no position

6:36 to take advantage and strike back

6:38 because Russia is fighting a war of

6:39 conquest. It can't advance without

6:41 committing more troops and resources

6:43 behind the line in order to manage its

6:45 occupation, which is why since 2022,

6:48 Russia has launched its offensive almost

6:50 exclusively through barren fields and

6:52 small towns. Every advance mobilizes

6:55 more Ukrainians to fight because more

6:57 territorial defense units get activated

6:59 and Ukrainians in the West get more

7:01 nervous about the general outcome of the

7:03 war and are willing to take on more

7:05 risk. Even with America out of the war,

7:07 Russia just doesn't have the tools to

7:09 capture a city of a million like

7:10 Zaparisia, let alone hold it, even

7:12 though on paper it's already been

7:14 annexed to Russia. This combination of

7:16 forces just kind of lends itself to a

7:18 stalemate. The battle line is settled on

7:21 an equilibrium point where Russia and

7:22 Ukraine are equally matched.

7:24 This war has now become a war of

7:27 attrition uh where the Ukrainians are um

7:32 uh

7:34 paying a high price.

7:35 The Midwit interpretation of this

7:37 situation is that Russia has to win such

7:39 a war of attrition because it's bigger

7:41 and has more stuff. So obviously Ukraine

7:44 will run out first. But there are good

7:46 reasons to think a war of attrition

7:47 actually favors Ukraine. Ukraine is

7:50 fighting a defensive war which means it

7:51 loses material and men at a much lower

7:54 rate and it can more easily mobilize its

7:56 economy to total war since there's much

7:57 less internal dissension compared to

7:59 Moscow. Ukraine isn't already mobilizing

8:02 now because it doesn't have to because

8:03 Russia is also afraid of throwing in too

8:05 many resources. So while Russia's

8:07 cheering section in the media is sure

8:09 Russia will win a war of attrition, the

8:11 Russian Ministry of Defense is a lot

8:13 less confident. So, Russia tried to make

8:15 up for what it couldn't get on the

8:16 battlefield by using psychological

8:18 pressure. By which I mean, of course,

8:20 killing random civilians.

8:24 New burst of grief in Ukraine's

8:25 increasingly under fire capital.

8:27 Relatives mourn not at gravesides, but

8:30 by the newly covered bodies of the dead.

8:32 A 9-year-old girl, her mother, and

8:34 another woman killed on Children's Day.

8:36 And well, it works. Constant daily drone

8:38 attacks take a hell of a toll on

8:40 people's sanity. Ukrainians started to

8:42 doubt that they could make it through

8:43 the war without losing it long enough to

8:45 win a war of attrition, even while the

8:47 line stood perfectly firm on the

8:48 battlefield. So, Ukraine increasingly,

8:51 desperately started looking to the

8:52 Americans, not just to give them the

8:54 tools to survive, but the tools to roll

8:56 back the Russian occupation in Toto and

8:58 quickly. But the Pentagon was sort of at

9:00 a loss for how to provide that.

9:02 In terms of uh our their ability to win,

9:06 uh the first step in winning is

9:08 believing that you can win. You see,

9:10 here's the thing. At the risk of making

9:12 sweeping generalizations about a subject

9:14 about which I have no real world

9:16 experience, as far as I can tell, the

9:18 American Army doesn't really have a

9:20 ground war doctrine. On paper, it has a

9:22 ground war doctrine, but in practice,

9:25 America's ground war doctrine is thanks

9:27 to the global coalition, including all

9:29 of you here today, and to our other

9:32 partners.

9:33 Together with our partners, America is

9:34 training and equipping the Syrian

9:36 opposition to be a counterweight.

9:38 together with our partners with our

9:40 partners our partners our partners our

9:42 partners with our partners

9:43 find someone else to be the ground troop

9:45 so America can stick to closeair support

9:47 and logistics this means the US has

9:49 plenty of small arms and plenty of ultra

9:52 high-tech super weapons but very little

9:54 of the meat and potatoes in between but

9:56 that middling type of equipment the

9:58 self-propelled artillery the counter

10:00 battery radars the [music] short-range

10:02 ballistic missiles are exactly what

10:03 Ukraine needs and it's not like there

10:05 are factories around just waiting to

10:07 pump out more of them. So, the Pentagon

10:09 is nervous about giving away too much.

10:11 The advanced weapons can't be sent

10:13 because America wants to protect its

10:15 tech secrets and America didn't want to

10:17 send longrange missiles for fear of

10:18 triggering a Russian retaliation against

10:20 NATO. And I suspect the White House

10:23 thought Ukraine would be capable of

10:25 developing their own long-range weapon

10:26 systems that would let them off the

10:28 hook. Altogether, NATO was basically

10:30 betting on a strategy of bleeding the

10:32 Russians dry with defensive tactics

10:34 until Putin gives up. a perfectly

10:36 rational strategy so long as you ignore

10:38 the human cost to Ukraine. Trapped

10:40 between the pressure to end the war

10:42 created by Russian terror bombings and

10:44 the inability of America to win the war

10:46 for him, Zalinsky turned to a longshot

10:48 strategy to maintain the narrative

10:50 momentum of the war. He was going to

10:51 have to launch another daring offensive.

10:58 But where to do it? The lowhanging fruit

11:00 had already been picked. There were

11:02 really only two areas in Ukraine where

11:03 an assault would be plausible. the Don

11:05 Boss where Russia was throwing the mass

11:07 of its troops in an ongoing offensive or

11:10 the south [music] behind which lied the

11:11 land bridge that connected Crimea to the

11:13 rest of Ukraine and by extension

11:15 Russia's most important supply line. The

11:17 Ukrainians decided to hit the south. It

11:19 was the most obvious place to hit. The

11:21 Russians had their troops concentrated

11:23 elsewhere. The land is flat and the

11:24 territory is of vital importance. The

11:27 problem though is that the south was the

11:29 most obvious place to hit. The Russians

11:31 had their troops concentrated elsewhere.

11:33 The land is flat and the territory is of

11:34 vital importance, which means the

11:36 Russians were expecting to be hit there.

11:38 So the second the Russians retreated

11:39 across the river, they started building

11:41 line after line of defensive earthworks.

11:44 The more time they had to prepare, the

11:45 thicker the defenses got, which meant

11:47 for any assault, time would be of the

11:49 essence. But up to that point, the

11:50 Americans hadn't been training the

11:52 Ukrainians on quote unquote offensive

11:54 weapons. Doing it now would take months,

11:57 giving the Russians lots of time. But

11:59 with no better ideas to go on, Ukraine

12:01 began preparations for an offensive in

12:03 the spring. In the meantime, a quiet

12:04 bureaucratic fight started to break out

12:06 inside the Ukrainian military between

12:08 the commander and chief of the Ukrainian

12:10 armed forces, Valerie Jalusni, and the

12:12 commander of the ground forces,

12:14 Alexander Cerski. While Zillni was in

12:16 charge of the overall war effort, Cerski

12:18 was in charge of the Donbos front.

12:21 Cerski became convinced that with enough

12:23 extra troops, he could route the Russian

12:25 mercenaries of Vagner group in the

12:26 eastern town of Bachmann and push deep

12:28 into occupied Luhansk. But Zelusni had

12:31 already committed himself to a plan to

12:32 push south with only a small

12:34 diversionary attack in the east.

12:35 Reserving all of his new, specially

12:37 trained by the American recruits for the

12:39 main front. But when spring finally

12:41 came, nothing. The Americans were late

12:45 with some of the aid. And Zilinsky

12:46 didn't want to risk putting the army in

12:48 the position of fighting the first half

12:49 of the battle only to be left

12:51 empty-handed during the second half, so

12:53 he waited again against the wishes of

12:56 his commanders and the Americans. It was

12:59 at this point allegedly that Cerski went

13:01 behind his superiors back to Zilinski

13:03 and personally promised him that

13:05 Bachmoot could be a big showy victory.

13:08 that Vagner was on the cusp of breaking

13:10 and if he Cerski were just given some of

13:12 those specially trained American troops,

13:14 he could lead a breakthrough behind the

13:15 lines into Luhans province and route the

13:18 Russians on the entire east. Given the

13:20 delay, Zalinsky was probably losing

13:22 confidence in the original offensive

13:24 plan. But not wanting the bad PR of

13:26 calling it off, he chose the worst of

13:28 both worlds. He split his forces up and

13:30 gave a third of them to Cerski for his

13:32 Bakmood offensive. Instead of trying for

13:35 a defeat in detail, the Ukrainians would

13:37 fight under manned on two different

13:38 fronts. But for a second, it seemed to

13:41 work.

13:47 The mercenary company in charge of

13:48 defending Bakmoot, the Vagner group,

13:50 took such bad losses that its leader, if

13:53 Pragoian, began threatening other

13:55 ministers of the government and

13:56 implicitly even Putin himself,

13:58 culminating in Pragoian's decidedly

14:01 silly decision of trying to overthrow

14:03 the Russian government. Hours earlier,

14:05 Vagna forces seized the city of Rosa

14:08 Vondon on Russia's southern border

14:11 and then calling it off when he got

14:12 halfway there and pretending it was just

14:14 a sort of couplike performance art

14:17 protest.

14:18 By nightfall, Vagnner forces appeared to

14:20 be making good on their word to

14:22 withdraw. The Kremlin was also making

14:26 peace, saying Praggoian will no longer

14:29 face criminal charges and instead will

14:32 relocate to next door Bellarus.

14:35 The missile that shot down his plane and

14:36 killed him, however, did not stop

14:38 halfway. Russia's political system

14:40 remained stable, and Sirki's legacy

14:42 would seem to primarily be memes about

14:45 Pragotion.

14:49 With the hope of Russian political

14:51 instability saving the day dashed and

14:53 the main offensive force too under man

14:55 to break through, the offensive

14:56 sputtered to a halt on both fronts. The

14:59 failed offensive was not a particularly

15:01 big disaster when it came to the actual

15:03 balance of forces on the battlefield,

15:05 but it had a catastrophic effect on

15:06 Western public opinion. [music] Within a

15:08 month, support for aid to Ukraine

15:10 dropped 13 points and opposition rose 12

15:12 points, almost reaching a majority. All

15:14 the people who had tacidly supported

15:16 Russia before the invasion, but who

15:18 during the war had to keep their heads

15:20 down after the slaughter started,

15:21 suddenly started feeling safe popping

15:23 their heads back up again to start

15:24 spreading defeatism. And the foreign

15:26 policy blob in Washington, whose first

15:28 instinct is always towards power

15:30 worship, started nattering about how

15:32 Ukrainians need to be more realistic and

15:35 start thinking about compromises. This

15:37 damage to American resolve was then

15:39 compounded by Zalinski's need to explain

15:41 away the failure of the offensive to his

15:43 own people, which Zilinski did by

15:45 blaming the West, since, after all, the

15:47 West had been late with the aid and had

15:49 been dragging their feet on the aid the

15:51 entire war. But that sent the message to

15:54 Ukraine's tryhard cheerleaders in the

15:56 West that they should start ringing the

15:57 alarm bells about America betraying the

15:59 Ukrainians by withholding this or that

16:01 wonder weapon. a given type of equipment

16:03 would be paradigm shifting right up

16:05 until the point that the West delivered

16:07 it at which point just coincidentally it

16:09 would suddenly be too late for that

16:10 equipment to make a difference [music]

16:12 when in reality such equipment would

16:14 only have a marginal impact on the

16:16 course of the war. This game of two-step

16:18 is a perfect way to squeeze more aid out

16:20 of a hyper cautious White House. But it

16:22 also involved a lot of cycling between

16:24 false promises the war would be turned

16:26 around and false threats that the front

16:28 would collapse soon without the new

16:29 weapons. If this campaign to shift blame

16:32 to the White House had simply made the

16:33 relationship between Biden and Zalinski

16:35 frosty, it wouldn't be such a big deal.

16:38 But the focus on the catastrophic

16:40 consequences of Ukrainian collapse and

16:42 the panicky tone much of it was

16:43 delivered [music] gave the impression

16:45 that Ukraine was on the brink of giving

16:47 up. This was being done in the hope that

16:48 it would scare the West into giving up

16:50 more aid. But there's one problem, which

16:53 is that you can't control who hears you

16:55 say these things. If you broadcast the

16:57 message in the west that you don't have

16:58 the will to fight unless you get

17:00 substantially more help, you're also

17:02 broadcasting that message to the

17:03 Russians, thus bolstering their will to

17:05 fight. The second problem is that this

17:07 revival of domino theory in Europe

17:09 didn't convince Americans of the

17:10 necessity of bolstering Ukrainian aid so

17:12 much as it convinced Americans that

17:14 Europe was helpless and not carrying its

17:16 own weight. After all, why the hell

17:18 should a place as rich as Europe be so

17:20 vulnerable to a second rate power like

17:22 Russia? In 2023, it seemed every week

17:24 military analysts who had spent early

17:26 2022 predicting Ukraine would collapse

17:28 in 3 days were now assuring us with the

17:31 same confidence that Europe, or at least

17:32 the Baltics, would also easily fall to a

17:35 Russian onslaught after Russia was done

17:37 with Ukraine and that this was the

17:38 result of sort of decadent

17:40 post-historical complacency on the part

17:42 of the Europeans. In other words,

17:44 Europeans were just too gay and welfare

17:47 dependent to spend enough on their

17:49 military to deter or defeat a Russian

17:50 attack. and America is spending billions

17:53 to carry all the weight. In reality,

17:55 Europe's defenselessness is being just

17:57 slightly exaggerated. The arguments

17:59 mostly hinge on the idea that the war in

18:01 Ukraine supposedly proves that modern

18:04 war has become a nutritional slog.

18:06 Because after all, the war in Ukraine

18:08 has become a nutritional slog. And

18:10 Europe does not have large reserves of

18:12 ready or near ready fighting vehicles or

18:14 troops to break out in case of an

18:16 emergency. So, it can safely be assumed

18:18 Europe will quickly run out in a war

18:20 with Russia and fall back. The problem,

18:22 of course, is that the only reason the

18:24 war is a slo is that both sides are

18:25 fighting with last generation airplanes,

18:27 but current generation air defense

18:29 systems. Europe does not have a last

18:32 generation air force. They have a modern

18:34 air force with modern stealth

18:35 capability. They are not going to be

18:37 stopped in their tracks by a bunch of bu

18:39 launchers. And unlike Russia, Europe has

18:41 not neglected its naval power. Italy

18:44 alone has a more powerful navy than

18:46 Russia. Even a postamerican rump NATO

18:48 has a good chance of being able to

18:50 bottle up most of Russia's water-based

18:51 trade. And while Europe has been slow to

18:54 develop its industrial capacity when it

18:55 comes to helping Ukraine, that is at its

18:58 core a political decision. They're

18:59 simply prioritizing other things higher.

19:02 Europeans will suddenly find the power

19:03 in themselves to build much more quickly

19:05 once it's their ass on the line. This

19:07 European freeloader argument also

19:09 dovetailed with a new line of Russian

19:11 propaganda that had taken off in the

19:12 summer of 2023. In a June interview,

19:15 Vladimir Putin just kind of blly let it

19:17 slip that actually about a month or two

19:19 after the war started, Ukraine was just

19:21 about to sign a ceasefire deal, but then

19:23 pulled out at the last moment under

19:25 pressure from the West. And this deal

19:27 was, according to Putin, a more generous

19:29 deal than what Ukraine could get now.

19:31 You see, all Putin had really wanted was

19:33 a promise to keep Ukraine out of NATO.

19:35 He didn't really care about Ukraine's

19:37 internal affairs or even if it signed a

19:39 bilateral defense agreement so long as

19:41 it wasn't NATO. This meant, of course,

19:44 according to Vladimir Putin, Ukraine had

19:46 the option in the summer of 2022 of

19:48 ending the war right then and there with

19:50 good security guarantees and no real

19:52 obstacle to its European integration.

19:55 So, why didn't they take the deal? Well,

19:58 you see, the people who run American

20:00 foreign policy are congenitally evil and

20:03 love war for war's sake. And so they

20:05 sent their most subtle diplomat, a man

20:07 who can be trusted to always stay on

20:09 script, Boris Johnson, to convince

20:12 Silinski to walk out on the deal and

20:14 keep fighting. Needless to say, this is

20:16 not what happened. In fact, you can

20:18 pretty quickly deduce what actually led

20:19 Ukraine to say no by carefully reading

20:21 the description of the security

20:23 guarantee clause in the Russian offer.

20:25 In this formulation, Ukraine security

20:27 partner would be a consortium between

20:29 certain Western countries and the UN

20:31 Security Council with both the UNCC and

20:34 the other countries needing to agree in

20:36 order to approve an intervention in

20:37 Ukraine against any foreign assault. But

20:40 those countries would only be able to

20:41 intervene in Ukraine against foreign

20:43 aggression with the consent of the UNCC.

20:46 But Russia, of course, has a veto on the

20:48 Security Council, which means Russia was

20:50 under the guise of letting Ukraine have

20:52 a security agreement, awarding itself a

20:54 veto on any country's ability to

20:56 intervene on Ukraine's behalf if Ukraine

20:58 were to be invaded by, say,

21:00 hypothetically, you know, Russia. to

21:03 turn this into a story of the West

21:05 sabotaging a promising peace deal to

21:07 satisfy, I don't know, Jake Sullivan's

21:09 inexplicable first for blood, or even

21:11 just a story about the Ukrainians

21:13 boneheadedly turning down a pretty good

21:15 deal out of post victory exuberance.

21:17 It's perverse, but it lent itself to

21:20 something people wanted to believe, that

21:22 Russia was actually more reasonable than

21:24 it appeared, and there actually was a

21:26 sustainable ceasefire deal to be made

21:28 with the only drawbacks being national

21:30 pride. were it only so. This combination

21:34 of the failed counteroffensive, the

21:36 resentment of European helplessness, and

21:38 this new alleged proof that the war had

21:40 actually been unnecessary created a new

21:42 consensus that it was time to force

21:44 Ukraine to end the war. Whereas

21:46 Americans preferred to formulate it to

21:48 avoid feeling guilty, it was time for

21:50 America to stop forcing Ukrainians to

21:53 fight by giving them the weapons they

21:55 asked for. And that new consensus

21:57 created a perfect wayin for a more

21:59 entrepreneurial politician to pitch his

22:02 new foreign policy ideas.

22:03 I will end every single international

22:06 crisis that the current administration

22:09 has created, including the horrible war

22:12 with Russia and Ukraine, which would

22:15 have never happened if I was president.

22:17 as he told it now, Americans were

22:19 victims of a globalist elite and their

22:21 European allies who had started and

22:24 needlessly prolonged the war for

22:25 abstract ideological reasons like

22:28 democracy and liberalism. If Donald

22:30 Trump had been president, the war never

22:32 would have started because he's strong,

22:35 whatever that was supposed to mean. And

22:37 once he became president again, he would

22:40 immediately end it because he was on

22:41 good terms with Putin, which meant once

22:43 he got in, he could get a good deal. Do

22:46 you want Ukraine to win this war?

22:48 [music]

22:48 I want the war to stop. I want to save

22:51 lives. We're in for 250 billion or more

22:55 because they don't ask Europe, which is

22:57 a much bigger beneficiary to getting

22:59 this thing done than we are. I know

23:01 Zalinsky very well and I know Putin very

23:03 well. I have a good relationship and

23:05 they respect your president. Okay? They

23:08 respect me. They don't respect Biden.

23:10 How would you respect him? Why? For what

23:12 reason? But we have a president, Mr.

23:14 president that doesn't know he's alive.

23:17 This rhetorical stance was perfectly

23:19 designed to trick everyone at once. He

23:21 could appeal to doves by promising a

23:23 quick end to the war with a strong

23:25 implication that he would do it by

23:26 cutting off aid to Ukraine and force

23:28 them to make concessions to Russia. But

23:30 simultaneously, he could appeal to Hawks

23:32 by making vague appeals to his toughness

23:35 in a way that implied he was going to

23:37 use a sort of madman theory of diplomacy

23:39 which would scare Russia into making

23:41 their concessions. This shouldn't have

23:43 worked on Ukraine supporters, but the

23:45 growing schism between Biden and

23:46 Zalinski and the media campaign to

23:48 exaggerate the [music] effects of

23:49 American aid delays had alienated many

23:52 Ukraine supporters from Biden. And some

23:54 increasingly started thinking that maybe

23:56 Trump would be the lesser evil. Either

23:58 way, Trump would give Americans the

23:59 thing they wanted most in Ukraine, the

24:01 ability to not have to see or think

24:03 about Ukraine in the news anymore. It's

24:06 that urge ultimately that carried him to

24:08 the White House.

24:11 Is this a call? Ladies and gentlemen,

24:14 we are now projecting that Donald J.

24:17 [music] Trump will win the state of

24:20 Pennsylvania.

24:21 Now, it was time to implement his plan.

24:24 Or it would be if not for the small

24:27 problem that he didn't have a plan.

24:29 Do you think Donald Trump thought it was

24:31 going to be this hard, this challenging?

24:32 I mean, on the campaign trail, he said

24:34 day one it'd be fixed.

24:36 Yeah. Well, he was asked about this uh

24:38 why he said, you know, in 24 hours he

24:40 would have a deal and he said that he

24:42 was being sarcastic.

24:43 Trump's campaign promised version of the

24:45 plan would never work. Of course,

24:47 American aid doesn't give Washington

24:49 enough leverage to force Ukraine to

24:50 surrender and Trump was clearly not a

24:53 mad man. So any bluff against the

24:55 Russians was doomed to fail and Trump

24:57 cave to Russia pretty immediately. That

24:59 left the current plan of just trying to

25:01 ease the Russians and Ukrainians into a

25:03 sequence of partial ceasefires and

25:04 hoping that you can just kick the can

25:06 down the road where it can trip up the

25:08 next Democratic administration. But then

25:10 even that plan blew up.

25:12 You went to Pennsylvania and campaigned

25:14 for the opposition in October. Offer

25:16 some words of appreciation for the

25:18 United States of America and the

25:20 president who's trying to save your

25:22 country.

25:23 If you will speak very loudly about the

25:25 war, you can

25:26 He's not speaking loudly. He's not

25:27 speaking loudly. Your country is in big

25:29 trouble.

25:30 Wait a minute. No. No. You've done a lot

25:31 of talking. Part of the problem here is

25:33 that the Trump White House is torn

25:35 between multiple contradictory campaign

25:37 promises. On one hand, Donald Trump

25:39 promised to end the war quickly. On the

25:41 other hand, the populist right feels

25:42 that America has been taken advantage of

25:45 by the globalist elites and therefore

25:47 America must be paid back. But putting

25:49 pressure on Ukraine emboldens Russia to

25:51 ask for more, which makes Trump feel

25:54 like a sucker. Which means instead of

25:56 American pressure on Ukraine being

25:57 focused on one point of just getting

25:59 them to make concessions to Russia, the

26:02 pressure is diverted three ways.

26:04 Between

26:04 extortion of the Ukrainians for natural

26:06 resources, pressure on Ukraine to make

26:08 concessions to Russia, and pressure on

26:10 Russia to make concessions to Ukraine,

26:13 which just ends up canceling out the

26:15 pressure on Ukraine. At first, it seemed

26:16 like the square was circled by creating

26:18 a mineral deal in which Ukraine would

26:20 give up 50% of the proceeds from mineral

26:22 deposits it actually couldn't really

26:24 exploit anyway, giving the populist the

26:26 appearance that they would get paid back

26:28 all the money the globalists forced them

26:30 to spend on Ukraine. But then the White

26:32 House had to make the process so

26:34 humiliating that Zalinsky couldn't say

26:36 yes without jeopardizing his own image.

26:39 Why don't you wear a suit?

26:42 Why don't you wear a suit? You're the

26:43 highest level in this country's office

26:45 and you refuse to wear a suit. Just want

26:47 to see if you do you own a suit.

26:49 Yeah. Yeah. Problem.

26:51 A lot of Americans.

26:54 Senator Rubio, you've taken a very

26:56 different approach to the the question

26:58 of Russia. You've called Vladimir Putin

27:00 a quote gangster. Why would President

27:03 Rubio's approach be more effective than

27:05 President Trump's?

27:06 Well, first of all, I have an

27:07 understanding of exactly what it is

27:09 Russia and Putin are doing, and it's

27:10 pretty straightforward. He wants to

27:12 reposition Russia once again as a

27:13 geopolitical force. He himself said that

27:16 the destruction of the Soviet Union, the

27:17 fall of the Soviet Union, was the

27:19 greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the

27:21 20th century. And now he's trying to

27:23 reverse that. He's trying to destroy

27:24 NATO. Russia is also trapped in a bind.

27:27 It has a large swath of territory it

27:29 doesn't really want to administer and is

27:31 therefore valueless to Putin. But if

27:33 Russia trades that territory back to

27:35 Ukraine in exchange for promise that

27:37 Ukraine will stay neutral and maybe even

27:40 recognition of Russia's claim on Crimea,

27:42 they would essentially have to admit

27:44 they launched the war for no reason

27:46 since they already had both of those

27:48 things deacto. There's also the matter

27:50 of the Russian economy, which has

27:52 baffled some casual observers. With the

27:55 sanctions, the flight of the

27:56 professional class, and the massive

27:58 divestment of resources into the war,

28:00 analysts, particularly geopolitical

28:02 analysts, for whom economics is black

28:04 magic, expected much more damage to the

28:06 Russian economy. Perhaps unintuitively,

28:09 the secret to Russia's resilience lies

28:11 in its deep economic dysfunction. Russia

28:13 is a deeply unequal country, not just in

28:16 the sense that the rich are very rich

28:18 and everyone else is very poor, but also

28:20 geographically. The rich are

28:22 concentrated in a handful of cities and

28:24 a great mass of people eek out a meager

28:26 living in the provinces through a

28:27 combination of odd jobs and pension

28:29 checks. That meant when Russia needed

28:31 manpower in both the trenches and the

28:34 factories, they didn't have to get it by

28:36 cannibalizing productive sectors of the

28:38 economy, there was already a massive

28:40 bonus army of marginally employed

28:42 provincials to pick from. The money to

28:44 pay those people then came from two

28:46 sources. one seizing it from the rich

28:48 and two printing rubles which in effect

28:51 mostly squeezes value out of Russia's

28:53 small benited middle class who are rich

28:55 enough to have savings but not rich

28:57 enough to have it denominated in gold in

28:59 a Swiss bank account. In other words,

29:01 the war is providing Russia with a badly

29:04 needed opportunity to redistribute

29:05 wealth. In fact, in a country as unequal

29:07 as Russia, it's perfectly possible that

29:09 the quality of life for the median

29:11 Russian has actually gone up. But that

29:14 doesn't make the war sustainable. Russia

29:16 still needs hard currency to buy and

29:18 build weapons and to keep its currency

29:20 from collapsing. But the Kremlin doesn't

29:22 get enough hard currency from oil sales

29:24 to simultaneously maintain the welfare

29:26 state, pay soldier salaries, and

29:28 stabilize the ruble all at the same

29:30 time. That is without dipping into

29:32 savings in the form of its sovereign

29:34 wealth fund. After 3 years of war, it's

29:37 burnt through at least half of its gold

29:39 reserves. At least that's as much as

29:41 they're willing to admit. But Russia

29:43 isn't just sacrificing the comfort of

29:45 the oligarchs and the middle class. It's

29:47 also sacrificing the sources of its long

29:49 run growth. And if the war only lasted

29:51 three days, that would not be a problem.

29:53 But long run was 3 years ago. So while

29:56 Russia's been able to transition to a

29:58 war economy, transitioning back into a

30:00 consumption economy is a much trickier

30:02 and dangerous prospect. People have

30:04 higher expectations for peace than they

30:06 do for war. Putin will need all

30:08 sanctions off in order to get back to

30:10 normal. And Trump can't force the

30:12 Europeans to drop their sanctions. And

30:14 European sanctions aren't the only thing

30:16 the EU has agency over in this conflict

30:18 either. With the exception of the

30:20 Patriot missiles, most of the weapons

30:22 Trump might cut off can be backfilled or

30:24 replaced by the Europeans. At least if

30:26 there's enough political will to pull

30:28 out the stops. And while the Europeans

30:30 have been slow to reform in the past, a

30:32 flakier, Trumpied US might finally give

30:35 them the kick they need. I hope. Third

30:38 time's a charm, right? In fact, there's

30:40 a sick way in which Trump's election

30:42 might be good for Ukraine, and it goes

30:44 back to what this war is fundamentally

30:45 all about. You see, there's a lie the

30:48 Americans started telling right around

30:49 the time of the first Gulf War. It goes

30:52 something like this.

30:53 What is at stake is more than one small

30:57 country. It is a big idea, a new world

31:02 order. After World War II, the United

31:05 States created something called the

31:06 Liberal International Order, which has

31:08 long guarded vigorously and

31:10 consistently, and only now in the 2020s

31:12 are we in danger of losing it.

31:14 But the greatest threat on this front

31:16 springs from the distinct illiberal and

31:19 external actors who equate their success

31:22 with fracturing the liberal

31:23 international order.

31:24 The truth is that when it comes to

31:25 upholding international law, America's

31:27 contribution to upholding the world

31:29 order has always been scattershot and

31:31 inconsistent. Even when America wants to

31:33 punish a country for violating

31:35 international law, it usually settles

31:36 for a less than effective strategy of

31:38 sanction and weight. The one alleged

31:40 exception is the taboo on big countries

31:42 annexing territory from small countries.

31:45 The precedent set by, of course, the war

31:47 to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein.

31:50 Saddam Hussein's unprovoked invasion.

31:53 His ruthless, systematic rape of a

31:57 peaceful neighbor violated everything

32:00 the community of nations holds dear.

32:03 The world has said this aggression would

32:07 not stand and it will not stand.

32:11 In reality, national borders have mostly

32:14 been self-reinforcing. In the age of

32:16 popular participation in politics,

32:18 rising nationalism, and cheap machine

32:20 guns, ruling over a foreign country

32:22 became more and more expensive over the

32:24 course of the 20th century. The people

32:26 are much less indifferent to who rules

32:28 over them than they were in the 19th

32:29 century. And if they don't like you,

32:31 they can give you help. They're now very

32:33 few things a power can get by invading

32:35 and occupying a country that it couldn't

32:37 more easily get through the more subtle

32:38 tools of coercive diplomacy. That's why

32:41 there hasn't been much in the way of

32:42 annexation since World War II. You can

32:44 see the problem in action today in Gaza.

32:47 Israel doesn't want to leave Gaza

32:48 [music] without getting some kind of

32:50 concrete win. But they don't want to

32:52 expend the resources that would come

32:53 with an occupation. So they have simply

32:55 settled for committing mass atrocities

32:57 on and off until the global community

33:00 out of some sense of pity just bails the

33:03 Israelis out of their dilemma by

33:04 relocating the people of Gaza for them.

33:06 A bailout that is almost certainly not

33:09 coming. A big three-way size disparity

33:12 like the one between America, Kuwait,

33:13 and Iraq could act as one exception, but

33:16 such an alignment of circumstances is so

33:18 unlikely it never happened again. Aside

33:21 from little Kuwait, the taboo on

33:22 changing borders by force has been

33:24 mostly self-inforcing, but it didn't

33:26 hurt America's image to take credit for

33:28 the kind of peaceful state of the world

33:30 in the 1990s. So, they did. And now

33:34 certain people have taken America's own

33:36 propaganda too seriously and think

33:38 American decline makes all sorts of new

33:41 conquests possible. The Russian theory

33:43 of victory in Ukraine is based on the

33:45 idea that the liberal international

33:47 order is real but somehow entirely the

33:50 product of American coercion. Therefore,

33:52 all they have to do is defeat the US in

33:54 a battle of wills. And once Americans

33:56 give up, the occupation of Ukraine will

33:58 go swimmingly. Well, now the US has

34:01 given up and Ukraine is still not

34:03 rolling over. The longer the Ukrainians

34:05 can hold out without American help, the

34:07 less credible their theory of victory

34:09 becomes, and the Kremlin will eventually

34:12 have to face up to the fact that they

34:13 have embarked on a forever war. This

34:16 would require needlessly a massive

34:18 sacrifice on the part of the Ukrainian

34:20 people, maybe bigger than they already

34:22 have, but what choice do they have?

34:30 And I just want to give a heartfelt

34:31 thanks to my patrons who've been so

34:34 patient. Next year will be more

34:36 productive. I promise.

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