NATO’s hidden agenda & why Europe will fail Ukraine

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Welcome. Welcome back to the Conor Glass.

The podcast from Unheard that debunks that which needs to be debunked.

Good morning. Hello, Vovkan.

Hello. Good morning, Janice.

Today I'm going to talk about Ukraine again,

but I would like to focus today about a narrative that I increasingly see in the media,

which is that, oh, it's Trump who lost us the war.

It's going to lose us the war.

Another saying, no, it's not Trump, it's the betrayal comes from the Europeans.

I say this is exactly the wrong way to see about this, to think about this.

This isn't a betrayal story.

This is a very different story altogether.

And on my part, along similar lines, I will be targeting the touching face.

The orthodoxy that the greatest supporters of NATO are motivated by a genuine fear of Russia

and the concern for Europe.

The reason I wanted to talk about this betrayal story is there was a story the other day,

a column in the Guardian by Simon Tistol.

And you know, there is sort of a tendency in the media.

I see very much to put blame games on things.

You know, why is Kyaz Thama failing because of McSweeney?

It's all him he used to blame.

And why is Labour failing is because of Kyaz Thama.

And the blame game narrative, you know, convenient as it may be,

never, never.

This is my sort of my long experience of journalism.

Never explains why something is happening.

Now, the reason in the UK politics,

why Labour's failing is not related primarily to the leaders,

related to the party, the fact that this party doesn't know what it wants.

And the Ukraine war has very similar characteristics.

Now, when the war started in February 2022,

there was an initial expectation that Ukraine might actually win it.

In the beginning, obviously, everyone thought Russia would just walk over,

but that didn't happen.

And then Ukraine rebuffed Russia very successfully.

And in that period, let's say the first six months there were,

there were expectations that Ukraine might actually drive Russia back

out of the occupied territories.

And some people even thought that Ukraine might drive Russia out of Crimea,

so that Russia would actually end up with less than what it started.

Already by the autumn of that year,

this sort of narrative became harder to sustain

because the Russians were digging in,

and it became very improbable at the time.

Electroids, both in the United States and Europe,

started to become more skeptical.

People had already, by that time,

six months into the war, gotten tired of it,

they wanted something, they wanted the success story,

and that wasn't a success story.

So people moved on.

So when we're talking about betrayal here,

we're really talking about, we're criticizing voters.

We're criticizing voters for not following your agenda, basically.

It's like criticizing voters for voting for Trump.

Now, you can spend your time doing that,

and whatever political views you might have,

it's generally a waste of time to blame voters

for voting for a particular party.

The job in politics is to continue and to win the next election,

and maybe persuade voters,

but that hasn't happened, that hasn't succeeded anywhere.

The reasons why the Europeans are not supporting Ukraine

by more than they do is to do also with voters.

The Ukraine war has become a political issue

in Germany, the previous German government,

with held certain weapons categories,

fearing that its voters might not approve.

The current German government is more open

to supporting Ukraine and has gone to greater length.

It made real money available.

It's a two-digit billion sum.

This is a lot of money,

and it does deliver weapons systems.

But it does not deliver the amount both financially

and in military goods that Ukraine will need to defeat Russia.

And the same is true of other countries.

Germany spends more.

The UK spends a lot as well.

France hardly spends anything.

Spain, Italy hardly spent anything.

So it's essentially Germany and the UK trying to do this together.

Germany and the UK cannot replace what America did.

Even when America was still on board, it was not enough.

Back in December, the European Council agreed

a 90 billion package in loans to Ukraine,

funded by a European debt instrument.

So they couldn't even pay this out of their own cash.

They had to actually raise debt for their help with Ukraine.

90 billion is kind of the minimum.

This is the money economists had calculated.

Ukraine would need to fill the budget deficit.

This is not really helping the country win the war.

This isn't like 90 billion in military goods.

This is 90 billion to repair electricity systems, to repair.

General budget shortfalls.

This is not all war related.

The large part is war related.

It's not going to be enough to even match

or even come close to matching the Russian defense spending,

which is about 150 billion per year.

So for us to outspend the Russians at the counter,

it's completely disillusioned.

It's like, I think we are way like an effect of 1 to 10.

This is not, we are not close to this.

So we can't really talk about betrayal unless we make proposals to say,

we want to match Russia, we want to defeat Russia,

but we need to actually raise taxes for that

or we need to cut social spending for that.

Now, you will never read this in those columns.

You certainly know the Guardian that anyone would advocate.

Yeah, let's cut social spending to give money to Ukraine,

because that is not something that they want.

They want other people to do the fighting.

They want other people to do the funding.

This is somebody else's issue.

They just want Ukraine to win.

This is basically us taking the position of some backseat drivers

of the fanboys in the football stadium to cheer our team,

but we're not doing this.

We're not bankrolling this.

We're not fighting ourselves,

because, no, obviously, we don't want to be in a war with Russia.

We've demonstrated that we don't want to be in a war with Russia.

We are not sending troops.

Every government has had the same red lines.

And in terms of funding, yes, we do what we can,

but we don't do what it takes.

And I think that is the fundamental, the fundamental difference.

So it's really wrong to think about betrayal.

And I also often think about these.

I'm often careful about psychologizing certain political conflicts,

but there is sort of the, I often come back to the stages of mourning

and anger and denial as a very common stages.

And you see this in political debates.

When people see their realizing is their first denial,

and denial is a story.

And you know, we in the corner class have often talked about things,

you know, about people underestimating dangerous.

This is the denial phase.

Now this blame game is the anger phase.

Now we're angry that, you know, our team is losing,

and we're angry, we, someone must be to blame,

and we blame Trump.

All of Schultz was another guy.

We could all blame, because he could have done more.

Or we can blame Macron.

He's always there to blame.

And Kierstamer can be blamed.

We can always blame certain people.

But frankly, that doesn't help us.

It doesn't help Ukraine.

It doesn't also help us understand

what's happening.

What is happening is that Ukraine,

that a country that is not in the EU,

a country that is not a NATO,

is being ransacked by a power of which it was part 25 years ago,

until 25 years ago.

So there's a war going on.

We have not accepted Ukraine into NATO.

So we cannot defend Ukraine as effectively

as would have been the case otherwise.

I think that the right course of action,

the right course of action to get out of this,

would be to cut a deal very much on the lines

that they're negotiating at the moment.

The main issue to be sorted is the land.

Whether Russia will get all of the Donbass

or the Count areas it occupies.

What is the status of the land?

What is the status of the,

you know, whether there's military

or a presentation in those disputed areas.

Now, we're talking ultimately in, you know,

in most cases, peace deals are a struck

according to the battle lines.

That would always be my position.

I don't think anyone should get something

they don't have.

If you want to be successful and a P-deals,

you don't take the reality that you have.

It's not about the law.

It's not about international law.

It's not about right or wrong.

People say the only P-steal is one where

Russia with trees, okay,

then you don't want the P-steal.

You want victory.

And the only way to get Russia to retreat

is to defeat Russia.

You know, forget about the rhetoric of P-steal

in that case.

You don't want P-steal, you want victory.

And that's fine.

But the hypocrisy is if you want victory,

but you don't, you know,

you don't want to put the money up.

You don't want to put the troops up.

You don't want to put the support up.

And that's sort of where the hypocrisy lies.

So in given the thing,

and I'm taking us as given the politics of that,

the politics isn't the politics of a government.

It's the politics of our voters

that have elected those governments.

The preferences have been there.

They've declared their preferences.

Given those preferences,

a P-steal is the best outcome that is achievable for this.

And so the question then is,

you know, there may be a dispute left over

may have 50 kilometers of land.

I would not suggest that Ukraine

just accept the Russian demands

that it should get all of the Donbass.

I think this is an unreasonable demand.

Likewise, it would be also unreasonable

to think that Russia should retreat from areas

that has occupied,

because that is not the reality of a P-steal.

So in my view, it should be based on the current land.

And you know, it may be possible

that there is no deal that Russia may continue fighting.

If that were the case,

if Russia were to reject a P-steal,

including a P-steal that the U.S. administration

would find reasonable,

then we should consider our position

in respect of our support of Ukraine

and massively step it up.

This is not doable with the current level of support.

So the decision we should make,

and this is really, I'm bifurcating here.

I'm saying, you know, either we go all in

or we will push Ukraine into a P-steal.

And the question is,

the all-in scenario is, you know,

we are ultimately talking about 50 kilometers of land.

50 kilometers of land and, you know,

hundreds of thousands of people who might die for it,

trillions that it would cost us in money,

is this something we want?

Is this something we are ready for?

Because it's not up to Ukraine to decide this

as the Western position has always been,

because if you are the sponsor of this,

if you're bankrolling this,

you have a word here,

and the voters, your voters have a word here.

So this is something that needs to be on the table

and we need to discuss this more honestly.

But I see we are sort of in this blame game scenario

right now, this is sort of this,

oh my god, how, you know, is, you know,

how did, how did this happen?

It's been happening for a while,

and I think, you know, I've been sort of writing

in columns myself that since about late 2022

that Ukraine is not going to win this war.

And the situation hasn't changed much.

This is a war of attrition,

a border that is a battle line that's stuck.

There is not going to be a breakthrough

up by either side.

Russia is not going to run over the rest of the country.

We have seen this,

Ukraine's defenses have been strong enough

to withstand that scenario.

But equally, Ukraine is not strong enough

to get a material amount of its lost territory back.

So there's a stalemate,

and a stalemate, you know, the Russia is the bigger army.

Forget all the numbers about Russian casualties, they're lies.

You know, I heard Marco Rubio say the other day,

you know, Russia's losing 8,000 troops each week in the war.

If that were the case, if you do the math,

they would have lost 1.6 more than 1.6 million,

which is larger than the size of the Russian army.

You cannot lose, you know, your numbers like that are sort of like credibility.

Russia has had serious losses,

but nothing of the kind,

so we should not underestimate it.

And they're still big.

They're still much, much bigger than Ukraine.

Their army is a multiple of the size of Ukraine.

There's no way Ukraine is going to gain its territory back.

I also don't think Russia will, you know,

succeed in its efforts either.

So I think it is time for the Europeans in particular,

but also for the, you know, the US administration is already negotiating this deal,

but it's not likely to impose its own terms here.

So this is very much a matter between the Ukraine and Russia.

I think it is time for the Europeans to start talking,

to put in, talking, talking to Zelensky,

and trying to put something on the table

that would encourage both of them to cut a deal.

At the moment, the Europeans are not doing that.

At the moment, the Europeans are still making unreasonable demands.

I mean, unrealistic demands.

It's not that unreasonable in some kind of, you know, theoretical sense,

but they're not designed to end the war.

If that were the goal, I don't think it is.

And if the Europeans continue this pros,

they may find themselves the ultimate loser of this war.

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Like you, I am not just a reluctant, but low to speak of betrayal,

betrayal is a word that should be used very judiciously.

The expression I would use, Volkan, is that the people of Ukraine

were led down the garden path by the West, by Europe,

and by various administrations in the United States,

but particularly by Europe.

And I would even go as far as to say that the whole point was to lead them down

the garden path and leave them there alone.

Look, in 2008-2009, it was already clear that NATO

was intent on expanding into Georgia and into Ukraine in particular.

Now, look at the map of the Black Sea.

Crimea was part of, formally, after 1991, of Ukraine.

You know, it so happens that it was also the major port of the Russian Navy.

There was an arrangement where, first of all,

was allowed to remain the Russian Navy's main base.

Now, when you're saying that we're going to allow,

induct Ukraine into NATO, whether you'd like it as an idea,

or you don't like it, it doesn't matter.

What you're effectively saying is you're going to encase the Russian Navy

within NATO territory.

How well is that going to go down in Moscow?

Okay, number one, number two.

I'm not going to go into the analysis of what happened in Maiden in 2014

and the overthrow of Yanukovych and the new regime and so on.

The fact is that in 2014, there was an attempt,

ethnically, to cleanse Russians from the eastern parts of Ukraine.

When the government effectively bans Russian from schools,

in an area where Russian is the main language,

and you have Europe that has a long tradition of double standards.

Remember that, you know, essentially, there are the rights of Russian speakers

in the Baltic states where effectively trampled upon.

That was, we are supposed to be a European Union

that respects the rights of minorities,

that respects the rights to self-determination,

to self-expression and so on and so forth.

We have not been very good at that.

Even when it came to former Yugoslavia,

I was absolutely appalled, as I'm sure you were,

by the ethnic cleansing, by the Srebrenica massacre,

by what the techniques we're doing on the one side,

and the Ustashi were doing on the other side or there in Yugoslavia.

But, you know, Europe had double standards.

Brussels and Berlin and Paris, even Athens,

were quite happy, or at least tolerant,

of when Serbs were being cleansed,

and less so when Croats or Muslim were being so.

So, you know, we have not been very good

at maintaining our own moral values as Europeans.

And when it came to Ukraine, essentially,

the bars that were in Europe

gave a blank check to Ukrainian authorities

that they're going to be inducted into NATO

without explaining what is going to happen

if I'm not just defying this,

people say, oh, this is accepting the talking points of putting.

This is not a moral judgment.

What you're saying is, you're going to take the Russian fleet

and you're going to encase it by NATO in Crimea.

Now, if you did this in the United States,

if Mexico were to join some Chinese military alliance,

I don't believe that the Americans would be happy

with San Diego to be encased by a Chinese version of NATO.

And you have to ask yourself your question.

If you make that move,

if you support the Ukrainians to enter into NATO

and essentially to encase Sevastopol

within NATO territory, you know,

what are you going to do if the Russian bear

responds the way it did?

You need to think it through.

Are you going to start a war with Russia?

Will you stand as you were saying?

Will you send troops?

Will you escalate?

Because if you're not prepared to do that,

then what is the point of talking legalistically

about the right of Ukraine to be a member of NATO?

No, nobody has the right to start a third world war.

Nobody has the right, like Mexico doesn't have the right

to start to jeopardize world peace

by, you know, allowing in a Chinese military base in Tijuana.

Legally, they have the right to do it.

I do not recognize the right of my friend Claudia Scheinbaum

to plant a Chinese military base, naval base in Tijuana

if that jeopardizes world prospects.

More generally speaking.

This whole notion that, as you said it, you said it very well,

that you cannot reward Putin by striking a peace agreement.

That has been the argument now since 2022.

Whenever, you know, you, me, others have been proposing peace plans.

You proposed one just now.

Me and colleagues of mine from DN25, for instance, we've been arguing.

This is something that we did in March of 2022.

We put forward an idea.

Maybe it's not a good idea, but it is an idea.

For instance, take the Donbass.

What happens to the Donbass?

When the Donbass in Mayan is reminiscent, of course,

there are many differences.

But it's quite reminiscent of Northern Ireland.

It is a part of the world where you've got two populations

with very different understandings of their traditions,

of what is at stake.

There is a lot of conflict, but they are very similar at the same time.

They have the strong roots in the same village,

in the same, on the same land.

And we know what the solution to the troubles was in Northern Ireland.

It was a good Friday agreement where you have quasi-joined sovereigns

by London and by Dublin.

Every community has two leaders.

One comes from Sinn Fein, the other comes from the Protestants.

And you try to find some way.

So there are creative ways of doing this.

But I remember when we were at the age of 25 and myself,

we were putting this forward.

The attacks that I was receiving on the basis

that any such talk is appeasement.

You are appeasing.

You are rewarding the aggressor.

Well, as you said, either you are suing for peace

or you are going for victory.

And they are doing neither.

And if you want to bring out the word betrayal,

which I am very reluctant like you are, to bring out,

I will do it in this way.

The greatest betrayal by our leadership in Europe,

of Europe, not just for Ukraine,

is that they have no concept of a new security arrangement

for Europe that will include and incorporate ultimately

and potentially Russia.

They have no idea of what they want.

If you really push them, in the end,

you end up with a picture that they paint

similar to the Korean peninsula,

the coalition of the willing.

What on earth are they thinking of?

That there is going to be a line of control somewhere

across the Donbass with parts of the Parisian

or with parts of Harrison and so on.

And that the Europeans are going to have an army

that will play the role there along that line of control

similar to that of the Americans in the Korean peninsula.

Firstly, the candidate, even if they want to.

And secondly, they shouldn't want to do it.

This is not, you know, the Korean peninsula solution.

It's not a solution for Ukraine.

An alternative security arrangement, which includes,

you know, coming to terms with the, you know,

a Moscow that you made dislike very intensely.

That's a whole point about the peace deal.

It should leave everyone slightly dissatisfied.

There are two big obstacles to any peace deals.

And we are basically, you know,

putting these big obstacles in place.

One is history, you know, the idea of what is our historic right.

And this is not how peace deals work.

Peace deals basically accepts, you know,

solutions that are anti-historic.

They often accept the cutting of land,

the cutting of regions into, into look at

Korea between Finland and Russia.

Korea was, you know, when the Winter War 1939-1940 ended,

Korea was split into Russian and the Finnish part.

When Germany was separated,

it wasn't separated on clean regional lines.

It cut through regions that previously belonged together.

That always happens.

The second thing that's really against peace

is the sort of this legalistic thinking

that we have sort of developed in the West.

The idea that Putin has to be

right in front of the ICC and be condemned,

you know, you're not going to get a deal.

If that is your priority,

we are basically in the West not having thought wars, you know,

mercifully.

But, you know, we are basically sitting here

talking about war, none of us, you know,

none of us is fighting as ever fought.

And we're taking sort of legalistic

tarot views.

We're saying, okay, we have to, you know,

these are war crimes.

These are, this is genocide.

This is, you know, we put in categories on it.

But these categories are a problem for peacemakers,

because I cannot make peace with somebody

who I, after the peace deal, I want to drag

in front of an international court.

I cannot make a deal with somebody

of whom I demand reparations.

I mean, the EU is still demanding

that Russia pays reparations,

which is not a peace deal scenario.

It's a defeat scenario.

So the only way to, you have to win the war first

before you can extract reparations payments.

So I think we don't want to.

No, it's though, right?

Absolutely.

They are confused.

You're absolutely right to say.

We're not doing enough for war.

We're not doing enough for peace.

This is the absurdity of the position

in previous days when you had wars.

It was your country that would fight the war.

It was you who would go to war.

It was your children that would go to war.

And it was your taxes that would pay for the war.

But we are now in the situation

where we don't go to war.

Our children don't go to war in the West.

Now, we don't pay for the war with our money.

We try to sequester Russian assets

or let the Americans pay for it.

This has been sort of a very different experience.

And we are much more gung-ho about the war

because it has no cost to us.

If the outcome cannot be peace

and if the outcome cannot be victory,

it's a deeply immoral position to take

because you're ultimately just going into a process.

You're saying, this is fine.

We haven't got an idea.

We haven't got a clue how to end this.

But maybe we'll think of something someday.

That's the situation where we are today.

It's about, oh, Russia will exhaust it.

So this is sort of the ultimate excuse that they have

that our sanctions, you know, 20 sanctions package

was now being discussed.

That eventually it will break Russia's back.

It won't.

It hasn't.

The 19 didn't happen.

The 20s won't happen because Russia is aligned with China.

It's aligned with North Korea.

And it is aligned with Iran as we're now seeing as well.

And therefore, I believe it's time to show some of these

principles overboard and say, look, we need to,

if you want to get a peace deal done,

the only country able to do a peace deal

at the moment is the United States.

I think the best outcome or the best chance

we could have is that these talks that the talks at the moment

are not going anywhere, but they are sufficiently advanced

that we could get to a position where the US

imposes its own peace deal on both sides.

If Russia were to accept under Ukraine were to reject,

we would be in a scenario where the United States

would then presumably cut off whatever aid

it still gives to Ukraine.

So I think that is a potential scenario for peace.

But if that scenario were to fail and I, you know,

the timeline is if it were to fail,

it would probably have to fail by May or June

because then we were in the, in the realm of the US

congressional elections.

We would be in a very, very difficult scenario

and the Europeans would have to grow.

They would, it would basically be there on their watch

and they would have to kind of find a solution.

But, you know, if they don't, and you know,

my, I would always assume they don't because they

haven't got anybody at the top who does sort of

who thinks strategically about these things as we just did.

And it was just things strategically means

think beyond, you know, beyond next week,

beyond beyond the next press release or next declaration.

But actually think about how does this end?

Where does this, where does it leave us?

What is the implication for our own security?

What's the implication for our finances?

What is the implication for, you know,

the geopolitical makeup?

That's the kind of stuff they should be discussing.

But if they don't, then we could be,

we could enter very bad scenarios.

What, what, what you just described is

that the election of duty by Europe,

if not a betrayal of Europe, not of Ukraine,

but of itself.

Because if we rely on Trump to find the good solution

for your grain of the Europe,

that will never happen.

There may be a solution,

but it won't be good for Europe.

It will be awful for all of us and for the Ukrainians.

And we only have a European leadership

and ourselves to blame for it.

Folks, enough just for now on Ukraine,

we will come back to discuss NATO

and to discuss security and geopolitics.

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Welcome back to the Econoclasts.

The touching faith, the orthodoxy,

the false belief, which I want to grapple with,

is that which is peddled by the greatest supporters

of NATO these days, who seem to be

genuinely motivated by the idea that Russia is about

to take over Norway, Scotland, Poland,

maybe in Greece.

The point I'm going to be making is that

if Putin did not exist,

these people would have invented him.

Indeed, in a way, he was invented.

After 1991, you will recall those of you who were around.

I hope we do have younger members of the audience

who don't have long memories like us,

Wolfgang.

You will recall that Russia was not only exceptionally weak,

but under the present Yeltsin and the various governments.

And even after Yeltsin passed on the pattern to Putin,

Russia wanted nothing more than to be embedded in the West,

to be embedded in NATO, to be a normal country.

That's what they were craving for, to make some money,

to overcome the shadows of the Soviet Union.

At that time, 1991, 1992, 1993,

the United States no longer feared Russia.

I don't believe that Germany feared Russia in 1991.

But however, Washington needed NATO to expand,

not because of any fear of Russia,

but because as various functionaries from Washington DC,

used to say back then, we need to stay with NATO,

because we need to keep ourselves in Europe,

we need to keep the Germans down,

and we need to keep the Russians out.

Say, in a sense, there was a prospect at the time of JNP's in Europe,

which of course would have been detrimental to the hegemonic interests of the United States,

because imagine a peaceful Russia embedded in even the European Union, just hypothetically.

That German-Russian economic integration would have been a clear and present danger

to the hegemonies of the United States.

Now, Germany, a lot of people in Germany,

I'm hoping you will tell me whether I'm right or wrong on this.

As I said, I don't believe that there was any fear of Russia at the time,

there was the elation and the concentration on reunification,

on healing the rift between East and West Germany.

But Germany was still a mercantilist economy that was fully dependent on the United States

for aggregate demand and for the dollar and for all those things.

So, even though Germany, the German authorities at the time had called government

and the governments that followed that had no interest in conflict with Russia,

they nevertheless went along with the NATO expansion.

It was not their drive, it was not their beef, it wasn't what they wanted,

but they just went along with that.

Now, at the same time, anyone who knows anything about how the European Union works,

you know, our different governments are different elites,

whether they are the Portuguese, the Greeks, the Italians, the French and so on.

They all tried to do things within the European Union that gives them

better positions, you know, more authority within the European Union.

Now, the European Union, because of the industrial structure

of the union from the very beginning, from the European economic community days onwards,

always had the north-south divide, divide between the surplus countries,

like your country, your Gulf country, and the deficit countries, like my country.

But then, you know, as NATO expands, and this is an American project,

that the Europeans accepted, we have now a east-west divide coming along as well.

Now, the emerging elites in the Baltic states, in Estonia, in Lithuania, in even in Poland,

they realized very, very quickly that their bargaining power within Brussels

was expanding, was increasing, if they operated like proxies of the United States

within the European Union, within NATO.

They were much closer to the Americans than they were to the Germans, for instance.

This is important, if you really truly understand the machinery by which power is distributed in

Brussels. Now, in this context, and within the process of the economic developments of the

Balkan and I have discussed it many times before, you have a crisis that's hitting us in 2008,

which makes the dependence of Europe on the Fed, on American sources of demand for

net exports coming from the European Union to the United States, that dependence is enhanced.

And in conjunction with the mishandling of the inevitable Euro crisis, the Balkan and I are not

going to talk about again because we've worked so many times in the past, you have a combination

of austerity and money printing, quantitative easing, stagnation, and that brings us to a situation

where by the late 2010s there is no engine of growth in Europe. We have recession, deflation,

almost zero net investment, and the Green Deal comes along, it is a figment of Ursula Frontelian's

imagination, as Balkan has written so many times, and I've talked about it with Smoke and Mirrors.

And now we are in a situation where the only show in town, regarding the money in which

demand can be created so the industrialization in Germany slow down, is this war. So the point

I'm making is that there's no conspiracy here. We have a historical process that starts from 1991,

the United States insists on expanding NATO for reasons that have nothing to do with European

security at all. It's detrimental to European security when you have a Russia that really wants to

come in. And in the process, in the process, somebody like Putin, that's why I said he would be

invented, had he not existed, uses this opportunity of NATO expansion in order to solidify his own

dictatorship in Russia and lo and behold, look at the money in which he has become absolutely dominant

since Europe has responded the way it has, and since NATO has responded in the way it has,

he has become, to the Ampteenth Power, more powerful as a result of the NATO expansion,

he was invented. If you think that Putin is a new Hitler, he was invented by Europe's

behavior by the United States, initial decision in 1991, not to create peace in Europe,

but instead to go for NATO expansion. I agree with you on pretty much everything you say,

you know, whether Putin was invented, I'm not so sure. I think there's a sort of

more of a lot of unintended consequences. If I look at the Germans in particular, they really

got themselves snookered here. They had this relationship with him. They're completely disregard

at the East Europeans. There was always the joke or the cynical expression of the in-between countries.

These were the countries that were in-between Germany and Russia. They didn't matter. They were

basically just there. They were awkward. They would always raise objections to what Germany would

be doing. Germany's saw itself as the natural leader of Europe, and it's the only country that

they would ever have sort of relationship with would be Russia. The Germany of the period of 2000

until the war was very much Russia oriented. I always refer to the East German business

society as a big, the biggest lobbying group as of the German equivalent of the National Rifle

Association. They were basically the biggest influential group on MPs. They would decide

who would be in the Bundestag and who would not. They would co-opt a lot of MPs into their

sort of dealings with Russia. With the war, Putin completely destroyed that. He misjudged

that. He thought the Germans would stay on board. He thought the pipeline would stay on board,

but he misjudged the politics and Germany's ability to resist, because Germany was ultimately

more dependent on the United States than it was on Russia. Therefore, the Germans flipped and

completely joined the Western cause that they had resisted for so long and became in part

its strongest advocates. Germany is not benefiting from this at all. I saw Gertroider wrote an article

recently saying, look, he chose the moment because he had been so he stayed quiet for the last

four years and he wrote the article as low as time to actually get back to the Russians.

Now people said this was awful what he said. He shouldn't be saying that. A lot of people asking

themselves, what else can we do? Our energy policies are completely short. We went in one direction

and we went in the other direction and we went into a third direction. Dependence depends on

Russian gas. Now we offer the Russian gas. We tried the renewable strategy that didn't work.

So there is a vacuum in German energy policy and there may well have to go back to some

kind of arrangements with Russia at some point in the future once the war is over. I don't expect

the relationship to come back, but this speaks to the lack of strategic thinking in Europe,

because having this sort of subservient relationship to Russia that they're hard and having that

kind of the opposite relationship is also not right, because ultimately Russia and Germany

exist. You know, you may want to keep them down or Russia out and that may be all legitimate and

there was good strategy while it lasted, but ultimately there's only so much you can do. So we have

to kind of find a way a reality to live with the fact that Germany is awkwardly large for the EU.

It's the largest country and the richest country and that cannot be, we cannot be in denial of that

fact, but we can also not be in denial of the fact that Russia exists and the idea of keeping that

counter-state of this pariah state of Russia is not sustainable.

I think this is a pretty good teaser for a live meeting we're going to have.

Volkan and I, for the first time, are going to be together on Monday the 23rd of March.

I think you should join us for that one. And don't forget to rate, like and subscribe to the

Econoclasts.

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