Sept. 14, 2023
MM#268--The American Foreign Policy Trilogy, part 2
FAN MAIL--We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text Message Ready for a deep dive into the labyrinth of American foreign policy? Brace yourself as we unravel the complex tapestry of historical events and long-term effects of the Russo-Ukrainian War. We put the spotlight on Sergei Polkiy's eye-opening book 'The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History.' We pull back the curtain on the origins of this war and trace its roots to the imperial collapse of the 19th and 20th centuries. W...
FAN MAIL--We would love YOUR feedback--Send us a Text Message
Ready for a deep dive into the labyrinth of American foreign policy?
Brace yourself as we unravel the complex tapestry of historical events and long-term effects of the Russo-Ukrainian War.
We put the spotlight on Sergei Polkiy's eye-opening book 'The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History.'
We pull back the curtain on the origins of this war and trace its roots to the imperial collapse of the 19th and 20th centuries.
We also evaluate Sergei's impartiality as a historian, dissecting this intricate and multi-layered conflict.
This episode promises to be a thrilling roller-coaster ride through the annals of history, politics, and diplomacy.
Key Points from the Episode:
- Ever wondered how a regional conflict can trigger a seismic shift in global dynamics? Uncover how Russia's aggression has sent ripples across the world stage.
- We delve into the implications of the Russo-Ukrainian War, revealing the fallout of France and Germany's decision to block Ukraine and Georgia's NATO memberships.
- We dissect Russia's motives behind the war and its impact on both Ukraine's economy and Russia's energy exports.
- As we debate America's role as the world's policeman, we shine a light on the relevance of the founding fathers' views on foreign policy in today's context.
- We also scrutinize the intentions of international organizations like the United Nations.
Other resources:
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00:07 - American Foreign Policy
18:33 - Implications of the Russo-Ukrainian War
36:13 - Russian Aggression's Impact on Global Dynamics
WEBVTT
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Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life.
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Now here's your host, david Kaiser.
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Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Mojo Minute and to this ongoing trilogy series, which is all about American foreign policy.
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Now, part one was on Tuesday, where we checked out the Four Ages of American Foreign Policy by Michael Mandembaum, so be sure to check out that episode.
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And today is part two of our three part series, and what this series is covering is we're posing to ourselves what are some of the best books in which to read so you can have a better understanding of American foreign policy, and especially what we have learned, let's say, in the last 25 years.
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Have we learned anything as a country?
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And we will try to answer that question.
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In addition to that, we're going to be researching and diving deep into the best books about our topic at hand and we're going to be asking ourselves the difficult questions, the difficult questions in this trilogy, because tough questions when pondering them, when meditating on them, when praying about them, helps us to have a fuller understanding of the problems and the dynamics all associated with American foreign policy.
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In fact, no matter that topic at hand, good, tough questions and their answers help all of us understand better and move us towards discovery of the truth, albeit in a faster and more, better fashion.
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And speaking of tough questions, last time, in our last episode, we introduced three of the tough questions we hope to answer, so let's bring them up again.
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Number one, and these are all about foreign policy.
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So, number one can we rightfully label the founding fathers as proponents of isolationism when we compare the founders' visions and ideals of American foreign policy to how we should conduct our foreign policy in the 21st century?
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Why or why not?
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Number two do international organizations such as the United Nations and the League of Nations align with the founders' perceptions of foreign policy?
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And number three how could the US, meddling in the politics of another country, infringe upon the rights of its own American citizens?
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And where I'm going with this question is what insights might the founding fathers provide on America's engagement in Ukraine, halfway around the world?
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Now, we will try to answer those questions before the end of this episode.
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But speaking of Ukraine, let's pivot to our book of the day, which is a fantastic one.
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It's title is the Russo-Ukrainian War the Return of History by Sergei Polkiy, and instead of our usual format of covering our books, we're going to switch it up and do a Q&A format, question and answer format to hopefully make it a little bit more appealing to you.
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We'll see.
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We'll try to switch it up, give you something different as a listener, and we searched and browsed the internet to come up with our top 10 questions, along with what we thought the standard answers that people were commonly coming up with.
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We did this throughout Google, and it's all about the Russo-Ukrainian War.
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So we got 10 questions here and we're going to dig into those, but we'll also pull some answers as a different take from the Sergei Polkiy book that we're covering today.
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So you'll see how this all works once we get to our first question, which we're going to do now.
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Number one what are the origins of the Russo-Ukrainian War?
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The common answer is, from what we can gather, is the use.
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The Russo-Ukrainian war originated from a complex mix of historical tensions, political ambitions and cultural differences.
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The refusal of Ukraine's former president, viktor Yukanovich and I'll crucify all these Russian names or Ukrainian names Viktor Yukanovich to sign an association agreement with the European Union triggered the protest which led to his ousting and to Russia's subsequent annexation of Crimea.
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That is what most people believe, that all happened in 2014.
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Now, in reading Sergey Polke's book, you get a different sense of the origins of this war.
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Let's go to that book.
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The roots of the current war are to be found in the history of imperial collapse in the 19th and 20th centuries, which also produced the key ideas that fueled the current conflict.
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My basic argument is that what we see today is not an entirely new phenomenon.
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In many ways, the current conflict is an old fashioned imperial war conducted by Russian elites who see themselves as errors and continuators of the great power expansionist traditions of the Russian Empire in the Soviet Union.
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On Ukraine's part, it is, first and foremost, a war of independence, a desperate attempt on behalf of a new nation that emerged from the ruins of the Soviet collapse to defend its right to existence Despite its imperial roots.
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The current war is being waged in a new international environment, defined by the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the disintegration of the post-Cold War international order and an unprecedented resurgence of populist nationalism, last seen in the 1930s, throughout the world.
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The war clearly indicates that Europe and the world have all but spent the peace dividend resulting from the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and are entering a new and yet as yet undetermined era.
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A new world order, possibly replicating the bipolar world of the Cold War era, is being forged in the flames of the current war.
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So that is some pretty good analysis there by Sergey Polkiy.
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Now, who is Sergey Polkiy?
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Well, he's Ukrainian born, so he does have a dog in this fight, but he is a very objective and he's wonderfully readable.
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This is a very complex and nuanced war with a lot of tentacles that stretch back decades, if not tens of decades, centuries, in fact, all the way back to Ivan the Terrible and Catherine the Great, with which Putin seems to be leaning towards more as his motivators as he reads more and more Russian imperial history.
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But Sergey Polkiy is a Ukrainian born historian.
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He lost a cousin in this war.
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So far Now, this book was only written.
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It was.
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The war started on in February of 2022.
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This is finished in March of 2023.
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So it covers roughly about 10 to 11 months by the time the publisher got the book to market.
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But he is a great chronicler of early and modern Ukraine.
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He has other books the Gates of Europe that I want to read, lost Kingdom, the man with a Poison Gun and Chernobyl, which Chernobyl won the 2018 Bolly Gifford Prize, and that book is all about the 1986 nuclear disaster.
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So Polkiy is a very good historian.
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I didn't sense anything.
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That was totally out of bounds, and after getting drenched for the last year and a half to two years all about Russia, with Russian propaganda, I wanted to find a very good historian from the Ukrainian side to see what they had to say, and that's where I found this book.
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So a very good, very good, readable book, and I think it just gives another side of the story.
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Moving on to our second question, why did Russia invade Crimea in 2014?
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Russia invaded Crimea under the pretext of protecting the Russian speaking population there.
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However, underlying reasons include strategic military interest, as in the Crimea houses, the Russia's Black Sea Fleet, and political objectives to reassert influence over former Soviet territories.
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That's the general consensus.
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Now, what does Polkiy say about this invasion of Crimea?
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Let's go to chapter five of his book.
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The Crimea, the only part of Ukraine in which ethnic Russians constituted a majority of the population and a bone of contention between Russian and Ukraine since the late Soviet years, had long been a Kremlin integrationist horizon.
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Back in 1994, boris Yeltsin had decided not to intervene in Ukraine's internal affairs.
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When Ukrainian voters elected the allegedly pro-Russian president, leon Kuchma, and Ukrainian politicians negotiated their relations with the Crimean elites.
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Now Putin, faced with the loss of his protege in Kiev, ukraine's almost certain signing of an association agreement with the EU, and thus the fiasco of his plans to involve Ukraine and the Russian-led Customs Union and Eurasian Union decided to take the peninsula by force.
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There was no separatist movement in sight, as had been the case in 1994, but there were other factors that Putin sought to use to his advantage.
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They included the interregnum in Kiev, the questionable legitimacy of parliament's removal of Yanukovych from power in the no less questionable credentials of his successor, and the inability of new authorities to gain the trust of the Ukrainian secret services, which they had fought with Molotov cocktails only a few days before, if not hours earlier.
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Soon, the Ukrainian parliament gave Putin a political gift with its maledroit adoption of a new law supporting the use of the Ukrainian language, which pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine characterize as an attack on Russian minority rights.
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The Kremlin exploited the law to stoke the flames of Russian nationalism and separatism, thereby helping to justify the annexation.
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Very interesting Never heard of that from the Western press.
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Now our third question what is the current status of the Russia-Russo-Ukrainian war Now?
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As of now, in September 2023, the Russo-Ukrainian war is still ongoing.
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The Russian army made significant gains in the first year, but lost them towards the end of the year, the end of 2022.
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Now the fighting is now grinding into a halt, almost somewhat of a stalemate now, and many believe the US-backed sophisticated weaponry has pushed the Ukrainians over the top into believing they can win.
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Now the eastern and southern portions of Ukraine is where most of the fighting is taking place, as Ukraine is on the move with its own counteroffensive as we speak Now.
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Like I said, sergei's book only covers the first 10 months of this war, so it would be out of date to quote from it now about anything regarding the war, or only to say that he describes some horrific scenes of what the Russians had done on their first year in country.
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So if you are interested in that, by all means get this book.
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I would highly recommend it.
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And then, moving on to our fourth question of 10, how has the international community responded to the Russo-Ukrainian war?
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Most outlets come down somewhere along the lines of this the international community has largely condemned Russia's actions.
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Sanctions have been imposed by the US, the EU and other western countries.
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However, russia has received support from a few nations, most especially China, which is furthering a polarization of global politics not seen since the 1930s.
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And speaking of that international community, another question must be asked here.
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This is one of those tough questions Could Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022 been prevented?
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Sergei has something to say about that, in fact something to write about that.
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Going back to the book, concern about Soviet and then Russian objections to NATO membership for East European countries was the key factor behind President George H W Bush's refusal to contemplate NATO's expansion beyond Germany's Eastern borders, although he insisted on keeping the organization in existence after the Cold War.
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So this is Bush 41 saying we're not going to expand NATO beyond Germany's Eastern borders.
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Going back to the book, it was also a major reason why many members of the Clinton administration rejected the pleas of East European leaders to join the alliance by 1993,.
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There was one more reason to question such expansion.
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The reason was Ukraine, or more specifically its denuclearization.
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Clinton Secretary of State Warren Christopher formulated the Ukraine problem as follows it is hard to see how Ukraine can accept being the buffer between NATO, europe and Russia.
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This will militate against our efforts to get rid of Ukraine's nuclear weapons.
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The direct link between nuclear weapons and the desirability of NATO membership for the East European countries was demonstrated in 1992, when some Polish officials suggested to their American counterparts that they would acquire nuclear weapons if not allowed to join NATO.
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The prospect of a nuclear armed Poland facing a newly aggressive Russia frightened many in Washington, and some were prepared to offer NATO membership to the Ukrainians as a carrot to give up their nuclear arsenal.
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Frightened by the possibility of losing their weapons while getting stuck in the grey zone between NATO and Russia, ukrainian diplomats tried to jump on the East European bandwagon to join the alliance.
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Now, later on, we read in the Clinton administration in April 1993, when Clinton met with Valencia and Havel in Washington and both leaders raised the issue of NATO membership, the US president began to rethink the more cautious policies of his predecessor.
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But there were two main obstacles on the Eastern European road to the alliance.
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One was opposition from Russia.
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The other was concern about Ukraine, which still retained its nuclear weapons and was extremely apprehensive about finding itself in a no man's land between NATO and Russia.
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Russian opposition to NATO expansion presented a problem.
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But the Clinton administration was also concerned that, whatever position Yeltsin took, such expansion would embolden his domestic critics.
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If NATO adopted an anti-Russian rationale for taking in new members, it could tip the balance of forces in Russian politics in exactly the direction we feared, Wrote Clinton's point man on Russia in Eastern Europe, straub Talbot.
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The breakthrough on Russia came in August 1993 when Lewenza reached an informal agreement with Yeltsin to ensure Poland's membership in NATO at the expense of Ukraine.
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The terms were that Russia would not oppose Poland's application to join the alliance.
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In exchange, poland would not involve itself in Ukrainian affairs unless there was a military crisis in Ukraine.
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Although highly informal, the deal was upheld.
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Russia raised no objections to East Europeans joining the alliance.
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But the line was drawn at the Ukrainian border.
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And then we get to the bottom line answer.
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Here we go back to Polki.
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But key European members of NATO, france and Germany in particular, blocked the decision advocated by the United States and supported by the new East European members of the alliance to grant Ukraine and Georgia a membership action plan.
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We agree today that these countries would become members of NATO.
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Read the declaration before, making it clear that no ascension would take place anytime soon.
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The map membership action plan was promised, but not given, on the basis that the two potential applicants still had to meet some specific criteria in order to qualify.
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We will now begin a period of intensive engagement with both at a high political level to address the questions still outstanding pertaining to their map applications Again, the membership action plan.
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The matter was postponed and would not return to the NATO agenda at the next summit or the one after that.
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One knew that the decision to deny map to the two post-Soviet republics was a concession to their former master, russia.
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So France and Germany blocked NATO membership of Ukraine in 2008 and they pulled the old Washington two-step we're going to do something for you without really doing anything.
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Thus, that's why you get this word solid of a quote.
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We agreed today that these countries would become members of NATO.
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Read the declaration before making it clear that no ascension would take place anytime soon.
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There was outstanding questions of the two potential applicants the old Washington two-step let's do something for you without doing anything for you.
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And that is exactly what France and Germany did.
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Now, interestingly enough, just a few months after this vote, at the NATO summit on August 8th 2008, russia invaded the former Republic of Georgia under the pretenses of South Ossetia, which had seceded from Georgia in the early 1990s.
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Russia said they needed protection and within four days, the larger or more powerful Russian army had overwhelmed the Georgia fighting force and was at the outskirts of the capital.
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Then a ceasefire was brokered with by then French President, nicholas Sarkozy, to halt the hostilities, but the die had been cast.
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The invasion of Georgia was a clear message to Ukraine that you better not step over the line.
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No matter what had happened in NATO the fact that you were not an official NATO member you still had questions outstanding.
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Putin invaded Georgia because of that weakness and Georgia's never recovered.
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They're now just a puppet satellite state of Russia, and Ukraine is holding on for dear life.
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Our fifth question is what is the role of NATO in the Russo-Ukrainian war?
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We just covered that for the most part, nato conventional thinking says NATO has backed Ukraine.
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It's condemned Russia's actions and provided support in terms of capacity building and advisory roles.
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However, ukraine is not a NATO member, so it just limits the extent of NATO's involvement and, if we can be frank, nato has been completely impotent.
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In the 2008 invasion of Georgia, the Soviet Republic, it frankly did nothing to help them.
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They were essentially completely caught off guard.
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And NATO did nothing in the 2014 annexation of Crimea in eastern Ukraine by Russia.
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So both 2008 and 2014, they were completely impotent, so NATO is essentially almost worthless.
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Now number six of our 10 questions how has the Russo-Ukrainian war affected Ukraine's economy and people?
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And how about the Russian economy and the Russian people?
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Well, from our research, the war has caused significant damage to Ukraine's economy and infrastructure.
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Now, additionally, it's led to a humanitarian crisis, with thousands dead and over 3.5 million people displaced.
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Now here's what Sergei Polki says about the Russian economy.
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This is very interesting.
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I thought Europe's turn away from Russian oil and pledged to drastically cut its consumption of Russian gas began to close the European market for Russian energy much earlier than proponents of Europe's long-term strategy.
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The achievement of net-zero-net greenhouse emissions by 2050 had expected.
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Loss of the most lucrative European markets promised nothing good for a country 60% of whose government revenues were generated by energy exports.
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Germany depended on Russian gas for 55% of its energy before the war.
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Reduce that share to slightly more than one-third of its supply.
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In the first months of the war, it also made plans to build a new LNG terminals for American liquefied natural gas.
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By July of 2022, europe was already importing more LNG from the United States than the amount of natural gas it had previously bought from Russia.
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That's a fascinating series of statistics there by Sergei, so you can see Europe is banding together to help each other out.
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It was very good.
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At least the Biden administration actually saw, and did well to anticipate, that we needed to turn on the spickets for LNG exports.
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So they get a check mark for doing something good.
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Now our seventh question is what Russian objectives have been solved in the Russo-Ukrainian War.
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The Russia's objectives in this war are multi-fold.
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They include reasserting its influence over the former Soviet territories, protecting Russian-speaking populations and countering Western expansion.
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That's the novel, or the general conventional thinking, and I thought Sergei seemed almost prophetic when he wrote these paragraphs.
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There are clear indications that the Ukrainian nation will merge from this war more united in certain of its identity than at any other point in its modern history.
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Moreover, ukraine's successful resistance to Russian aggression is destined to promote Russia's own nation building project.
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Russia and its elites now have little choice but to reimagine their country's identity by parting ways not only with the imperialism of the Tsarist past, but also with the anarchistic model of Russian nation consisting of Russians, ukrainians and Belarusians.
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By paying an enormous price in wealth and in the blood of its citizens, ukraine is terminating the era of Russian dominance in a good part of Eastern Europe and challenging Moscow's claim to primacy to the rest of the post-Soviet space.
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That's extremely powerful.
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The impact of the Russo-Ukrainian war has already been felt far beyond the former possessions of the Romanovs and Commissars.
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Ukraine survived the Russian assault and defended itself thanks to the unprecedented solidarity of the international community, which provided the Ukrainian government and the people with political, economic and military support on a scale not seen in decades.
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For many of Ukraine's friends, this war became not only the largest and deadliest military conflict in Europe since the end of World War II, but also the first major war since the victory over Nazism in which there were few shades of gray when it came to its moral dimensions.
00:28:31.696 --> 00:28:53.086
It was the first quote good war since the global conflict in 1939 to 1945 in which it was very clear from the start who was the aggressor and who was the victim, who was the villain and who the hero, and whose side one wanted to be on.
00:28:55.095 --> 00:29:03.442
Russian aggression against Ukraine produced a 19th century war, fought with 20th century tactics and 21st century weaponry.
00:29:03.442 --> 00:29:12.482
Its ideological underpinnings came from the visions of territorial expansion that characterized the Russian Imperial Era.
00:29:12.482 --> 00:29:31.826
Its strategy was borrowed by the Kremlin from World War II and post-war era manuals of the Soviet Army, and its key features were not only precision guided missiles, but also intelligence gathering satellites and cyber warfare, used to different degrees by both sides.
00:29:31.826 --> 00:29:36.344
The war posed a nuclear threat to the world from its very inception.
00:29:36.344 --> 00:29:59.384
Russia's takeover of the Chernobyl nuclear site and the Zephyr-Vezina nuclear power plan in the first days of the all-out conflict constituted a clear and present danger to the part of Europe and the Middle East, as well as a challenge To the safety of nuclear installations worldwide.
00:30:00.795 --> 00:30:02.901
Now moving on to our eighth question of 10.
00:30:02.901 --> 00:30:08.025
How has the Russo-Ukrainian War impacted global politics?
00:30:08.025 --> 00:30:25.558
Well, the conventional answer is it's significantly impacted global politics, straining Russian's relationship with the West and causing shifts in geopolitical alliances, especially with China.
00:30:25.558 --> 00:30:37.143
And, as we will see in Saturday's episode, this war was caused by the United States' weakness in other areas of the world, namely in Afghanistan.
00:30:37.143 --> 00:30:40.117
But let's hear from now.
00:30:40.117 --> 00:30:47.642
Let's hear from what Sergei has to say about China and Russia and their coming together in their closeness.
00:30:47.642 --> 00:30:49.376
Very interesting.
00:30:51.394 --> 00:31:06.884
In early February, having already made up his mind to invade Ukraine, vladimir Putin flew to Beijing there to figure as a guest of honor at the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympic Games hosted by Xi Jinping.
00:31:06.884 --> 00:31:19.675
The two met and released a photo in which Putin did not keep his distance from his Chinese counterpart, as he had been doing in meetings with Western leaders during the previous few weeks.
00:31:19.675 --> 00:31:36.122
President Xi and Putin also released a 5,000-word statement declaring friendship and cooperation with quote no limits or quote forbidden areas of cooperation between their countries, which suggested military cooperation.
00:31:36.122 --> 00:31:55.143
Even so, the declaration fell short of a formal alliance, since China still considers the international order hierarchical and has not regarded Russia as its equal historically and culturally, let alone in terms of economic power and potential.
00:31:55.143 --> 00:32:05.217
The document called the New Agreement Superior to Political and Military Alliances of the Cold War Era Interesting language.
00:32:05.217 --> 00:32:05.458
There.
00:32:07.315 --> 00:32:13.579
There were no specifics about how the partnership would work, but there were particular statements about geopolitics.
00:32:13.579 --> 00:32:27.646
President Xi had publicly supported Putin's opposition to the eastward expansion of NATO, the key reason that the master of the Kremlin had provided to justify his imminent aggression.
00:32:27.646 --> 00:32:49.000
Putin in turn supported China's claims on Taiwan and both leaders to clear their opposition to the quote advancement of US plans to develop global missile defense and deploy its elements in various regions of the world, and with capacity building of high precision non-nuclear weapons for disarming strikes and other strategic objectives.
00:32:49.000 --> 00:32:56.586
It's not clear to what extent the coming war in Ukraine was discussed at the summit.
00:32:56.586 --> 00:33:06.904
But Putin could not afford not to mention the war at all, otherwise he would have killed the quote no limits friendship before it began.
00:33:06.904 --> 00:33:20.219
Now, western intelligence found that President Xi did not want the war to start before the closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games, so as not to distract world attention from his great achievement.
00:33:20.219 --> 00:33:24.160
Very interesting indeed.
00:33:24.875 --> 00:33:33.786
Moving on to our ninth of 10 questions, what is the stance of the United States on this Russo-Ukrainian war?
00:33:33.786 --> 00:33:44.604
Well, continuing with our conventional wisdom, the United States has condemned Russia's actions and has offered significant support to Ukraine.
00:33:44.604 --> 00:33:57.338
This includes sanctions against Russia, financial aid to Ukraine albeit a lot a crap ton and military assistance.
00:33:57.338 --> 00:34:04.547
Now Sergei says this about US foreign policy towards Ukraine and Russia.
00:34:04.547 --> 00:34:21.617
Going back to his book, although the Biden administration was at pains to make clear that it had no intention of involving the United States in the Russo-Ukrainian war, the President's rhetoric was redolent of the Cold War.
00:34:21.617 --> 00:34:30.041
In that tradition, his speech was billed as remarks on the United Efforts of the Free World to support the people of Ukraine.
00:34:30.041 --> 00:34:39.420
There were indeed four references to the West or Western world and 20 uses of the words Free and Freedom.
00:34:39.420 --> 00:34:46.878
For anyone listening to Biden's speech on that March evening in Warsaw or watching it on television around the world.
00:34:46.878 --> 00:34:57.360
There was no doubt the United States was back in Europe to lead its allies in the battle for freedom against an old enemy and that the West as a whole was involved in the struggle.
00:34:57.360 --> 00:35:18.545
The joint actions of Americans and Europeans, with their provisions of military and economic assistance to Ukraine and the sheltering of refugees and, most controversially, the imposition of joint sanctions on Russia, indicated a revival of the Cold War-era alliance.
00:35:18.545 --> 00:35:30.409
Now our final question, question 10, what can be done to resolve this Russo-Ukrainian war?
00:35:30.409 --> 00:35:37.626
Well, the conventional wisdom says the resolution is going to require diplomatic negotiations.
00:35:37.626 --> 00:35:49.121
On the Ukrainian side, there has to be respect for its sovereignty and there has to be international pressure on Russia to cease its actions.
00:35:49.121 --> 00:36:05.427
Now it's a complex issue that requires persistent efforts from all stakeholders and it's going to be very nuanced how they're going to get to a final agreement, a final peace agreement.
00:36:05.427 --> 00:36:09.880
Now Sergei has a final word to say about this.
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The war buried Russia's hopes of becoming a new global center in the multipolar world envisioned by Russian politicians and diplomats since the 1990s.
00:36:24.914 --> 00:36:33.521
It exposed weaknesses not only in Russia's clearly overrated and overpromoted army, but also in its economic potential.
00:36:33.521 --> 00:36:52.507
In that context, the decisions of Sweden and Finland to join NATO were not just reactions to the threat posed by Putin's rogue regime, but also realizations that a significantly weakened Russia was in no condition to prevent their move.
00:36:52.507 --> 00:37:00.344
That's very interesting that Sweden and Finland were now able to join Russia, or now able to join NATO.
00:37:00.344 --> 00:37:05.501
As Opposing to Russia, they have always been under their sphere of influence.
00:37:07.070 --> 00:37:10.420
Going back to the book, russia, for its part, was left without allies.
00:37:10.420 --> 00:37:27.963
It forced the Belarusian strongman, alexander Lashenko, whom it had saved in 2020 from the revolt of his own people, to allow the use of Belarusian territory for its attack on Ukraine, but failed to persuade him to join the war.
00:37:27.963 --> 00:37:47.097
There was even less support from the members of the CSTO, that's, the collective security treaty organization, the Russian-led military alliance of the former Soviet republics of our media Kazakhstan, kyrgyzstan to Jikistan, uzbekistan.
00:37:47.097 --> 00:38:05.739
Outside the former Soviet Union, russia's main diplomatic achievement was alliance with Iran and neutrality of Turkey, which sees the opportunity afforded by the isolation and the weakening of Russia to establish itself as a regional power beyond the Middle East.
00:38:05.739 --> 00:38:12.929
That was a swift move by President Ergon in Turkey to do that.
00:38:12.929 --> 00:38:21.244
Now China put limits on its quote no limits agreement to cooperate with China within weeks of having signed it.
00:38:21.244 --> 00:38:47.483
While publicly expressing the concern that it shared with Russia about NATO's posture in Europe, beijing provided Moscow with limited political and economic support and, to the best of current knowledge, no military assistance and, that is a key point, no military assistance by China to Russia, as far as we know.
00:38:49.710 --> 00:39:01.324
So have we learned anything in the last 25 years in terms of American foreign policy, especially with this engagement or with this war in Ukraine by Russian aggression?
00:39:01.324 --> 00:39:03.653
We hope so.
00:39:03.653 --> 00:39:12.512
Right now, support for the Ukrainian war seems to be Good.
00:39:12.512 --> 00:39:14.014
It seems to be winning.
00:39:14.014 --> 00:39:26.878
Now that all said, we have never had any formal joint resolution by Congress on Providing all this funding to Ukraine.
00:39:26.878 --> 00:39:29.023
So there is a problem with that.
00:39:29.023 --> 00:39:38.418
But there's always been problems with funding wars that the executive branch wants to help and provide financial aid.
00:39:38.418 --> 00:39:40.704
So there's always been that dichotomy.
00:39:40.704 --> 00:39:42.289
There's always been that tension, no matter who is in power.
00:39:42.289 --> 00:39:57.250
But there has been a crap ton of financial aid sent to Ukraine and very, very little conversation and Votes around it in Congress, which is a huge problem.
00:40:00.599 --> 00:40:04.028
Now here's a bonus question and a bonus book recommendation.
00:40:04.028 --> 00:40:13.668
After everything, we just heard how difficult and how nuanced that part of the world is, and there's various parts of the world that are like this.
00:40:13.668 --> 00:40:25.248
But our bonus question is should America Be the world's policeman, especially after everything we just heard?
00:40:25.248 --> 00:40:46.333
Especially after everything we just heard, and a bonus book recommendation for you is Brett Stevens, who was the author of the 2014 book titled America in Retreat the new isolationism and the coming global disorder Very good book.
00:40:46.333 --> 00:40:50.210
He tries to tackle that question should America be the world's policeman?
00:40:50.210 --> 00:40:53.757
And real quick to answer that.
00:40:53.757 --> 00:40:55.643
He would answer that this way.
00:40:57.349 --> 00:41:06.338
Whenever this question is asked that's always been asked for nearly a hundred years the answer is usually no, america should not be the world's policeman.
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