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Another week, another Tucker interview, another transcription of a juicy part by yours truly. I promise, this is unusual, I haven't listened to two in a row, at all, ever.
This week is Jeffrey Sachs. The part below is just after 1:44.
That was the first mention of Israel, that I could recall, but the whole conversation is about Ukraine, Russia, Putin, and NATO. It's not exactly new to me, but it's refreshing to hear someone so clearly say that this is a war of choice, and the choice is being made by the USA, and their puppet states involved in NATO.
And that was all before any discussion of COVID. tl;dl, it's obviously from a lab, we (USA) pretty clearly funded it, and Fauci has been running the germ warfare branch of the DoD for decades. Which lab, and how is unknown, but, in his own words:
Great interview, and I'm glad that Tucker has twitter dot com to host his stuff, rather than be consigned to the fringes of the internet.
Sachs is making the same fundamental mistake the current administration has made and the next administration will likely make again, which is thinking that the US is in the driver's seat and all it needs to do is turn the wheel to get everyone going in the direction it wants. The war did not start on America's terms and unless it wants to intervene directly, it will not end on America's terms (a position Sachs is not advocating for, as I understand it).
NATO's enlargement was not, as Sachs seems to imagine, a result of an ever expanding American empire, but the manifesting of the strategic needs of the member states. Even if the US could wave it's magic wand and dissolve NATO tomorrow a new Euro-centric bloc would form as a symptom of the same strategic anxiety. Life in the Russkiy Mir is still within living memory of the majority of the former SSR and there is hurry to return to it. The Baltics are preparing for the worst and Poland's military buildup has gone into overdrive. Western Europe, which does not have the misfortune of sharing a border with Russia, has been slower to wake from its stupor.
Meanwhile at the Kremlin there appears to be no desire for a neutral Ukraine either. Putin et al shunned all offramps prior to Feb 2022 and have opined repeatedly that Ukraine is Russia. The Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson have been legally incorporated into Russia. After the sanctions placed on it in response to its seizure of Crimea, Russia made great efforts to reduce its reliance on the west and built up great wealth (which it is now spending to fund the war). Does Mr Sachs imagine that if Biden were to ask nicely that Putin would just pack up and leave?
Sachs is right about one thing though, America does have the means to end the war. Through violence.
Russia is a nuclear power. Engaging in direct U.S. vs Russia conflict over Ukraine of all places is insane.
Should such a conflict occur, the mean expected deaths would number in the millions easily. The chance of a limited nuclear exchange becomes quite high, and a full nuclear exchange possible.
Scott shut this argument down. You can’t just play nuclear blackmail games. Maybe Ukraine is the right place to back down. Maybe it isn’t. That is a complicated question.
The solution to Russia has nukes is not back down anytime they want something. Then the whole world would be ruled by Russia. A thing worse than nuclear war.
The one big issue with not defending Ukraine is it raises a question of who really is under the umbrella of U.S. protection. Any country that thinks they might be outside of the security arrangement would be very interested in being a nuclear state. And as N Korea has proven just about any civilization can get nukes and a missile program. The reason even places like Taiwan do not have nukes despite real risks is because getting nukes would piss off the U.S. and they view security help from the west as more valuable than nukes.
Even places like Georgia would probably buy some nukes and launcher systems as soon as possible. And those type of states do have some political instability which means eventually some people you don’t like are nuclear.
The alternative is Russian Roulette. Maybe you’ll get lucky and the other guys won’t actually go through with it. But the thing is, you can’t ever misjudge in that game because if you do, the consequences, not just for your country and her allies, but for the entire world are absolutely catastrophic. Billions dead, mass extinction event, famine, radiation. And so the consequences should at least be weighed against the benefits with those consequences in mind. Is Ukraine worth it? I’m not sure. But what has always worried me about the NATO approach is that they’re playing chicken under the assumption that Putin never actually means it. And we honestly have no way to actually know this. We might guess, or assume, but we don’t know for sure that the next line we cross won’t be the one that Putin was serious about. The west in my view absolutely doesn’t take the nuclear threat seriously. They aren’t asking whether Putin would, and in fact they seem to be deluded into thinking that Putin is less likely to use them if he feels cornered. This simply defies common sense. If he loses in Ukraine his life is in danger because Russian coups tend to happen after Russia loses a war, and quite often the leader who lost gets executed. And so you have a cornered man whose only way out is the nukes, but that’s somehow something he’s going to care about. It’s nonsense, and dangerous nonsense.
You play Russian Roulette whether you fight in Ukraine or not. If you choose not to your just playing with a different gun.
Appeasement didn’t work in the ‘30’s. Looking weak today increases the risks China or Russia oversteps in the future. You even marginal raise the risks of a Russian/Chinese first strike if they think you are too soft to counter.
Playing brinkmanship is just part of the game. It can’t be removed.
"we need to fight this stupid war or we a pussy" this is the stupidest fucking argument in the world, it's responsible for so many deaths, and it's exactly why I don't trust the pro Ukraine people.
I did not say that.
Maybe not in so many words, but the line of logic of "we need to show the world that we are maximally willing to engage in war" can excuse literally any level of escalation, and used to reject any effort of diplomacy - which is what you're doing, here, with the by this point very predictable accusation of appeasement, since your history book ended at 1945.
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