The Charlie Kirk Show - WHO and WHAT is Standing in the Way of Peace in Ukraine
Aired: 2022-03-08
Duration: 34:08


=== Contrarian Take on Russia Ukraine (09:52) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk Show, a contrarian take on the Russian-Ukrainian situation.
[00:00:04]  And we give you an update straight from Russia and Ukraine, the best we can decipher from the smokescreen media.
[00:00:11]  Clint Ulrich is here, and he dives into the situation on the ground and what should the West's response be to try to broker peace, not further escalate this conflict.
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[00:01:31]  Should we establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine?
[00:01:34]  It sounds good if all you've done is kind of play Call of Duty video games your entire life and it sounds as if you could just wave a magic wand.
[00:01:41]  Yeah, no-fly zone, no planes.
[00:01:43]  Well, this is now being floated by some U.S. lawmakers, Adam Kinzinger being one of them.
[00:01:49]  And this is now being discussed as a serious topic.
[00:01:51]  So what does that mean?
[00:01:52]  Well, you don't have to overthink it, actually.
[00:01:54]  A no-fly zone in Ukraine would mean that America, we, would take ownership of the skies.
[00:02:00]  And if Russia were to push that boundary, we would have to shoot down a Russian airplane, which could actually trigger something that is now being colloquially branded as World War III.
[00:02:14]  Chuck Todd asked Tony Blinken, failed rock star, Secretary of State, hey, why would you rule it out?
[00:02:21]  Why not make Putin think it's possible?
[00:02:23]  Play Cut 16.
[00:02:26]  Why rule out the no-fly zone?
[00:02:28]  Why not make Putin think it's possible?
[00:02:30]  For everything we're doing for Ukraine, the president also has a responsibility to not get us into a direct conflict, a direct war with Russia, a nuclear power, and risk a war that expands even beyond Ukraine to Europe.
[00:02:43]  Now, of course, that's the right response, but these guys are the worst negotiators ever.
[00:02:47]  Trump never would say that.
[00:02:48]  Trump would always say, you don't know what I'm going to do.
[00:02:51]  I got everything at my disposal.
[00:02:54]  Do we have to remind you what Trump said about the Kremlin when he was talking to Putin in private?
[00:03:01]  And he said, listen, you invade Ukraine, those beautiful golden turrets in Moscow, they're all going to burn.
[00:03:08]  And Vladimir Putin laughed.
[00:03:10]  Trump said, that's what we're going to do.
[00:03:12]  Now, of course, some would call that reckless, but actually, I call it peace.
[00:03:17]  There was not a million and a half refugees coming from Ukraine under Trump.
[00:03:20]  It just didn't happen.
[00:03:22]  He understood prudence when it came to foreign policy.
[00:03:24]  He was also willing to talk to anybody, which does beg the question, if Joe Biden really wanted to create an off-ramp for peace, why is America not taking a leadership role in diplomacy?
[00:03:36]  Since Ukraine is a client state of the State Department, why is Joe Biden or at least any of his surrogates going to Europe and immediately demanding the two prime ministers meet, Zelensky and Putin?
[00:03:49]  That's what Teddy Roosevelt did, and he won a Nobel Peace Prize for it.
[00:03:54]  Let's go to cut 15, montage of Manchin and Rubio on the no-fly zone.
[00:04:00]  Play cut 15.
[00:04:01]  A no-fly zone, if people understood what it means, it means World War III.
[00:04:06]  It's not some rule you pass that everybody has to oblige by.
[00:04:09]  It's the willingness to shoot down the aircrafts of the Russian Federation, which is basically the beginning of World War III.
[00:04:16]  Would you support a no-fly zone?
[00:04:17]  This is not the Russian people's war.
[00:04:19]  This is Putin's war and his quest for whatever it may be.
[00:04:22]  But to take anything off the table, thinking we might not be able to use things because we've already taken them off the table is wrong.
[00:04:28]  I would take nothing off the table.
[00:04:29]  Now, one of the reasons why Putin has the upper hand is because he's not broadcasting his moves, and he's also the unpredictable one in this equation.
[00:04:37]  Unpredictability when it comes to foreign policy in today's time, when everyone has nuclear weapons, seems to be an advantage.
[00:04:45]  Trump used the mystery of action, the unpredictability, the caricature that the West framed Trump as being someone who can't control himself.
[00:04:56]  He actually used that as a great brokering of peace.
[00:05:01]  The fact that people thought he's losing his mind.
[00:05:03]  He can't control himself.
[00:05:05]  He's the one that can push the button at any time.
[00:05:08]  That actually ended up being a way that the people that otherwise would say, Putin probably had a meeting with his foreign minister and they said, is this guy totally out of his mind?
[00:05:19]  Now, Joe Biden always says that he's the reasonable one, that he's the one that's going to say the right thing.
[00:05:25]  Well, when you're dealing with people like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, they don't really quite worship the God of reason.
[00:05:36]  All they care about is power.
[00:05:38]  And if anyone threatens their power, if you just go to pure Machiavellian tactics in the prints, then in a power dispute, it's the one that you cannot quite predict that is going to get the upper hand.
[00:05:51]  Predictability is a very bad thing when you're dealing with autocrats.
[00:05:55]  Why?
[00:05:56]  Because then they can map out your behaviors.
[00:05:58]  Look, Putin, I guarantee you, has on one of his planning and strategy walls with all of his generals a decision tree.
[00:06:07]  Joe Biden will not intervene.
[00:06:10]  Joe Biden will tell us what he means.
[00:06:13]  And NATO will not intervene because they're afraid that we're going to use nuclear weapons.
[00:06:17]  So what does Vladimir Putin do?
[00:06:19]  Well, he plays off the Trump song sheet.
[00:06:21]  He says, I'm going to put my nuclear weapons on high alert.
[00:06:24]  Boom, stock market crashes in America a thousand points.
[00:06:27]  People start freaking out.
[00:06:29]  He says he's going to use the father of all bombs.
[00:06:32]  Vladimir Putin basically copy-pasted and plagiarized Donald Trump and says, you guys are going to suffer destruction and suffering, the likes of which you've never seen.
[00:06:41]  I say, you could at least come up with one or two new wrinkles.
[00:06:46]  No, it's like a carbon copy.
[00:06:48]  It is a copy-paste.
[00:06:49]  Putin says, what did Trump say?
[00:06:54]  This is what we say now.
[00:06:57]  This.
[00:06:59]  And like that, the game changes immediately.
[00:07:03]  Let's go to cut five, Tony Blinken on the conflict in Russia and Ukraine.
[00:07:09]  You know, how this ends is an important question.
[00:07:16]  And I wish that we could see signs that President Putin was willing to engage diplomatically to bring this aggression to a close.
[00:07:26]  Right now, we're not seeing them.
[00:07:29]  He was on the phone, President Putin, with President Macron of France a couple of days ago.
[00:07:34]  And by all accounts, according to the French, he's digging in and doubling down.
[00:07:38]  And I think we have to be ready that this could go on for some while.
[00:07:42]  And this will go on for some while.
[00:07:45]  Now, when American diplomacy or American leadership is absent from the international scene, we're unwilling to do the things necessary to rebalance the energy, let's say, the energy portion of this entire situation.
[00:08:00]  Well, then don't be surprised if Putin is going to get his way.
[00:08:04]  Now, interestingly enough, there is an argument out there that the West provoked Putin into action.
[00:08:11]  I don't like this argument.
[00:08:12]  I don't like when countries invade sovereign countries.
[00:08:14]  I don't like when America invaded Iraq.
[00:08:16]  And I don't like when Putin invaded Ukraine.
[00:08:19]  It's not what civilized, decent people do.
[00:08:22]  Getting down to the brutal aspects of war creates refugees, death, suffering, famine, poverty.
[00:08:27]  It is not the highest levels of human existence.
[00:08:29]  In fact, it's some of the lowest.
[00:08:31]  War does not take prudence, restraint, wisdom.
[00:08:36]  That's not to say that only dumb people win wars, but war is awful.
[00:08:41]  It is one of the worst things humanity can do.
[00:08:44]  However, it's very interesting that Joe Biden predicted a lot of this in 1997.
[00:08:49]  He said the only thing that could provoke a vigorous and hostile Russia response would be if NATO expanded as far as the Baltic states.
[00:08:56]  This is before Putin became prime minister.
[00:08:58]  Play cut 24.
[00:08:59]  I think the one place where the greatest consternation would be caused in the short term for admission, having nothing to do with the merit and preparedness of the country to come in, would be to admit the Baltic states now in terms of NATO-Russian, U.S.-Russian relations.
[00:09:20]  And if there was ever anything that was going to tip the balance, were it to be tipped in terms of a vigorous and hostile reaction, I don't mean military, in Russia, it would be that.
[00:09:32]  So the way I look at the calculus here, Ms. So he says the only thing that would tip Russia into being vigorous and hostile is if NATO expands too far, which of course NATO has done.
[00:09:43]  NATO has incorporated countries that otherwise have no sort of affiliation with the core European corridor.

=== Cheering for Hidden Nazis in Ukraine (05:56) ===

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[00:10:54]  If you are cheering for Ukraine, you might be cheering for a group that you don't realize.
[00:11:00]  And I'm not saying that we're cheering against Ukraine.
[00:11:03]  We're cheering for the Ukrainian people.
[00:11:04]  But if you're cheering for the Ukrainian government more specifically, there's a group of people that you should probably be made aware of.
[00:11:12]  They are called the Azov Battalion.
[00:11:15]  The Azov Battalion are legitimately Nazis.
[00:11:20]  It's not a joke.
[00:11:22]  It's not an exaggeration.
[00:11:24]  In fact, let me read from Wikipedia because Wikipedia is never wrong.
[00:11:31]  They say that it's a right-wing extremist neo-Nazi paramilitary unit of the National Guard of Ukraine based in Marupol, the Azov Sea coastal region.
[00:11:42]  It has been fighting in the Russian separatist region in the Donbass War.
[00:11:46]  Azov initially formed as a volunteer militia in May of 2014.
[00:11:52]  It saw its first combat experience recapturing the Meropol from pro-Russian separatists in June 2014.
[00:11:58]  And on the 12th of November 2014, Azov was incorporated into National Guard of Ukraine.
[00:12:02]  And since then, all the members are official soldiers serving in the National Guard.
[00:12:07]  So membership is kind of hard to pinpoint and define, but it's a legitimate neo-Nazi organization.
[00:12:16]  So, and the guy financing Azov Battalion is Ihor Kolominsky.
[00:12:21]  It's a Ukrainian oligarch who finances them, a group that has been accused of civilian executions and torture in Donbass.
[00:12:30]  Kolominsky also bankrolls numerous politicians to increase his influence, such as Zelensky.
[00:12:37]  Kolominsky was also the owner of Burisma, the very same company that paid Hunter Biden $83,000 a month.
[00:12:50]  From Newsweek.com, it says Ukrainian nationalist volunteers committing ISIS-style war crimes.
[00:12:56]  This is back from 2014, cutting heads off and decapitating people.
[00:13:02]  Now, NBC News says that Putin is using false Nazi narrative to justify Russian attack on Ukraine.
[00:13:08]  Let's put that aside.
[00:13:10]  I'm not here to say if Putin is right or wrong in that particular instance.
[00:13:13]  What I am saying, though, is that when PBS went and went to Ukraine, they interviewed someone from this region.
[00:13:23]  America's Public Broadcasting Service published and promoted an interview with a renowned neo-Nazi Ukrainian mayor without disclosing its politicians' allegiance to World War II German leader Adolf Hitler and Ukraine's own Nazi sympathizer, Stepan Bandera.
[00:13:38]  This is PBS that aired this.
[00:13:40]  The interview comes just days after PBS published an article downplaying the links between neo-Nazi politicians and the Ukrainian current political situation.
[00:13:49]  On Thursday, March 4th, PBS hosted Mayor Artem Semokaliy of Konotop in the country's northeast region.
[00:13:57]  I'm reading from nationalpulse.com.
[00:14:00]  He says, quote, my weapon is American, and I feel like our occupiers will be pleased that we are killing them with American weapons.
[00:14:06]  Now, it is not an exaggeration that these are legitimate Nazis.
[00:14:12]  In fact, the PBS interview, Semenikin, posed with a Bandera portrait behind him, albeit blurred out by PBS in their attempts to obscure their work with Ukrainian neo-Nazis.
[00:14:24]  Now, we warned against this.
[00:14:26]  The very same people that have told us to get involved and support some of these Ukrainian groups are the same people that told us that we had to support the Syrian rebels, and the Syrian rebels ended up being friends with ISIS.
[00:14:41]  It's like, wait a second, so Bashar al-Assad is fighting ISIS?
[00:14:44]  No, we need to fund ISIS because we hate Assad.
[00:14:47]  Well, what if we hate them both?
[00:14:49]  Now, many of the people of Ukraine that are throwing Molotov cocktails and fighting have nothing to do with this Azov battalion group, but it's a component of this.
[00:14:59]  And he's bragging that we have financed them and we have given them weapons.
[00:15:05]  What am I getting at here?
[00:15:06]  At these conflicts, when you have people that are flying Ukrainian flags on their Instagram profile or that are doing everything they possibly can to virtue signal and posture as if they're on the side of democracy, should probably stop short and say, wait a second, am I cheering for a regime or a government that is neo-Nazi in nature?
[00:15:26]  And this was the Ukrainian mayor, where he had a Hitler accomplice image in his own office as he was interviewing with PBS, Public Broadcasting Service.
[00:15:36]  There's a lot more to this situation, unfortunately, that meets the eye.
[00:15:40]  It isn't black and white.
[00:15:41]  The people of Ukraine deserve our encouragement.
[00:15:46]  They are standing for what they believe in.

=== Why You Need a VPN Now (02:13) ===

[00:15:48]  But the government of Ukraine, Zelensky, the paramilitary groups, Azov Battalion, there seems to be an inter, let's say, an interweb of corruption, deceit, and dare I say, Nazi radicalism that is the West supporting and propping up?
[00:16:05]  That should be something that should make you take pause when American forces and money are supporting legitimate Nazis in Ukraine.
[00:16:14]  Hmm.
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[00:17:00]  Look, it's like making brownies using a mix.
[00:17:03]  Sure, you might add an extra egg in there or a dash of vanilla to give it an edge, but the foundation is still the same.
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[00:17:36]  We are here to provide contrarian opinions and clarity to the confusion.
[00:17:40]  If you just wanted to hear about the drums of war beating, you guys would be watching a cable news show.
[00:17:46]  But you come here for the truth and to go a level deeper.
[00:17:49]  So with us right now is someone who has been bold enough to, let's say, put a different opinion forward at great personal cost to him.
[00:17:58]  That is Clint Ehrlich.
[00:18:00]  And he joins us right now.

=== China Perspective on the War (15:35) ===

[00:18:02]  He's a Russia policy analyst and a former visiting researcher at MGIMO University, which is basically Russia's equivalent to Harvard.
[00:18:10]  Clint, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:18:12]  Thanks for having me on.
[00:18:13]  So Clint, you believe that the narrative that Russia is frustrated and might lose is wrong.
[00:18:19]  We're hearing this a lot.
[00:18:20]  Walk us through why you think that is misguided.
[00:18:23]  Well, I think that Russia is frustrated that they wanted to make more progress in their war on Ukraine.
[00:18:30]  But I think the idea that they're going to lose or that they're going to give up is misguided because it underestimates the stakes of this war from the Russian perspective.
[00:18:40]  The mistake that many analysts made before the war was they thought that Vladimir Putin would not invade Ukraine because they didn't take his words about the threat that Ukraine posed to Russia's security literally.
[00:18:51]  They simply didn't believe him.
[00:18:53]  And they're doing the same thing again.
[00:18:54]  They're not listening to what Putin is saying about Russia's goals in Ukraine and the fact that Russia considers this an existential war, basically a sequel to World War II for them.
[00:19:05]  And so the idea that Russia would simply give up or withdraw rather than escalating the war and using heavier weapons is based on a misapprehension of Putin's motivations and of the willingness of the Russians to do whatever it takes to win.
[00:19:20]  Do you think in your opinion and your expertise, is Putin willing to see this entire thing out as far as a takeover of the entire country or maybe divide it into two in East and West Ukraine?
[00:19:29]  I mean, a country of 40 to 50 million people taking it over is no small undertaking.
[00:19:36]  What do you think his true motivations here are?
[00:19:38]  To be honest, I think that the plan in that respect is probably poorly thought out.
[00:19:44]  I think that the Russians were over-optimistic and they thought that they would be able to go in initially and replace the government, basically a very efficient regime change war.
[00:19:53]  Now they're seeing that that's not going to happen.
[00:19:55]  There's fiercer resistance than they anticipated.
[00:19:58]  And so they're scrambling to figure out what the political solution at the end of this conflict is going to be.
[00:20:03]  Today, we saw a statement from the Kremlin that their conditions to end the war would involve Ukraine amending its constitution so that it would no longer aspire to NATO membership, to Ukraine recognizing Crimea as part of Russia, and to Ukraine recognizing the autonomy of the territories in the east.
[00:20:18]  And so I think that kind of political solution could be a feasible end to the war.
[00:20:23]  It's actually the Ukrainians who are unwilling to accept those terms.
[00:20:26]  There are Ukrainian nationalists who would potentially kill President Zelensky if he were to agree to give away Ukrainian territory that way.
[00:20:34]  And so it's not just the political dimension on the Russian side, it's also the political dimension on the Ukrainian side that's currently an obstacle to peace.
[00:20:42]  Well, that would also, I would also imagine, shows that Ukraine's actually in a much stronger position than if they're willing to push back against demands that would end the war.
[00:20:50]  I suppose that's a question that I've had here, which is, you know, how strong really is the Ukrainian position here?
[00:20:56]  We've heard for days now that Kiev is about to fall.
[00:20:59]  Is that practical?
[00:21:00]  Is you know, how what really is, and if it does fall, what does that actually mean?
[00:21:05]  It means it might be you control a capital, but not a country.
[00:21:08]  I think the truth lies somewhere in between.
[00:21:10]  What we're hearing right now is a lot of cheerleading that makes it sound like Ukraine is on the verge of outright defeating the Russian military.
[00:21:17]  And that simply isn't plausible.
[00:21:18]  The reality, though, is that taking a city of that size, a city that's been preparing for an invasion, is a massive, massive undertaking.
[00:21:27]  And that beyond just the military cost, the cost to Russia's international image that could happen if it lays siege to Kiev, if it kills tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians potentially in that kind of conflict, would be very, very damaging.
[00:21:42]  And so Russia has a motive to try to avoid that kind of bloody, bloody urban warfare if it can.
[00:21:50]  And so I think that that's why the Russians are potentially willing to go to the negotiating table and try to come up with a political solution that allows Russia to emerge as a nominal victor in the conflict without forcing it to use the kind of force that we saw, for example, in the Second Chechen War when the Russians absolutely laid waste to Grozny, the capital of Chechnya.
[00:22:10]  So talk to us about this group, separate fact from fiction, this Azov battalion group.
[00:22:17]  It seems as if they're legitimate neo-Nazis.
[00:22:20]  How large are they?
[00:22:21]  What is their influence in Ukrainian government?
[00:22:25]  The American media is saying they're a small splinter group, which is weird because they never say that about small splinter groups here in America.
[00:22:31]  They act as if they control entire political parties.
[00:22:33]  But separate fact from fiction.
[00:22:34]  Is this a real group or is this some sort of just kind of outdated internet conspiracy?
[00:22:39]  What's really going on with this Ukrainian military paramilitary group?
[00:22:43]  Azov Battalion is very real.
[00:22:45]  I wouldn't even call them a paramilitary group.
[00:22:46]  They're a full-fledged part of the Ukrainian military.
[00:22:50]  They're currently ensconced primarily in the Mariupol region of Ukraine.
[00:22:55]  They're surrounded by the Russians.
[00:22:57]  They claim that they're not neo-Nazis, but if you look at their iconography, they have clear Nazi symbols on their uniforms.
[00:23:06]  And there have been many photos of them where they're pictured with other Nazi symbols like the hooked cross, sometimes called the swastika.
[00:23:17]  And so to claim that they aren't neo-Nazis or that they're not an important part of the Ukrainian military is, I think, unrealistic.
[00:23:24]  President Zelensky has himself given awards to these individuals.
[00:23:28]  He's appeared on stage and given them military honors.
[00:23:33]  And so that's part of why the Russians feel like the neo-Nazi element of the Ukrainian government has been downplayed.
[00:23:39]  Now, I'm not calling Ukraine a neo-Nazi state.
[00:23:42]  It has a Jewish president.
[00:23:44]  And so it's important to understand that there can be real contradictions here and strange bedfellows when power politics come into play.
[00:23:50]  So there's an alliance between some Jewish Ukrainian oligarchs who are funding the very neo-Nazi elements within the Ukrainian government that Russia considers so dangerous.
[00:24:02]  And so it's really the complexities of the region that we have to take into account before we dismiss all of this as a conspiracy theory.
[00:24:08]  So do you see a resolution anytime soon between these two warring countries, or do you think this drags on for months?
[00:24:15]  Because this is costing Putin significantly.
[00:24:18]  I guess I suppose that's the second part of my question, which is how real is the cost to Putin?
[00:24:22]  Because is he starting to feel pressure domestically and economically to try to wrap this up?
[00:24:28]  The problem with theorizing that there's pressure on Putin to end the conflict is that it presupposes that the suffering that the Russian people are undergoing, that the economic cost in Russia is going to result in political opposition to Putin.
[00:24:42]  And right now, the vast majority of the Russian people blame NATO and the West for this conflict.
[00:24:48]  And in fact, they feel like they're under attack from sanctions.
[00:24:51]  I know individuals within Russia who were, frankly, not that sympathetic to Putin, who have grown more sympathetic to Putin over the course of this war because they feel like Russian civilians are now being targeted with sanctions, as if there's an effort to make Russian civilians suffer so much that they will rise up against their own government, and they resent that.
[00:25:10]  So in the short term, I think that President Putin's power within Russia is actually consolidating and that he's growing stronger.
[00:25:17]  Now, obviously, if things drag on long enough or if the economic crisis in Russia becomes significant enough that people can't put food on the table, then that would result in political instability.
[00:25:27]  And I think that at that point, President Putin and his advisors would seek an end to the war.
[00:25:32]  But that's not what we're seeing right now.
[00:25:33]  The ruble has reached its lowest level, but it's not a level that's so low that it's causing political instability within Russia.
[00:25:40]  And so right now, I think that the leadership of Russia within the Kremlin are prepared to weather this storm and continue prosecuting the war.
[00:25:49]  So yeah, and that's the question, which is how long this has actually taken?
[00:25:53]  How much bloodshed will actually be necessary there?
[00:25:55]  So the West is entertaining all sorts of different options.
[00:25:59]  There's talks about no-fly zones and supplying weaponry.
[00:26:03]  I mean, from your perspective, from a prudent America-first type perspective, is this something where we should be supplying airplanes, warfighters, and sophisticated weaponry?
[00:26:16]  I mean, what could the consequences of that be?
[00:26:19]  The consequences of that first are negative for the Ukrainian people, because the longer that this war drags on, the worse the damage is to Ukraine.
[00:26:28]  And so if we claim that Ukraine is our ally, I don't think that turning Ukraine into a failed state, making them the European version of Syria or Libya, is something that is in our national interest, frankly.
[00:26:41]  I think that a political settlement, one where we agree that Ukraine will not be in NATO, one where Ukraine, frankly, accepts the Russian demands that Crimea is going to be Russian territory and that the east of Ukraine is going to be autonomous.
[00:26:55]  That that is, frankly, in America's national security interest to avoid this kind of conflict.
[00:27:01]  When we talk about a no-fly zone, we're crossing so many lines.
[00:27:05]  We're going so far beyond America's national interest and instead positioning America as a global policeman who's willing to risk World War III for a country that we don't even have a security treaty with that would obligate us to fight.
[00:27:20]  And so I think from an America first perspective, there's really nothing to recommend this war and everything to recommend peace and diplomacy, something that the Biden administration has not pursued.
[00:27:30]  Even in the face of this kind of war, they have not been pushing the Ukrainians to go to the bargaining table and try to find a solution.
[00:27:37]  That's what's so bizarre to me, Clint.
[00:27:38]  And I mean, why is it that the Biden regime is not forcing the hand for peace?
[00:27:42]  Why are we not the ones facilitating this in Minsk or wherever?
[00:27:45]  I mean, when the Americans show up, people don't ghost you.
[00:27:48]  Like they're going to, I mean, you could force people to the table here.
[00:27:51]  We have a lot of chips to play from the diplomatic standpoint.
[00:27:54]  Why is it that this administration just seems to let this want to play out?
[00:27:58]  It's really weird to me.
[00:28:00]  I'll let you in on a dirty secret, Charlie.
[00:28:02]  They don't want peace in Ukraine.
[00:28:04]  They view this as an opportunity to have a repeat of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which was part of what brought down the Soviet Union.
[00:28:12]  So they want this to be Putin's version of that, his folly, where he invades a country and then the Russian army gets caught up in this long, protracted conflict.
[00:28:20]  And so they're looking at this as a geopolitical chess game where if they can just keep the war in Ukraine going, that will drain Russia of its resources.
[00:28:29]  It'll harm Russia's economy.
[00:28:30]  And so they think that will advance America's interests.
[00:28:33]  Well, if you view American interests as globalism and of being engaged in conflict with other nations, it makes perfect sense.
[00:28:41]  Whereas if you come at it from a perspective that you and I do, an America-first perspective, a pro-peace, anti-war perspective, then it's crazy.
[00:28:49]  And so there's really nothing to recommend this except for the desire to wage a Cold War with Russia that might well go hot.
[00:28:57]  Yeah, and that's really Machiavellian and cynical.
[00:29:00]  And I believe all of it, actually.
[00:29:01]  So that goes to show the state of where we're at.
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[00:30:21]  Clint, let me ask you: have we unintentionally or intentionally created a super alliance between China and Russia?
[00:30:28]  Yes.
[00:30:29]  And we're looking at a second Cold War and one that's more dangerous because it involves two hostile global rivals.
[00:30:36]  We have Russia, a country that in some respects has the most advanced military technology in the world.
[00:30:41]  And we've pushed them into an alliance with China, a country that has the largest population and the largest industrial base.
[00:30:47]  And so in this Cold War, frankly, it's not clear that we're going to win.
[00:30:51]  So, but let me ask you, just on something you just said, just as kind of a curiosity.
[00:30:55]  If Russia has the most sophisticated military technology, why is it that this has been such a clumsy kind of potential coup d'état, or has it been?
[00:31:04]  Or am I misreading that?
[00:31:06]  Well, often countries overinvest in their very advanced top-line weapons and they neglect their logistics.
[00:31:13]  And I think that that's what we're seeing in this current conflict.
[00:31:16]  So Russia, for example, has a Kinzal hypersonic missile.
[00:31:21]  It can go at Mach 10.
[00:31:23]  It has a payload three times the size of a tomahawk.
[00:31:26]  But that's utterly useless to them in Ukraine because they don't have targets that they're using it against.
[00:31:30]  And so in a conventional conflict with NATO, those sorts of missiles could absolutely destroy our aircraft carriers.
[00:31:36]  But in the mud of Ukraine, they're not very helpful.
[00:31:39]  Yeah, and there seems to be a lot of that.
[00:31:41]  I mean, the joke that I just told my team is: why is Putin invading in the winter?
[00:31:45]  He should know better than that.
[00:31:47]  But, you know, of course, it usually works the other way.
[00:31:49]  But it seems as if that, obviously, war is complicated, it's complex, it's hardly ever something that could be done surgically.
[00:31:56]  And the ramifications of this kind of new economic alliance between Russia and China, I mean, will you see now Russia become a vassal state for China?
[00:32:05]  Well, I don't think that Russia is going to be a vassal state because China still does want access to some of these advanced Russian technologies.
[00:32:13]  And so, even though China has a much larger economy and a much larger population, I think that they'll engage, frankly, not as equal partners necessarily, but certainly as partners in an uneasy alliance.
[00:32:26]  That's part of what's so frustrating: that Russia and China's interests do not perfectly align.
[00:32:31]  In their history, they've had border skirmishes, particularly in the east of Russia.
[00:32:35]  And so, there was a real opportunity for us to peel Russia away from China if we had pursued detente instead of confrontation.
[00:32:41]  And so, we've really wasted this opportunity.
[00:32:44]  And now, all of our economic sanctions, all the removal from Western companies in Russia just means that China is going to fill that gap.
[00:32:51]  And the fact that America doesn't manufacture anything anymore means that we can say, okay, our companies are leaving, but those Chinese factories are just going to produce the same products and put different logos on them and ship them to Russia.
[00:33:04]  So frustrating.
[00:33:06]  What is the West's prudent response here?
[00:33:08]  Brokering for peace, trying to demand an off-ramp.
[00:33:10]  War is an awful and ugly thing.
[00:33:11]  I don't like Putin invading Ukraine.
[00:33:13]  I don't think any reasonable person does.
[00:33:14]  What's the proper response to all this?
[00:33:16]  The number one priority is to ensure that the West does not get dragged into this conflict.
[00:33:21]  So we need to reject calls for a no-fly zone.
[00:33:23]  We need to reject calls for cyber attacks against Russia.
[00:33:26]  Because if we get sucked into a war with Russia, it's not just another Iraq war blunder.
[00:33:31]  It's the kind of war that could end human civilization.
[00:33:33]  And so that's why we need to push for peace because our lives are on the line.

=== Prudent Response to Global Conflict (00:30) ===

[00:33:37]  The lives of everyone that we love are on the line here, Charlie.
[00:33:40]  Yeah.
[00:33:41]  Amen.
[00:33:41]  Well, thank you, Clint, so much for joining us and for your wise commentary.
[00:33:45]  We appreciate it.
[00:33:45]  Thank you very much.
[00:33:46]  Thank you.
[00:33:49]  Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
[00:33:51]  Email us your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
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[00:34:00]  Thanks so much for listening.
[00:34:01]  God bless.
[00:34:04]  For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.