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Sept. 18, 2025 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
01:00:43
Glenn Diesen warns Europe and NATO it's time to ADJUST TO REALITY
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Again, I warned all the way, Russia has an immense military power.
They would likely win such a war because they have the benefit of the proximity.
The idea that they could isolate Russia in the world, this was also a fantasy.
It's easy to be tough on Russia when we're using Ukrainians and throwing them into the grave.
If you want to compete in this high-tech era, you need access to cheap energy, as you did in all industrial revolutions.
Recognize reality and see the opportunities instead of trying to fight it.
And if we had had free speech in Europe, still we had the ability to dissent and talk, but I don't think we do.
Welcome to today's interview here on Brighteon.com.
I'm Mike Adams, the founder of Brighteon.
And today we have a very special guest.
It's the first time that he's joined us on this show, but I have to confess I've been a fan of his work for several years now, frankly, since 2022 with the start of the conflict in Ukraine.
His name is Glenn Deeson, and he's a professor of political economics.
He joins us today to discuss the political economic situation, which is very complex in Europe and much more.
So welcome, Professor Deason.
It's an honor to have you on today, sir.
Well, no, it's my pleasure.
Thank you so much for inviting me on.
Well, thank you for joining us.
I think that many of our audience members may already be familiar with you and your work, but for those who are not, can you give us a brief background of who you are and what you like to focus on?
Well, as I said, I'm a professor of political economy.
My main interest initially was on the construction of a new Europe after the Cold War.
So the competing conceptions, what kind of Europe the Western Europeans wanted versus Russia.
And when all of this broke apart, that is, the European security architecture fell apart in 2014 with the toppling of the government in Ukraine to bring it into the NATO orbit, I started shifting focus more towards what Russia would do economically.
So I wrote a book therefore in 2015 on the topic.
The book was called Russia's Geoeconomic Strategy for Greater Eurasia.
So the argument it would diversify all its economic connectivity from the West towards the East, so primarily China, looking then at the technologies, industries, transportation corridors, banks, payment systems, currencies, and everything in this regard.
And this happened around the same time as the Chinese were also seeking to develop a more alternative economic architecture.
So this couldn't happen at a worse time for the Europeans, that is.
And no, this was my focus.
And again, I warned all the way, not just from 2014, but since 2004, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, that efforts to split, to cause divisions between Ukraine and Russia by pulling Ukraine into the Western orbit would likely result in war.
I warned against this all the way to 2014.
After 2014, I kept arguing that we need a political settlement, otherwise there will be war and Ukraine will be destroyed.
And yeah, so which took us up to 2022.
And I then wrote a book on the war, why it has happened and also how it would likely play out.
And it has played out as I suggested.
And this is why it's quite depressing to see what's happening now, which is the complete destruction of Ukraine.
The Russians aren't getting their offer of restoring Ukraine's neutrality.
So they're instead stripping Ukraine of the regions which were historically Russian and making a basket case out of the rest.
So, yes, I don't like to be correct, but on this I was.
You saw this coming and it looks like your academic focus and your authorship research actually positioned you perfectly to understand what's happening today.
And I want to give out your X account and your YouTube channel also.
So on X, your handle here is Glenn with two N's, underscore Deeson, D-I-E-S-E-N.
For the Americans, it's spelled like diesel, but with an N instead of an L, in case you're wondering.
So Glenn Deason.
And then you also have a YouTube channel, and that's easy to find just by searching for Glenn Deeson.
And I'm a fan of your work on YouTube.
I really appreciate your channel and the guests that you have on.
Now, despite the fact that you saw this coming and you warned about it, as you just described, are you shocked by how severely the West miscalculated in its ability to attempt to cripple Russia's economy when in fact the opposite has occurred.
The economies of Western European nations have been crippled and Russia's economy appears to be stronger than ever before.
And the U.S. itself is in a lot of economic trouble and resorting to tariffs, punitive tariffs on allies in order to try to address trade imbalances through strangulation, I suppose.
But are you surprised at the miscalculation of the West?
Well, not really.
Well, the miscalculations were quite profound.
Again, back in 2022, when the Russians went in, the argument was that Russia could be defeated on the battlefield if we just supplied the weapons.
Economically, we put the sanction.
We thought that Russia would collapse by the end of the weekend.
And of course, we're going to isolate Russia in the international system.
Now, well, for many reasons, I think this was a lot of wishful thinking.
And we've kind of been talking about Russia as if it's this tiny economy smaller than Spain.
We've been saying there's a gas station masquerading as a country, as John McCain labeled it.
So we kind of bought in, I think, to our own propaganda.
But in reality, Russia has an immense military power.
It's the largest nuclear power in the world.
They have an immense industrial capability to build up a war machine.
They always had, as Obama won back in 2016, they would likely win such a war because they have the benefit of the proximity.
That is, they have the logistics in place.
And very importantly, they want this more as well, because for them, this is an existential threat.
So they will go all the way and have the capabilities to go all the way.
And economically, again, this is what I was working on.
I even worked as a professor in Moscow looking at this economic shift from the West to the East, that they wanted to decouple to be less dependent on Western technologies and industries and the maritime corridors and the Swiss payment system and the dollar and the Euro and the banks.
So they've been working on this for quite some time to make their economy bulletproof or sanction proof.
And lastly, the idea that they could isolate Russia in the world, this was also a fantasy, in my opinion, because the rest of the world isn't like NATO.
85% of the world's population live in countries which hasn't put sanctions on Russia.
And if you and even countries who oppose Russia's invasion of Ukraine, they don't want to see Russia defeated because that would mean an effort by the West to revert to the unipolar moment.
And they want to live in a multipolar world.
So it's very difficult outside of NATO to get any countries to join on to this proxy war against the Russians.
So again, I tried to warn about this, but we haven't had much acceptance towards dissent here.
When I warned that Russia would win the war, the argument I heard back was I was trying to undermine the war effort.
When I warned from day one that the sanction would fail and it would hurt Europe instead of Russia, I was told that this was an effort to undermine the sanctions.
So it's all commitment to narratives.
We have some phrases we have to say.
And all dissent kind of gets just brushed off as picking the Russian side or talking Kremlin talking points, all this nonsense.
So I think it was predictable.
That's insane.
I mean, we're living in a time of incredible irrational censorship.
And anyone who dares to think rationally and ask questions rooted in history and patterns or economics is labeled a Russian sympathizer.
But let me ask you about energy, because Western Europe has suffered a catastrophic loss of access to affordable, abundant energy from Russia.
The Nord Stream pipelines destruction, which I believe was carried out by the United States.
But I know opinions differ.
Nevertheless, that really cut off a critical artery of energy to Germany and other countries.
And then now Russia and China announcing the new pipeline, the power of Siberia II, which will pipe, I think, 50 million cubic meters of gas from the Yamal fields in northwestern Russia.
The fields that used to supply gas to Western Europe will now be piped through Mongolia into northern China to power China's AI data centers and industrial robot factories and everything else.
What does this indicate to you in the big picture, the complete reshifting of affordable energy supplies for Western Europe?
I think you're completely correct.
And this is why I also argue that it would hurt the Europeans more because Europe's economic partnership with the Russians was in great advantage to Europe.
That is, they had seemingly unlimited amount of cheap energy which they could send to Europe.
And given that their main objective used to be creating a greater Europe, that means Europe which includes Russia, they tend to prefer often Europe and the United States as partners in developing energy fields, all of this.
So they sent us energy.
We exported the product and different manufactured goods.
And so this was good for our economies, especially for the German economy, as you mentioned.
This was the economic powerhouse of Europe.
And a lot of their industries are quite energy intensive.
That is, they're heavy industries.
Now, with cutting themselves off deliberately from Russian energy means that they can't compete anymore.
I mean, they have a lot of problems, but one of them, one of the bigger ones, is obviously the lack of access to cheap energy.
So you're seeing now massive deindustrialization in Germany.
And you had some offers from the United States under this Inflation Reduction Act to these failing industries.
They can move across the Atlantic.
And some are going to China.
So overall, Europe is not, well, it's going out of business.
And how are the Russians going to react to this?
Many people think that they're just going to try to wait out the sanctions and then try to kiss and make up with the West.
But again, as I wrote a decade ago, the main objective for the Russians is to now reorient their economy towards the East.
And any sanctions will just be used as an opportunity to intensify this process.
And this is why you led, ended up now with this.
Well, first in 2000, after the coup in 2014, you had the power of Siberia.
And now you have this signing of the power of Siberia too.
Recently now in China for the Shanghai Corporation Organization meeting.
Now, this is quite dramatic.
And as you said, this is not from the Asian part of Russia.
This is from the Arctic, from the Yamal region with gas, which was supposed to fuel the European economies for decades.
Instead, the Russians have now signed agreements and they will send all this gas, all this energy to China for the next decades.
And as you also correctly said, this will fuel Chinese data centers.
Now, if you want to be prepared, it's very critical.
If you want to be prepared for the new industrial revolution consisting of artificial intelligence and you need all these data centers, and this is going to be very energy intensive.
So if you want to compete in this high-tech era, you need access to cheap energy, as you did in all industrial revolutions.
The problem for many countries across Europe, but also the United States, is that energy costs tend to be increasing.
And this affects the way people vote.
And overall, it's going to be difficult to stay in the AI race with this.
I mean, in one place, the energy costs are dropping.
And this is China.
They're building out in all areas.
And now, of course, the Russians are giving them this massive injection.
So this was just stupid on every level.
And it was predictably stupid.
And if we had had free speech in Europe, still we had the ability to dissent and talk, we could have maybe prepared ourselves and avoided some of these worst consequences.
But yeah, but I don't think we do.
Well, well said.
And of course, all of us in America were always rooting for free speech for Europeans.
But we're always disappointed by what actually happens, especially in the UK, which I'll get to in a moment.
But about the electricity, you know, the number one input into data centers is electricity.
And the cost of that input largely determines the efficiency of your operation.
You put electricity in and microchips, you get out intelligence.
You get cognition and you get super intelligence at some point here, many experts believe in the next few years.
Well, in the United States, especially on the Eastern power grid, the cost of electricity in some areas is now 35 cents a kilowatt hour.
It's headed to 50 cents a kilowatt hour.
In China, they will be able to provide that from five to 10 cents per kilowatt hour.
So we're talking one-fifth or less of the cost of just power alone compared to the United States.
So a very strong competitive advantage in China, meaning they can build AI models for a fraction of the cost of the U.S., even in terms of comparable output in terms of cognitive capabilities.
What's your take on that?
No, I couldn't agree more.
That's just the two things you need.
You need powerful data processing, which is the race for the computer chips, all of this, which the Chinese are not just catching up, but being able to pursue technological sovereignty in this area and the second is yeah access to data of course but also energy you need energy and this is why um yeah the the chinese will uh uh i think it take leadership in this and this is this will encompass all parts of the economy
Because often one argues that the current industrial revolution is essentially everything plus AI.
And I think this is to a large extent correct.
Because in this, what they call the fourth industrial revolution, it largely organizes around when digital technologies can be used to manipulate the physical world.
So you see all industries, all aspects of societies will be influenced by this.
So to take the lead here is going to be quite important.
And this is why the Chinese and the Russians are laser focused.
Because if you fall behind in industrial revolutions, this is what can crush a country in a civilization.
And in the first industrial revolution, the Chinese and the Russians, they did fall behind.
And this allowed them to be crushed in the mid-19th century.
That is in 1853, the British and French went in and defeated the Russians in Crimea.
This was a huge, humiliating defeat, which had many consequences.
And in China, they defeated the Chinese in the opium wars.
And they had their century of humiliation, which they now recovered from.
But this was linked to falling behind in industrial revolution.
This industrial revolution, both the Russians and Chinese are focusing on technological sovereignty, avoiding excessive dependence.
And so they're doing quite well.
I think the Americans, despite the energy problems and many other issues, I think they will also come on top.
I mean, but the Europeans, I think it's no, I don't see any good indicators at the moment.
Let me share something with you personally.
You may not know this about me, but I lived in Taiwan.
I speak some amount of Chinese and my company is very Chinese language capable.
And we also built, we built our own AI engine called ENOC.
And it's specifically trained on nutrition and phytochemistry and disease prevention through nutrition, et cetera.
Well, we found that the largest repository of information in this area was actually in simplified Chinese language in China.
And so we were able to acquire a massive amount of scientific research from out of China in the Chinese language.
We use AI to translate it into English.
We use the English to train the model.
So our model is now the number one model in the world in our testing on nutrition and phytonutrients and so on.
That's due to Chinese research because Chinese researchers are, you know, 500% more numerous than American researchers, especially on these topics.
And the Chinese researchers are less biased because they don't have the big pharma overlay where the pharmaceutical giants determine the science funding of, you know, whether you get a grant is whether you're promoting a drug or not.
China actually does real core botanical research.
Maybe that's some of the history of traditional Chinese medicine.
But we found a goldmine of knowledge out of China for our AI model.
Does that surprise you or is that in line with what you already know?
No, that sounds very much correct.
I mean, the China that exists today is not the same China as 10 years ago.
China is developing very fast.
And this is also why I argue that this new distribution of power, this rise of new centers, the problem often, not just in Europe, but the United States, is also a tendency to always look at it as a threat.
And I think a lot of the problems with the way we address China and the business opportunities, which you suggest is, I think we have been, the past 500 years, been kind of based on the West has based itself on the dominance.
And it's very difficult to imagine a world where we're going to have equals outside the Western world.
And, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh But again, there are great opportunities if we work together.
And this is why, as well, at this Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting, I would have loved to see, if not at the meeting, then after the meetings, have the United States there as well.
Because three of the four largest economies in the world in terms of purchasing power parity was present there.
The Chinese, the Indians, and the Russians.
Who was missing from the top four tier was the United States.
And I think if they learn to harmonize interest, try to mitigate where the interests compete and try to shift from this unipolar order we had over the past 30 years, which is already over, and organize around a common multipolar system, which can benefit all, I think would be, yeah, everyone would gain.
And as you said, there's a lot of ways that the U.S. could prosper if they would cooperate as well closer with China.
So I think seeing the rise of all these other powers merely as a threat is resulting in missing out on a lot of opportunities.
And instead, one can't prevent a multipolar world from emerging, no matter how hard one tries.
But the threat I see now is that a multipolar world is emerging in opposition to the United States.
Instead, the U.S. could be like first among equals almost.
But instead, it's now the Chinese, the Indians, the Russians, they're all now carrying more and more grudge towards the United States.
And this is very, very, very unfortunate.
It doesn't have to be this way.
It's a critical point that you make, Professor Deeson.
And I think I'll use that opportunity to state that both you and I, we want, like I want America to do well.
You want Europe, you want Norway to do well.
We are not against our own countries.
But we see that unless our countries are able to participate as equals in a multipolar world where trade is encouraged rather than war, rather than even economic warfare, if trade is encouraged, then we can all enjoy increased abundance.
But if we end up in these wars, the punitive tariffs, Trump is making enemies out of our friends.
And both Trump and Western Europe are going to end up in an economic isolation situation where nobody wants to use the Euro.
Nobody wants to use the dollar.
Nobody wants to use the yen.
Nobody wants to buy the treasury debt of the UK or Germany for that matter.
That will harm our people, your people and my people.
They will be harmed by these policies.
So we're actually fighting for our people by trying to help our leaders understand that we need to work in a multipolar world.
Does that sound correct to you?
I don't mean to put words in your mouth.
What would you say about that?
No, I agree.
And I think this is why it's important to recognize the world as it is.
I always make this point that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, I understand why many countries and many people saw an opportunity with the unipolar moment, that is, with only one center of power.
Because the argument could be organized around two principles.
One, with only one center of power, the United States, well, organized in the collective West, it would end great power rivalry because there wouldn't anymore be any competition between the great powers because there would only be one.
Second, because the US is a liberal democracy, it would seek to elevate these values in the international system and make it more benign.
So I understand all the optimism and the idealism around it.
However, it's also worth looking at what the critics said.
And they expected two things.
That is, over time, the United States, as well as its partners, would exhaust themselves.
That is, all the resources would be spent on maintaining this unipolar moment.
So domestically, you would expect economic decline, more poverty, economic inequality, social problems, political polarization.
And at the same time, because one center of power can only persist if the rising powers are kept down.
So you would expect other rising powers, be it Russia, China, India, Brazil, all of this would then seek to collectively balance the United States.
So this was the expectation.
Now, I think it's, you know, 30 years plus later, we can conclude that this is what has happened.
Our economies aren't doing well, society isn't doing well.
Our political systems are, well, obviously not well either.
And we see now a multipolar, prosperous part of the world building up, and we're not part of it.
And indeed, some of it is becoming aimed against us simply because we're seen as attempting to go after them and break it.
My argument is a very pro-Western one.
That is, how should the West adjust to the current realities?
What does the West look like which is not hegemonic, which doesn't dominate the world anymore?
Because it feels good and pretend to be patriotic if one just pretends that we can get it back, but this will only accelerate our decline and destruction.
Instead, we can realign, adjust to the multipolar realities.
And there's a lot of opportunities there.
There's a lot of countries like Russia.
There's no reason we need to have a conflict.
This is not the Soviet Union.
There's no communists there.
You know, they're a traditional European country.
Their main goal is, you know, it has nothing to do with communism or empire.
We can make peace.
We will have a lot of disagreements, but we should focus on where we can align our interests and where we can mitigate the competing interests.
And, you know, this idea that the only way you can solve a conflict with Russia, again, the world's largest nuclear power is war, it's well, it's kind of insane.
And yes, I just, and I heard that this was an anti-American argument by some colleagues in Norway.
But, you know, do anyone think that this is really sustainable if one think we were in the 90s, all the Chinese, Russians, their main foreign policy goal was to align closer with the U.S. Now the United States is $37 trillion in the hole, having growing social problems, political instability.
Its partnerships, alliances are beginning to fall a bit apart.
You know, there's no going back here.
I think this has been exhausted.
You know, one has to adjust to reality.
The cost of not doing it will be immense.
So I consider this a very pro-American and pro-Western argument to say recognize reality and see the opportunities instead of trying to fight it.
Well, I like your phrase that we need to adjust to reality.
And yet, I believe, and I'm saying this as an American, I believe that our Trump administration here is not operating in economic reality.
And I want to be clear: I mean, I have a lot of ties to the people around Trump.
I was invited to attend Trump's inauguration.
I was recently invited to the White House.
Not to meet with Trump, by the way, but just to meet with some other lawmakers there.
And I said, no, I'm busy.
I'm trying to save America.
I'm not going to go to DC.
I need to be in Texas doing what I'm doing here.
But my point is that Trump and the people around him, Besant, Lutnik, Rubio, et cetera, and this is not a personal attack on them, but I believe their economic theories are rooted in a bygone era.
Their economic theories are hegemonic Western dominance, which is we go around the world with our aircraft carriers and our bombs and our CIA and our assassins and whatever, and we just threaten everybody into compliance.
And they're still trying that, Professor Deason.
They still think that's going to work and it just doesn't.
Like, that's over.
That is no longer the operating system of the world's economy, but they don't get it yet.
I'm frustrated.
Yeah, I think what happened with India should have proven this because the main idea there was let's just put the pressure on India, threaten it with sanctions unless it cut its ties with Russia.
And again, they did the opposite.
And they said, well, we're not going to abide by any of these secondary sanctions.
We'll continue to trade with the Russians.
And then they went off to the SEO.
Well, Prime Minister Modi went off to the SEO meeting in China and first time in seven years trying to improve relations there.
And Trump's reaction was, oh, he has chosen China and Russia over us.
Well, I hope they'll be happy.
But this wasn't the point.
It's not that they chose China and Russia over the United States.
It's just the United States was the only one who was demanding that they pick because in a unipolar world, like the United States would be the only game in town.
But in the multipolar world, you can preserve a lot of political autonomy if you diversify your economic ties.
Again, India doesn't want to only try trade with Russia and China.
That would make them excessively dependent.
They would like to trade with everyone.
Indeed, the Russians as well, they're not the one to cut the economic ties with the Europeans and Americans.
They also want to diversify.
They don't want excessive dependence on China.
But it was the United States that said, us or them.
The Chinese and Russians never asked the Indians to choose.
And the Indians do not want to choose.
If they choose, they would have to be less prosperous because they would only have, well, less than half of the trading partners.
And also they would no longer be able to have proper political autonomy because if you're only dependent on one actor which is more powerful than you, that asymmetrical economic interdependence can be converted into political influence.
And they're looking at Europe because we took that deal with the Americans said, cut yourself off from Russia, China, Iran.
We did all of this.
And now America was the only trade partner we have.
And when Trump called over the Europeans to come to his golf course and sign whatever he put in front of them, they signed it.
All the EU officials said this was a horrible deal to sign, but we have to sign it.
So this is not what India wants.
They don't want to become a vassal.
And this is the main attractiveness of small, medium-sized countries, as well as large ones like India.
They can have more independence if they diversify their economic ties.
But they can't get trapped then.
It makes me wonder how Taiwan and Japan feel right now, also, with sort of choosing the United States as their military and economic and political partners and then getting hit with tariffs or sometimes currency manipulations or the Trump administration is trying to push Taiwan into manipulating its own currency to favor the United States.
But you mentioned the secondary tariffs.
I was really shocked recently when Trump attempted what I would call tertiary tariffs, when he said to the UK, we want you to sanction India because India buys energy from Russia.
And I'm like, now, wait a second.
This is, you know, three orders of magnitude.
I mean, that could involve any country on the planet.
What gives the U.S. the right to tell country A to sanction country B for buying products C from country D?
It just seems completely insane.
Yeah, no, it doesn't work indeed.
And this is only something that will trigger more countries to seek to reduce their dependence on the United States.
So it's very counterproductive.
But a lot of this, I mean, it wouldn't be unique to the United States.
There's a lot of theories in political economy where they speculated that something like this would likely happen.
I remember reading articles written early 1980s, some late 70s, where they made a point that the U.S. ability to act as a benign hegemon, that is in the economic sphere, to have a liberal international economic system where everyone has access to the technologies and industries.
They can sail the seas.
No one will seize their ships.
They can use any banks, currencies, like this very liberal international economic system.
It was under the benign hegemon of the United States.
But this is when there was a lot of economic power concentrated in the United States.
And the U.S. had an incentive to encourage trust in the U.S. Now, what many people predicted then, 45, 50 years ago, was, well, what happens when the U.S. is in relative decline and you have new centers of power emerging?
Because in such a situation, the U.S. would have an incentive to preserve its dominant position.
It would have an incentive to prevent the rise of others.
So it would weaponize and essentially abuse its administrative control over the international economy.
So it would begin, for example, to seize oil tankers from Iran on the seas.
It would access them.
Piracy on the high seas.
We're just stealing ships.
Stealing gold, stealing the sovereign funds of the Russian central bank.
That's right.
Cutting off China's access to semiconductors and key technologies.
I mean, shutting down SWIFT for countries the U.S. doesn't like.
I mean, and my point is when this happens, what happens?
Will countries just fall in line and bow to the United States?
Well, some did, like Japan in the 80s, because they had high security dependence.
But for other countries, they're saying no.
And indeed, the pressure is only incentivizing them to decouple faster.
And that's, from my perspective, is what happened with India.
And yeah, the one exception is the Europeans.
And that's partly because of the war in Ukraine, that it terrified the Europeans.
And the Americans are the main security provider.
So the U.S. can convert this security dependence into both political and economic loyalties.
So the Europeans will do as they're told.
But earlier on, you mentioned the energy aspect and the destruction of Nord Stream, which you think the United States was behind.
And I share that conviction, by the way.
But keep in mind what actually happened, because it's quite remarkable when the rest of the world looks at Europe.
We can't talk about it, so we don't realize it.
But when Nordstream was destroyed, we all had to say, oh, all the signs are pointing towards Russia, that they destroyed their own gas pipelines.
And we had talk about this being an attack on NATO, whether or not this would be war.
The most dramatic things we use this to escalate the war in Ukraine.
We used it to militarize the Baltic Sea and anger the Russians further.
And then later on, we find out that, well, we knew all along it wasn't the Russians.
But we have a new story that the Ukrainians did it.
We tried to stop them, but it was too late.
And that's where the story ends.
And now nobody wants to talk about it because there's no good narrative.
But what they now saying, then, what is the only thing you can conclude from this is that they knew that it wasn't the Russians, but they lied anyways so they could escalate the war in Ukraine so they could get more of the militarization of the Baltic and get more loyalty from the Europeans.
And in Germany, they don't talk about it.
The politicians, the media, they don't want to talk about the Nord Stream because now they ask, you know, who destroyed it?
Was it Ukrainians or the Americans?
Well, either way, it's our friends.
And so if there's no good narrative, what do you do in Europe?
Don't talk about it anymore.
Because, you know.
Here in the States, we view Germany's current leaders as, I mean, frankly, we just call them a suicide cult or economic suicide cult.
And, you know, we prefer the AFD party members who are also apparently being hunted or removed or killed or whatever is happening there.
We don't know exactly.
But it strikes me that Western Europe has, especially out of the UK and also Macron in France, they are not living in reality.
They talk very aggressively and fiercely about how they're going to militarily defeat Russia, but they have no means to achieve that.
They talk about how they're going to rebuild their economies, but they've lost their affordable energy supply.
They talk about how they're going to make their nations great, but in effect, they are at war with their own cultures and their own people in so many cases.
Is there some kind of bizarre now?
I'm not trying to get you in trouble.
Obviously, you're already under enough attack from Europeans.
But from my perspective, as an American and a very independent Texan, is there an affliction among the Western European leaders?
Do you have to be insane to run for office in the UK or something?
What is going on?
Why can't they protect their own nation's interests?
Well, it's hard to say, but when you talk about Europe losing its mind, it's worth noting that it could just be the leaders because the leaders are not that popular.
Indeed, I would argue that there's a massive legitimacy crisis among the political leadership.
So you have, as you mentioned, Germany, you have Chancellor Blackrock Mertz, who is immensely unpopular.
In the UK, you have Starmer, also just very widely despised.
And of course, Macron.
But how do they hold on to power?
Well, the most popular party now in Germany is IFD, which was only established in 2013.
And so how do they deal with this?
This new opposition, which is against the wars and wants to make friends with Russia and try to re-industrialize.
Well, they labeled it an extremist organization.
So now the intelligence agencies go after it.
And the media politicians are openly talking about whether or not to ban it.
This is the largest, most popular party in Germany.
And in France, they arrested the opposition leader, Le Pen.
And so in Romania, they reversed the election results because someone claimed it was Russian interference.
It wasn't, but nonetheless, he has to go.
And it's just they lie over and over.
And same as Macron, because all narratives kind of have to serve the same objective, especially in Ukraine.
They have to keep the war going.
So you have these speeches by Macron who say, oh, listen, the Russians, they're not winning.
Look how little territory they have taken.
But, you know, everyone knows that this is a war of attrition.
The Russians aren't prioritizing territory.
They're prioritizing the destruction of the Ukrainian army and armed to the teeth by NATO.
And they're doing this.
And once the army is destroyed and the front lines aren't that well defended, the Russians don't have to send a lot of manpower and equipment to take well-fortified defensive lines.
They will just walk in.
And that's what's beginning to happen now.
So they're deceiving all along.
The economic state, the military, the world, the whole world is against Russia.
It's not.
This is just for domestic consumption.
And people are starting to see through this.
Yeah, yeah.
And I agree with you.
And I have nothing against the citizens of Germany or France or Poland or the UK.
And we saw a massive outpouring protest in London just in the last few days.
Potentially millions of people are protesting against Kirst Armer and censorship and government corruption.
But if I'm a citizen of Germany today, let's say if I own a business that needs to use energy to manufacture something, I'm not thinking that Russia is at war with me.
I'm thinking that my own government is at war against me.
Like, why is my own government blocking our ability to have access to affordable energy to create jobs and to build products and to export products out of Germany?
The impediments to my success as a German business owner are not overseas.
They're right there in Berlin.
At least that's what I'm thinking if I'm a German citizen.
Well, I think more people are thinking like this because they have enough mismanagement by their own governments.
I mean, nobody really thinks, who thinks that Russia's planning to invade Poland?
I mean, it is absurd.
And again, there's so much data as well.
So much, it's obvious that they invaded because NATO tried to pull Ukraine into the orbit.
I mean, this was predicted by many people.
Even in Germany, the former Chancellor, Angela Markil, she even warned that if we try to bring Ukraine into NATO, the Russians would interpret this as a declaration of war.
This is why they were cautious back in 2008.
And now we're pretending as if, no, no, no, this is completely unprovoked.
They're not worried about NATO expansion.
I mean, in the United States, you have, well, many leading ambassadors, diplomats.
You have a former CIA director, William Burns, who also argued then back in 2008, if we try to pull Ukraine into the NATO orbit, then likely there would be a civil war, which there was, and the Russians would then intervene, likely on the side of the Ukrainians in the East, which they did.
So it's like this was predictable.
But also people start to see through some of the stories they're being told because when we escalate this proxy war against the world's largest nuclear power, it's always out of altruism.
It's always we really just want to be good to Ukraine.
We want to help them.
Meanwhile, in reality, we see that the polls show that the vast majority of Ukrainians, the last one I saw from Gallup was 69% of Ukrainians, want immediate negotiations to put an end to the war.
But our leaders in Europe, they don't even want to sit down and talk to Russia.
They say that this is dangerous.
It might embolden Putin.
So we're not going to sit down and talk to him.
Instead, we're backing Zelensky, which is hunting Ukrainians to send to the front line.
So it's just this idea that we're here to help Ukraine.
I mean, it's the people who actually look into the data, and you can go to BBC or any Western media, which I also cite mostly in my book.
The Ukrainians didn't, majority of Ukrainians didn't support the coup in 2014.
They didn't want the intelligence services and all to be hijacked by Western powers.
73% voted for Zelensky in 2019 to implement the peace mandate, and he was bullied into reversing this.
I mean, time and time again, we see that the will of the Ukrainians is ignored because we in NATO label it capitulation and being weak on Russia.
So it's easy to be tough on Russia when we're using Ukrainians and throwing them into the grave.
Let me mention some of your books available on Amazon and booksellers everywhere.
One is called The Ukraine War and the Eurasian World Order.
I think is that the most recent one, Professor?
Yes, that's the most recent one.
Okay.
And then there's the think tank racket, managing the information war with Russia, Europe as the Western Peninsula of Greater Eurasia.
I'm curious, do you speak Russian?
Poorly, yes.
Poorly, yeah.
Okay.
I hear you.
Yeah.
I speak some Chinese, but I can't read it.
So whenever I'm in Taiwan, I have to ask people what the road signs say.
I can read road signs.
I've just met when I used to work there, but when I was teaching, they didn't want me to teach in Russian.
They wanted me to teach in English so that students would be more proficient in English as well.
So I didn't learn proper.
Understandable.
Yeah, but I lived a few times.
I lived in Russia in 2006 and then 2011 and 12 and then 2018, 19 and 20.
I did catch on some of it, but I couldn't teach a class even if I would read it off a sheet, unfortunately.
Well, and I find that people like you and I and most of our audience, they're also very sophisticated and well-traveled people.
But those who have ventured outside their home country, they tend to have the most accurate reality-based perspective on what's happening with our world.
Whereas those who have never left home is a very distorted view.
But I'd like to ask your view on where this goes with Ukraine, given that Trump is essentially saying he's trying to extricate, I think, the United States from the conflict.
He's trying to essentially dump it on European leaders.
He hasn't yet been able to fully achieve that.
But you recently said Zelensky is going to have to make a deal.
Yeah, that's kind of obvious at some point.
Where do you think this is going?
Well, if you can just briefly say something related to what you said about travel abroad, it helps to take a more critical view.
I think it's important because this is one of the problems, I think, in international security affairs.
That is in human nature.
It's in our instinct to organize in groups.
That's in-group us versus the out-group the other.
And whenever there's external threats, we feel a strong impulse to fall in line and support the home team, which is a good human instinct.
You want to come around the group and seek a common defense and security if you see external threats.
The problem is in international security, we have something called security competition.
All countries are competing for security.
And if you want to have peace, you have to manage and reduce the security competition.
So this is why the first thing you want to do is put yourself in the shoes of the opponents.
That is, you know, what are the Russians worried about?
What are the Chinese worried about?
You know, not everything has to end in a war if you can reduce their security concerns as well.
Because we're all threatening each other's security.
If America builds missiles, the Chinese will be worried.
Chinese build missiles, America will be worried.
But the problem is we don't do this at all.
We never ever, I mean, in Europe, ever talk about Russian security concerns, Iranian, Chinese.
This is near treason.
But if you can't mitigate the security concern of your opponent, then security can only be achieved through victory on the battlefield.
And that's why war is the only approach we have to conflict.
The Wolfowitz doctrine and the point of view of America has been that Russia doesn't have a right to have its own interests.
That's the default position.
Yeah, and this is part of the problem with the ideology because liberal democracy was supposed to elevate some benign values and make this international system better.
But instead, we see it fueled ideological fundamentalism because now we say, well, we're democracies, we're good, the other side is bad.
So for example, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I would say, well, I think the United States would do exactly the same.
If China or Russia tried to bring Mexico into military alliance, put its long-range missiles in Mexico, build up military bases there, take over its intelligence services, as we did in Ukraine.
What would the United States do?
Well, of course, it would react very much like Russia is.
But if you put this hypothesis or premise to someone, they would say, oh, well, you know, we're a democracy.
There's no reason to worry about us on the Russian border, but we have to worry about Russia because they're authoritarian.
So we're leaning into the ideology.
Instead of being a source for stability and peace, we're making it into this uncompromising struggle of good versus evil, where the conclusion is that any diplomacy is treason while defeating them on the battlefield is the path to peace.
Yeah, diplomacy is treason.
Right.
If your national leaders believe that diplomacy is treason, then you will never have peace, which is what you're saying.
Well, the former Norwegian prime minister, which was the NATO Secretary General, Leon Stoltenberg, he coined that term, weapons are the path to peace, which is a horrible slogan for a defensive alliance, but nothing seems to make much sense anymore.
Back to my question, though, how do you think this ends up?
It's a bit of a detour there.
No, that's good.
Well, I do think that he would, you know, he still would like, I think, to contain the Russians, but I think he wants to outsource this whole thing to the Europeans.
Because the main objective, I think, of the United States is it sees the multipolar world emerging.
China is the main sorry is the main adversary.
So ever since Obama, he said, you know, we have to pivot to Asia.
If you pivot to somewhere, you have to pivot away from something.
And the main area they want to pivot away from is Europe.
I mean, it's not the center of the world anymore.
It's not really relevant economically, politically, or, well, anything.
So they would like to reduce their presence in Europe and shift their focus and resources towards the East.
So does this mean that the Americans have to give up on containing Russia?
Well, not necessarily.
I think it can mean two things.
Yes.
One, it means try to make friends with Russia, but alternatively, just outsource the hostility to the Europeans.
They still want to confront Russia.
So now the United States has diplomatic efforts with Russia.
They want to improve bilateral relations.
I think the Russians seize that Trump simply, you know, he wants to not give away weapons to Ukraine, but instead sell and make money.
So it's not as if they will become best of friends, but still, this is better than Biden.
So they will take this at least as a step in the right direction.
But yeah, I mean, imagine if we see the Ukraine war failing, it's being lost.
This is going to be a horrible disaster.
And then the United States can say, well, we don't want to focus on this anymore.
And the Europeans step up and offer, well, we can take over.
And they will then have to take the blame when the whole thing falls apart.
It's a pretty good deal.
And that's the direction the U.S. is going.
There are some analysts who believe, and some I've interviewed, like Tom Luongo believes that Trump is actually at war with the city of London, that Trump's policies are designed to weaken or even destroy the Great Britain power base there for a number of reasons, including the fact that MI6 ran the Russia hoax against Trump, by the way.
But there are other economic reasons, and perhaps this explains the repatriation of gold to New York out of London and the LBMA, etc.
Do you give any credence to that theory that Trump is secretly at war with London?
It could be.
He doesn't seem to be too happy about, well, a lot of the Europeans.
He also said the same about the EU that it was developed to screw us, he said.
And they're worse than China.
So obviously he does have a problem with it.
But with Britain, I think he's also well aware that Starmer and them, they were campaigning essentially for Kamala, not against him.
And the Russiagate issue, I don't think it's forgotten either.
So, no, it is quite possible.
Again, it's hard to read Trump at times.
I mean, he talks a lot and he shifts from one day to the other.
But if you look at what he actually does, there seems to be a bit more consistency.
And so it is possible.
And again, I think the whole way, I mean, it's just not just Trump.
If you look in the United States on the conservative side, I think there is a shift in the attitude towards Russia because, well, look at it like this.
After the Cold War was over, we decided to redivide Europe anyways to keep the Russians on the outside.
And we then reinvented the ideological divide to justify the redivision of Europe.
So we said, oh, the world is divided between liberal democracies and authoritarian states.
And we said, well, Russia belongs to this camp.
This is why we have a divided Europe organized around EU and NATO.
Now, so this is kind of how every conflict in the world has to be seen.
We don't have to know where the country is on the map, but we're told it's liberal democracy versus authoritarianism.
So this is how you engineer consent and public support.
But Russia is not a communist state.
It's becoming a Christian conservative country.
So when you see the Tucker Carlsons and other people on the political right, they're envisioning the divisions of the world differently.
They don't see liberal democracy versus authoritarianism because, let's be honest, we're becoming quite authoritarian now in the West as well.
Instead, they're seeing it as, well, almost liberal loons going a bit too far versus conservatives.
And I would categorize Russia now as a very conservative state.
They went through this revolutionary regime in the Soviet Union, and they would like now to revive a lot of their traditional Christian values.
And yeah, so this is not that unlike Hungary or Poland or others who want to restore what was lost during the communist era.
So I think for many, they don't see it as many conservatives in the US and Europe have noted.
They don't see the divide being liberal democracies versus authoritarian, but they see it as being, well, patriots versus cosmopolitans or conservatives versus this woke liberals.
So I think the whole way that they're looking at the world has shifted.
So when they look towards Germany and the UK, how they're running their country, seeing that they're kind of uprooting their traditional heritage and fighting this forever liberal wars, which is ruining their economies, I think they don't see this as necessarily playing for our team anymore.
And I wouldn't dismiss that Trump sees it in this way as well.
Okay, last question for you, Professor.
And again, thank you for your time today.
It's a real honor to be able to speak with you.
I want to ask you about BRICS settlement systems and currencies.
And of course, we have the SCO meeting recently, but the BRICS nations who are increasingly moving away from using the dollar as a settlement currency.
Most trade between India and Russia, for example, is carried out in their own domestic currencies.
And trade imbalances between many of these nations, including China, may be settled with gold, it seems, or gold sort of gold claims, you know, claims to the gold that's in the vault in whatever country.
The fact that the West has effectively stolen $300 billion from Russia seems to be the worst economic mistake in history if you want to run the infrastructure of international currency and settlement.
How rapidly do you think non-dollar trade will eclipse the dollar trade that currently exists on our planet?
Well, I think you're correct that this is the main, that we don't appreciate what a shock this is to the international economic system.
We often just taper over it with this different moral argument saying, well, Russia is an aggressor.
It's just reasonable they have to pay reparations to Ukraine, but this has never been done before.
This would upset everything.
You can argue the same with Iraq, that, oh, the United States should pay reparation to Iraq, but if every country around the world starts seizing American assets and sovereign funds to hand it over to Iraq or give it to someone who's fighting against America, I mean, it would be absurd.
The whole economic trust in the international economic system would fall apart.
And that's exactly what's happening.
I mean, in Europe, they created some narratives that, oh, no, no, we're not stealing the actual, we're just stealing the proceeds from it.
Right.
That's not theft.
But it is theft.
They have stolen and not just freezing it, but stolen it.
And this is a huge concern because the Chinese know they're holding a lot of dollars and they know that they're next.
But also countries like India would be worried because we might go after them as well if they don't fall in line.
So overall, there's two main concerns.
Again, Europe is a basket case as well, but only to folks on the United States.
I think they look towards the debt, which is unsustainable, but it's also being weaponized.
So you never know if this is actually still your money.
So this is a huge motivation for why they would like to shift into different currencies, either trade in national currencies, do something with the gold, possibly establish some common currency.
But again, the world has been on the dollar for so long.
It's a bit of a learning curve.
And even the Chinese, they do often like to use the dollar as well.
So they're not ready to ditch it just yet.
But they are when this, I mean, we can see where this is heading.
It's going towards a cliff.
So when things go bad, they don't want to be in a position like in 2008 where there's no alternative.
So they want to be able to lean into some options.
And I think once you have this new economic architecture being built with new centers of technology, new supply chains, these transportation corridors, banks and currencies and payment system alternatives to SWIFT, you would like to facilitate it in some kind of an institutional arrangement.
And this is where institutions like BRICS comes in, but also the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
So they're developing development banks.
And the main idea is to become less developed, sorry, less dependent on the political West.
So this is when I'm arguing against putting more sanctions on the Russians, warning against stealing their sovereign funds.
For me, this is, you know, often they say, oh, you're supporting the Russians then, but this is suicide.
No one will trust us ever again, and they're not.
So it's a massive mistake, I think.
It is.
It's a reputation suicide of the Western financial infrastructure.
I mean, what other country would not conclude that we have to have an alternative based on what the West and Europe is doing to Russia's holdings?
Anyway, thank you so much, Professor.
It's been an honor to speak with you today.
I really appreciate your time.
Let me mention your website, or your Twitter handle is Glenn underscore Deeson, D-I-E-S-E-N.
And I encourage people to follow you.
I'm going to click follow right here.
Gosh, I thought I did follow you.
Maybe X unfollowed you from me.
I don't know.
I've had that happen before.
Anyway, I'm following you now.
And then also, we've got your books here on Amazon and other booksellers, the Ukraine War and the Eurasian World Order.
Is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap this up?
No, well, please follow if you want to check out my YouTube channel as well.
YouTube, yes.
I think mostly, yeah, no, I got new interviews every day.
So, yeah.
And of course, to you, thank you so much for inviting me on your program.
It's a great privilege.
It's an honor to have you on.
You've been a great educator.
I've learned a lot from you over the years of listening to you.
And I think that economics is the key area of knowledge that will help us understand the world.
Because what is economics but the study of human behavior involving value, right?
I mean, it's so thank you so much for all that you do.
Have a great rest of your day.
Thank you for joining us.
Thanks.
All right, folks, that was Professor Glenn Deason, just an extraordinary, brilliant mind and a courageous voice who is, I believe his convictions are rooted in reality.
So you would do well to follow his channel and read his books and learn from him.
And as always, feel free to repost this interview on other channels and platforms.
I'm Mike Adams, the founder of Brighteon.com.
And thank you for joining us today.
Take care, everybody.
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