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Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy's speech in front of congress and what the United States can really do to help intervene against Russia, particularly when a whole governing body defended a former president that blackmailed Zelenskyy himself.
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Hey everybody, welcome to the weekender edition of the Muckerick Podcast.
I'm Jared Yates Sexton, here as always with my trusty co-host Nick Halseman.
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In the meantime, we are recording this on Wednesday, March 16th.
And we, I gotta tell you, a lot has been happening today.
It is, it's been a jammed, double-stuffed news day is what it's been.
Earlier this morning, the President of Ukraine, Zelensky, addressed Congress, called for a no-fly zone, added planes from NATO, also started talking about a new international organization that could react to aggression from nations like Russia.
We need to talk about that.
dropped a lot of American rhetoric, including bringing up Pearl Harbor, September 11th, Martin Luther King, and challenged Joe Biden as the leader of the free world to do something about this situation.
You got to say, it's a lot, Nick.
Oh, I mean, listen, the guy is also desperate.
He's in dire straits.
There's been, I think, double-digit attempts on his life so far during this thing where people are trying to get at him.
So, I don't blame him for, you know, laying out the most compelling argument he could possibly have to, A, stay alive, and B, to keep his country alive.
You can't blame him at all for taking on this standard.
You can't blame him for the rhetoric.
You can't blame him for the appeals.
We talked on the last episode About how we felt about declaring a no-fly zone, what that could possibly lead to, where we sort of split on that issue.
You cannot blame him for calling on it.
He is in a nation where there's a very real possibility that it could be destroyed at some point.
We could see, depending on where you fall, whether you believe this is a genocide up to this point or not, we can certainly believe that these things are going to get worse.
We're going to see more and more war crimes committed.
You cannot blame him for calling for this.
And while we're at it, I gotta tell you, still the idea of a no-fly zone feels like it's a misstep at this point.
This international organization that would replace the United Nations.
And by the way, I don't know where you stand on this.
United Nations, nothing.
Nothing.
We've all known that it's been corrupted.
We've all known from the very beginning that the Security Council with Russia on it and China on it and the United States on it, let's be frank, that this body doesn't really do what it claims to do outside of some humanitarian work and climate change studying.
Other than that, it has just been rendered completely and utterly antiquated.
Well, okay, but let's not forget, like, you know, it's still the only environment we have to get all these different countries into the same room to connect on some level.
Well, outside of the G7, G8, and the, you know, international economic Well, but the G7, G8, it's still limited to just the seven or the eight countries versus, you know, the UN is everybody or is most everybody.
So I think there is value to being able to have a body that, you know, all the people can kind of, you know, hang out somewhere.
So I don't want to like completely pooh-pooh the UN, but yes.
I will almost completely pooh-pooh the UN because it was built on the premise that the Cold War would never have taken place and FDR's vision for A United States-USSR agreement which, by the way, was completely undermined by Winston Churchill and all of the advisors who love geopolitics within the United States of America who got in Harry Truman's ear and went after this and basically completely hamstrung it from the beginning.
But that's just it.
Well, you know, it sounds just like when Trump would lay out some ridiculous thing he wants to do and then, you know, the Secretary of State's like, yeah, we're not gonna do that.
That was Winston Churchill, I guess.
So, okay, but either way, the question here is, yeah, do you want to push back on a tyrant who might ultimately use nuclear weapons?
You're on board, it sounds like, with No-Fly Zone, because let's examine that.
No-Fly Zone means... No, I'm not on board.
Here's what you're on board with.
You're on board with the fact that No-Fly Zone becomes World War III.
I think that we're in a situation at this point.
So I think we're still thinking about a no-fly zone in terms of what has happened in the past.
And a lot of these people, you'll hear them.
We talked about the Elliot Cohn article, right, in the last episode.
And he was basically like, oh, during the Cold War, they shot at each other all the time.
You're exactly right.
They did, during the Cold War, shoot at each other all the time.
That's not the situation that we're necessarily in right now, where we have An absolutely desperate murderous dictator.
God knows that everything going on is more or less a life or death struggle for him.
I, at this point, do not feel good playing poker with a person across from me who more or less has a death wish at this point.
Is there a possibility that we institute a no-fly zone, which I suppose means American planes piloted by American pilots are flying over Ukraine, ensuring that no one gets into the airspace.
Isn't there a possibility that if we say that and do that, maybe then Russia doesn't fly into that airspace?
There's a real possibility that that could possibly happen and there's a real possibility that you and I might be signing off for the last time and listening to see you again sometime soon.
There is always a possibility.
I'm just I gotta tell you I do not want the the human species to go extinct That's that's where I'm at.
Okay.
I mean I Neither do I and it's weighing on me.
So, okay.
So I mean listen if that's the real question I in theory but like okay, so he's saying that but we also have a couple other moving parts around this where I So, can we talk very quickly about where the peace talks are?
Because this has been one of those things that hasn't been covered in mainstream news all that much.
the actual capitulation that Russians are demanding here because there are ongoing peace talks that have been going on for a long time.
So can we talk very quickly about where the peace talks are?
Yeah.
Because this has been one of those things that hasn't been covered in mainstream news all that much.
Basically, you'll see an article that's like talks are happening.
There's been a back and forth here between Russia and Ukraine.
The one thing that began all this was humanitarian corridors in which refugees could leave.
That fell apart immediately as Russia just started airstriking those people and killing those people.
Then we moved into a period in which Russia continued stating its original statement, which we can either believe or disbelieve, and there's every reason to disbelieve it, which is they wanted the independence of the separatist parts of Ukraine.
They wanted a pledge that Ukraine would remain neutral and never join NATO or some organization like it.
And now I gotta tell you, one of the things that's come up in the last day or so is that Ukraine has now told them that neutrality is completely off the table, which means that there's very little for them to talk about at this point, outside of, again, possible humanitarian corridors and maybe some again, possible humanitarian corridors and maybe some discussions to have future discussions.
But there's basically no way for these two parts to talk to one another at this point.
Right.
Well, they're also they exist in a different reality here because denazification is another big one they want, which really means we're going to wipe out the entire government and the military.
So, I think that's also part of their demands.
They want it to be demilitarized to the point where Russia will just have complete control over the whole country anyway, despite, you know, they also said they want Crimea, they want the Donbass region, and then, yes, the NATO thing.
But what's interesting is then, to combat that, Ukrainians want to say, okay, we won't join NATO, but now they want to, like, create their own NATO, which has assurances from all the countries that are in NATO around them that they will come to defend them if Russia does this again.
So it's almost like, okay fine, we won't call it NATO, but we'll call it like, you know, OTAN.
We'll spell it backwards for you if that's okay.
We talked about this on an earlier podcast.
It's like when you're a kid and you're playing a game and suddenly the rules change and someone's like, oh yeah, well, I've got a force field.
And then you say, oh yeah, well, I've got a laser gun that goes through that force field.
It's like, oh yeah, well, I've got a double force field.
It's literally linguistic reality games at this point.
Like, that's what Zielinski is calling for.
And you know what?
Listen, and I know I started this off by completely blasting the United Nations, Maybe it is time for something beyond the United Nations.
You know, maybe it has exhausted its use and maybe it is time to find something else that could possibly go beyond NATO.
Because NATO has its own problems.
Article 5 of NATO, look at the damage it's already caused here.
We can't possibly go in and deal with this situation because the moment that there's some sort of a dust-up or some sort of a step over the line, that's it.
So, maybe it is time for something like that?
But I have to tell you, I haven't heard anybody, whether it's an institutionalist or someone outside of it, call for that at this point.
Zelensky's throwing that out sort of as a Hail Mary at this point, but I haven't heard anybody have a serious discussion about this so far.
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