James Smith argues the Ukraine war stems from NATO expansion and U.S. provocation, citing the 2014 regime change and Donbas referendums as catalysts rather than solely Putin's aggression. He compares current tensions to the Cuban Missile Crisis, urging libertarians to reject war guarantees and prioritize avoiding nuclear conflict over supporting Ukraine. Smith contends that telling uncomfortable truths about covert policies and alliance dangers is essential, even when demonized, concluding that détente or rolling back NATO offers a better path than sanctions that harm ordinary Russians. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Rudy Giuliani Parallels00:10:26
Fill her up.
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Here's your host, James Smith.
Hello, what's up, guys?
Welcome.
Brand new episode.
I am riding solo for this episode of Part of the Problem.
Robbie the Fire Bernstein is doing some stand-up comedy gigs over in Ukraine, trying to keep everybody's spirits up.
And from what I hear, not going over well.
They are not in the mood to laugh and do not enjoy his brand of comedy.
But Robbie the Fire, he's a trooper.
He's over there cracking those danging single mom jokes or whatever he does.
Okay, so it's just me for this episode.
I just wanted to talk about the war in Ukraine that's currently going on and I'd say what the libertarian response to this moment is.
And of course, as people know, I am a libertarian and this show is about what's going on in the world.
So that's what I figured we'd talk about today.
The last episode that I just did was with Scott Horton.
And I think there's, I, you know, I think there was a ton of great stuff about the history and what led to this conflict.
I'll probably go over a little bit of stuff from that episode.
So I apologize if it's a little redundant, but obviously there's been some pretty huge updates.
So we did the episode with Scott and then like the next day, the war really broke out.
So let me start by saying this, because I want to try to kind of connect what's going on right now, how we feel about it, with what I think libertarians should be saying in this moment and how I think we should handle this stuff.
So I'll start by saying this.
When I think about great libertarian moments, there's two moments that always stand out in my mind.
And this is in terms of libertarian leaders talking about libertarian things.
And the two moments are, of course, Ron Paul versus Rudy Giuliani, what they call the Giuliani moment, even though it should be called the Ron Paul moment, because no one cares about Rudy Giuliani even being involved in it.
But if people haven't seen this before, this was the moment that introduced me to libertarianism and a whole lot of other people too.
It's really kind of incredible.
But if you talk to people like 40 and under who are libertarians, an incredibly huge chunk of them, if you ask them what introduced you to libertarianism, was this moment, not just Ron Paul, but this moment.
And it was an incredible moment where Ron Paul was talking about what inspired 9-11.
And he's talking about the fact that we've been bombing Muslim countries for decades.
And very specifically with bases in Saudi Arabia and the bombing campaigns of Iraq and all this stuff.
And he's talking about blowback and how this is what this is what we're seeing.
And then Rudy Giuliani, who was the kind of the standard George W. Bush Republican, chastises him in front of the crowd and says, you know, I've heard some pretty ridiculous explanations for 9-11, but I've never heard anything like that.
Now, at the time, I didn't know any of this.
But one of the things that's kind of funny about this is that Rudy Giuliani is confidently saying, I've never heard anything like that.
But all the stuff Ron Paul was talking about.
like the, you know, the bombing campaigns in Iraq and the bases in Saudi Arabia, they were literally in Osama bin Laden's declaration of war against the United States of America.
So whether or not you agree with it, saying I've never heard anything like that isn't the, it's not the when you think it is.
You know what I mean?
It's like, you're like, oh, you haven't even heard what your enemy is saying, like, which is, if you want to be the commander in chief and fight this war on terrorism, I don't think it's unreasonable to say maybe you should be aware of what the, of what Osama bin Laden is saying.
But anyway, he says this and gets thunderous applause from the crowd.
This is one of the things that I think people don't focus on in that moment, that this, it's not like Ron Paul won the moment with the audience in front of him, thunderous ovation.
And then, and this is what really sparked the whole Ron Paul movement.
Then Rudy Giuliani says, he says, I'm going to, you know, I forget the exact way he said it, but he goes, I'm going to demand that the congressman apologize and tell us that he didn't really mean that.
And that gets thunderous ovasion.
And then it goes back to Ron Paul.
This is where Rudy Giuliani really fucked up.
He could have just said his piece.
They probably would have moved on to someone else, but he demanded that Ron Paul apologize.
And I'll tell you, there was something so powerful about the optics of, you know, Rudy Giuliani saying this thing, the really dumb thing, getting thunderous applause, demanding Ron Paul apologize gets thunderous applause.
And it went back to Ron Paul.
And his first words off of this thunderous applause were, I sincerely believe.
And he said, I sincerely believe that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback.
And then he talked about how the CIA went in in 1953 and overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran.
And then that that had blowback when there was the Iranian Revolution, which the government that's still in power today took over in 1979, and how they hate America.
And part of it's, you know, because America waited there and overthrew a democratically elected government.
And so he just took the opportunity.
It was like this incredible opportunity where it was like, it didn't matter that everyone was against him.
He was going to tell the truth and also back it up with like a history lesson.
So it was like this unapologetic, I will not be like, I will not be intimidated and like shamed into apologizing.
I'm going to tell you what I quote, sincerely believe.
And this was a moment that sparked like so many of the libertarian, you know, like so many libertarian podcasters and libertarians who you know, this is what created them because there was something amazing about that.
And so that's one moment.
And the other moment that I think about, which I didn't, you know, I didn't even know of at the time, but later read, is Harry Brown, the late, great Harry Brown.
And he wrote a piece on September 12th, 2001.
And it's called, When Will We Learn?
And it's basically a very similar thing.
It was the day after 9-11.
And he wrote this piece called When Will We Learn.
And it was all about, you know, like, when will we learn that we can't just like bomb countries and prop up brutal dictators and just like slaughter like in, you know, all of these innocent people and not inspire hatred and not have to deal with any ramifications of that.
It's an incredible piece.
I literally say, with it's maybe second to the Declaration of Independence, I think, and the greatest piece of American writing ever.
And, you know, I know there's a lot of younger people who listen to the show.
And I'll tell you, you know, as someone who's in my late 30s, I'm still on the right side of 40, but getting close.
I'm going to be 39 in a few months.
But for younger people, like if you're in your early 20s or something like that, I don't know if you can appreciate how brave that was.
You know, if you think about like what's going on right now, the kind of, you know, the climate that's going on right now, this is nothing compared to what 9-11 was.
I mean, after 9-11, to say on 9-12 that actually the U.S. military are the aggressors here, and this is a response to that aggression was, I just, I can't explain how courageous, you know, and it was the truth.
And anyway, I just, I see a lot of parallels between what's going on right now and what happened there.
That's not to say that it's exactly the same situation.
Of course, it's not, but I do see a lot of parallels.
And anyway, the point of bringing up those two examples is that to me, if libertarians have a role here, if we're in the world of commentating on politics or, you know, taking political action, having a party called the Libertarian Party, anything like that, or even being in the Republican Party, or, you know,
I guess theoretically, even being in the Democratic Party, but I don't know if that exists.
But regardless, if libertarians are in the business at all of talking about politics, I think that's our task.
That's what our role is.
It's look, I mean, let's be honest.
It's not as if we control any political power.
If libertarians had real political power, then we wouldn't have a welfare state and a warfare state, and there wouldn't be lockdowns, and we wouldn't have a central bank, and we wouldn't have a deep state.
And we would, you know, write like we wouldn't be the biggest, most powerful government in the history of mankind if people who believe in small government or no government were, you know, had any power.
Speaking Uncomfortable Truths00:02:28
So we're in this to say what we believe, to tell the truth.
And I don't think that that's, you know, some people may disagree with me, but I don't think that's like an unimportant thing.
I actually think ideas are incredibly powerful and telling the truth is incredibly powerful.
So I think that's a that's a very like I think that's a worthy thing to do with your time.
But if that, so if you understand that, then what is really our role?
What's the most important thing we can do?
And I would submit this.
I would say that the most important thing that libertarians who are talking about, you know, society and politics and things like this, the most important thing you can do is in these moments, tell the uncomfortable truth that might just get you booed off the stage.
That's the most important thing.
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Tom Woods, who is a genius and one of the most important libertarian figures ever, and certainly one of, if not the most important libertarian figure right now, he wrote in his book, Real Dissent.
I really love this.
He wrote this piece.
I'll probably butcher this a little bit, so I apologize.
But he said that he goes, It's very easy to be against slavery today.
And it's meaningless.
It doesn't matter if you're against slavery today.
You know, we're all against slavery.
There's no risk to saying you oppose slavery.
Courage Against Slavery00:13:05
But it really meant something to be against slavery in 1840.
You know, in 1840, the abolitionists got lynched and they had like 1% or maybe 2% of the vote.
I mean, it was a dangerous thing to be an abolitionist, and the slave trade was like at its height, and there's, you know, or slavery was at its height.
And that it really meant something.
It took some courage, you know.
And you see that a lot of times.
Like right now, if you say you're against the war in Iraq, what does that mean?
This means nothing.
Everyone's against the war in Iraq.
We all know that was a mistake.
You know, it ranges from a mistake to a crime against humanity.
That's John McCain admitted the war in Iraq was a mistake in his memoir.
Bill Crystal admitted the war in Iraq was a mistake just in his debate with Scott Horton a couple months ago.
That's like five months ago.
So, okay, even the Warhawks admit that's wrong.
You know, I mean, it's don't get me wrong, it's good to be against that.
It's good to be against slavery.
But what does it really mean?
But if you were against the war in Iraq in 2002, that meant something.
It took some courage.
And if libertarians are going to be, you know, in the business of talking about politics, but not really controlling political power, then I think the most important thing we can do is be, you know, really be for the thing that takes some courage when it matters.
And right now, this situation with Russia and Ukraine, this is when it matters.
These are the moments.
And I talk about this a lot on the show, but there's these moments that come up, right?
It's like even being against the lockdowns now doesn't really matter.
Everyone knows.
Everyone knows the lockdowns were wrong.
It was all about being against the lockdowns when the lockdowns were going on, you know?
You know, being against even like the vaccine mandates or something like that, or even questioning the vaccines, you know, efficiency or something like that.
That's a little bit easier now than it was right away.
And, you know, I talk about these moments like when Donald Trump wanted to pull or when he was talking about pulling out of Syria and they're like, oh my God, we got to protect the Kurds.
And you're, well, you hate the Kurds if you don't want to, you know, stay in Syria.
And have we heard anything about the Kurds since then?
No, they didn't care about the Kurds.
This was all just, you know, it's just these enormous pressure campaigns.
And this one obviously is a lot bigger than that.
But so when you're in one of these moments, and we're in one of these moments right now, that's when it matters.
That's when you have to sit in the pocket and take the shots and throw back.
That's what matters.
It's like right now in this moment.
And that's what you see is going on in these moments.
All of the sudden, you know, there's like this massive kind of like campaign where this one narrative is adopted.
And if you deviate from that narrative, you are immediately demonized.
You know, and that's that's what's going on right now with this Russia, you know, invasion of Ukraine.
And like this incredible level of binary thinking rises up and the accusations, I mean, it's, I, it's, I really see so many parallels because I remember guys like Ron Paul being, you know, the, the, the, um, uh, critique of them was like, well, you're for the terrorists.
You're on the side of the terrorists.
And believe me, I've been told several times today on social media that I'm on the side of Vladimir Putin because as if there's no like, it's unbelievable how like how incredibly idiotic it is.
Like as if you can't say, hey, I think it was wrong that we propped up brutal dictators and slaughtered innocent civilians and like all of this and put our bases in the Arabian Peninsula where they don't want us to have military bases.
You can't say that.
If you say that, that means what you're for 9-11.
That means you, you, you're, you know, what they'll say a lot of times, you're justifying it.
It's like, no, not justifying it, but you are explaining it.
You know, if there's like some, you know, I don't know, if, if there's a kid who you like lock in a basement and like, you know, torture and just give like a horrible childhood to of just like being like completely mistreated.
And then he grows up and kills a whole bunch of people.
And you go, well, maybe he's such, you know, a savage because he was so mistreated when he was a kid.
You go, so you're justifying him killing those people?
Like, what?
No, it's still wrong that he does that, but I'm trying to explain what happened.
Maybe we shouldn't do that anymore.
Maybe we should raise children better.
You know, like these are, it seems to me, if you're interested in truth, then, okay, let's, let's talk about that.
And for me personally, I just feel like my heroes are like Ron Paul and Harry Brown and Murray Rothbard and all of these guys.
Like that's what made me want to be in this world.
So like if I admire, I admire the people who, you know, who would do that, who would tell the truth when it's really uncomfortable to do that.
So I don't, I'm just not going to respond to any of this like pressure to just like, oh, just go along and just, you know, say the most boring basic thing ever instead of saying what really matters in this time.
And again, it's not as if like, I don't know, of course, Ron Paul and Harry Brown and all of them like condemn 9-11.
They're not for anyone.
Like they're not for innocent people being killed.
That's their whole philosophy.
And that's the philosophy that I've been convinced of too.
You know, it's like, yeah, no, that's not, it's just saying that like to just sit there and say the easiest, most obvious thing seems like, well, then what's the point of us being here?
Our point of being here is to say the important truth that the, you know, no one else wants to say or that people are, you know, taking a lot of heat for saying.
So anyway, in the situation with what's going on with Russia invading Ukraine, of course, it's, yeah, it's, it's fucked up.
And I wish it wasn't happening.
And I feel for all of the innocent people in Ukraine whose lives will be made much worse by this.
And of course, there's already been people who have been killed and injured and stuff.
And I don't know exactly what the numbers are.
I don't think there's any way of really knowing so far.
It's a weird thing when a war breaks out, there's a lot of chaos around it.
And we don't exactly know what's going on, but it is pretty clear that Putin invaded and that there's been, I know there's been reports of like explosions in Kiev and all throughout the country.
I know that Belarus has kind of joined in.
I know there were reports of these cyber attacks, which pretty clearly seem to be from the Russians.
And I do think that is fucked up.
But I'm not going to fucking bullshit you guys.
And I'll say that this whole thing happening is all the fault of fucking NATO and Russia, excuse me, NATO and America provoking the Russians for years and years.
And that doesn't mean that it's not Vladimir Putin's fault also for doing something that's wrong.
But, you know, in the same way that like if you saw some kid who is just being like picked on and picked on and picked on, and then they snap and just start punching everybody and they punch a few people who weren't even there picking on them.
You could be like, oh, that's fucked up that they punched those people.
But you also kind of recognize what happened here.
And if we're not going to do that, then I don't know.
You know, what's the point?
Then we're going to be in a really bad spot.
And this is, and this is the other message that I've really been trying to get out there on Twitter today and on the show with Scott, is that this is really no joke.
And you see so many people, like, you know, blue checks on Twitter and people in the corporate press, like really, it's really shocking to see.
It's as if they have like no understanding of how serious the threat is here.
And like first and foremost, what we want to do, what all sane people should want to do, is avoid a war between America and Russia.
This is priority number one above all other priorities, above all other priorities in the history of humanity, is to make sure that the two countries with 90% of the world's nuclear arsenal do not go to war.
And look, I don't think that's going to happen right now, but we're a lot closer to it than we were a week ago.
And that's something that's pretty like, you know, that's about as important as anything could be ever.
So that's where like the focus should be.
And look, I think that you have to at least, and I know, you know, Scott talked a whole lot about this stuff, but I'll go over just a little bit of it.
But you have to understand what happened here and what's going on and what like led to this moment.
And sure, condemn Vladimir Putin all you want to.
I think that's fine.
Condemn the invasion, like, sure, that's, it's bad.
You know, we don't believe in, you know, I don't believe in governments at all.
And we certainly all don't believe in people being, you know, imposed upon by foreign governments.
But you kind of have to understand like what led to this.
And, you know, I think about, think about like the Cuban Missile Crisis.
And without going into like all of the details of it, but just like the broad strokes that back in the early 60s, when there was the Soviet Union, the United States of America, and Cuba had gone communist and was allied with the Soviet Union.
And the Soviet Union sent over nuclear missiles to Cuba.
And I think it was the CIA, American intelligence spotted them and had pictures of them.
And they confirmed it.
Like there are nuclear missiles in Cuba, you know, just a few miles off the coast of America.
And that was a deal breaker for America.
And I think understandably so.
That was like, look, we can tolerate a lot, but we cannot tolerate nuclear weapons pointed at us from just a few miles off our coast.
Like that's, that's an act of war, you know, and like, okay, maybe technically not an act of aggression, but kind of an act of aggression, you know, like someone pointing a gun at you.
Like if someone points a gun at you and you have a gun, you might be ready to shoot that person because you can't just sit there waiting to figure out what their intentions are.
It's like, I'm sorry, this is a little bit too close to home.
And I think everyone gets that in America.
And if you get that, I really don't see how you don't get what's going on with this situation with Russia.
And look, just think about it like this, okay?
The line used to be drawn down the center of Germany.
And everything to the west was American NATO territory.
You know, you can't come over here.
And the Soviet Union collapsed, and that's where the line was.
And George H.W. Bush, the president at the time when the Soviet Union collapsed, promised both in writing and verbally that NATO would not move one inch to the east.
And not only has NATO moved to the east with every president, it's moved further and further and further, you know, since George H.W. Bush with Bill Clinton, with George W. Bush, with Barack Obama, with Donald Trump, you know, and now it's at a point where it's right on NATO's doorstep.
Excuse me, it's right on Russia's doorstep.
I'm sorry, I'm thinking of the Hillary Clinton line.
She said Vladimir Putin has moved his forces right up to NATO's doorstep.
And by that, she meant Russia's border.
So now it's all the way up to Russia, to Russia's border, NATO.
And then you have Ukraine, which, okay, technically is not in NATO.
And technically, they're not saying we're going to put it into NATO.
Biden Ukraine Conflict00:10:58
But, you know, they did, you know, Obama and Joe Biden did lead, you know, they orchestrated a coup there in 2014.
And for anyone who wants to give me shit about this, you can go look it up if you want to.
They absolutely did.
And there's audio recordings and proof of this.
Like it was a color, what they call it, a color revolution, right?
Where they like organize these kind of like protests and overthrowing the government.
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You know, so there's this country.
We overthrow the government and install a government who's friendly to the United States of America.
We've pumped tons of weapons in there.
And one of the things that's interesting is that, you know, it's like right now, if you talk about any of this, it's like this toxic thing to talk about.
You know, I've, as I've been told on Twitter, even by many regime libertarians, told like, oh, you're on the side of the Russians or something like that.
You know, you're, well, you're acting like a spokesman for Putin or whatever any of this nonsense is.
But this was not, you know, like the current, you know, CIA director, many different people in the intelligence community, many like, you know, leaders have talked about this for a long time.
Why are we not allowed to talk about how provocative it is, you know, what a provocation it is to the Russians to move NATO all the way up to Russia's border?
And why is that good?
Why?
Why must that happen?
Like, who, who's, what, what is the, what benefit is there to us to have, you know, NATO is not just like, hey, we're all friends.
NATO is a military alliance.
Why does that help us?
Why do we want to have a military alliance all the way right up to Russia's border?
And, you know, harkening back to the Cuban missile crisis, could you see where that would maybe be?
Like, you know, that would be seen as a provocation if you were in that situation.
So, okay, so anyway, the, you know, even Obama, who orchestrated the coup, or his government orchestrated the coup in Ukraine, wouldn't send in all the weapons that they wanted.
And Donald Trump, of course, right?
So anyway, just to make this clear for people, right?
So the government was overthrown, and the government that was installed was a much more pro-America, pro-NATO government, obviously.
That was the point of it.
Okay.
And so a few things happened when this coup was successful in 2014.
Number one, the eastern part of Ukraine, the Dunbas region, they were pretty pissed off about this because that part of Russia is very ethnically, excuse me, that part of the Ukraine is made up of primarily the majority is ethnic Russians, and they weren't happy about the government that they liked being overthrown.
And so they were pissed off and they were kind of like, well, if you guys can do these protests and take over these government buildings and all that shit, like, okay, we can do that too.
And so they basically became independent after that.
And they held a big referendum and they voted on whether they wanted to be a part of Russia or a part of Ukraine.
And they overwhelmingly voted to be a part of Russia.
Same with Crimea.
They overwhelmingly voted to be a part of Russia.
And Vladimir Putin took Crimea, but he didn't take the eastern part of Ukraine there in the Doombas region.
Okay.
So like that, he didn't take that.
But they voted overwhelmingly to be a part of Russia.
So just to keep that in mind, that is something that happened.
But the other thing that kind of like overshadows this, even Obama, who led that coup, wouldn't just send in all the weapons that they wanted.
And then Donald Trump came in and Donald Trump, of course, gets impeached over this thing where they said it was a quid pro quo because he was trying to get the Bidens investigated and he was holding up a weapons deal.
Okay.
So that's kind of like what people remember.
Oh, Trump's corrupt and all of this.
And he was impeached over this issue.
But what was really going on there, right, was like, well, why was it that Donald Trump was trying to get them investigated?
And don't get me twisted because I am not one of the people who's coming from this perspective, like Donald Trump was this great warrior who was fighting for what's right in America.
It's all a bunch of bullshit.
I don't believe any of that.
Not a Trump supporter.
I don't say that as like some meaningless disclaimer.
I'm just trying to tell you how it is, at least how I think it is.
But I'm right.
So Donald Trump, he knew that there was a lot of dirt on his political opponent there.
So what happened was, you know, if you remember with the Hunter Biden thing, right?
That company, Burisma, they, am I saying that right?
I always fuck up the name.
Anyway, you know what I'm talking about.
The one that employed Hunter Biden, they were in real tight with the previous government that got overthrown.
And so they now were in this kind of position.
They're one of the biggest energy companies in Ukraine.
And the government they were in tight with was just toppled.
And there's this new government in there.
And so they, instead of just trying to buy favor with the new government, which they also did, but instead of just doing that, they went right to the source because they knew who fucking led the coup in 2014.
So they just went, you know what we're going to do as our insurance policy is we're going to put Joe Biden's kid on our fucking board and give him whatever, 80 grand a fucking month or whatever they gave, you know?
So this kid doesn't speak the language and has no experience in the energy sector.
So we're just going to put him on because of course Biden was the person in Obama's administration who was tasked as like his Ukraine guy.
This was Biden's project, which is also something to keep in mind.
I think it's not a complete coincidence that then when Biden becomes president, you see this conflict with Ukraine, which is not exactly like the Fox News Republican narrative that Biden's just so weak.
And that's why Vladimir Putin felt emboldened now because he'd have never tried this with Trump.
It's more like, no, Biden was the dude who fucking like really was the point man on this fucking coup in 2014.
So anyway, so this is all of this went down.
And this is part of why Trump was trying to, you know, pressure them into investigating both Joe and Hunter Biden.
And the, you know, and then he used the weapons deal as leverage.
So now there is, to be fair, there is a little bit of a faux pas that Donald Trump committed there.
Like, you're not really supposed to fucking, you know, like he wasn't really trying to investigate them because, you know, this is just for the public good.
And it's so obvious that we need to get to the bottom of this.
I mean, maybe there was part of it, but it was also clearly like this guy's my political opponent.
And he's holding up a deal, a government to government deal based on trying to get dirt on his political opponent.
So it's not like there was nothing there, but there was a lot of dirt on Joe Biden and on Hunter Biden.
And so, and, you know, this was the leverage he had.
But, you know, however you feel about Donald Trump making that deal, the bigger picture here is what happened.
The bigger picture is how corrupt this whole fucking thing was.
And then the real bigger picture, which doesn't get talked about enough, is that it's like, yeah, okay, so what you hear is that, oh, Donald Trump tried to, you know, do a quid pro quo, that whatever, Hunter Biden got this cushy job, and that Donald Trump, you know, threatened to hold up this weapons deal.
But really, the more consequential story there is that he caved and he did the whole weapons deal.
He didn't even hold it up.
He didn't even like not do it.
He fucking gave in and he gave him weapons that even Obama wouldn't give him.
Okay.
So that's just, you have to understand this.
This is from the Russian perspective, which I know you're like not allowed to even look at and say, well, this is what the Russian perspective on this must be.
Can't even do that.
Or I guess you're an agent of Vladimir Putin.
But so now you have this situation where they've absorbed, what is, I think it's seven or eight different countries that were former Soviet Union countries that were absorbed into NATO.
It's all the way up to the Russian border.
Ukraine hasn't been absorbed into NATO, but they did stage a coup there, installed a government that's more friendly to the West.
They've sent in a ton of weapons and supported, you know, literal neo-Nazis in order to do it.
And I don't say neo-Nazis in the sense that it gets thrown around today, where it's like anyone you don't like is a neo-Nazi.
These are literally, you know, descendants, grandchildren of the Galatian SS, like really legit neo-Nazis, all of that.
So that's what the Russians are saying.
And so, you know, just think about that.
And think about like in the sense that Ron Paul would say, like, what if?
Quit Naturally With Fume00:03:07
What if this wasn't a good idea?
What if this idea that moving NATO further and further east was going to be some deterrent to Vladimir Putin and sending all of these weapons into the Ukraine would be a deterrent?
What if it wasn't a deterrent?
What if it was actually a provocation?
And that's where we're at now.
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And so, look, you know, I'm just not going to sit here and watch all that and pretend that this isn't another instance of blowback where our policies and our secret policies have unintended consequences.
Escalating Global Tensions00:12:29
And then the American people never know what to blame those unintended consequences on.
That's the essence of what blowback is: is that you have these covert policies, and then there's a reaction to the covert policies.
And then, for the people who don't know about the policies, they're like, well, look, why the hell is this guy being such a jerk?
What would inspire someone to just do this?
But there's a lot more to it than that.
And look, to any of the people, if you're saying that what I'm saying right now is saying I'm justifying Putin killing innocent people in Ukraine or something like that, like honestly, it's not even just that that's an idiotic take.
It's that no one believes that you're actually that much of an idiot.
Everyone, like people know what you're doing.
You're just shutting down discussion by trying to like label people, you know, awful things or something like that.
None of this is a justification.
It's an explanation.
And I think it's the correct explanation.
Now, I'm not saying there's not more to it than that, too.
I also do think that, you know, Vladimir Putin showed something to the world here, and he certainly showed something to me.
I didn't think he would do this.
I was wrong about that.
I figured if he didn't take Dunbas, the Dunbass region back in 2014, I figured he wasn't going to do it because that would have been the time to do it.
They literally just had a referendum and voted that they wanted to be ruled by you, but he didn't.
But now looking at it, you're like, well, I guess this guy was pushed to the point.
And I also do think that Vladimir Putin, I mean, certainly from listening to his speech or his rant a few days ago, I think he does want, like, I think he would love to reunify all of the countries in the Soviet Union, in the former Soviet Union, you know, all the countries that have split away.
However, you know, you got to step back and look at all of this and go, what should be the goal here?
And above all, the number one priority by far should be to avoid a war between the United States and Russia, because that is just something that, you know, to say it will have devastating effects is like the understatement in the history of humanity.
This is something that has the potential to end human life.
And if not doing that, it certainly could come damn close.
This is not like, you know, a war with Iraq or a war with Afghanistan or Syria or Libya or Yemen or Somalia.
And all those wars are horrible.
You know, I'm not downplaying that, as you guys know.
I've been talking about them for many years.
But this is different.
This is different.
This is a country with nuclear weapons and the capability to deliver them and that we can't stop.
And Vladimir Putin has said that if, like he's already said, he's ready to use them if someone comes in and does something.
He's in real gangster mode right now.
But the problem, right, is that if you don't, you know, if you, if you're not willing to talk about any of this stuff, if you won't understand your enemy, or if you won't understand what caused this whole situation, then you're at a serious disadvantage on trying to figure out what the solutions are.
And that's kind of the essence of what Ron Paul was talking about and Harry Brown was talking about, is that, you know, you have to understand what's going on here if you want to know how to solve this.
And so if you understand this much of it, then you would understand that, like, well, maybe the answer to this, you know, problem is we don't need NATO to be all the way up to Russia's border.
And maybe what we should do is be willing to talk and say, okay, listen, it's in none of our interests to have a nuclear war.
And that's the most important thing to avoid.
So maybe we can work out a deal here.
Now, I'm not saying that'll definitely work, but the idea that we're not fucking trying that is insane.
That's insane.
And that's what happens in these situations.
And who knows?
You know, people get drunk on power and people who run governments are crazy people and evil people.
And I don't know.
Maybe Putin takes all of Ukraine.
And then after that, who knows what he's emboldened to go do?
Who knows what his next step is?
But it's definitely worth trying.
Now, I'll say this.
You know, all of this stuff about like the, you know, the people who are like, oh my God, the people of Ukraine.
You know, it's all like, again, and I'm not saying I don't feel for the people of Ukraine.
It's just like, it's very much, it's very similar to like, oh, my God, the Kurds in Syria.
All of a sudden, we're supposed to care about these people.
But again, no one cared about like what was going to happen to the people of Ukraine when we were like, you know, sponsoring a neo-Nazi-led coup in 2014.
That wasn't like a big concern.
It's just like now, all of a sudden, now we have to really care about the people of Ukraine.
And why is that?
Why do we care about the people of Ukraine?
But we don't care at all about the people of Yemen.
You know, we don't care at all about the people of Syria or Libya or Iraq or Afghanistan.
But all of a sudden, we really care about the people in Ukraine and the Kurds in Syria.
When you want to end a war, okay.
This just seems a little bit convenient.
But what is it?
It's not, you know, it's not because Ukraine is some like, you know, thriving democracy or something like that.
I mean, yeah, they've had some elections.
They've also had some coups.
They also, you know, have had like opposition leaders imprisoned and, you know, news shows shut down and stuff like that.
I mean, it's not as if they're like some perfect democracy.
I mean, they're not Saudi Arabia, but we're also quite happy to, you know, support them.
So it's not about that.
This is about a much bigger plan here.
And that's, to me, it's like, you see, this, this is what's happening right now.
And so anyway, what we should be doing here is what Donald Trump had originally said, which he never did, part of that not his fault because he was framed for, you know, treason or whatever, framed for being a traitor.
But obviously, this goes with like without saying to anyone who's sane and observing this, is that we should be looking for détente with Russia.
We should be looking to have some type of relationship.
We should talk.
We should be like, okay, look, what can we do here?
What's a reasonable compromise?
Now, obviously, I don't expect, I mean, in a perfect world, but I don't expect NATO is going to be rolled all the way back to, you know, Germany or something like that.
But maybe there could be assurances that we won't, you know, bring Ukraine in.
Perhaps even like a written treaty.
Perhaps we could get back into some of those treaties that George W. Bush and Donald Trump tore up.
Maybe we could get back into some of that.
Maybe we could try to de-escalate things here.
Instead of all looking around and saying, we got to do something.
We can't just let Putin do this.
This is like dumb shit that's like, okay, yeah, okay, you don't want to let Putin do this.
What are you prepared to do?
Okay, so you're going to do all of these economic sanctions.
What's that going to do?
Hurt the people in Russia, the people who have nothing to do with this, the people who, by the way, if you were in that country, you'd probably feel the exact same way.
Unless, tell me if I'm if I'm wrong, tell me if I'm wrong that you go the Cuban missile crisis example.
You go, no, I have no problem with that.
No problem with a hostile foreign government, you know, who we're in a cold war with, putting nuclear missiles like a few miles off from where I live.
No problem.
Right?
So if you can't understand that, then you can understand why a lot of people in Russia, and not just Putin, even like the liberals in Russia, have a real problem with, you know, what we've been doing in Ukraine and the prospects of absorbing Ukraine into NATO.
Okay.
So here's the thing.
Hopefully, hopefully, here's what, this is what I think could happen.
Vladimir Putin made his point.
And he really has made his point already.
He's let everyone know he's not fucking around.
Even like people like me, I did not think he was about to do this.
And even if other people pretend to, I don't, I think a lot of them didn't either.
So he's kind of made a point that he's like, wow, he's really ready to go.
This is really a deal breaker.
He proved, you know, as Scott Horton likes to always talk about, and the current CIA director had that whole, you know, cable that was leaked by Julian Assange.
He proved that yet really does mean yet.
Okay.
I think it's possible that he'll go, okay, I've kind of made my point.
I'm taking the eastern part of Ukraine.
I'm the region that's mostly ethnically Russian and, you know, that, you know, whatever, that voted to be part of Russia back in 2015.
I'm taking them.
You guys can have the other side.
And that's that.
It's not a perfect solution, but I don't know.
I mean, where exactly should any borders be drawn on any of these countries?
I mean, if there's a group of people who voted to be a part of that country, I guess fine.
I don't know.
Maybe he'll do that.
Maybe not.
But maybe that'll be that.
And then there'll be like an opportunity to de-escalate.
But the worst thing that can happen here is tensions get higher.
He takes all of Ukraine and then he decides he wants to move for more.
That could be very, very bad.
And we might be in a very bad situation.
So we should all be hoping and praying and doing everything we can to ensure that this war doesn't go hot.
Like, and it doesn't, I mean, it's already hot between Russia and Ukraine, but I mean like all-out war with more powers involved.
And, you know, I don't want to see Russia take Ukraine, but I also don't want to risk a nuclear war over it.
You know, same way I don't want to see China take Taiwan, but I also don't want to risk a nuclear war over it.
I don't know.
That's kind of how I feel about that.
And I don't know, people try to like pretend like, oh, that's fucked up or something like that.
It's like, no, what's really fucked up is risking a nuclear war over any of this shit.
So, okay.
Here should be the libertarian response.
And I'll kind of wrap up in a minute here.
But to me, essentially the libertarian response.
And I saw, you know, I see some of these like kind of Beltway regime libertarian types.
And they're like, you know, the libertarians are against Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine.
And like, okay, sure, yes, that's true.
But okay, what's our position on coups and NATO and, you know, any of this fucking shit?
Like, so the libertarian response should be that it is that it is completely unnecessary to have NATO at all.
We're not for these like war guarantee military alliances.
We're not for subsidizing the defense of other countries who should be able to take care of themselves and work out their own deals with their neighbors.
That is not our role.
Okay.
The libertarian response should be that America's foreign policy is either designed or in effect.
It just is nothing but, you know, it's a huge provocation to all of these other countries in the world that we don't need to be provoking.
These countries are not like a threat to us unless we kind of make them one.
That should be what libertarians are saying.
And what libertarians should be willing to do is stand up in these moments when it matters and really say the unpopular thing and really say the thing that's unpopular, but is the fucking truth.
And if we're not willing to do that, then what value do we really have?
You know, if when things, if when the shit really goes down, you're just going to say the same goddamn thing that CNN is saying, what are you really adding to this?
Standing For The Truth00:01:12
I think that's something to think about.
And I think that there's real value in us being the ones who tell the fucking truth when it really matters.
And I will just say this, that much like with the Ron Paul Giuliani moment, much like with the war in Iraq, much like with, you know, Donald Trump being a Russian spy, much like with lockdowns, much like with vaccine mandates and all of this stuff, it pays dividends ultimately if you tell the truth when it's really hard to do it.
I think that's something to keep in mind.
And I think that's something we should all try to do.
So let's all really hope that this doesn't go as bad as it can go, because that'll be really bad for everyone.
All right.
That's the episode for today.
Ramped over.
I am jumping on a plane in a couple hours to go down to Florida for the Florida Libertarian Party State Convention.
So hopefully we're all here and everything's okay by the next episode.
I'm fairly confident we will be, at least for the next episode.
And yeah, I'll be back with Robbie the Fire in a couple of days here.