This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit radixjournal.substack.comThe gang, including European regulars, discuss world events in Europe, in particular the explosion in the Nord Stream pipeline and the reality that, for both Putin and Zelensky, the “die has been cast”: accepting a partial victory is no longer possible and escalation is likely.
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| I did get a certain sense that a neo-Cold War would be stabilizing in its way. | |
| You know, most of the, you know, 40-some-odd years after the Second World War was fairly stable, or was mostly stable, in fact. | |
| And so it's a kind of like, there's this ambiguity and there's a kind of cold, cold war going on that's a bit of a culture war of, you know, Russia takes in Edward Snowden and Russia, you know, prosecutes Pussy Riot and we... | |
| Promote Pussy Riot on television. | |
| And this kind of tit for tat in that way. | |
| And, you know, there's a lot of ambiguity there. | |
| I mean, you could still travel to Russia. | |
| Putin can still be the kind of plus one in G8 summits and so on. | |
| And I think a Cold War just kind of makes everything clear and thus stabilizes Russia internally. | |
| And I think there's some actual benefits to that. | |
| But for that to occur, you can't have a military that's caving in. | |
| You can't. | |
| I don't know what to say. | |
| You can't. | |
| Just, I don't know, turn into North Korea or something. | |
| I don't think it's nearly that bad, of course, but you see my point in the sense that there has to be some kind of plausibility and then an ability to have stability. | |
| There could have been the seizing of the regions that are currently undergoing referenda. | |
| And a kind of new line in the sand with Ukraine as a buffer state. | |
| I mean, I can see that as kind of stabilizing in its way. | |
| But again, if you're losing and you're, you know, success breeds success and failure breeds failure. | |
| I mean, it's, I don't, I think I kind of thought that that's where we would be months ago, but I don't think that now. | |
| I think. | |
| We're headed towards escalation and maybe also collapse. | |
| That's probably true. | |
| And the one scenario, come to think of it, that could kind of transition the whole situation to a Cold War of sorts is if the collective West basically tells Ukraine, That they have to basically give those, so to speak, new territories to Russia. | |
| And otherwise, no more help. | |
| Otherwise, they'd be left on their own. | |
| And if they do give those territories to Russia and acquiesce to that, then the rest, what's left of Ukraine, will be effectively, you know, there'll be a Marshall Plan and there'll be speed. | |
| tracked into the EU, perhaps, you know, all kinds of benefits will accrue to them. | |
| I don't know to what extent that is something Zelensky can sell to his people. | |
| If he were to accept something like that, he might destabilize Ukraine itself. | |
| It might descend into chaos because right now they're winning. | |
| They don't see any reason for that. | |
| And obviously they understand the nuclear threat, but right now for them to say, okay, you know, we accept our defeat, we accept that we have to cede a quarter of our territory to this invading force. | |
| I'm not sure how that can be done, but that's one scenario that could lead to that Cold War, the stabilizing Cold War. | |
| That's what I was talking about early on. | |
| I don't want to inflate myself too much. | |
| I was Kissinger before Kissinger. | |
| But I remember at the very beginning of this in March, there was this talk of a no-fly zone. | |
| And there was a poll, like one of these snap polls that probably shouldn't be taken too seriously at all, but it was like... | |
| 60% of the American public wants a no-fly zone over Ukraine. | |
| And I think that expressed a sentiment of just outrage, emotional outrage. | |
| You know, just like, why are you doing this? | |
| These poor people, they're getting slaughtered. | |
| Stop, you know, kind of thing. | |
| And it was this notion of America as an exceptional power, and we can just put a halt to a conflict if we want to. | |
| And then there was the... | |
| Response to that, which was, well, a no-fly zone means that you're going to have to shoot down a Russian plane, and that would be a war between Russia and the United States or Russia and NATO, and that's just, you know, a huge escalation, so this is unrealistic. | |
| And even, like, AOC did an Instagram Live or whatever. | |
| She was explaining this in the way that only she can. | |
| So it was clear that the establishment was kind of saying, no, no, no, we're not going to do that. | |
| And I remember there was a Tucker Carlson segment where he was someone interviewed. | |
| I think it was actually Max Blumenthal, who is an absolute Russian asset at this point, which is kind of surprising knowing his history. | |
| But anyway. | |
| He was interviewing this Hispanic congresswoman from Florida. | |
| And, you know, she's not terribly sharp. | |
| She's one of these kind of well-dressed women who looks like a newscaster or something. | |
| Maybe she was in her previous career. | |
| But anyway, she was like, you know, oh, yeah, we want a no-fly zone. | |
| We got to put a halt to this. | |
| And they're like, you know, that means war with Russia. | |
| And she was like, well, I don't want that. | |
| And they were kind of making fun of this woman. | |
| I basically said, you know, look, let's just accept the lost territory as lost. | |
| And, you know, let's not perpetuate bloodshed. | |
| And let's actually declare a no-fly zone over territory that is still Ukraine. | |
| And we can just basically, you know, because obviously, you know, Russia, at least... | |
| Hopefully, doesn't want to get into a shooting war with the United States. | |
| They know that there are consequences for them, and not just for the United States, if a Russian plane is shot down. | |
| So I was kind of suggesting this, that you just kind of tell Zelensky, you know, this territory is lost, it's over, but the great benefit is that the Western half of your country is going to be part of... | |
| Perhaps the NATO alliance and European Union, etc. | |
| So it's just ultimately better. | |
| You kind of have to take a loss, take your lumps, and then move forward, which is reasonable. | |
| We've all been in that situation in life many times. | |
| And I do think that I would stand by those comments. | |
| I think that's a good strategy. | |
| But it's now over. | |
| And again, as Boris just said, there's the... | |
| That feel of victory and that drive to go all the way. | |
| And you can't... | |
| I agree that even if Zelensky kind of saw that option as reasonable, which of course it is, he would say no. | |
| You know, we're going all the way with this. | |
| Every bit of territory from the, what was it, 92 or 93 referendum, that is ours. | |
| Yes. | |
| And one other thing that will weigh heavily on his decision is this far into this war, it seems like the consensus number for the people killed for the casualties in this war, probably around 50. 1,000 on each side. | |
| So the question that he won't be able to answer, so if you're giving up what they had seized initially, essentially, or in the first couple months, you know, why did we lose 50,000 of our people? | |
| And many more injured and crippled and many more yet civilians, like Mariupol alone is... | |
| They're saying about 80,000 civilians have been killed there. | |
| Oh, my gosh. | |
| Right, but it is a kind of sunk cost fallacy, though, which, you know, if you're a businessman, you should think in those terms. | |
| You know, like, yes, we invested all of this money into this project, but if we keep doing it, we're just going to lose more money. | |
| So we just stop it. | |
| And it hurts to, like... | |
| Throw away $10 million or something, but you just have to do it. | |
| I remember on social media, Warner Brothers spent $100 million on a Batgirl film, and they just canceled, which is kind of funny, because they're just like, we're just going to continue to lose money, so stop. | |
| You can do that in business, but war is just different. | |
| It's not just you lost $10 million and maybe you can make that back in a few years. | |
| It's about pride and emotion. | |
| I mean, it's like you're on a football team, you're driving down the field, and then your coach is like, well, you know, we're up by seven and there's only two minutes left, so let's just kneel the ball or something. | |
| I mean, the players wouldn't do it. | |
| It's like, let's, you know, that just feeling of... | |
| Power and momentum and drive. | |
| And not to mention the loss of life and thus feelings of revenge or making loss meaningful. | |
| I mean, it's the most powerful force in the universe. | |
| Exactly. | |
| The loss of life is key here. | |
| I mean, I'm sure that argument could have been made reasonably if we were just talking about territory and maybe destroyed. | |
| Infrastructure and financial cost, financial loss of it, but the lost lives, I mean, you can't really as a politician. | |
| And businessmen make different decisions than politicians. | |
| You know, as a politician, you can't just say, well, sorry, some cost, move on. | |
| Right. |