Viva & Barnes - Viva & Barnes Live with The Duran - World Politics, World News, & World War?

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Oct. 8, 2025 - Viva & Barnes

01:54:29

Viva & Barnes Live with The Duran - World Politics, World News, & World War?

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	I was going to start with a joke, but I guess I'll save it for my afternoon show.
	James Comey pleaded not guilty earlier today to uh his charges.
	Uh gentlemen, this is an off hour off time uh live stream.
	Alex, you you want to tell the world who you are.
	The other Alex is coming as well, right?
	He is indeed, absolutely waiting for him.
	But um, I'm from the Duran.
	I'm one of the two people who make up the Duran.
	We are a channel that you can find on Rumble, on locals, on YouTube, on all sorts of places.
	We basically do international affairs and geopolitical commentary, and we are absolutely delighted to be here through your generosity on this show, and we're very much looking forward to the show.
	And there is Alex, he's just joined us.
	I'm gonna bring up your channel.
	We've been you've been on a few times now, and uh it's look you guys are loved and respected for a reason.
	And for those who don't know, you you have a rumble channel.
	Yes, okay, good.
	So I'll bring that one up afterwards.
	You know, I'll bring that one right now.
	Uh Alex, how goes the battle?
	Doing great.
	Thank you for for inviting us to the show.
	Once again, it's a pleasure and an honor.
	And uh we also have a locals, the Duran.locals.com.
	Durant, I'm gonna bring all these up right now to show everybody.
	Locals.
	I guess the question on everybody's mind is uh how much longer do we have to live on this beautiful earth?
	Sorry, I'm I'll start with a joke.
	Uh Robert, how are you doing?
	Good, good.
	Uh we are going to survey the world.
	Uh you know, we try to do this uh as often as we uh can, you know, quarterly or so with the Duran.
	The uh you can follow Alexander McCorse uh and Alex Christopher, or both the constituent members of the Duran and the Duran itself on a wide range of channels, the Duran.locals.com, very vibrant uh locals community, a lot of uh input and information provided there.
	In fact, uh Alexander McCorse does his uh uh weekly live stream uh later today there at the Durand.logals.com.
	So if you have follow-up questions, you can go there and watch the uh as well and ask.
	Uh also, of course, on YouTube and Rumble and uh Rockfin and uh uh the in Odyssey, the all of those places.
	Also uh on X, uh the Duran Real or Duran Real.
	I just think real because I'm stuck too much sucker uh from Spain these days.
	The uh and so uh uh you know the Alexander McCorris comes from the uh uh a family you could call like the George Washingtons of Greece.
	Uh long history of being deeply involved in uh European affairs, and that was Christforo's family from Cyprus.
	Uh goes way back.
	Uh the uh an extensive diplomatic uh roots uh across the world.
	Uh so the the they come from that background, that experience, uh bring an independent mindset uh to issues of geopolitics and their short-term and meet term medium-term predictive accuracy uh in my experience is better than anybody else in the space.
	The uh we will cover today the all the different hotspots around the world.
	Uh we'll cover Europe, we'll cover Asia, we'll cover Russia, uh we'll cover Latin America, and we'll cover the Middle East, uh, which never ceases to be a hot spot.
	The we live in very interesting times, though many people think that Chinese proverb is not always in a desirable state of affairs to be.
	Uh maybe it was Lenin who said sometimes the world happens in decades, sometimes decades happen in months.
	And we're seeing that in live time.
	And we have a very unique uh president here in the United States of America that uh takes some unique approaches.
	Uh that uh being able to translate them or predict them, uh, has become an expertise of its own accord.
	The so uh we'll be discussing all of those issues as we cover through with certain thematic uh unity presented.
	And one of the importance of these kind of shows, and one of the reasons why part of my daily diet is Alex Alexander and the Duran, so much so that I find my uh self uh uh copying certain phrases that they use, uh you know, just saying the uh uh and other things of that nature,
	is that we have this dynamic uh where strategic empathy is looked down upon to be to employ you employ empathy with those you may disagree with for the purposes of understanding them to strategically achieve your own objectives, not uh suicidal empathy where you empathize so much with someone different than you that you destroy yourself.
	You empathize with them for the purpose of getting your own agenda in.
	And if you don't, you will more often fail.
	Uh both uh both uh Alex and Alexander are our deep studies or history, and often one of the biggest lessons from history is the importance of strategic empathy.
	There might be other useful lessons like don't invade Russia, you know, and things of this nature, don't go to war with Russia, the uh and so forth.
	Uh but uh we'll be exploring it within that framework.
	Any critical aspect of the accuracy of intel and information, that the you look at the great debacles of world history, and you often find the failure to employ strategic uh empathy, the failure to understand the lessons of history, and as importantly, inaccurate intel.
	Uh we'd followed them, you'd be able to predict with a high degree of accuracy what is, for example, happening on the battlefields of Ukraine, much more than certain people in oh, I don't know, the Pentagon of the United States of America, who are busy spinning tales uh that uh even Baghdad Bob would have been ashamed to do back in his Iraq days.
	So the we'll go through all of that as we uh cover the landscape.
	Uh but uh I'll start with uh uh Alexander.
	What is at the top, what do you think is the greatest risks uh we face in the near short term over the next three months to a year uh from a geopolitical perspective?
	I think the great the greatest risk is the situation in Europe and the fact that we're completely out of control here in Europe.
	I do think people in the United States quite get a sense of how uh hysterical the atmosphere here in Europe has become, because there's a sense that the war in Ukraine is going wrong.
	I think that sense has been there for a while, but I think it's got much worse over the last couple of weeks and months.
	And there's also a sense that uh the United States is no longer fully on board with this uh ultimately European enterprise, which is the one that we launched ourselves into against the Russians in Ukraine.
	I mean, remember it all started with an idea of uh establishing an association agreement between Europe between between the EU and Ukraine, and when there were some objections, both within Ukraine and from Russia to that, that escalated and went on escalating, and it has brought us to this war that we're in today.
	So I think there's this extraordinary atmosphere of anger and fear and hysteria, where drones that uh uh you know appear over airports are seen as proof of Russian attack tomorrow,
	where the Danish Prime Minister talks about Europe being in a state of war effectively, where the Polish Prime Minister talks in the same way, where there's talk about German rearmament, and i it's very easy to see how this could all get completely out of control, and we could end up doing something very, very stupid and very, very uh bad, which we might not be able to control, contain.
	Now, of course, there are problems going on in other places in the Middle East, but I think it is the situation in Europe which is the most dangerous.
	And uh Alex, uh you're mentioning recently in the uh on your uh show, uh the I even I'm I'm I keep trying to imitate, I don't like it, uh, but I I can't quite get there.
	I I I get part of it, but I just can't get the Alex's uh emphasis.
	But you mentioned that the you know yesterday gold crossed 4,000, big threshold.
	And the and for a lot of people those it was a green uh light for great success incoming.
	But as you noted, historically, that's not always what a sudden rise in gold means.
	It means if uh every central bank and a bunch of the world's economic elites are rushing to buy gold, it's usually an indicator going all the way back to the decline and decay of the Roman Empire, that they think the world might be going to hell in a handbasket.
	Uh, and they want to make sure they've stockpiled that gold, and they don't trust any currency.
	And that, and then we have digital gold, Bitcoin also going to record highs.
	So there's uh plenty of our followers that buy gold and get they'll buy a lot of bitcoin over the years.
	A lot of you you guys followers uh have done very, very well if if they took that necessary risk and and caution.
	But the can you explain to people that uh this sudden rise in gold to just a sign that the world's elites, The people in the best position to know what might be coming down the pipeline are very nervous and scared about what might be coming down the pipeline.
	Yeah.
	They're nervous and they're they're putting their money into into gold.
	Some of them are buying Bitcoin.
	Uh real estate.
	I see a lot of uh of the elites buying real estate, me being in Cyprus, I do see it.
	Um Alex Alex just froze.
	Ah but I I hadn't seen the gold crossed 4,000.
	So they're looking to put their money, yeah.
	All time high.
	You froze up there for a second.
	Yeah, you you guys hear me now?
	We can hear you now, yes.
	Okay, yeah, yeah, all-time high.
	Bitcoin as well.
	Both of them yesterday hit all-time highs.
	My question is like if the world goes to hell in a handbasket, what good is an ounce of gold in your hand gonna do?
	Like you still have you're gonna shave off little pieces to buy food, but there's gonna be no food to buy.
	Um they'll put it in their bunkers.
	They'll still stack it up in their in their bunkers.
	So here's the question: like, you know, we are it's almost like in America or say the West, we've stopped talking about the war in Ukraine to some extent, in that it's going on and it's sort of no longer in the news cycle.
	In Europe, I mean, you're still living with that war, ongoing war day in and day out.
	What's the what is the sentiment like in the non-Ukrainian part of Europe?
	Well, this is exactly a good point, because I think in the um in the United States, people are thinking about the war less.
	In Europe, they're thinking about this more and more all the time.
	And um, this is partly driving the fear and the anger.
	We had the summit meeting of European leaders a few days ago in Copenhagen.
	And I have to say the rhetoric was just off the scale.
	It was completely out of control.
	Now, I think what has happened, and I I will jump ahead a bit, maybe uh a discussion we're gonna have in more detail later.
	But I think what happened was that sometime in the early summer, the Ukrainians themselves began to understand that they're not going to win the war, and in fact, they're likely to lose it.
	Um, I think it has taken a little longer for this understanding to reach uh governments in the West, but in Western Europe.
	But I think over the last couple of weeks, it's hit home.
	I think there's an understanding that the Russians are indeed grinding relentlessly forward.
	They might not be moving very fast, but they are always moving, and there isn't very much that can be done.
	In fact, there isn't anything that can be done to stop them.
	And that all diplomacy, all attempts to persuade them to stop, have failed.
	And I think this has created a tremendous sense of crisis across Europe because people sense here that the United States is becoming more detached from this conflict and this war, even as it is increasingly looking like we are going to be facing a major military defeat in Europe.
	And it is a defeat in Europe.
	I think it was uh Donald Tusk or Radek Sikorsky, one of these two, the Polish prime minister or the Polish foreign minister who actually said it straightforwardly.
	A defeat for Ukraine is a defeat for Europe.
	And that will, of course, affect radically Europe's own sense of itself and of its own importance and of its place in the world and of its future security.
	So I think this is probably what has happened.
	I said I think they've understood that they're losing the war and they don't know what to do.
	In that regard, Alex, uh, the uh you've been discussing the risks and uh I mean there's some there can be rewards, but President Trump seems to be the great virtue of President Trump and the occasional vice of President Trump is his ability to turn on a dime and his ability, uh, but it's reflects a complete lack of ideological uh commitment to anything.
	In other words, the good thing is he's not ideologically locked into the neocon, neoliberal world order.
	He has no ideological commitment to it.
	On the flip side, it's not clear what he does have an ideological commitment to.
	We thought it might be opposition uh to war, but it that has been sporadic and erratic.
	And Trump seems to be a big believer.
	Nixon was similar back in the day, though Trump employs it at a whole different level.
	In the madman theory of global governance, which is that you can get what you want by everybody at the poker table not having any idea what it is you actually want.
	That you know, the the bluff uh heavy obsession that Trump seems to have, especially in his second administration, uh has major risk when you're bluffing with nuclear war as the risk.
	The uh we've you we've seen with you guys have both identified that General Kellogg and other people uh within the joint chiefs of staff continue to give false intel and information to President Trump.
	And that even though, and I'll be citing uh some information throughout this report uh from a national intelligence report, whether we're talking about Venezuela not uh running a huge drug cartel, whether we're talking about Iran not building nukes imminently, whether we're talking about Russia being anything but a paper tiger militarily, uh, and Ukraine doing, as Alexander just mentioned, doing anything except winning on the battlefield with any real prospect of winning.
	But we see people from the administration, vice president Vance recently uh repeating some of these general Kellogg lines that you Russia is falling apart, it's losing massive numbers of casualties.
	It's an economy is about to frazzle.
	The and if you just push them a little bit harder, Mr. President, then by golly, you'll get everything you want without anybody being unhappy.
	But some of the intelligence I'll be referencing here ain't Rusky intelligence, it's U.S. intelligence.
	And it's not U.S. intelligence from two years ago, it's US intelligence from six months ago.
	It's the national intelligence report of OD and I Tulsi Gabbard, who said Russia's military is a very strong and is doing well on the battlefield.
	It was Gabbard's report that said Iran was not imminently creating nukes.
	Uh it was Gal Gabbard's report that Venezuela is not this huge drug cartel that's responsible for most drugs coming into the country.
	These are fig leaves for continuing war or other risky policies.
	But the uh as you've watched this through, what's your thoughts on the internal dynamic of the US in terms of do you believe President Trump is getting accurate intel and information uh about the Ukrainian conflict, about what is happening in Venezuela, about what is happening in Iran, taking at the and in general, what are some of the risks of a madman theory?
	Uh in other words, how much right now we see the peace possibility in Gaza, but Hamas doesn't have any confidence or trust that Israel or the U.S. will keep up their end of the deal.
	And that's currently what's holding up, it appears, that peace negotiation in Gaza with Hamas and Israel.
	The what are some of the downsides to the world not knowing such a bluffing all the time to uh to this this being so unpredictable that you actually could trigger a conflict rather than escape one?
	Yeah, I think Trump was at a time early in his administration, he was getting um information from the Kellogg side of things, say the Kellogg, Lindsey Graham side of things, and he was getting information from, let's say, the the Whitkoff advance uh side of things.
	But um it it seems to me that he is now drifting more towards the Kellogg Lindsey Graham side of things.
	There are reports which claim that Witkoff is going to be leaving the administration by the end of the year.
	Uh that's that's troubling in my opinion.
	Um, and it does seem like like Trump is moving towards the the Kellogg um uh Lindsay Graham side of things when it comes uh specifically to to Ukraine.
	Uh that's the way it seems.
	But with Trump, you you you never know.
	Um like you said, Robert, he could he could change his mind tomorrow and and keep everyone guessing.
	Uh the I I think the problem with the Europeans is that Trump not being able to just tell them we're out of this thing, we're gone, keeps the Europeans kind of freaked out.
	So there's they're thinking to themselves, we need to continue to escalate.
	We need to continue to keep on uh trying to contact Trump to whisper in his ear how it's important to go to war with Russia, how it's important to support Ukraine, and and he gives them a type of false hope in that maybe if they just uh if they just liaise with Trump a little more, if if Stuub just played another round of golf with uh with Trump, the the president of Finland, then we can get Trump to finally support us 100%.
	And so they keep the his position keeps the Europeans kind of dangling.
	And if he would just cut the whole Ukraine thing off, then yeah, the Europeans would be would be panicking for a couple of days.
	They'd be pissed off at Trump.
	They're pissed off at Trump anyway.
	They don't like Trump anyway, but but they would be doubly pissed off at Trump.
	But eventually, after a week or so, they would say it's over.
	We don't have the United States it's over.
	But now they're kind of in a no man's land, and they're thinking, you know, if we continue to court Trump, if we fly over to DC, make another trip, continue to talk to him, kiss his butt a little bit more, then we're going to finally get him to commit to us 100%.
	And Trump is playing them off.
	He's keeping them hanging.
	He is keeping them on the line.
	I think it's uh it's a dangerous approach.
	Um he needs to just, in my opinion, he needs to just cut this thing off.
	For the United States' benefit and for the Europeans' benefit.
	Yeah.
	And for Ukraine's benefit at the end of the day, I mean, you know, when all said it done, it benefits Ukraine.
	Well, Ukrainian people want peace.
	Uh, what's for uh the transition to Alexander?
	The uh uh we see extra like the the people Trump keeps hanging out with promoting this war are all losers.
	Uh Trump hates to be around losers.
	The Zelensky curses call that for a reason.
	Uh in your home country, it looks like Starmer's days are clearly numbered.
	Now the most hated leader in the history of Britain, uh modern history of Britain.
	Uh Merz is approaching the most hated leader in the history of Germany, which is impressive for a country that had mustache man running their country.
	Uh, you got the uh uh at the same time you uh with the AFD's rise there, populist rise in Germany, the populist reform party of Nigel Farage might obliterate what's left of the Tories and completely crush uh labor.
	Uh Zelensky himself is deeply underwater.
	That's why he won't do polls, that's why I won't do elections and is busy baiting the Ukrainian Orthodox Church now, apparently, and everything else along with it.
	But the isn't there, uh but one of the places you followed where we're seeing the complete collapse in live time is the little Napoleon wannabe uh Macron, uh is the France French government, the second third one he's trying to set up in in short order, collapsing.
	The to be both to the the real downside risk to Trump's madman strategy following up on uh Alex's point, but also what the heck is happening in France, and does can Macron really hold on for another year?
	Or at this point, will he have to call Alexis?
	Indeed, can I just just say a few things?
	First of all, um play playing a game of bluff, following the game of you know, being the madman, but bluffing, which is ultimately what the madman theory is all about.
	The problem is that other people that you might be dealing with don't play that kind of game.
	I mean, poker is an American game.
	The Russians don't play poker.
	I mean, just to say, I mean, their dominant national game, as many people have pointed out, is chess.
	And one of the problems with this, one of the problems with this particular approach is that it's not just keeping the Europeans dangling, it is keeping the Russians dangling too.
	And the Ukrainians also, by the way, is giving the Ukrainians false hopes.
	It's giving the Russians also uncertainty as to what exactly it is that the United States is really doing and where this whole thing with the United States is going.
	And there are people in Moscow who are now increasingly saying, well, look, the president of the United States says one thing, the president of the United States the next day something says something completely different.
	One day he talks about uh improving relations with us.
	The next day, he's seems to be attracted to this very bad idea that the Europeans and the Ukrainians have cooked up, which is to get the US to supply Ukraine with tomahawks.
	The Europeans, the US, uh the Ukrainians, and I should Kellogg and people like that too.
	And well, you're starting to see increasing signs in Moscow that people there are now starting to push back.
	And they're telling Putin, well, enough's enough.
	We've gone as far as we can with this.
	This isn't going To lead us anywhere in the end.
	And over the last 24 hours, two things in Russia have happened which are worrying.
	The first is the Russian parliament had a session, and it was addressed by a man called Yabkov, who is Russia's deputy foreign minister, a very, very senior man, and who's undoubtedly speaking with the authority of the Russian government.
	And he said that the momentum of the Alaska summit has stalled, that the situation between us and the Americans is deteriorating, that prospects for peace have been still born.
	And it is no coincidence, as the Russians like to say, that Putin almost simultaneously with that event in the Russian parliament, had a televised meeting with his generals in which they discussed the military situation and the generals' plans to win the war.
	And there was no talk about negotiations with the United States, no mention of Trump, no talk about diplomacy or of the pursuit of peace.
	So it's almost as if the Russians are saying we can't carry on with this anymore.
	We've got to focus on the war, and we've got to win.
	So that's that's the risk with this strategy.
	It pushes your negotiating partner away.
	And Putin, for the first time that I can remember, is being publicly challenged in Russia about the fact that he's been having these meetings with Trump and has been outreaching to him.
	And when I say criticized, he's not been criticized by the usual people on social media or the telegram channels or wherever.
	I mean, actual Russian officials are basically through very elliptical language, but they're now starting to say, well, the boss on this has spent too much time, and now we need to start taking off the gloves and focusing on the war and forgetting about a rapprochement with the United States.
	I say all of this, I really don't want this at all.
	I want a rapprochement between at least a detente between Russia and the United States.
	But this is the danger with this game of bluff that Trump has been playing.
	A question that I have I'm wondering what does a Russian victory look like at this point?
	What does a Ukrainian loss look like at this point?
	From the perspective of Europe, are they afraid that a Ukrainian loss will mean that Russia occupies Kyiv or that they're just going to keep the land they've got in the east and um the port place?
	And now I forgot the name.
	But that's the concern that that all of Ukraine is going to fall if Russia wins the war, put it in quotes.
	Right, right.
	Well, I think it this is the other thing that's important is that the Russians have to some extent been drawing the curtain a little on what they envisage as a victory, an actual military victory, what that would mean.
	And that is that they've now confirmed in various places that their military is actually working to a plan in Ukraine.
	In other words, they're not improvising.
	It's not opportunistic.
	They have an actual military plan, An actual plan that they've been following.
	And they there's been an article by very well connected Russian journalist, which seems to relate to a map that the Russian military showed in a program that was done a few weeks ago.
	And it showed all of Donbass Zaporozhye, east of the Dnepa under Russian control, but also the entirety of Ukraine's Black Sea coast, Odessa, Nikolaev under Russian control, also.
	So it looks as if the military have been tasked or have tasked themselves with achieving that objective.
	Nobody Expects it to happen tomorrow or in a week's time or a month's time, we are still looking at an incremental advance.
	But that does appear to be their objective now.
	The fact that this map was shown in the way that it was, the fact that these articles are starting to appear, gives us an idea of what ultimate Russian military objectives are.
	Putin is prepared to accept a lot less than this, but some people in Russia clearly want to push further.
	And to be quite clear about this, if Ukraine loses both control of the Dnepa River in its central areas and its Black Sea coast, then it is no longer viable as a state of the sort that we have known.
	Economically, it cannot function because it loses its hist into land and its access to the sea.
	It becomes a landlocked whatever's left of its natural resources.
	It becomes a landlocked country which is deprived of its industrial resources, its industrial centers, and the places where most of its strategic minerals are located.
	Speaking of which, uh Alex, uh in these to the risks of this bluff strategy, maybe I'll go to nuclear war, maybe I won't, you know, just in general, if you say that out loud, you kind of recognize the risks of it.
	But one of them lately is all this tomahawk nonsense.
	So the as soon as it was is as yo, General Kellogg, this is the game changer of game changers.
	Never trust a general named after a kid cereal, to say.
	But in that uh uh but the responsible statecraft publication of the Quincy Institute, named after uh my great cousin, John uh Quincy Adams, who Alexander McCorsey recently had a great view, one of his many beautiful quotes over the years.
	He, of course, was the one who penned the phrase, we Americans do not go abroad searching for monsters to destroy, and we spent the better part of the last century searching for and pretending we're looking at monsters to destroy uh in the military-industrial complex.
	But you look at, I mean, as soon as the responsible statecraft laid it out, that the tomahawk is a is a designed to be a submarine weapon.
	It is not designed to be an on-the-ground weapon.
	Uh just the uh and the very few uh platforms we have to to use it on the ground, which have only been recently developed, uh, are not going to Ukraine.
	So most people who looked at this from the military logistical side, uh said, this is nonsense.
	That the now, maybe there's some other missile system that's going to be provided there.
	But what that suggested to me, I mean what's amazing is Fox News apparently can never cover this.
	Mainstream media can manage to never cover this.
	I mean, I mean, it's starting to slip through like Reuters and some other publications, it's starting to filter out that this appears to me to be another one a game of one big dangerous bluff.
	And that I think the I think at different times Trump has been convinced that Russia's just about to collapse, and and you're helping Putin by helping him get out of this war.
	That I think that pitch has been made uh to sort of unite the two sides of Trump's personality in approaching Russia.
	The uh, and he seems to convince himself for a period of time that the sanctions are going to be game changers and the unilateral ceasefire is going to be a game changer.
	And now it's the Tomahawk, and in giving him logistics to fire deep into Russia is going to be a game changer.
	It's like, yeah, it might be a game changer, but not in a way you want, uh, given the kind of risk it escalates.
	I thought Putin handled it well in the way that I think Trump would have, if Russia would have come out really strong, said this is a big red line, no way, that-da-da.
	Trump, I think would have unfortunately misinterpreted that as weakness.
	Uh, ah, okay, this does scare him.
	This really does frighten him.
	Okay, maybe this can work and get stuck on that escalatory ladder.
	When Putin didn't respond that way, he was like, eh, it's an old weapon, we'll deal with it.
	Not good.
	It'll put a lot of our, he'll probably put peace talks uh with the US reproachment talks on the back burner if it exists at all.
	But he wasn't going to give off the impression to someone like Trump, and I think Putin reads Trump better than any leader in the world, uh, that uh he wasn't going to give Trump any sense of uh this is something that scares me, this is something that intimidates me, this is something that worries us, this is something that's going to change our negotiation position because it ain't because he was, you know, cool like Fonzi from Happy Days.
	So but to it, is that an example of where this bluff, obsessive bluffing strategy that Trump seems to be employing is very dangerous.
	Because if we got if somehow long-range weapons do end up being used and used successfully in some manner, uh I mean, I'm talking about focusing on just energy infrastructure, but let's say some other disaster happens, you could be at the risk of, I mean, it violates a Russia red line that is justification for their use of nuclear weapons because tomahawks can't carry nuclear warheads.
	So the can the how risky is it if Trump were to actually go forward with the Kellogg plan and they were to quote unquote succeed.
	That may be the greatest danger of all for US peace.
	And these missiles have to be fired by NATO or the United States.
	That's the problem.
	Even even if Tomahawks are not delivered to Ukraine and say they deliver um Taurus missiles, the German torse missiles, or they deliver these new Barracuda missiles, which have never been really tested, but but still, you deliver these long-range missiles to Ukraine.
	Putin made it a point to say that these missiles are going to be fired by the United States or by NATO.
	And we know this, and everyone knows this, he said.
	And he said it twice.
	He said it once at Valdae, and he said it a second time with an interview with uh with Zarubin, who's who's the Kremlin journalist.
	So he made it a point to say it twice.
	If these missiles are fired into Russia from Ukraine, you're not fooling anybody.
	We know that this was fired by the United States or by NATO.
	You also have to look at it from the perspective of the reason we have this war.
	The reason we have this war was the fear of long-range missiles in Ukraine.
	And now you have the United States, Trump, the entire collective West talking about putting long-range missiles in Ukraine.
	So I mean, the the whole thing, whoever whoever advised Trump to go down this path of talking about uh the Tomahawks, in my opinion, wanted to sabotage any type of detente reprochement with the United States, and they have succeeded.
	They've succeeded because you've you've put Putin in a in a difficult place where where he's having these negotiations with the United States, he's having these talks with Trump.
	They're trying to figure a way to re-establish uh relations, diplomacy to normalize things.
	And what does he now have to deal with?
	He has to deal with the fact that Trump is saying that he's going to send long-range missiles to Ukraine.
	They could have nuclear warheads, they have a range of 2,000 kilometers or 2.5,000 miles, whatever it is.
	And our goal is to hit Russian um energy facilities, but we're not seeking escalation, he says.
	And the whole thing is just confusion and it's crazy.
	And Putin has to now deal with this stuff.
	And then he's got the hardliners like Medvedev telling him, you know, you're you can't continue to talk to Trump like this, and you're taking a soft line.
	Meanwhile, he has to try to prevent some sort of escalation or some sort of uh world war three escalation, and and Trump is not making it easy to get some sort of reprochement with with Russia to try and de-escalate the things in Ukraine.
	He's he's making it harder.
	And the fact that you've now thrown Tomahawk missiles into the equation, you've pretty much submarined any progress that was made during Alaska.
	Well, I mean, hypothetically, what happened?
	Trump walks away.
	I'm reading the chat, they say Trump should have walked away.
	He's getting you know further deeper into talks of nuclear war.
	If Trump walks away, is there not a risk that Europe does something stupid in order to escalate or that Ukraine does something extremely stupid, like some false flag type thing to justify Article 5 or whatever?
	This is where we go back to what Alex uh should have uh was saying earlier, because of course, just walking away in itself was not enough.
	You need to get the Ukrainians and the Europeans to one side and say, look, the United States has made this decision, it game over.
	This is the point where you've got to sit down and negotiate.
	The United States is not going to be involved.
	And I think knowing the realities in Europe, I think they'd have gone along with it.
	There would have been exactly as Alex said, fury and rage, lots of complaints, uh, people would have shouted and said that the US is betraying Europe, which is a ridiculous thing to say.
	How can the United States be betraying Europe by not committing itself to a war on behalf of the European project?
	Uh, But anyway, there would have been rage, but they would have accepted it.
	And here I think there's something else to say.
	And it goes back to the point that Alex was making.
	And indeed, the point that Robert was also making, and where we come back to the issue of strategic empathy.
	Now I'm one of I've been to Russia or spoken to Russians.
	I follow and read a lot of things that people in Russia says.
	And I've also someone who takes an interest in and feels very close to the United States.
	It may surprise people in the United States to know that in Russia there would be a very, very strong constituency of people, probably a critical mass of people within the elite, who, if they were offered a rapprochement, a real détente with the United States, they would seize it with both hands.
	There is a fundamental difference between Russian attitudes towards Europe and Russian attitudes towards the United States that goes back very far indeed.
	The Russians see the United States very differently from the way that they see uh the Europeans.
	They see the Europeans as dangerous, they want the United States to remain in Europe.
	Oh, and I say this to people, it always surprises them.
	But the Russians, from a Russian point of view, this is where strategic empathy comes in.
	The Russians have fought many wars with the Europeans.
	Napoleon invaded them.
	The Germans invaded them.
	The British, by the way, have also invaded them.
	The United States never has.
	So from their point of view, they have they feel that their country, huge continental country, enormous resources, tremendous science, technology.
	It's in some ways like the United States.
	They can relate to the United States.
	They can talk to the United States, or that's what they want to do, because for them it is a path forward.
	Now, if they were confident that a deal with the United States like that was possible, and it would stick, they might be prepared to make certain moves in Europe, even in Ukraine, in order to calm American concerns and to make the pathway for the Americans easier.
	The problem is that they don't see that at the moment.
	And that is why they themselves are drifting back into a policy of seeking an outright victory in Ukraine.
	It goes directly back to that issue of strategic empathy, which Robert was talking about.
	And Alex, in touring Russia, where I think you currently are, uh the beautiful time of year to be there.
	Uh the uh I've you know heard from all the experts uh that the Russian economy is completely falling apart.
	Uh you know, the has no future.
	Even uh my friend Vice President Vance was uh putting out something I think is gibberish, uh, whether he was just talking script because he has to, or honestly believes it, if he honestly believes it, he needs to uh fire anyone who gave him that advice, in my opinion.
	But can uh can you tell us is the Russian economy collapsing uh from your personal uh view as well as a view of the evidence?
	Uh no, uh I I don't see it.
	Uh is it going through through hard times, especially with regard to to inflation and interest rates?
	Yeah, but I would say most of the world is is having those uh those difficulties.
	Uh but uh it's it's very normal here, I would say, Robert, just very normal.
	And uh the the other thing that uh that really um struck me being here this this time around is that uh I am seeing Russia moving completely away from Europe.
	Uh last time I was here, I still saw some connection to Europe, some things that overlapped.
	Uh this time around, I feel like I'm in in in the east.
	I'm not in the West anymore, and I'm in Moscow and Moscow is Europe, right?
	I mean, but I feel like I'm in the East and I don't have any any connections whatsoever to Europe or the West, not even Eastern Europe.
	I mean, I really feel it this time around, and uh I think that's that's interesting.
	Uh Russia is for all intents and purposes completely now to the East.
	Well, and now it in a good way or in a bad way.
	Because I'm trying to understand what they're doing.
	In a different way.
	In a different way.
	Yeah, in a different way, like just from you know, um going to purchase things from using the mirror card, uh, even stuff like uh like the SMS, like the text messaging system.
	Um everything's either being cut off from the West, and it's just on a whole different system, a whole different track, or uh, or there's no you don't see any and any types of uh of businesses, restaurants, I mean, you just don't see the Western influence here anymore at all.
	Uh, for example, uh the the cars on the streets now, I have to say, are about in Moscow seven, it feels like it's 70, 80 percent Chinese cars.
	I mean, that's that's the sense that I get it's probably a lot less, it's probably like 5050.
	But the sense that I get in every taxi that I've been in has been some Chinese car and half of them, I have no idea what they are.
	I mean, I know BYD, but uh I know it's oomy, Xiaomi and BYD, but the other cars I have no idea what they are.
	And sometimes I I I talk to the to the Yandex drivers to what's the Uber, the Uber drivers in uh in Moscow, and I asked them about the cars.
	How are they?
	Uh you like them?
	Like, yeah, we're happy with them.
	I usually I used to have a uh a Honda, I used to drive uh a Mercedes or whatever, but now I've got this this Xiaomi or this BYD and it's all good.
	I've never even I've never even heard of these.
	I mean, I I'm not I'm not much of a car aficionado to begin with, but I mean now I wonder if they're explosion.
	Sorry.
	I know it's the explosion of the Chinese electric car market, and the uh that they've been uh improving, improving, improving, and at a certain point they were way behind, like Elon and others and Tesla.
	Tesla still has an edge because it has an edge over everybody, uh, but the the China's making huge leapfrogs uh in that area.
	Now, speaking of like how uh Putin's recent speech where he basically confirmed what Alex just said, uh the divorce from Europe uh is here and done.
	Uh and that Putin was a long time perceived, at least in Russia, as uh as more of a Europhile than a Europhobe, uh, but that that loss that that great opportunity for the reincorporation of Russia into Europe is now appears to be lost.
	The the same risk poses to the US, and as if you pointed out, maybe Putin's path of divorcing from Europe would be well advised for the United States.
	Uh can you give us a sense, Alexander, of just what a disaster it is right now in Stormer in Britain, merch in Germany, uh uh the complete fall of Macron's government in France, the uh uh the Maloney struggling in Italy after betraying her the more popular side of her promises in her campaign, the EU being this project that as Victor Aubon recently said is dying and will soon be dead, so we don't want to join the euro uh in Hungary.
	The Czech elections was had a populist resurgence once again, they had to interfere in the Moldovan elections, interfere in the Romanian elections.
	And even then they barely got over the I mean they used to be able to steal elections better.
	They need to send the Lyndon Baines Johnson uh how to steal an election to the EU so he could do it better in Moldova next time.
	Yeah.
	Well, absolutely and and then Georgia regime change coup except sorry, yeah, go ahead out there.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	I mean, you you've just you've given a description of the realities across Europe, which of which is a very, very accurate one.
	And to that, by the way, I I would add, I mean, just as a little detail.
	We are currently um witnessing the conference, the party conference of the conservative party of Britain, the party of Churchill and Disraeli and Thatcher and all of these people, you know, the Titanic figures of our past.
	And there is nobody there.
	There is hardly anybody there.
	The the whole you see it is empty.
	And in order to attract people, they're actually offering a séance.
	And I'm not exaggerating.
	They've got a post box, and you write a letter to Margaret Thatcher, and you're supposed to post it to her.
	And that's that's that's what they do.
	I mean, it is it is an astonishing situation right across Europe.
	And you spoke about Macron, and we've done programs about this um on the Duran, about the absolute chaos that Macron has created in France.
	He's completely destabilized the situation there, how he's bored about governing France, that he really doesn't address the problems of the French people, and there is a single thread that unites all of these problems.
	And that is that in the 2000s, the early 2000s, we imposed on ourselves in Europe this well, early 90s actually, going back.
	We impose upon ourselves this structure above ourselves, a bureaucracy, completely unelected, completely unaccountable, which is the European Union.
	There is a European Parliament, but it is a joke.
	It hardly functions.
	It certainly doesn't function as any kind of proper parliament.
	We've had this bureaucracy that was created because there was this idea that you know we would that way achieve the kind of economies of scale that the United States has, and we would emulate the economic achievements of the United States, completely failing to understand our own economic geography.
	The fact that the whole economic vitality of Europe has come from the fact that we are states, European states, nation states, governed by government governments that are directly electorally accountable to us as a nation constantly in competition with each other.
	That is where we have in the past gained our energy and our dynamism from.
	That's been completely taken away.
	We now have a kind of bureaucratic structure which regulates because that's all it knows how to do.
	It regulates constantly, and it is doing the same thing that all para para you know state structures in Europe have done again since the time of Napoleon,
	in order to pursue this um mirage of European integration, they seek to unite all of the European states in a crusade against Russia, which has been a disaster as well.
	So you see this happen in every European country, governments losing legitimacy, political leaders losing legitimacy because they're no longer um ultimately accountable to the people.
	Their accountability to the extent that it exists is to the structures that exist in Brussels.
	And um Europe, therefore, is in rapid and terminal decline.
	And as soon as this is understood in the United States, and a divorce from this rotten structure is made, the better, because the risk is that while the things continue in this way, what it what Europe is doing is it's pulling you, pulling America down with it.
	Exactly.
	Did you did I understand they're writing letters because like like letters for political inspiration to a woman who's been dead for over a decade?
	You are absolutely correct.
	That is exactly that is exactly what is happening.
	It's like it's like a political wailing wall, like people putting their wishes in the cracks of the wall and just hoping that a spirit they divine a spirit.
	Exactly.
	The divine spirit of the leader of the great leader.
	I mean, that that tells you that tells you that this is as I said, this is the conservative party.
	It's actually not a bad idea when you think about Starmer and whoever's in the in the UK government.
	You might as well hope that Thatcher does something from the Great Beyond.
	Well, it'll definitely be a good candidate for uh one of Alex's clown world.
	Um the I think what's always fascinating here, I see a lot of the modern American left, that the doesn't uh appreciate the history of politicized violence uh in in you know in including leftist politicized violence.
	Like people like my niece and some other people think, oh, politicized violence is only a right-wing thing.
	And it's like the the historical amnesia we have in the US, of course, whether underground, you know, Black Panthers, other groups, uh, Black Panthers are integrated with gangs, so it's kind of a different animal, but whether underground, probably the most paramount example.
	But what we who really got rocked by a lot of leftist violence was Europe.
	Uh and the Alex, the like the uh there's a lot of debate here in the US about how to deal with Antifa.
	The, and I've been trying to point out to people here, if you understand their history to the black bloc, go back further to Antifa, uh, with about northern Italy, uh parts of Germany, that the you know may have been formed in the guise of protecting against the fascist, uh, but was often a sort of a violent uh regime to be this sort of paramilitary version, this violent uh uh element that they could use that's privatized to get political objectives.
	But uh you know briefly, the could you remind people that the long history of sort of leftist violence uh in Europe, uh going back uh a century, and how that the and and how that that is a real thing and is something that poses ongoing risk.
	I mean, you could argue the left got partially hijacked throughout the 70s with its extreme, different Red Army, this group that Red Group, well, yeah, all the different I I forget all the you know different groups, you know, little drummer girl, John Lakari style portraying in Germany.
	But the the that that Antifa is not some uh according to some uh historians here, it's historian in quotes in America that the this Antifa doesn't even exist, it's not a thing, it's never existed.
	There's no real history of leftist violence.
	What does the lessons of Europe tell us about that?
	No, Antifa's been around for forever.
	At least I'll I'll tell you in Greece, uh Antifa is it was and is everywhere.
	I mean, when I do a lot of my videos, if you notice the graffiti, just about you know, half of the graffiti that you'll see as I'm walking around Athens, Greece, you'll see Antifa spray painted everywhere.
	Uh they have a huge presence in uh in Greece.
	And and actually at the time of uh of Tsipras, who was for Syria Syriza, which was the branded as the radical left party that won the elections about uh 10 10, 15 years ago, um, he he was very much of that radical left and and they won the elections, and he became the prime minister in Greece.
	And he branded himself as someone who is going to take a very hard line against the globalists, and I'm a man of the left of the far left, and I'm gonna uh initiate these programs and I'm gonna move away from the entire globalist uh agenda.
	Uh in 24 hours, he went to the European Union with the mandate of the Greek people to go against any type of EU austerity that was being imposed on Greece.
	They said, yes, we support you, go to the EU, tell them to F off.
	We don't want uh austerity, we don't want any of this globalism crap.
	He went to the European Union.
	This is like the big radical left, Antifa support.
	He has all the support of these guys, right?
	And he goes up to the European Union and he signs everything that the EU puts on in front of him, right?
	So he becomes fully integrated into the globalist cause.
	And I think that's that showcases what what Antifa really is.
	Yeah, they they present this this radical uh left uh cause, this anti-globalist, anti-fascist cause.
	But when you really dig deep into what Antifa is, it's it's it's very much part of the of the globalist uh system.
	And um, you know, it was a hard lesson for us to learn in in Greece, a very hard lesson, to the point where where even the the communist party, the KKE, which is a real communist party.
	I mean, they're like the real deal, right?
	They had a small, a small amount of support, you know, single day, just very low.
	But still, they're they're the real deal.
	These guys have books of Lenin and Marx, right?
	Even they were they were screaming, saying, Oh my God, these Antifa guys, these series of guys, they're gonna ruin it for the left forever, right?
	And they were just completely upset about everything that uh that happened to them.
	But yeah, Antifa's been around forever in Europe, it's been around forever in Greece.
	Um, it still is around.
	Uh, but um, but we've we've we've learned hard lessons in uh in supporting these types of causes, very hard lessons, economic hard lessons, which we still feel today.
	And Alexander, before we transition into uh other hot spots around the world because there's people in the Pentagon who want us to be on three different continents waging three different wars at the same time: Iran, Venezuela, Russia.
	Uh, the insanity just keeps rising as the incompetency exceeds.
	But the one last uh question on Europe.
	You know, the the great, you know, the old Prussians, uh Bismarck and the like, helped create the beginnings of the social safety net uh system.
	And we're seeing in Germany, they're talking about raising the retirement age to 73.
	I get, you know, because Zelensky needs a little more coke, so you got to make some trade-offs.
	The uh we see in Britain, the even the labor party uh contemplating cuts in in social benefits and other issues, uh, also help fund the Ukraine war.
	The we see Macron never be able to get any of his reforms through meaningfully uh be a disaster of a president uh outside of his own vanity mirror.
	The uh what is the future of Europe?
	Uh is Orban right?
	Uh, do these populist rebellions indicate the end of the EU project?
	Uh and what about the social safety net?
	Might it all disappear in the in the continent that helped berth it?
	Well, it if things continue as they are, it will indeed disappear because um the it can only function a social safety net like the kind that we used to have in Europe, the what the kind that Bismarck created and which was then imitated by other European countries.
	That can only happen if there is a strong underpinning um from the economy, and of course, that isn't there anymore.
	And it also, by the way, needs something else, which is it needs a great deal of social solidarity within the society in which it functions.
	Because if it if that isn't there, then you would inevitably it would inevitably corrupt attracts corruption.
	It begins to uh um break down in all sorts of ways, and um that's something else that we've been seeing in Europe.
	I mean, and it very rapidly degenerates into a kind of clientage system, which we also have in Europe too.
	So um the way to try to support all of these things is to try to bring back economic and political and social energy into Europe.
	And that can only happen if we get rid of this enormous superstructure that we have created for ourselves, and which has been such a complete political disaster for us.
	Now, can I just return to the point about leftist violence?
	I was a student in Britain and in Europe in the 1970s.
	I remember leftist violence very well then.
	I used to travel to Germany, where the Rote Army Faction, the uh Bader Meinhof was very active.
	I remember being astonished to see how much traction it had within the German student community and within the Dutch student community, which I all also knew.
	I remember the Red Brigades, the Brigato Rossi in Italy.
	You had lower levels, but nonetheless real levels of violence in France too.
	All of these directed in the usual strange ways that we see now.
	But absolutely leftist violence in Europe has much very, very long history in Europe indeed.
	And Antifa was already, as I will remember, an actual presence in the in Berlin when I used to, uh well, I used to go to Germany in the 70s, even though I didn't go to Berlin in those days.
	But you know, anybody who says that this is the European phenomenon, in my opinion, the whole new left thing originates in Europe.
	Um, it is connected with the entire intellectual currents towards postmodernism that developed in Europe in the 1950s and 1960s, and which were then transported, imported into the United States.
	I don't want to give the impression all bad things in the United States come from Europe, but there are European traditions and European political movements and problems, which it would have been much better if the United States had stared cleared from.
	No doubt about that.
	Speaking of conflicts to steer clear from, the president of the United States said just a few months ago, a few months ago, that no, no, uh, we didn't just bomb some side of a mountain.
	Uh we absolutely obliterated.
	You love that word, obliterated, obliterated.
	Uh, Iran's nuclear capacity.
	And now all of a sudden I see Bibi Netanyahu talking about how they're going to have ballistic missiles that can hit Washington, DC.
	I was just waiting for Bibi to explain that Iran has developed space lasers.
	Uh, and we got to get ready quickly because they're going to be attacking from space.
	So we got to take out the regime now.
	Uh this looks to me like a fig leaf uh for regime change in Iran that has been the long obsession of BB Netanyahu, for which weapons of mass destruction has long been his excuse for getting in.
	But it does look that you know, we were shipping massive amounts of the capacity at least to wage war, uh, a more extensive continuous war with Iran uh based on military assets and Trump's latest language.
	Now I hope that it's a bluff, but then the problem is how you bluff yourself into war.
	So I think it's partially how Trump got there the first time.
	I think you really thought, hey, BB will go crazy, Iran, unless you give me what I want on the nuclear deal.
	Even though he was asking things Iran could not do that other than be suicidal.
	And the and then he got caught in an actual war because as soon as the real negotiations were on the eve of finalizing uh Israel attacks, Trump pretends to later take credit for it, which only further damages Trump in the court of global public opinion by looking like someone that's untrustworthy and unreliable.
	And so what is the risk, uh, Alex, of uh of going back into Iran?
	And is this another example of this madman theory strategy constantly backfiring on Trump himself, that the Iranians can't trust the IEA, can't trust the U.S., can't trust negotiations because of what happened last time.
	And the given that the director of national intelligence, which Trump hated being reminded of last time, concluded that Iran was nowhere near nuclear weapons.
	And what we found out since then is that in fact her report was exactly right, that they were at least two years away, according to internal Israeli intelligence that they hid from the Trump administration first time around.
	So what's the risk we end up going back into Iran?
	And uh the and what's the risk that looks a lot different a second time around?
	Uh the risk is very high.
	Uh it looks like something is going to go down, probably by by the end of the year.
	And uh the fear that's that I have that that Alexander has, we've discussed this in many videos, is that uh the United States is going to be much more involved this time around.
	And I think that is the uh great risk uh last time around.
	Uh Trump kind of got sucked into it.
	You you could make the argument that uh that Israel and the United States were not uh prepared for the retaliation uh of Iran and and all the missiles that they were firing.
	Uh they ended up uh being depleted of uh of a lot of weapons, so they had to pull back a bit.
	Uh this time around, it looks like the United States is moving much more uh military hardware into into the region in preparation for for a bigger war and for a longer war.
	And um probably you're going to, if this thing does fire off, uh probably you're going to see the same strategy employed in the first time around, which is going to be some sort of decapitation strike or or some sort of operation to take out the leadership early.
	Uh, most likely that will not work.
	And then you're going to be looking at some sort of a longer uh operation.
	But it does appear as if the United States and Israel is preparing for that scenario.
	I'm talking about.
	Alexander, uh, we couldn't even disappear we couldn't even win a war with the Houthis using those uh Kellogg's great weapon-changing tomahawks, the hoodies.
	But apparently uh the uh we're going to win easily this conflict with Iran.
	If you talk about what some of the risk, let's assume a regime change doesn't happen, or if regime did change did happen, what migration crisis that could create, you know, combine Syria, Iraq, and Libya, you could probably fit them all population-wise within Iran, what that might look like from a migration crisis to Europe and other parts of the world,
	all the different terror cells that may emerge from an internal civil war, the some of those downsides, even if it succeeds at the regime change, and assuming it fails at the regime change, how uh Israel seemed to be about to lose the war with Iran towards the end of it.
	What kind of triggers could we have from that?
	Well, indeed, I mean I think we discussed this in the previous uh in a previous um uh stream that we did together.
	But let's just let's just reconstruct this.
	Iran is a huge country.
	I think it's 95 million people, it is an enormous territory, it is very mountainous, it has its industrial competences, it is not a um completely you know, place which is not it's not like Vietnam in 1960s, for example.
	It's much more developed than that, and of course, it now has friends.
	I mean, it's got friends with China, it's got friends with Russia, it's got a very close relationship, which it's developed significantly over the last few months and which has gone beyond below the radar with Pakistan, which remember is a nuclear power.
	So I always, if there is an attack on Iran, the big question is how strong is the regime?
	Will the regime absorb the blow?
	Or will it crumble?
	If it absorbs the blow, if it's able to take the blow when it comes, because I don't think anybody is seriously talking about sending ground troops into Iran, which would be an enormous act of folly, as I said, against an enormous country.
	If the regime remains stable, then inevitably, over time, the balance of the pendulum starts to shift in its favor.
	Because you can attack Iran, you can kill lots of people, you can do enormous amount of damage, but it will then start to hit back, as it did during the June war.
	It will have friends who might be incentivized to help it.
	And as we have seen in many instances in the last few years, our resilience in the face of this kind of challenge is not as great as some people perhaps would imagine it to be.
	Israel in particular is a relatively small country, as opposed to Iran, which is a huge country that already gives Iran a strategic advantage, a degree of strategic depth, which Israel arguably lacks.
	Of course, the United States is in a different position completely, but the United States is far away, and a long war with Iran would be deeply controversial, one assumes in the United States also.
	So I can very easily see if the regime survives, how this could be a debacle, it could create a major crisis for Israel.
	Israel might be pushed to take extreme measures to protect itself.
	And of course, if these extend to using Israel's nuclear arsenal, which is a possibility I don't want to discuss or analyze because it terrifies me so much.
	Well, then we're in a completely different world.
	So that's that's what happens if we attack Iran, have no plan to end the war, and it goes wrong.
	If it succeeds, if the regime collapses, then again, we have a very complex society, one which we don't understand very well.
	There are large numbers of armed men across Iran involved in many institutions, uh, military institutions, paramilitary institutions, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and all of that.
	It is very, very easy to see how that could also generate a long-term crisis in the Middle East.
	And the lesson of recent wars in the Middle East is that it's possible to start them and initially To think that they are going well, only over time the problems grow and ultimately become intractable.
	So I would have thought that the United States absolutely would not want to do this thing.
	I don't see that there is a good outcome in the end.
	They were they totally obliterated the nuclear facilities.
	What would be the rationale and the justification for going back in now?
	Well, presumably that Iran is going to rebuild its nuclear facilities.
	I mean, you know, they say that they completely destroyed the Iranian nuclear facilities.
	And they might very well have destroyed the Iranian nuclear facilities that they attacked.
	But this is a huge country.
	There are reports that the Iranians have been building another place to enrich uranium in another mountain near the city, I believe, of Isfahan, and apparently it's even deeper than the than Ford.
	We are completely, there's complete uncertainty about whether all the enriched uranium that Iran had, the you know, the very highly enriched uranium that in Iran had, whether that has all been destroyed or kept out of use.
	So there are those fears.
	And this brings us back to the problem.
	Um can we stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons by attacking it, if that is what Iran does intend to do.
	Some people I know, who I respect, say no.
	And then what is the alternative?
	Well, diplomatic action, isolating those people in Iran who are the hardliners through using diplomatic action.
	And China and Russia absolutely do not want Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.
	And Iran needs the help of China and Russia if it is to stabilize its economy for the long term.
	So maybe diplomacy negotiations as appeared to work fairly well before.
	That might be a better way than a war that has very unpredictable, very unpredictable results, and which seems to me recklessly risky.
	Speaking of which, Alex, we've seen another aspect of Iran before we transition over to uh the other another country we're thinking about getting in a war with Venezuela.
	The how much is the failure of these internationalist globalist institutions, uh, like the IEA or maybe you know, the International Atomic Agency that basically, I mean, people in Iran have suspicions that they gave the names of the scientists to Israel so they could be uh murdered by Israel.
	I mean, Israel murdered their families, other people.
	Uh, the uh they don't have the civilian shield excuse for that FYI.
	Uh the I found it morally horrendous, uh, that you know, the uh you you murder a kid because his dad's a scientist.
	I'm sorry, I'm not on board.
	The but putting that my moral objection aside, the just this is bad strategy of what these these it's like the IEA guy, I guess is gonna bounce up to some the UN or someplace, the the you know, grass that caused all this nonsense.
	We've got that, you know, bear.
	It's like all the losers of Europe keep keep getting promoted.
	Uh you know, von der Leyen sucks at Germany, so what do you do?
	Well, let's just put her in charge of all Europe.
	Oh, that's great.
	The uh, you know, Bearbach is over here making embarrassment of herself on a daily basis with the UN, as you pointed out recently, you know, standing on a crate to make her look taller.
	This is embarrassing.
	It's like, you know, the high heels that Ron DeSantis liked Marco Ruby is the left.
	She's the president, uh, Robert Parr, the president.
	Yeah, exactly.
	The UN General Assembly.
	How much of the what has happened in Iran is the fault of these, the failure of these institutions to do their job and to be true independent, neutral arbiters.
	There's like almost the cold war forced some of these institutions to be more independent than they are now.
	After the Cold War, we thought, you know, we get a peace dividend.
	Instead, they've been co-opted by one side in such a way that they fail to deliver in and we may get nuclear proliferation because of the incompetency of the agency charged with nuclear non-proliferation.
	Yeah, uh, Grassio, the IAEA, he is uh he's gunning for the for the president of the United Nations.
	That's that's what he's looking for.
	Um, yeah, I mean, you know, it was it was uh the IAEA that released the the document about Iran and and the uranium enrichment on a Thursday.
	The attack happened on a Friday.
	But the interesting part is that Witkoff was negotiating with the Iranian foreign minister.
	They were on the seventh round of technical talks, and earlier in the week, both of them, both of them came out with statements and said things are looking very good.
	We're on a positive track.
	Both Witkoff and Araqchi, they both said we are we are progressing.
	And everyone was thinking, okay, we've avoided war.
	We've avoided some sort of conflict.
	And then the IAEA comes along, they publish this document, um, and and Netanyahu jumps on it, and uh you get to the 12-day war.
	So I mean, you know, the the Iranians are right to not trust the the IAEA and their right to not uh allow the IAEA back in.
	And and what's the consequence of that is is no one knows where the uranium went, where this uranium that Alexander is talking about.
	There's no international body to to track this stuff to say, okay, it's in this city or in the or it's in this area or this bunker.
	So now everyone is wondering where is where is their uranium?
	Where is this stuff?
	And it's because of uh of the tricks and the games that these institutions are playing.
	Speaking of uh, another place we may go to war, uh, is Venezuela.
	The now the I had some people telling me the other day, Barnes, you need to read up about the cartel of the sun and da-that-da.
	Well, I'll tell you that cartel is a mostly a non-factor in the drug trade, and the Venezuelan government isn't running it, operating it anyway, and Venezuela's a very small role in the drug trade in in general.
	And you might think um, I'm quoting some sort of wacky source.
	Again, I'm quoting director Gabbard of the Director of National Intelligence report from March of this year.
	You can read it there.
	The uh so it appears that we have a fig leaf.
	Now, maybe Trump really believes it because you're never really sure what what he knows or doesn't know.
	But if he's if he believes otherwise, if he believes that this secret that Venezuela is the hot spot for all the drug cartel activity, then he's ignoring his own director of national intelligence, as unfortunately did with Iran, as unfortunately he did with Russia in betrayal to his voters, who he promised to promote Tulsi Gabbard for the explicit and express purpose of avoiding this.
	We're busy blowing up random boats and say, don't worry, they're definitely a bunch of drugs on there.
	Well, well, what's the proof?
	Can you not show me?
	They have yet to show one single piece of proof.
	People like Kurt Mills, close with Steve Bannon, part of sort of the young populist right, has said that the the yeah Hegseth is getting false intel and information.
	That the that it's not that they don't have anywhere near the certainty that they claim to for blowing up these boats uh off the Venezuelan coast.
	But putting that aside, there's they're talking about there's articles in the New York Times.
	I I get these people say, Bar, what are you talking about?
	Risk of war with Venezuela.
	Now that's a sign of how bad the Trump administration has prepped people if we do go in, because recent surveys by Ugov, a UK-based poster originally, said uh showed that overwhelmingly Republicans oppose a war in Venezuela.
	Independence, 9%.
	9% support a war with Venezuela.
	And they did a recent survey, by the way, back on the Iran question.
	Did the most the least popular position that Trump has done, that they pulled them all in the Harvard Harris poll.
	The least popular one amongst Republicans was his prior attacks on Iran.
	Imagine what that would look like a second time around without the ability to say we obliterated their nuclear weapons and we were in and out without major consequence, because we got a ceasefire through the Qataris, right uh on the verge of disaster with Iran closing the Straits of Armuz, oil prices spiking, chaos globally, and Israel losing that war.
	Now we're talking about going into Venezuela, massive long coastline.
	Uh it's it's bordered by two major countries, Colombia and Brazil.
	What's unique about them right now?
	Both countries are very hostile to the United States of American Trump.
	They're not Lula's not a Trump fan.
	The Colombian president is not a Trump fan.
	We're busy suspending people's visas from club.
	The we've got paramilitaries throughout the rural areas, going back to FARC, going back to the old, you know, talking about old left-wing violence.
	It's the Latin American version of that.
	Uh for years.
	I'm all the way back to Hugo Chavez.
	Venezuela's been preparing to defend itself, not by an institutional army, but by a massive militia.
	We don't know how strong or weak that even is.
	But you know, people like Colonel McGregor, longtime military advisor, looked at it and said it would be far from easy to win an actual war with Venezuela in the way people think.
	This feels to me like Panama Part two.
	Uh for those who don't remember, Papi Bush went into Panama, replaced Noriega in the name of fighting uh drugs.
	We're fighting drugs.
	Once again, how did that work?
	Did the drug trade go down after Noringa was taken out?
	Maybe it had nothing to do with it.
	But can you tell me what are some of the risks of war with Venezuela?
	Well, can I just say, first of all, that my wife was recently in Mexico, and she had some discussions with some people there, pretty well connected people, and they were absolutely baffled about this talk about Venezuela being the center of the international drugs trade and the government of Venezuela being that.
	And they said, yes, yes, but Venezuela does play a role, but it's a relatively small one.
	If you want to find a left-wing government that is heavily implicated in the drunk cartels, look at our government here in Mexico.
	It's much, much more deeply involved than the Venezuelan uh the Venezuelans are.
	And apparently there were all kinds of reasons for this, which I'm not going to go into, but they're part basically connected with the kind of structure of power there and the way in which the Venezuelan government is organized, which are not flattering to Venezuela at all.
	But anyway, the that that is what's that is what she heard.
	I I, you know, not able to verify any of this, because I don't actually know very much about the international drugs trade.
	What I will say is this.
	I think that it is a universally accepted fact that across the history of Latin American independence, going back to the 1820s, there has been intense involvement by the United States.
	Sometimes it has been positive.
	The enriched original Monroe doctrine, which people do not know, was intended to protect the Latin American states that were gaining independence from Spain from intervention by the conservative powers of Europe that might have wanted to restore the Spanish monarchy.
	So, you know, that that was the original Monroe doctrine of the 1820s.
	But since then, as we know, things have not always been good.
	And the result has been that there is a very, very powerful tradition, which uh Catherine, my wife also encountered in Mexico, of hostility to the United States and extreme suspicion of intervention by the United States in Latin American affairs.
	And this is deep-rooted, and it's very, very much part of the political climate there.
	And I have to say this: if the United States goes into Venezuela, I don't know how strong the Venezuelan military is.
	I don't know how well organized the militias are.
	I don't know whether anybody in Washington does, by the way.
	I don't know how deep and intense and well researched this all is.
	But what I do know is that Venezuela is a very big country.
	It is, again, a very complex society.
	Large areas of it are mountainous and not easy to access.
	This is a region, a part of the world, where there has been a long history of political violence and insurgencies.
	You mentioned the FARC, which was active in uh Colombia until fairly recently.
	I can very, very easily see how an American intervention in Venezuela could start all of that up all over again, create political chaos in Venezuela, encounter extreme hostility from other uh South American states, and you mentioned Colombia and Brazil, it will also be something that would not be well received around the world.
	It would not be well received amongst the BRIC states, for example.
	It would probably damage the US's international reputation at this time.
	And I can't help but think that political crisis in Venezuela is going to achieve the opposite of what it's supposed to do with respect to the drugs trade.
	Because if such government as Venezuela currently has collapses, then surely that's going to be make it easier for people to traffic drugs through Venezuela and the Caribbean and to Europe and the United States.
	So again, I don't really see the upside to this.
	Maduro is clearly a difficult man.
	One can have huge arguments with the government of Venezuela.
	And you know, I can understand that.
	But surely this is a Venezuelan problem and a problem for the people of Venezuela to sort out.
	And if you're dealing with drugs, as I said, which is a worthy cause, there are other places and other ways to do it better.
	Maybe first and foremost in the United States itself.
	Secondly, in those other countries in Latin America, like Colombia and Ecuador and Mexico, and by the way, Brazil, where it is arguably a still bigger problem.
	Speaking of which, uh concerning BRICS, uh that you know, one interpretation would be that the dying uh globalist empire centered in places like the city of London and Washington, DC in its suburbs, uh, wants to just wage kinetic war against BRICS as a way to deal with it.
	One way they do so uh is through mass sanctions policies.
	Uh, we've seen that with Venezuela.
	There's still a lot of denial.
	Uh well, I am by no stretch a fan of the Maduro regime, uh, and think its policies uh produce the outcome that we see.
	They can quite credibly point to mass sanctions by the US on Venezuela as the more likely probable cause for its domestic constituency to attribute it.
	Uh we have done massive sanctions against Cuba for forever.
	Uh, no sign that that's ever changed, led to any change of government, arguably it's consolidated power.
	Mass sanctions against Iran, once again, no sign that it has changed anything except consolidated power.
	Mass sanctions against Russia, and all that did was Europe cut its own feet off.
	The uh I don't know how Europe's gonna militarize when it has no industrial base and it can have no industrial base as long as energy is too expensive.
	I don't know, you know, Vander Crazy was out doing her AI speech.
	Uh uh, somebody needs to uh tell Vander Crazy uh that the uh take a double look at the energy cost associated with AI data centers.
	It's an issue, right?
	Big issue here in the United States.
	Uh currently was how how we're gonna try to handle that.
	Well, the for some reason we want to push all of the energy-rich countries against us.
	Venezuela, energy rich, uh the Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia's energy rich, but so is Iran.
	Uh, Russia, energy rich, and push them into the welcome loving arms of the big panda uh uh in China.
	The the how much do you think uh Alex that this strategy of waging economic and kinetic war against BRICS uh with the broader context of do sanctions ever work really anyway from an economic policy or do they just hurt poor people and help uh actual tyrants consolidate power, not mitigate their power.
	There's that aspect.
	Uh, but and also in general BRICS, it appears that the best gift to BRICS uh has been this Western uh hostile approach, that it is proving to places like India why they need BRICS, why they want BRICS, that you the because the your president of the United States may wake up one day and do 100% sanctions disguised as tariffs uh because of some foreign policy somewhere.
	The you could see it rattled Trump, uh, the the big, you know, the the meeting of them of the walk with China's G in the middle, Putin on the left, Modi on the right.
	Uh, you can tell that that that shook his sentiment.
	Well, it turns out kinetic war and sanctions is a dumb strategy, Mr. President, for dealing with BRICS, maybe the uh, but what do you think, Alex, about is is the Western world making BRICS stronger by its hostility?
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	Trump is is helping to build BRICS, right?
	He's he's accelerating the the building and the and the success of BRICS.
	Uh uh Trump should have should be there.
	He should be there with Putin, with Xi and with Modi, walking with them.
	He he should he should be there in order for the United States to shape the multipolar world.
	He needs a seat at the table in order for the United States to be there and to help usher in the multipolar world.
	But he's not uh at the table and he's going against BRICS.
	And once again, you have guys like like Lindsey Graham and all of these guys like Kellogg whispering in Trump's ear, telling Trump that that he has to destroy BRICS because BRICS's purpose is to destroy the United States and to destroy the dollar.
	And that's not uh not the right position.
	He's he's um he's weaponizing tariffs in much the same way that previous administrations, the Biden administration, uh the Obama administration weaponized sanctions.
	And uh that has been one of my biggest disappointments with Trump, the weaponization of tariffs.
	We've done many, many videos, we've done many live streams with you, Robert, where we've talked about tariffs in detail.
	Um, as a policy, yes, the way Trump envisioned tariffs way in the beginning, interesting, different, probably could work.
	Why not give it a shot?
	But he weaponized it and he turned it into some sort of foreign policy weapon where you can now go to India and say, if you don't, if you don't uh stop buying Russian oil, 100% uh tariffs.
	And India's saying, what what the F is going on here?
	What are you talking about 100% terrorists?
	Does the same thing with China?
	He's doing it with every country.
	Instead of using tariffs to bring industry back to the United States to present something different to the American people, to give it a shot and see how it works out.
	He listened to the people like Lindsey Graham, he listened to all of these neocons, and they took tariffs and they just turned them into a different type of sanctions.
	And this has helped accelerate the the building of BRICS because the countries are saying, you know what?
	You you guys were going after us with sanctions for so many years.
	Now we've got to deal with with tariffs being weaponized against us.
	We need something new.
	We need a new system, a new architecture.
	And there's BRICS right there.
	And Alexander, the you mentioned that the uh is we look at this broader, we see the rise of BRICS, we see Russia shifting towards Asia, we see a more unity amongst the global south.
	The uh we see the decline of the European project, the uh fading of U.S. military power to be able to project it around the world.
	I think that's one thing that frustrates Trump.
	I think that meeting a few weeks back with the generals was originally intended to take Colonel McGregor's ideas for reorganizing the military, including getting rid of a lot of the generals, every to reorganize it from offensive to defensive posture to focus on areas of of interest, uh the you know, spheres of influence determined by geography, not by anything else.
	The that he had proposed, he wrote it in detail because he was advising Robert Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, Secretary Kennedy, shared it throughout the Trump administration.
	Uh Daniel Davis has recently gone public with his facts, so I now can talk about it.
	Uh, but you know, early on, Hegzit was literally reading from it.
	You can see parts where Heggs was reading from it.
	The and it was sort of an intellectualized version of MAGA that someone like McGregor, who spent a long time studying it, part of the first Trump administration had put together the plans to get us out of Afghanistan without the disaster.
	Unfortunately, Trump wants out at the end, didn't do it, and then we got the disaster.
	That's why he keeps complaining about the Bagram air base.
	His plan would have kept U.S. control of the Bagram Air Base.
	Uh the but he didn't execute it.
	He decided not to.
	It's not kind of on him.
	And he doesn't want to admit he screwed up rather than listening to McGregor, listen to the deep state crowd, and he got a political bonus issue against Biden, but didn't but lost the geopolitical significance.
	The as and by contrast, we're seeing the rise of BRICS, all these other dynamics across the Asian subcontinent, India with long history of hostility.
	To what degree are we seeing the end of empire, particularly the Western Empire, uh and in terms of the path.
	And then the only question becomes can we get to the end of that empire uh without a world war in between?
	Well, What we are seeing is this end of the period of this period of European dominance that began in the 16th century.
	What the Europeans very successfully did, especially the British, was that after the second world war, they even as their own power was ebbing away, they managed to bring the United States in.
	They said, look, you know, we've had this terrible war in uh the second world war, and you've got to be involved with us, and you've got to keep us, you've got to prop us up because we have certain cultural similarities to you, and you have certain cultural similarities to us, and you must make this preservation of our dominance of our system, because it was the Europeans who created this global system.
	You must you must make this your project as well.
	And the result was that the United States stopped being what it had been previously, which was the self-sufficient democratic republic, which its founders had envisaged,
	one which sought peace with most of the countries of the world, focused on economic and social development in the United States, focused on developing democracy within the United States, and this is America's major contribution.
	Everything else falls and comes in that and became involved in European style great power politics, which were already exhausting themselves.
	What America did, it gave them a further 50, 60 year years' lease of life.
	Now, what the United States needs to do is it needs to detach itself from that, and let's look at the BRICS.
	Two countries in the BRICS definitely would want to be friends of the United States.
	One is India.
	India has no beef with the United States.
	It absolutely does not see the United States as a threat or a rival to itself.
	India wants to be a friend of the United States.
	Now, I was talking about Russia before.
	I know that this is a view that is unusual for many people in the United States, but I absolutely believe this, and I believe this goes back very far.
	Again, I can remember in the 1970s how the Russians were proposing at that time that Lockheed build a factory in Voronezh to build Tristars, Lockheed Tristars.
	So I mean, you know, that there is always been this hankering to have a good relationship with the United States, and yes, Russia has a good relationship with China, but always the instinct is to balance.
	you know don't over commit to one power especially one superpower like china or Always maintain a good relationship with the United States, which, like Russia, is connected to European civilization, but is somehow distinct from it.
	So that immediately gives the Americans and the Russians some degree of connection.
	Now, what could have happened is that the United States could have engaged with all of that process, and it could have shaped it.
	And BRICS initially was just a talking shop, basically a club.
	it didn't have to become an economic block but of course that is precisely what it is becoming and um the president by the way who did more than anything else to make it into an anti-american block was not donald trump
	It was Joe Biden, because Joe Biden started dividing the world, as I remember, into you know, the democracies on the one hand and the autocracies on the other, and he had uh he tried to create a platform where all the democracies which were arbitrarily selected, so countries like Angola and Saudi Arabia were democracies and not autocracies, Autocracies were divided to it.
	And the Chinese and the Russians saw all of that.
	And they started to compare notes and they say, well, look, this president, this administration, the United States under them, is very, very hostile to us.
	And we need to start forming a proper block with ourselves and attracting other members to it.
	The real big lost opportunity that has happened over the last year is that Trump was elected.
	He did appear to represent a change.
	As an as a human being, as a person, he's actually quite, he's actually widely liked.
	Nobody, no leader in the world outside the West like Joe Biden.
	No leader outside the West liked Barack Obama.
	All of them, all of them, liked Trump.
	They found him funny.
	They found him human.
	They found they could talk to him.
	They were somebody they could listen to.
	Even Xi Jinping got gets on with him.
	So this was his big opportunity.
	This was what should have happened.
	They should have moved forward purposefully.
	Maybe not exactly join the BRICS, but say to all of the various brick states, well, look, you've got various ideas for trade.
	Let's see what we can sort out.
	Let's see whether we can become involved.
	The Russians would have jumped at that.
	They'd have been delighted.
	They'd have said, come along, open up, you know, uh LNG projects in the Arctic.
	The Chinese want to be here, but it's good for us if the Americans are there too.
	They they they could have involved themselves in joint aerospace projects with the Russians.
	Why not?
	Absolutely.
	They could have done the same with India in other ways, you know, help develop India's um high-tech industries, pharmaceutical industries, which would have been important for keeping pharmaceutical costs in the United States low.
	Anyway, all kinds of things would have been done.
	But unfortunately, you have this miasma of people in Washington who still are attached to this strategy, this European strategy, great power strategy, which is ultimately so un-American, and who have managed somehow to pull Donald Trump back in.
	And um, it it's it's a big missed opportunity.
	And I don't think the door on that is closed.
	Not at all, by the way.
	I think that one day, maybe a new administration, a new president, or perhaps even this president when he sorts things through, because Trump is one of those people who strikes me as he makes every conceivable mistake, gets everything wrong until he finally arrives at the right answer.
	But uh maybe eventually this opportunity that is there will be grasped, and America will do that which it did so successfully in the 19th and early 20th century, which is make that break from Europe and forge its own way, making itself as it did before, you know, the richest country in the world, and there's no reason why it couldn't say that again.
	Because to repeat a point I've often made, in economic competition, the United States has nothing to fear.
	Robert, I just noticed something.
	We've got to take a bunch of questions, but we have a big we have the best member.
	Can I get to some of the questions here just to make sure we don't?
	Yeah, before we wrap, yeah.
	That makes sense.
	Okay, here on I'll read three over on Comm2 because I can't bring them up.
	Denmark is in a complete drone panic, so much that an anti-drone SUV from Danish police rammed Zelensky's car convoy when he visited and was towed away, it says red viking.
	I hadn't heard that.
	Pasha Moyer says, uh, Alex, you asked yesterday for a jingle for your drone segment.
	I can't paste it here, but I added it to Viva Barnes Law.
	And then we got Can the Duran give us an acapella version of Rio Hungary.
	Okay, well, I'm not sure what that is either.
	Now, but hold on.
	In our locals community.
	I noticed a bunch of questions there, and I'm gonna bring them up here right now.
	Okay, so starting off with Pasha Moyer, Alexa, you got the jingle.
	I'm gonna give that up afterwards.
	Andrew Piscadla says, I'm thrilled to see my three favorite geopolitical analysts, Alexander, Alex, and Robert, minus Rich.
	Love you do, Dave as well.
	I'm furious at the administration for this folly.
	Every additional Ukrainian and Russian death is on Trump.
	Robert and perhaps Alexander know how involved I am in both refugees from Ukraine and contacts in Russia.
	It's unacceptable that I had Intel fed to me on the ground from Sumi that Ukrainians were cut off in the Dirsk, uh, cut off in Kursk, and you refuse to believe your own DNI.
	Uh, the suffering of Ukraine is unimaginable.
	I got fed the daily from the people.
	Uh, it makes me want to sink republican candidates, Russians should be seeking absolute victory, particularly with cutting off the Black Sea from the Ukrainians.
	It's not about punishment, it's about taking away resources from savages who do not desire uh to govern their own citizens.
	Andrew has another one here.
	My eyes are black from looking at this.
	Every time I need to figure out what's going on, it requires me to look further in the worst parts of humanity.
	And I'm gonna simulate Putin, I think has brought up a new security or uh, I'm gonna say arrangement in Europe.
	What would that look like?
	Says son of a Mitch 824.
	Can you explain?
	Like it was like the I think Trump gave the impression that he was on board with a new security architecture for Europe.
	That the can you guys describe what that might look like?
	It looked like Trump was, you know, Putin put out also the START treaty proposal.
	That's part of that security architecture, though that's on a more global scale.
	Uh, and Trump said nothing about it.
	Then some of us are like, hold on a second.
	I don't we some of us were told that was part of the reason for the meeting in Alaska.
	And then Trump, yo, yesterday or day before, it's like, oh yeah, I think that is a good idea.
	It's like, yeah, what about a little bit sooner, but okay, better better late than ever.
	Can you describe what kind of possibilities for security architecture that Russia's thinking about that we could participate in, other than this NATO permanent conflict one we're currently in uh trapped in?
	Well, this goes back to the 90s, and the Russians made many proposals back then.
	Firstly, they don't want NATO moving further towards their borders.
	And I think that is the first thing to say.
	They have never asked for or sought NATO's actual dismantlement.
	And this is a thing which many people never quite understand.
	But to repeat again, the Russians would prefer to see a denuclearized Germany within a military alliance led by the United States than a nuclear Germany, which is outside any alliance with any other power, and which might indeed start to think of doing returning to policies of the kind that the Russians remember very well from the 20th century.
	So they would want to see some kind of NATO structure, perhaps preserved, but not moving closer to their borders.
	They would want very, very clear rules about uh military deployments, um, things of that kind across Europe.
	They would not want to see NATO or American bases in Scandinavia or in eastern Europe, um, which is what they thought they were promised back in the uh 1980s, that there would be no movement of um technologies of those kinds of things, uh bases in into the West.
	And above all, and this is the key, they wanted an a structure, a security structure, a kind of defense uh community system above NATO,
	with Russia itself a full participant, and which would have some sort of role in being able to veto decisions, and this really does mean veto, decisions which the Russians felt were dangerous for themselves.
	And of course, the United States would have a comparable um veto right over Russian uh Russian moves that might conceivably be a threatening to the United States or its allies.
	You remember when we first started, we talked about the new submarine drone that the Russians apparently have now put in service, which is the Poseidon submarine.
	And I said, what an incredibly dangerous and destabilizing weapon that was.
	Well, that would be one type of system, which using this structure and the means of communication that existed.
	The Americans might be able to say to the Russians, this is completely unacceptable.
	You cannot field it.
	And that there would be discussions taking place through it and limitations placed on its deployment and potentially its abolition.
	The Russians proposed this, this kind of arrangement back in the 90s.
	And it led to the OSCE, which never really functioned.
	And then in 2008, when Obama was elected, they thought they thought he was going to be the person that they were going to agree all this with.
	And they proposed it all over again.
	And of course, they quickly discovered that Obama said yes, and he really meant no.
	And he tricked and deceived them in negotiations.
	And that led to massive loss of goodwill, by the way, because the Russians really developed a deep loathing for Obama because they felt that he was dishonest in the way that he'd handled this whole tall thing.
	And Putin, apparently in Alaska, floated something like this to Trump again.
	Alex, can you point out the uh remind people, you know, coming from a family with long diplomatic uh history?
	The uh because I get it also in the chat that there's this popular belief that Trump is clearly fond of that deception is the way to go, that that's what equals leverage, that that's what equals power.
	And how in diplomat in diplomatic relations, the quickest way to lose all leverage is to be untrustworthy, to be unreliable.
	If the other side can't trust you, how do you get anything done?
	Can you explain how in the diplomatic circles deception is not the preferred path?
	Oh, you're on mute.
	You're on mute.
	Yeah, exactly as you said.
	Deception is not, I mean, you don't lie.
	Don't lie, don't deceive.
	It's that simple when when you're in uh when you're engaged in diplomacy.
	I mean, go back to Venezuela.
	Um, the United States wants the oil, right?
	You want the oil, okay.
	Um diplomacy.
	Maduro's a tough guy to deal with, granted.
	He's a tough guy to deal with.
	I understand all of that stuff.
	Uh don't get along with Venezuela.
	You don't like their government, you don't like Maduro.
	But you have to deal with him.
	That's what diplomacy is about.
	Diplomacy is about dealing with people that you may not like.
	That you may personally loathe.
	Uh Putin, Putin did not get along with Merkel, Merkel did not get along with uh with Putin.
	But but they engaged with each other.
	Uh, granted, Putin was burned by Merkel.
	You see, Merkel deceived Putin, which has led us to to where we are with with Ukraine in in a way.
	Actually, in a big part, uh Merkel's deception led us to Ukraine with the Minsk agreements, and that's all coming out now.
	So even when you lie and you deceive, eventually the truth comes out.
	So you might as well just play it straight.
	Play it straight.
	Look, Maduro, here's the deal.
	We need the oil, man.
	We want the oil, we want to do business with you.
	How can we work this out?
	It doesn't happen overnight.
	Diplomacy is also a really long process.
	It's difficult, it's long, it takes a lot of meetings, it takes a lot of negotiations.
	You have to give, you have to take.
	But if you are sincere in your approach and you're straight up with what you're looking for, then you can find compromise.
	That's the art of diplomacy, that's the art of politics, is the compromise.
	I just get the sense, you know, through throughout this whole live stream, the I think one of the common threads to all of this is somewhere along the way, the the United States lost the art of diplomacy, the art of negotiations.
	And that's weird because Trump is the negotiations guy.
	He is the negotiations guy, but where is it?
	We're all waiting for the negotiations.
	Where is it?
	That's why everyone was so happy with Alaska.
	Finally, finally, Trump is there.
	He's ready to negotiate.
	This is this is what what we've been waiting for.
	This is what he's best at.
	And it got all thrown away.
	Yeah.
	All the progress that was made for Alaska just got thrown away.
	Why?
	Because Kellogg told you that Russia's economy is about to collapse.
	I mean we're missing the diplomacy in the United States.
	We're missing diplomats in the United States because a lot of people that are being placed in embassies or that are in the foreign service, these are political appointees.
	These aren't people that are coming from the schools of diplomacy, from the Georgetowns, from the schools where they're where they're teaching diplomacy that should get put in these positions that should be working in the State Departments.
	A lot of the positions, a lot of the ambassadorships are political appointees.
	They shouldn't be there.
	These people have haven't learned the art of diplomacy, the art of uh foreign policy, international relations.
	But there you have it.
	It's the it's the art of shock and awe.
	I mean, it might have been the wrong lessons learned of prior conflicts.
	Uh, here I'll read these over on Rumble.
	Alex Alex, good, good.
	This is Ginger Ninja.
	He says I also invest in precious metals, mostly lead and brass.
	Uh, super buff shaft says they're stealing elections all over.
	Love you guys, but you spend for don't play, don't you guys?
	I spent time on the ostriches, and I think it's important.
	Uh, get Joe Van Pulitzer on.
	Uh, and my cleaning lady thinks Alex C looks like Ben Affleck.
	Okay.
	Uh gentleman.
	Do you really uh uh you know on that note the uh uh oh so start with Alexander?
	Any sort of over you know last thoughts.
	I mean, we talked about the smart strategy for Trump would be to engage bricks, not wage war on bricks, especially as it relates to a reproach with Russia where a new start treaty would substantially reduce the risk of escalatory conflict around the world.
	Don't send long-range weapons, don't approve them, don't brag about them.
	Try, you know, tell Zelensky and Europe, the gig is up, and Zelensky, you can party in your houses in Monaco, and you can party in your houses in in Miami and everywhere else that these Ukrainian oligarchs have.
	But it's time to end the conflict.
	Don't get further dragged into a Mid Eastern war and choose diplomacy, not war whenever it comes to Venezuela.
	But what are some other uh sort of closing thoughts on where we stand today?
	I think the first thing to say, and I think it's an it's a key one, that the United States has everything to play for.
	It's got it there is no reason objectively why the United States should be afraid of engaging diplomacy.
	It's a country with tremendous strengths, and it's a country that people around the world want to engage with positively.
	Um forget about Europe, which is not only going down, but which has a deeply manipulative relationship to the United States and has done so for a long time.
	I mean, it's both dependent on the United States and it wants to use it.
	Other countries, there are countries outside which want to partner with the United States, and they're prepared to do so in a positive way.
	And tariffs are not an issue, by the way.
	Everybody understands that the United States wants to re-industrialize.
	The Chinese understand it.
	I I read the Chinese media, you know, that they might not be happy about some of what uh you know the tariffs are ruled about, but you know, they know they've had a very good run for their money where monk trade with the United States is concerned.
	They also um understand pragmatically, because they're tough-minded and hard-headed people that the United States has said enough is enough.
	So by all means, put your tariffs in, do it consistently, do it wisely, explain to others why you are doing it, and pursue above all that policy which Abraham Lincoln once spoke about.
	Uh, a just and sustainable peace between ourselves and all nations.
	That is the best policy for the United States.
	And just to finally finish, this I'm somebody who always goes off on historical tangents.
	You're talking about uh deception and trickery not being a good uh process for diplomacy.
	Um, I remember once upon a time long ago Reading a handbook on diplomacy written by uh Francois de Caillers, who was Louis XIV's primary diplomat, and it's an amazing book, by the way.
	It you know, um talks about you know how to conduct diplomacy between sovereigns.
	He said, never lie, because if you lie, you might gain a temporary advantage, but you will leave poison behind you.
	And that is as true today as it was when it was written all those centuries ago.
	Absolutely.
	Thanks to Alex and Alexander for joining us.
	You can track on YouTube, Rumble, Rockfin, and of course, uh their great channel on locals, where uh uh Alexander will be uh later today uh doing his live stream, the Duran.locals.com, the Duran Reel on X, uh, and just the Duran on the others, and their individual channels, which uh you know they're being effective because YouTube has been trying to dial them down.
	So you gotta like those videos, share those videos, subscribe those videos, as Cartman might say like, share, subscribe.
	The uh makes it feel good.
	Uh but the in that same sentiment, and Alexander McCorris's channel, Alex Christophora's channel.
	You can also uh go to the great shop.
	Someone's asking me about this uh wonderful little uh double legal uh U.S. Cup that's from the Duran shop.
	They got tons of great merch shirts, hats, you name it, coffee mugs, uh, all of it.
	But if you want to stay on top of what is happening in the world, because even if you think the world doesn't matter to you, the world ends up finding a way to make clear it matters to you.
	So uh follow the Duran every which way you can uh to help improve our chances of global peace and prosperity going forward.
	Gentlemen, have a great afternoon.
	We'll say our proper goodbyes.
	We will end the stream now, and I'll be live in two hours.
	Peace out, everyone.

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