uh the next big one is a looming confrontation between the europeans and the russians
now normally the americans would take care of all of this that was part of the deal we had during
the cold war we provide your security you side with us against the soviets deal done uh that's
obviously not been in uh that deal is basically collapsed the united states is going its own way
and the europeans are now on their own uh with insufficient defense capacity i might add so
we've got a couple of things going on here first of all the american withdrawal is wholehearted it
is full-throated and honestly it's bipartisan uh over the course of the last two administrations
every arms control agreement that the united states has actually the three administrations
every arms control agreement that the americans have had with the russians has collapsed the
last one the strategic arms reduction treaty the first one start uh is in its final throws right
now it is unlikely to be renewed by either side the americans are demanding that the chinese be
involved in any future negotiations and while that might not be a bad idea the chinese are having
none of it so it's gone and that's the last piece of the post-cold war settlement that leaves it up
to the europeans and brings it to the second issue the europeans are out of one mind european foreign
policymaking requires that each individual state sign on a single country can veto the whole thing
and so the russians have trojan horses in the form of hungary and greece and cyprus that can
prevent any sort of broad agreement and that leaves it up to the rest of the europeans to
act independently in an era where the americans are backing away from trade commitments as well
and since the eu because of demographic decline is basically an export union that means europe
will be facing an economic crisis at the same time as a russia crisis everyone's going to
respond differently the polls are probably going to try to start up a nuclear program
the french are going to engage and stand up to the russians based on whichever way the winds
are flowing blowing and whatever makes sense in paris at the time the united kingdom is
largely exited stage left because of brexit which means that the country that really matters here
or the germ or the country that really matters here is germany now the german leadership is
desperate to avoid a confrontation with russia russia is where they get most of their energy and
if it ever comes down to a security confrontation the germans will have no choice but to massively
re-arm in a way that we have not seen since 1945. no one in europe wants to revisit that chapter but
we're nearing the point where there isn't going to be a choice which means that the united states
on the other side of the atlantic is looking at all this and like huh well this is kind of
interesting i wonder if we're going to get drawn in like we did get drawn in the last two times
that would be the time for an american president to kind of step forward and offer mediation
services if nothing else or bolster the alliance what's left of it but i think that ship has sailed
one of the things you have to remember about uh president trump of course is that he's hostile to
any sort of agreement like this in the first place and if we do have a president biden don't expect
it to be much better one of the things that was seared into biden's memory during obama's first
term is that when obama went to the europeans and asked for two things that they restimulate
their own economies and that they provide troops to help with the afghan operation you've got cold
shoulders there is no loved loss between joe biden and the europeans specifically between joe biden
and the germans the europeans are on their own and that is going to get really colorful
stay tuned step 3 coming soon and here's where they're moving this is eurasia on its side north
at the top or north on the right side the green area if you have to live in russia that's where
you want to live it's not too cold i mean it's still cold but you can live here you can grow
food here this is the part of russia that's worth having you'll notice however these big gaps
on the periphery before you get to any sort of reasonable geographic barrier the red zones
are places you can hunker behind mountains deserts seas what the russians have always
tried to do is to expand to that outer shell and then plug the access points these gaps
now the mongols like these two in particular the persians the next two the turks invaded
multiple times through the next two the germans of course have never met a square foot of poland
they didn't enjoy marching across sweden invaded russia through the bolts twice and here everyone
with a boat has invaded russia here canada yes yes canada has invaded russia through the white sea
if with this degrading demography the russians can reach that shell and concentrate their forces in
those gaps they're going to last a lot longer otherwise they're going to be trapped in this
wide open area where potential foes can get them militarily culturally economically you
name it from a number of access points during the soviet period the russians
controlled all nine of these gaps at the end of the soviet period they dropped from nine to two
with the seizure of crimea earlier this year they went to three
six to go five of those gaps were in the west and for the russians to get those gaps they
don't have to just take over ukraine they also need to take over estonia latvia lithuania half
of poland half of romania azerbaijan armenia and georgia i'm going to guess that there are a few
people in this room who know where those places are because this is not a normal audience for me
how that will happen there's a lot of ways it can go down the russians
have all the tools here and until the germans are willing to dedicate
troops to protect the polish frontier and just saying that out loud blows my mind
the russians do not see any meaningful resistance the sanctions don't hurt them in a way that would
make them reconsider remember this is a country that is convinced that it's its last generation
it's going to take a lot to get their attention and financial sanctions won't cut it
uh they have all this space all this land that is arable but it's just so hard to do anything
with look at all those rivers a lot of those are navigable most of them flow through tundra
regions up to the north which means that when they freeze in the winter they freeze from the
top down and they make these massive ice dams that then melt in the spring and everything floods and
can you imagine being in an iceberg flooded area this is this is russian farmland this is what they
have to work with every spring they actually have to go out and bomb their rivers every february
through may to make sure that not everybody dies also you'll notice that very little of this
terrain is what we consider traditionally arable it's temperate cool which means that there's not
a lot of sun in the winter in fact moscow gets about 18 hours of sunlight per december in total
the dotted line down at the bottom that's chicago in terms of latitude most russian territory can be
done something with but you have to have the money in order to metabolize it somehow this
is russian infrastructure at its best this is the trans-siberian road it was only completed in 2004.
the first road from european russia to the asian coast 2004. they it's too cold to use concrete or
asphalt so they could really just use dirt every time it rains you get this consequently you get a
political system that is extraordinarily different from everything else that has come before uh it's
capital poor in the extreme but the last lane there's the important bit for this because this is
a system that has to be ruled by the intelligence services because that's how the only way you can
keep all these concrete i'm sorry i skipped a step the only way that russia has found that it can be
stable is to basically conquer everybody in its immediate vicinity in order to provide a buffer
and then conquer and conquer and conquer until it finally reaches a geographic barrier that it
can anchor in and then to keep its populations under control it has to have an intelligence
service that shoots through those populations perhaps literally in order to keep them in line
the entire russian leadership cadre therefore comes from this intelligence service unlike the
united states where you have two three million people who are part of the elite and we get
presidents who are former actors or baseball stars or military leaders or whatnot everyone in russia
at the top comes from the intelligence services which means that their elite is about 200 people
they're fantastic leaders but there's only 200 of them so if somebody gets sick and dies or somebody
has a bad day the entire system seizes up and that's kind of where we are with russia right now
demographically they're the worst position in the world if you ignore hiv if you ignore tuberculosis
this is a country that's basically going to run out of skilled labor in about 10 years
that big chunk up there in the blue when those people retire they take with them what is left
of the soviet expertise because education was cut back in 1988 and was really never picked up again
the russians are preparing for this they've got a two-part plan part one is to modernize everything
to bring in as much foreign capital as possible and to regenerate all of the infrastructure in
all the industry part two is to use the old soviet era pipelines and dominate europe from an energy
point of view make sure that everybody's hooked onto russian energy and no one really has a choice
to rebel it was a good plan but unfortunately it hasn't worked for them four reasons first of
all the europeans don't really like this idea and so they started diversifying their energy sources
germany is now the world's leader in solar installed capacity and you're seeing a lot of
efforts to bring in energy sources from other ways one of those of course is lng and shale this is
the sabine pass facility which is going to start exporting lng to europe in about two years at that
point the world's largest lng export facility will be going into the one at the top there at
dunkirk which is the world's largest lng import facility specifically designed to keep russian gas
out of europe the russian political machine has kind of faltered in recent years the russians have
gone to the mat for the syrian government and we're seeing that government in the process as
final stages of dissolution you're probably going to have an end to the war in syria over
the course of the next year and then everybody who used to look to the russians for political
protection is going to wonder what it counts for because the russians have proven that they're not
willing to send troops they're not willing to send money they're not even willing to send weapons
what is a russian guarantee and then finally they were counting upon the europeans to
do the bulk of the reinvestment into their privatization program
and then the europeans had the audacity to go and throw their own crisis and so none of
this money is on hand of the 120 projects that the russians identified for privatization only
two have been carried out so far and at less than a quarter of what they were planned to
be they're scrambling uh the guy in the the back there the one with the huge
head that's cerakov he's the defense minister and yeah that is a huge head
he was basically the last part of the russian economics team that was left and he was fired
this week and so there is no longer an economist in the upper tier of the russian government
the russians in a very russian strategy have decided that the time has come to kind of redefine
what it means to be russian in order to make sure that all the various minorities that have
very high birth rates in the russian federation like chechens uh see themselves as russian and
not chechen and the guy they put in charge of this is down below that's a vladislav surcoff he's uh
he's a wily son of a [ __ ] uh he's half muslim half jewish i'm sorry half chechen half jewish
and he has been putin's right-hand man now for six years after killing his former boss who was
the former chechen president um and he's now in charge of making everybody feel russian wow
it's always good to know if the russians are feeling insecure
the orange area that's the russian wheat belt this is where all the food is grown unfortunately
for the russians the black dots are the major russian population centers and you can see that
the population centers are not traditionally in the wheat belts and so these are the people that
the russians have to push their control south in order to control take a look at this map this is
a heads of navigation in the navigable rivers of europe take a look at ukraine over there on the
right those two rivers the nipper and then easter they flow south or sorry they flow north to south
like what we consider a normal river so they don't have these ice dams in the in the spring they're
also in ukrainian territory ukraine can be an economically viable and successful country if it
can be allowed to use its rivers to ship its grain south to the black sea then to the mediterranean
in the wider world if ukraine does that if ukraine becomes a successful country russia starves
you can imagine what the russians are going to be doing to ukraine and if you want to see how
serious the russians are just look at ukraine see how much they're controlling policy there
large groups of russian troops are reportedly gathering at the border between the countries
raising concerns they could be preparing to attack ukraine
russia says it's entitled to station its troops wherever it wants and insists they pose no threat
focusing in on what might lie ahead
these ukrainian soldiers are patiently preparing for the worst here along what many international
experts say could become the front lines of a full-scale battle between russia and the ukraine
if russian troops attack us
russia seized crimea from ukraine in 2014. sparking an ongoing war in the
eastern donbas region of ukraine bordering russia since the crimean peninsula was taken
moscow has backed separatists fighting for control of the area with the recent build-up
of russian forces on the border ukraine says it has little choice but to prep for an attack
maybe they are just provoking us maybe yes maybe no
nobody knows what our enemies are thinking right now our commander says we shouldn't underestimate
them the conflict has killed more than 13 000 people including thousands of civilians
now residents feel they're being asked to prepare for a full-out battle with russia that's just too
good what will happen then nothing good it won't be the same kind of war as in the past
they have nothing else to do but to start a nuclear war with us
why are they letting this happen there will be fear and horror that's all
could ukraine lose the donbass region to russia and if not how much further loss of life could
be necessary to ward off the threat international allies like the u.s and others have voiced support
but will that be enough to protect ukraine or is russia just flexing
its muscles on the borders again looking to keep everyone guessing and retaliation at bay
you