Did Israel broker a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, and did Joe Biden nix it? Ezra Levanon explains why, and why he thinks the deal was scuppered by the White House. He also talks about why Israel is surprisingly close to Vladimir Putin.
00:13:51.220What does the United States have to say about the claim that this was scuppered by Joe Biden because Joe Biden wants to set an example of military strength?
00:14:01.820What is the endgame if that's the case?
00:14:03.920Because you push too hard against another country and it crumbles.
00:14:08.400You push too hard against Russia while before they finally crumble, don't they push the nuclear button?
00:14:17.760What, again, is the U.S. interest in Ukraine?
00:14:21.660Or is it just to pummel Russia, to get that out of the system of generals who were in their 60s and 70s and didn't get a chance to pummel Russia during the Cold War?
00:14:41.100I'd like to hear articulated and I'd like to hear what the Canadian interest is because I don't think anyone's expecting our aircraft carriers to save Taiwan from China.
00:14:51.700So what exactly is the Canadian interest?
00:14:53.900If the American interest, according to Naftali Bennett, is to carry a big stick and be fearsome, okay, you can accept that or reject that on its own terms.
00:15:04.780But that clearly cannot be Canada's interest.
00:15:08.160We're sending, what was it, one single tank, as far as I could tell.
00:15:14.540And then there's the larger question, and I think Henry Kissinger himself asked this.
00:15:18.260Henry Kissinger has proposed a settlement not dissimilar from the one Naftali Bennett talked about.
00:15:24.360Kissinger said, although Russia is a rival and perhaps even an enemy of the West, is it a good idea to destroy it, to destroy its military, to destroy the country, to have regime change?
00:15:38.080Would it be a good thing to have that vacuum?
00:15:41.040Would it really just be filled with China?
00:15:42.860Hey, is anyone open to a diplomatic solution here?
00:15:58.800And, you know, I was thinking more about China and its hot air balloon.
00:16:03.960We'll talk a little bit more about that with our next guest.
00:16:06.100But it made me think $100 billion worth of U.S. money and materiel is being sent to Ukraine, not just by the United States, but by other countries.
00:16:17.960Canada sent one tank, but the U.K. and other European countries.
00:16:21.880So I headlined the other day that if the U.K. were to do what its former Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants it to do, it would run out of ammunition in a week.
00:18:26.540I'd just like to briefly address the presence of the Chinese surveillance balloon in U.S. airspace.
00:18:31.660I spoke this morning with Director of the CCP Central Foreign Affairs Office, Wang Yi, to convey that, in light of China's unacceptable action, I am postponing my planned travel this weekend to China.
00:18:44.980As you know, President Biden and President Xi agreed during their meetings in Bali in November that I would travel to Beijing to follow up on their discussions.
00:18:55.600We've been working across the U.S. government to prepare for a substantive set of discussions on issues that matter to the American people and to people around the world.
00:19:03.440And we've been engaging for some time with our counterparts in Beijing to prepare for these meetings.
00:19:09.880Yesterday, the Department of Defense announced that we had detected and were tracking a high-altitude surveillance balloon that remains over the continental United States.
00:19:19.500We continue to track and monitor the balloon closely.
00:19:22.640We're confident this is a Chinese surveillance balloon.
00:19:26.840Once we detected the balloon, the U.S. government acted immediately to protect against the collection of sensitive information.
00:19:33.440We communicated with the PRC government directly through multiple channels about this issue.
00:19:40.040Members of my team consulted with our partners in other agencies and in Congress.
00:19:45.140We also engaged our close allies and partners to inform them of the presence of the surveillance balloon in our airspace.
00:19:51.460We concluded that conditions were not conducive for a constructive visit at this time.
00:19:56.780On my call today with Director Wang Yi, I made clear that the presence of this surveillance balloon in U.S. airspace is a clear violation of U.S. sovereignty and international law,
00:20:08.520that it's an irresponsible act, and that the PRC's decision to take this action on the even by planned visit is detrimental to the substantive discussions that we were prepared to have.
00:20:18.860If that was the sole response, the sum of the response by the United States, no diplomats ejected, no sanctions, no tit-for-tat, just simply a diplomat delaying a visit, well, maybe the balloon test run was a success.
00:20:44.860Joining us now to give an expert opinion on this subject, not my layman's musings, is our favorite expert on China matters.
00:21:21.120First of all, I couldn't believe it when I heard that China sailed the balloon into the United States.
00:21:27.540I mean, I think the Chinese leaders are bold and aggressive, but I didn't think that they would do something like this.
00:21:35.440The second thing, though, and this is disturbing, is that President Biden was not informed about this until the fourth day that the balloon had intruded into the U.S.
00:21:48.940It entered U.S. airspace at the Aleutians, traveled through Alaska, then down through your country, Ezra, through the western Canada, and then it entered the U.S.
00:22:01.440And about the time that it entered the U.S. in Idaho is when Biden was informed about this.
00:22:08.480By then, it was really too late to shoot it down without causing the possibility of personal and property damage.
00:22:16.040So, basically, the United States allowed this balloon to survey some of its most sensitive military sites.
00:22:25.360I think that the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should have notified Biden as soon as this got anywhere close to U.S. airspace.
00:22:35.580Because they could track this thing as it was coming towards the Aleutians.
00:22:40.640And that shows a fundamental failure in the Pentagon.
00:24:04.460That, in fact, the White House, if not the President himself, was alerted.
00:24:08.500But there was a decision made not to make a fuss, not to make an international incident.
00:24:15.560And maybe this thing, I don't know, it sounds ridiculous given that it was visible to the naked eye.
00:24:19.980But maybe everyone thought, well, this will just pass and we don't need a challenge with China right now.
00:24:26.360We don't need, you know, to have an incident.
00:24:28.900Let's just pretend this isn't happening.
00:24:31.040Because I tell you, presidents, both Democrat and Republican, have turned a blind eye to Chinese aggression in the past.
00:24:38.720I think it was under George W. Bush when a U.S. Navy intelligence aircraft was forcibly landed, stripped of its high-tech equipment before being returned to the U.S.
00:24:50.180I'm sure you know the case I'm talking about.
00:24:52.380And it sure felt like the U.S. side was trying to pretend nothing bad was happening because they didn't want to be moved off their diplomatic track.
00:25:57.840And I think that when we look at the history of Chinese intercepts, we have to be concerned that it is the United States that opened the door to this belligerent conduct.
00:26:26.920I mean, I was trying to get an estimate of the price of this balloon, and I couldn't get a good one.
00:26:33.080But you can buy stratospheric weather balloons, very similar to this, for under $1,000.
00:26:40.820Now, I'm not saying this may have been fancy and extra, and I'm sure the payload was expensive.
00:26:46.300But, like, talk about a low tech device.
00:26:50.220And part of my thought, well, is it necessary?
00:26:52.680Because surely the Chinese government has satellites, they have on-the-ground intelligence, they have electronic intelligence.
00:26:59.800I mean, you know, who knows if there's apps on cell phones and people in army bases.
00:27:04.660Like, I was trying to think to myself, is there anything in the United States that the Chinese government doesn't know, even through, if you know the company DJI.
00:27:14.240They're one of the world's leading manufacturers of recreational drones, toy drones.
00:27:28.680I personally believe that the Chinese government has mapped every square inch of North America through DJI, this toy drone company that just happens to feed all your video through China.
00:27:40.580So, I was thinking, what did they learn from a balloon that they didn't learn from satellites, drones, electronic information gathering, or even spies?
00:30:23.660And on Monday, Biden told reporters that the spy balloon incident would not weaken U.S.-China relations.
00:30:31.500That's like the most incredible thing that I've ever heard an American president say.
00:30:37.020So you can see that he's just teaching the Chinese.
00:30:42.840Provocative behavior will result in no cost.
00:30:45.880I think one of the aesthetic criticisms of Donald Trump as president was his unpredictableness, his chaotic sense, and that he would blurt things out on Twitter.
00:30:58.580And I think there was a method to the madness.
00:31:00.100But certainly, people like Kim Jong-un of North Korea did not know what Donald Trump would do.
00:31:09.080Vladimir Putin didn't know what Donald Trump would do.
00:31:13.220Perhaps it's not a cause and effect, but it is hard not to notice that Russia invaded Ukraine under Barack Obama and Joe Biden, but not under Trump in the middle.
00:31:22.460And I just can't believe for a second that Xi Jinping would have risked this move had Donald Trump been president.
00:31:32.160I don't know what Trump would have done, but I don't think he would have been tested with this challenge because I can't imagine that the Chinese government would have rolled the dice on this if Trump was in office.
00:31:44.560And this is not my affection for Trump, although I am affectionate towards him.
00:31:48.080This is me saying he scared the bad guys because he sort of came across as a bad guy in some ways himself.
00:32:08.980Now, last couple days, the Defense Department said that there were three balloon incursions during the Trump era, but they were pretty minor.
00:32:16.960And matter of fact, the Defense Department didn't even know about them because they were so well disguised.
00:32:30.660It was Trump's unpredictability that really got the Chinese and the Russians and the North Koreans and the Iranians and just about everybody else.
00:32:48.300I mean, we're thinking about this in North America, and we're pretty far away from the action.
00:32:54.540But if I was in Taiwan, if I was in Japan, if I was in the region within reach of the People's Liberation Army, I would be a little bit nervous about the U.S. response.
00:33:06.940Have you seen any commentary from Taiwan or Japan or South Korea on this matter, or have they been pretty tight-lipped about it?
00:33:15.520They've been tight-lipped, but Japan is now talking about changing their laws about balloon incursions.
00:33:25.400And, you know, in China, I mean, in Japan, it's pretty legalistic.
00:33:28.480But they are going to, I think, have more robust measures against balloons because they have seen these balloon incursions in the past.
00:33:38.720There have been a lot of them in Asia, as you can imagine.
00:33:41.420So this has been a wake-up call for everyone.
00:33:44.360This could very well be like Sputnik in October 1957.
00:35:05.660Yeah, I mean, as Gordon G. Chang said, you know, it could have electronic intelligence gathering equipment in there because it's much lower than satellites, which are many miles high.
00:35:20.38060,000 feet is a lot lower than 100,000 feet or 200,000 feet.
00:35:27.140Sheephunter7 says, apparently, Ezra's not actually researched this topic from beyond what the mainstream media said about it.
00:35:33.600Just putting his own spin on it does not make it credible.
00:35:35.800Well, perhaps reading a little from a few East Asian news and research sites, including ECNS would help Ezra on this one.
00:36:19.160Well, that's what was so sad when our friend Aaron told us about the reaction to criticism of the downtown Eastside that the mayor was going woke.
00:36:29.980It made me sad because I know this mayor was supposed to replace the previous woke mayor who used to be an NDP MP.
00:36:36.940Well, hopefully he'll get his bearings back.