No Western country seriously wants Ukraine to win
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Summary
Matthew Bondi, a foreign policy analyst at the McDonnell-Laurier Institute, joins us to discuss a new peace plan from Ukraine s President Vladimir Zelensky, and why he might be open to a deal with Russia.
Transcript
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It was a 28-point peace plan that was immediately dismissed as unworkable, as dictated by Vladimir
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Putin, and then one that Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky suddenly said, well, maybe we can
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And the headlines and challenges around trying to end the war between Russia and Ukraine
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My name's Brian Lilly, your host, and today we explore the Quagmire on the Donbass.
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While we have a backdrop of a peace plan discussion taking place, there's also attacks by Russia.
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They're carrying out cyber and heart attacks, drones, you might say, against NATO allies
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such as Poland, where a train line was sabotaged, or Latvia, where drones have been hitting regularly.
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You have the offices of Andrei Yermak, chief of staff to Zelensky, being raided in a corruption
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scandal, and Putin saying he still wants to meet with Donald Trump in Budapest.
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Well, to help us all figure this out, Matthew Bondi is a foreign policy expert with the
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McDonnell-Laurier Institute, who follows the situation in Ukraine closely, and will attempt
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Help us figure out where did this 28-point peace plan come from, because it's been described
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as Donald Trump's peace plan, and then it was, well, no, it's not really Trump's peace
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Where did this come about, and does it belong to Donald Trump or someone else?
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Well, it sure looks like a Putin-dictated plan.
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When you look at the contents of it, it reads a little bit like a fascist fever dream.
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I mean, it compels Ukraine to limit the size of its armed forces to 600,000, which sounds
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It gives Russia bonus lands that it hasn't even won by force of arms in the conflict, which
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And it goes back to the precedent that got us here in the first place, which is very weak,
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So you'll recall the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, where the US, the UK, and Russia agreed
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that Ukraine was going to be independent, it was going to be free, and that Western powers
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would provide security support should Ukraine ever be violated by force of arms.
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And, you know, that was no better than the paper it was written on.
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So this goes back to a horrible precedent of weak security guarantees.
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It keeps Ukraine out of NATO forever, which is not something one does to a sovereign country.
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It's going to make the world less safe if this plan goes forward as proposed by Trump.
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But in terms of its origin, Brian, I think it's going to take a lot of years and a lot
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of books to figure out exactly whose ideas went into each point.
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But I think Trump thinks that he is on a roll right now following the Middle East peace plan.
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And it looks to me like he wants to do another one just like the other one.
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Okay, but at some point Zelensky looked and said, I can work with this or at least some of it.
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And maybe it's expanded or contracted since then.
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What is it that Zelensky is looking at in this plan that makes him say, all right, let's talk?
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I think that if I put myself in Zelensky's shoes and I look at the situation in Ukraine right
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now, the original peace plan was so horrifically bad, but Ukraine has so little leverage with
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the United States continuing to court Vladimir Putin in a way that is inconsistent with U.S.
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So I think Zelensky is looking at the hand he has.
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And the strategy he's using would be something you might refer to as embrace and contain.
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The United States is the only game in town in terms of ability to actually drive security
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and economic outcomes for Ukraine in the short term.
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And if you don't get in the room with the United States and talk about where the United States
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is looking to go, then you just have no leverage to move forward.
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So embracing the United States and its objectives in principle while containing the worst elements
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In terms of land being swapped out, I've heard Mark Carney, I've heard the European leaders
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say, we can't reward Russia, borders shouldn't change due to war.
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That's just a matter of fact throughout the centuries.
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But what I find strange, especially coming from the Europeans more than Canadians, is that
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they're not willing to go in and help Ukraine fight the war.
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In my view, they're not even willing to properly fund Ukraine to have a shot at winning this war.
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And yet they're demanding that the war not end.
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And this is not me saying, well, Russia took that land, so they get to keep it.
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But it's Russia won't give up that land that they have taken by military force.
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The Europeans are refusing to fight to get it back.
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But they're telling Ukraine, you just keep sitting there like a malnourished child fighting
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this bear that has no end of people to put on the front line, whether it's their own
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I mean, over the centuries, war does change borders.
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And since World War II and the establishment of the UN and kind of the post-war architecture,
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the world's actually done a pretty decent job at living up to the aspiration of not moving
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And it is a cornerstone norm of international relations that is being so flagrantly violated.
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In terms of what Europe can really do, there are steps that it can take and that it should
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Europe itself is sitting on about $200 billion with a B in frozen Russian assets.
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And, you know, there's lots of good methodologies for getting that money out the door to support
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the Ukrainian defense industrial base, give it the weapons it needs to at least hold a
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Russian law while they negotiate a better system.
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I'm glad you raised this because Bill Browder has been talking about this for several years
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I've talked to him about it when he's visited here in Toronto.
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He described how Canada, with the Magnitsky Act, has the ability to seize those assets and
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Tristia Freeland, when she was still finance minister, talked about how, I think it's about
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$40, $50 million worth of assets, could be more, that were seized here in Canada that
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Not only have the Europeans not done that, but we haven't done that.
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We've talked loudly and proudly about it, but we haven't done it.
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And I saw one report in Politico that the Belgian leadership keeps trying to block this from
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But as Canada, we could have acted on our own and help fund the war with Russian assets.
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And that would have helped deal with those people who say, well, we shouldn't be spending
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It's hard to say, well, we shouldn't give Vladimir Putin's money to them.
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And it's the same with the Europeans right now.
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You know, to put the question you asked about why has this not been done in the most favorable,
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plausible light, you might say that Europe and Canada are waiting for the terms of an agreement
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to use that as a chip for desired outcomes for Ukraine's benefit.
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Put those chips on the table from Europe and from Canada to say to the United States, listen,
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we want to, we want to get this money out the door to support Ukraine.
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This is money you, the United States don't have to spend.
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Give us some leverage and latitude at the negotiating table.
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Let us, let us get to a better outcome than what you're proposing, Mr. President.
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Well, when I look at the fact that we wouldn't properly arm Ukraine and that we wouldn't properly
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fund them, to me, that's weakness on the part of the West.
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We are, we are asking them to win a war against a much larger adversary.
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And look, they've done admirable in holding Russia to where they have.
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At the beginning, it was, you know, widely predicted that the war would be over quickly.
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They have done well, but you can't say they're winning the war.
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Not saying they're losing it, but they're not winning either.
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And I don't think that despite our rhetoric, we have not helped them the way that we could
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Yeah, neither side can win the war, so to speak.
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You know, Vladimir Putin thought that he would be able to take Kiev and, and Ukraine would
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fall in, in weeks and Ukraine fought like hell.
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And so, you know, Putin can't get his win that he defined, which is to swallow and destroy
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Ukraine can't win this war in the sense of, you know, at least with the, the weapon systems
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They can't take back all of their territory, including the Crimea.
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I, I maintain that that should still be the objective.
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And here's why, like, if you look at, um, what support for Ukraine is actually costing
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the United States, for example, it's about 4% of their annual military spending.
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And, and that includes non-military items as well, like aid, um, and support for civilian
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So we're talking 4% of an already somewhat small U.S. defense budget compared to Cold War
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For 4%, let's say you move it to 5% or 6% so that you can actually send Ukraine what
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So like attack them, uh, Tomahawk missiles, uh, et cetera, for like five or 6% of annual
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military spending, Ukraine can disarm Russia for a generation.
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You know, the, the realists, the so-called realists who are cynical about Ukraine, uh,
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having a bright and Western and allied future, um, they're missing the point for a very reasonable,
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The United States and its allies could keep Ukraine in the fight, help it go on the offensive
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Even if they don't win all of their land back, they will disarm this fascist regime for a
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They shouldn't be rewarded, not scolded for that.
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And so I think the Trump administration for all the great work it's done, uh, on foreign
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And I think they've done some great stuff like checking Iran and, uh, moving toward peace
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There's a lot of domestic politics going on in the United States.
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And I think that's going to flare up with the, um, well, at this point, not arrest, but
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the rate of the office of Skolensky's chief of staff, Andrei Yermak.
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We've been seeing Ukraine play out in American domestic politics going back to the first Trump
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administration or even before that with, uh, um, you know, some would say going back to
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the Russia hoax, all of this plays in and there's a lot of distrust on the American right about
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So how, how does this, uh, rate of the office and, you know, I, I believe there's seven or
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eight people already facing charges in this current corruption scandal that's, uh, taken
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Um, how does that play out in domestic policies for the United States to do what you're talking
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Uh, because people just say, yeah, but they're just millions from us.
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And I can tell you that was part of the reason that Stephen Harper pulled out of Afghanistan
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when he did is that Canada was sending a lot of money and he didn't feel that an awful
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lot of it was going to the Afghan people, that it was going to, um, uh, arrive at a, uh, a
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It was being skimmed by warlords and officials.
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Um, you know, I, I think the corruption investigation, that's obviously going to be catnip to the,
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And, uh, you know, that that's, that's just politics.
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I think, I think where we need to go on it is say, yes, and so corruption is always bad.
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Um, Ukraine is in the middle of a ward and it's a fledgling democracy.
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And so I think we have to have, uh, a little bit of a pain tolerance for, um, for things
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not being super smooth and there being certain levels of, of corruption, which exists in all
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So, uh, we can't, we can't give it a free pass.
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We also have to focus on the big picture, you know, leadership.
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It's about keeping the main thing, the main thing, the main thing is international peace
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and security and a world where freedom can flourish through self-determination.
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So we have to, you know, make sure that the corruption gets attacked, uh, while at the
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same time, keeping focus on the main thing, which is international peace and security and
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And, uh, I'm confident that if the United States would really put its foot down, it could achieve
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Look at what, for example, Brian, look at what they're doing in Israel, what they're
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doing, what they've done in Israel and the peace plan.
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And I'll tell you what, one of the, one of the most insightful books on international
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You're saying that Trump, hold on, Matt, you just, just to be clear, you're saying that
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Trump's peace plan in the middle East is a form of imperialism.
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So there's a great book called empire liked by none other than Michael Ignatia, uh, former
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And he argues that there are some, some responsibilities, some goals in international relations that
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are uniquely suited to a form of imperialism because it requires a great power to have
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freedom of action, to control, to control a very complex situation.
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And so if you look at what happened in the peace plan, the United States just dictated
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Uh, Jared Kushner, you know, led extensive talks at the end of the day, though, this was
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Not unlike how the U S imposed on Germany and Japan after world war two, what the terms of
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their, uh, of their polity going forward were going to look like.
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So what happened in Israel with the peace plan is the U S putting its foot down saying,
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It's gone over with the Arabs and there's no path, uh, at least in the short term to a
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If you put your foot down as the world's superpower and the U S can do in Ukraine, what it did in
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Israel and it's not doing it, it's caving to Russian aggression and it's wrongheaded.
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I hear what you're saying, Matt, about the United States leaning on Israel, but Israel's
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not Russia and Russia isn't what it was before in the U S S are where it was a co-competing
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It's not that, but it is still a fairly big and powerful country.
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Um, there have been attempts by president Trump to, to lean on Putin.
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I know that his critics will say that he is Putin's puppet.
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Um, I think the attempt to have them meet in Alaska, I think the attempt to have them
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I think he is trying to figure out what to do, but fundamentally, I'm not sure that Putin
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How does he attempt to do the same thing he did with Israel with Vladimir Putin in Russia?
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The, the, the balance of power and the, the imbalance of power between the likes of the
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United States and the Russian Federation is, uh, gaping.
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So we have this, we have this mental image of Russia as this hulking Leviathan, uh, powerful
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When you actually look at, look under the hood in Russia, you're talking about an economy
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that's only a little bit bigger than Canada's that is taking the whole world hostage.
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And, uh, they have a horrible standard of living.
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Their military is, uh, incredibly degraded following Ukraine's valiant efforts to defend itself.
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The, the, the reason Russia seems to have a good hand is because everybody seems to think
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And if the United States were to, uh, send the, the quantity and quality of military hardware
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support that Ukraine needs, um, there is no question that Russia can be halted in its tracks
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They, they are just vicious and they seem to have the ear of the president.
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And if you look at the, the, the ink on the initial plan for peace in Ukraine, it reads
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And we give Russia and Vladimir Putin way too much credit and way too much latitude.
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If the United States wanted to put its foot down, this war could be over like the Trump
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administration says it could be, and it could be done on terms favorable to Ukraine.
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It's the fact that the United States is giving Russia so much leash, uh, to, uh, conduct such
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vile operations, uh, whether it's a military or stealing children on mass.
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Um, it's a stain on the U S foreign policy record.
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Well, there was a point where Trump did threaten to send tomahawks and that clearly got Putin's
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They're just picking on the weak kid in the class, but the weak kid is, is turning out
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to be a bit of a hero here, despite his modest size.
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I want to go back to, you know, why has Russia and excuse me, why have Europe and Canada
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You know, we say we're great friends of Ukraine.
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And I think a lot of that comes back to the role of NATO.
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Um, if you look actually at the game tape of how, uh, secretary of war, Pete Hegseth has
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He has not ruled out the United States being comfortable in principle with a multinational
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reassurance force being in Ukraine following a peace establishment to act as a deterrent against
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Russian, uh, foreign, uh, continued military intervention.
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What he has said is that it could not be done under the aegis of NATO, because as we know,
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under the aegis of NATO's article five, an attack on one is an attack on all.
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And the United States has no interest in involving itself in a European land war.
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So you could see as part of the ongoing negotiations that are happening right now, you could see
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Canada and Europe say, listen, we are each going to be contributing divisions, brigades,
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The moment there is a peace plan that is acceptable to Ukraine and it gets inked by Russia and
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the U S we, the powers of Canada and Europe are moving our troops in material into Ukraine,
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inside Ukraine with their blessing and support to act as a deterrent.
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And the terms would be that is a non NATO deployment.
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So that's one of the key things I'm looking for in this negotiation.
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All right, let's take a break, break right there.
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And when we come back, we'll talk more about what Canada can and can't do militarily and
00:21:37.120
on other fronts to help Ukraine back in moments.
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So, Matt, before the break, you were talking about the fact that Canadian troops could end
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And I'm going to say this as a longtime supporter of the Canadian Armed Forces, many friends and
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family members there, a very short stint, had a cup of coffee as a reservist, been around
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Our biggest deployment at the moment is Operation Reassurance in Latvia.
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And that is a strain for us using just 2,000, 2,000 troops.
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And they're in Latvia because Latvia is a NATO member.
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And we all believe that Putin, if allowed to take over Ukraine, would then turn towards
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So, what can we properly do militarily to assist Ukraine, either to win the war or to secure
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the peace, when we have allowed ourselves to become so weak, so depressingly weak?
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Yeah, Canada has this tradition of completely disarming itself between major conflicts.
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And it's a lesson we just refuse to learn, Brian.
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As a former Army reservist as well, I mean, it drives me nuts.
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In terms of what Canada can do for Ukraine, I mean, you mentioned that Opry Assurance features
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So, Canada struggles to deploy a full-fang brigade group.
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Even the United Kingdom would struggle to field more than a couple of brigades, per comments
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So, you are very right to point out that the West has dug itself a hole that it needs to
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dig itself out of from the ability to deploy, deter, and defend its interests and allies.
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And so, the only thing we can do about that right now, it's like the saying, best time
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to plant the trees 20 years ago, second best time is today.
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We can focus on the major investments that, to its credit, the Kearney government has put
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on the table for recruiting and re-equipping and re-arming the Canadian military.
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That's what we can do for the medium and long term.
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What we can do right now is we can focus on things like deploying frozen Russian assets,
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like working with our European partners to try and tip the scales in Ukraine's favor on
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And going forward, you know, the West has to ask itself if it actually is prepared to
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You know, if all the, think of all the wealth in Europe, Canada, and the United States, and
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all of mainland Europe is being held hostage by one fascist thug with an economy just barely
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So at some point, the West has to decide if it wants to defend its civilization or not.
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And if it does, I think they need to take a serious look, all the powers in the West,
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apparently without the United States, at least for now, at how can we deploy men and material
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into Ukraine so that if they are attacked again, which is very likely to be the case if
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the peace plan gets implemented the way it's currently designed.
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So when Russia reinvades, if they're given favorable, quote unquote, peace terms, which
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is really just a ceasefire to rearm themselves, what are we going to do about it?
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And if we're not prepared to defend our democratic friends and allies, that is a future that
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And we talk about how Canada has the largest Ukrainian diaspora, and we are such great
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And then I'll tell you what we've sent them militarily.
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But the Canadian Armed Forces sent gender advisors to Ukraine to perform gender-based plus analysis
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of things like minesweeping and building their military.
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I'm sorry, when someone's shooting at you, that's not what you need.
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I know there have been other pieces of material.
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I still don't know if the shells at CFB Dunder and that the Ukrainians were begging us for
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They said, send us what you have and we'll use what is functional.
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But we have continually talked bigger than we've been able to deliver.
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When Germany needed a peace force, a peace stabilization force, we easily had thousands.
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It would have been over 10,000 troops at one point in West Germany.
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Canada has become, on military matters with very few exceptions, fundamentally unserious as a power.
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To your point about sending gender advisors to a hot conflict, it's embarrassing.
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We do have massive investments that, to its credit, the Kearney government's put on the table.
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And this is a decades-long bipartisan failure on Canada's part.
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We consistently disarm ourselves between major conflicts.
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And not waste this crisis in terms of it being a hinge moment for Canada's posture on the world stage.
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You've got, you mentioned that there are areas that the Russians don't even have that the peace plan would suggest that Ukraine give up.
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There are areas that Russia has seized that they clearly do not want to return.
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But you suggested that we go all the way back to having Crimea as part of Ukraine.
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But we didn't even raise a voice, never mind a gun, to stop that.
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Stephen Harper is the closest, I guess, we had with telling off Putin in, I think it was Australia.
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I get the concern on lands Russia doesn't have.
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How does Ukraine get back lands that Russia does have, given the current situation?
00:29:57.880
Before we even get to Crimea, how do you get those lands back?
00:30:05.140
Just for context, the land components of the peace plan are so bad that it contemplates Russia, quote unquote, not preventing Ukraine from using the critical inland Dnieper River to move goods, services, and people through its supply chains and its international trade routes.
00:30:31.020
We're talking about an inland major geo-economic asset that is Ukrainian.
00:30:41.440
And the quote unquote peace plan says Russia will please allow Ukraine to use Ukraine's river to do Ukrainian things.
00:30:50.380
The land elements of the proposed peace plan are completely out of control.
00:30:59.060
In terms of mechanically how to retake those lands, honestly, you wonder how possible it is to retake all that control.
00:31:10.760
If you're looking at this, we've talked about aspirationally, we should be a world that works according to the rule of law.
00:31:19.420
We should have borders determined not by armed conflict.
00:31:24.440
With the situation we have in eastern Ukraine right now, open question about how much of that can be retaken by force of arms in light of how tightly Russia is dug in.
00:31:37.200
I would answer your question, not from a military perspective, but from a political perspective.
00:31:44.480
What we don't want to do is we don't want to negotiate against ourselves and our allies by saying, oh, those lands are written off now.
00:31:52.640
As part of the settlement, we have to go in to any peace process, which I don't think should be on the table right now.
00:32:04.360
I think we should be arming Ukraine to the teeth and letting them disarm Russia for a generation.
1.00
00:32:08.280
But if we're going to have peace talks, the lands currently in question represent negotiating against Ukraine and against Western principles of self-determination.
00:32:19.800
So militarily, how do you get those lands back?
00:32:24.040
I do know Russia, excuse me, that Ukraine would fight like hell for them if they had the weapon systems that they needed.
0.75
00:32:29.020
And that would be good enough for now to continue degrading Russia to tip the balance of influence in favor of Ukraine and the West and not in Russia's favor.
00:32:45.940
Are these oil or mineral rich lands, is that what's driving Putin to want them?
00:32:51.720
Or is it just, you know, rapacious greed for land and, as I said earlier, putting the USSR band back together?
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00:33:01.340
Yeah, I would say yes to your question of whether they're mineral rich or it's just rapacious greed.
00:33:07.100
There are meaningful deposits of rare earth in eastern Ukraine, which is important for both military and non-military economic development and supply chains.
00:33:18.880
And you saw that maybe six months ago now, Trump tried to make a deal with Zelensky to deliver more military support and economic development support in exchange for vast mineral resources in Ukraine.
00:33:36.120
So that's definitely a feature animating some of this.
00:33:38.740
You see, you know, you see this in Europe, whereas you see a lot of equivalent situations in Africa over petrol.
00:33:46.760
You know, oil rich regions are always kind of at war.
00:33:52.640
And it's an element that the United States has bellied up to the trough on that, too, in a way that, you know, happens commonly in international relations,
00:33:59.960
but was done in a particularly flagrant and undignified way when we're talking about a strategic partner and Western ally like Ukraine.
00:34:08.860
Well, he essentially said, we'll help you, but we'll get the deposits afterwards.
00:34:19.420
And even the terms of a military package of the likes I would like to see, which is very large, robust, gives Ukraine the opportunity to contemplate going back on the offensive in those eastern regions.
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00:34:33.820
You know, there's every opportunity for that to be incredibly beneficial for the United States, where essentially you're lending slash giving money to Ukraine to buy predominantly U.S. military hardware.
00:34:48.760
And so that is positive for the U.S. industrial base.
00:34:56.760
It's going to take a while, Brian, but we're going to figure out eventually why, under the Trump administration, U.S. has gone so pro-Russia.
00:35:04.860
And I suspect, you know, it's a combination of, you know, really liking the look of autocracy, really liking the look of, you know, the strongman look.
00:35:15.700
And maybe other nefarious things, but, you know, there hasn't really been anything meaningfully proven about Trump and Russia.
00:35:24.360
But this is also fundamentally pro-Russian, the way that the peace plan has set the table for this discussion that I would suppose it needs to be completely scuttled.
00:35:36.660
Look, not to defend Trump, but he wears a lot of stuff with Russia.
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00:35:40.800
But Europe is much closer to this, and they won't even give up European oil and gas to help Ukraine.
00:35:48.060
And Canada refused to sell our own liquefied natural gas to help get people off of Russian oil and gas.
00:35:57.500
So, you know, it can be a bit rich for any of us to say, well, he's obviously pro-Russian.
00:36:02.620
If you're buying Russian oil and gas, you're funding the war.
00:36:08.000
Europeans and others who've spoken up about this have refused to, you know, wean themselves off of that.
00:36:26.200
The world has responded to Ukraine with great, a lot of great words and a lot of bad action.
00:36:35.320
How much of this, you were talking about the military industrial base in the United States.
00:36:42.480
A lot of this war is being fought with drones, but I don't think the war can be won with drones, though.
00:36:49.660
But this war will be studied because of its use of drones.
00:36:57.620
That's another thing that Ukraine represents is what you might call a sandbox for technological development of defense systems.
00:37:06.720
The quick iterations and the availability of funds to be pushed down to combatant commands so that they can iterate quickly and make purchases quickly has been a real lesson for the entire West.
00:37:24.800
And I've got a piece coming up in the Jerusalem Post actually soon about how Canada can learn from some of its great allies, a lot of lessons about how to effectively use all this new money that Mr. Carney has pushed down.
00:37:39.360
And one of the theaters it can learn from is Ukraine, how quickly the iteration happens on defense tech development and how low you have to push the money down the chain of command to enable purchasing in real time.
00:37:52.240
It's pretty phenomenal what's happening in Ukraine right now, just from a defense technology perspective.
00:37:58.340
So you're having junior officers or NCOs making purchase orders?
00:38:05.980
I don't know about junior officers and NCOs, but you do have junior officers and NCOs participating in the adoption and piloting of technologies and informing decisions at a combatant commander level.
00:38:18.900
So we're talking, you know, maybe brigade level where there is there is money available for purchasing technologies much lower down the chain of command so that those folks who are enabled with this financing to buy the resources are actually connected with the troops who are iterating on the technology in real time and theater.
00:38:39.260
It's just a, it's a, it's a, it's a rapid way to iterate on defense tech and what's happening in Ukraine is pretty unparalleled.
00:38:49.720
You've, you've made clear that you'd prefer to see Ukraine be armed to the teeth.
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00:38:54.680
Do you see anything on the horizon that makes you think someone will go that route or are we stumbling towards a bad peace deal and trying to make it into a palatable one?
00:39:06.280
I think the latter, Brian, I think the, I think the West will not be on its front foot militarily for another decade.
00:39:14.680
It takes a long time to build the defense industrial conditions to produce war winning hardware at scale.
00:39:23.940
I think we've got a bad peace deal on the table.
00:39:26.540
Um, I think Ukraine appears resigned to try and make it a less bad peace deal.
00:39:34.220
Um, and it appears to me, I wish I didn't think this, but it appears to me that we're going back to a Budapest memorandum, uh, style of security guarantee that will enable Russia to take a breath, regroup, rearm and come back at Ukraine.
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00:39:50.440
Um, that is what this looks like to me right now.
00:39:59.280
Well, I've been hoping for a long time that, uh, Vladimir Putin would simply go away.
00:40:04.780
Uh, and I was hoping that long before he took, uh, started this war before he took Crimea without so much as a, a shot being fired.
00:40:32.200
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00:40:51.060
Two years later, he was still opposition leader, and he lost again to the Pearson Liberals.
00:40:57.660
Despite this, Diefenbaker doesn't resign as leader of the Progressive Conservatives,
00:41:02.920
which put the party in an awkward situation that hasn't really happened before.
00:41:07.240
The typical rules of a Canadian political party were that you stayed leader until you died or resigned.
00:41:13.960
And if you lost twice in a row, you were supposed to do the honorable thing and step aside.
00:41:19.400
But Diefenbaker just didn't, prompting the party to take the unprecedented step of forcing a party convention in Toronto
00:41:26.900
for the singular purpose of crowbarring Diefenbaker out of the leadership.
00:41:31.320
Diefenbaker shows up, pretends everything is fine, and gives a finger-wagging speech chastising his fellow party members for their disloyalty.
00:41:41.060
I followed this party when I didn't disagree, when I didn't agree with policies.
00:41:55.740
He's politely cheered by the assembled conservatives, and then abjectly humiliated in their subsequent leadership vote.
00:42:02.460
On the first ballot, Diefenbaker gets a distant fifth place, and even then he refuses to admit defeat.