Welcome to the making cents podcast. This is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you are not currently on our subscriber feed. And we'll only be here in the first part of this conversation. In order to access full episodes of The Making Sense podcast. You'll need to subscribe at Sam Harris dot-org there. You'll find our private RSS feed to add to your favorite podcast track along with other subscriber, only content.
Ain't we don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore, it's made possible entirely through the support of our subscribers. So, if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one. Okay. Well, this is yet. Another episode in, what is becoming a series on the Russian war? In Ukraine, like almost everyone else. I'm still thinking a lot about this not just for what's happening in Ukraine.
But for the risk, it poses for the rest of the world. We're in. I think the seventh week of the war and as you'll hear I find myself still somewhat confused about what we should and shouldn't be doing in response to help me sort it out this time. I have brought on Ian bremmer Ian's been on the podcast before he is a political scientist, who founded the Eurasia Group, which is a political risk, research and consulting firm, Ian is the
Author of 11 books. He has a new one coming out next month, titled the power of Crisis, how three threats and our response will change the world. He holds a doctorate in political science from Stanford, and he was once the youngest ever National fellow at the Hoover institution. Anyways, always great to talk to Ian here. We cover the state of the war and the state of our response sanctions, Biden's, gaffe, or so-called Gap about
Jim change, fear of nuclear war, the logic of mutually assured destruction. The role of China and all this, the most likely outcomes to the war as the NC is them. Anyway, the world is a mess and we are here to talk about it. And now I bring you Ian bremmer.
I am here with Ian bremmer and thanks for joining me. Again,
Sam great to be back with you.
So I you know, I thought we're going to talk about the issue. That is really the issue of the day, and it's been the issue of the day for the last, I guess, seven weeks. Now we can talk about anything else that might be pressing. But certainly the ongoing war in Ukraine is pressing before we jump in prayer, just remind people what your background is. What do you spend your days doing?
Political scientist. And I started this firm that does global political science about. Oh, I don't know 24 years ago. Now, I look at Global issues, but my background actually is on Russia and Ukraine that my PhD actually spent a year living across Ukraine, looking at issues of Russians living their kind of back in 1992, 93 for, for heck sake. And and so at this is something that even though I haven't spent as
Much time on it. The last 10 years it has it. Never quite let it
go. Hmm. Great. Well the so this is your wheelhouse. So I've had two conversations so far about this ongoing topic. I made its evolved a little bit. Since I started, I had an early conversation with Garry Kasparov. And then I had one with you've all know, her re taking different aspects of this, but it's amazing to see how public opinion domestically and abroad gets.
Loan around. And in the background here is this completely understandable fear, you know, strangely resurrected by these events, but it really should have been a fear we've had for our entire lives of World War 3, right? And it's doing something so stupid or ungovernable as to start the slide into an exchange of nuclear weapons or some other catastrophe of that magnitude. And that's
Really? It's making it hard to recommend things in any kind of straightforward way. And so like when I had Garry Kasparov on the podcast, he the implications of what he was saying. I do remember him saying it starkly as this but it was just you know, Now's the Time to have a conventional war with this crazy dictator Vladimir Putin. I mean, that's just the other you're not going to draw the line right here. You really NATO doesn't mean anything. So all of this squeamishness around, you know,
14, a no-fly zone and the implications of all of that, that kind of talk is for cowards, right? Me that I'm giving this more topspin much more topspin than Gary gave it, but that's, that will certainly the kind of implication one could have drawn from his side of the conversation. And of course, many people find that absolutely terrifying and we have in domestically, a kind of, you know, horseshoe structure to our politics, where you have people on the far left and the far right more or less a green that we
You should go nowhere near talk of that kind, right? This is just this insane, you know, we should, you know, you so essentially someone like Noam Chomsky and someone like Tucker Carlson could be expected to agree on this topic, which is the US has no business getting mired in a conventional war. That could go anywhere near Armageddon and we should be rethinking all of our promises to the rest of the world and clean up our own house and all of that. So, before we get,
Into the minutiae here. I just want to get, just take your temperature on the big picture here. What, how concerned are you about all of that? And what what's through-line have you found in terms of, you know, if you were in charge and could actually make decisions up to this point. What do you think you would have decided to do
a? So, I like your frame Sam. I think that Gary. I know Gary, Kasparov, a man anyone in the field. Does he has a very strongly held
ELD, ideological position, vis-Ã -vis is Russia, and he comes to it. Honestly, if you think about the way, he's been treated, you know, sort of, as a, former opposition member incredibly Brave as well on the ground in, in the former Soviet Union and Russia. I mean, there's a reason he's not there right now. And so I I don't want to criticize his, his feelings about Russia, and his courage and his bravery about rush. I don't think he's an armchair pundit. That's saying
We should go to war and is willing to send your kids. There. I think this is a guy who has has the courage of his convictions. But but I am very, very adamantly not with him. Analytically. I mean, for example, you said that it wouldn't meet NATO, doesn't mean anything if we don't have a conventional war with Russia. No, no. NATO mean something precisely because we're not having a conventional war with Russia. Ukraine isn't in NATO and we have not given them even the membership action.
Action plan. And by the way, nobody, seriously thinks we should. That was true before the crisis and it's true. Now. So, I mean, the very fact that we are saying, we are not prepared to actively defend a non-nato Ally and we are prepared to defend NATO allies, President. Biden said it when he was in Warsaw a week ago. Does
anyone believe that I'm does? Anyone believe we would defend
Lithuania? Yes. We have troops on the ground in the
Baltic states and I think we people absolutely believe that the United States and not just the United States. They believe that NATO would actually defend collective security other NATO countries. I think the amount that has been done for Ukraine, despite the fact that they aren't a NATO member is kind of astonishing. It's certainly shocking to Putin. I think it's shocking to Xi Jinping. Hmm. And here I'm talking about the destruction.
Ian of the Russian economy, including freezing, a majority of their Central Bank assets. To there was no one credible on this issue. The believe that the United States would do that before this Invasion occurred, the level of military support that's being provided to the very bravely fighting ukrainians as well as the intelligence support that's being provided to the ukrainians as to the disposition of Russian forces on the ground. And all of that is part of the reason why zalenski is
All there today and part of the reason why Putin is losing and losing big. So I'm quite aligned with most of what the NATO alliance has done in response to this Russian invasion, since it's happened. I'm not aligned with many things that happened before The Invasion that got us into this position and you, and I can talk about that. But the challenge that we have right now is that Putin's misjudgment was so vast.
That his position and the position of his country. Under any scenario is going to be vastly worse than it was before he invaded. And and yet he's probably still going to be in power. He's very likely still going to be in power. And so and he still going to have 6,000 nuclear warheads. And and this is not just a conflict between Russia and Ukraine. It is a conflict between Russia and NATO. It will be a conflict between Russia and NATO even if we get to the point, hopefully soon.
That we can have a ceasefire that we can freeze the conflict on the ground in Ukraine and and that's going to be a hard thing to manage and that makes things like another Cuban Missile Crisis thinkable, even though you and I clearly had hoped that 30 years ago when the Wall came down. We had a peace dividend and we could stop worrying about that. I mean, the reality of this war in Ukraine, is that the peace dividend is over? That's and that's a that's a truly.
Tragic thing.
Yeah, maybe Define peace dividend. I think man that that phrase is not has been spoken a lot of late but it's not something. Anyone has heard, I think in living memory. What do we mean by peace
dividend? We mean that we used to have a cold war in every every corner of the world and we fought over every piece of land and it was either ours or it was theirs. It was Warsaw Pact or was NATO was aligned with the United States or not. There's a global policy of containment.
Mint and and that meant, that was more important than any idea of globalization. And when the Soviet Union collapsed most importantly for Europe, the EU expanded right up to Russian borders. NATO expanded raw, right up to Russian borders. And the belief was that you didn't have to pay as much attention to National Security. You don't have to spend as much money on defense and that you could focus on the social contract.
T' and on economic policy and you could build your countries and that we didn't have to worry about World War 3. Now, the Americans, of course, pivoted more sharply from that after the attack on 9/11. But the Europeans never did. And of course under Clinton and under Bush and under Obama and under Trump and under Biden. The Americans have been trying to convince the Germans to spend more money on their own defense and they refused but Putin and
Five weeks has managed to convince the Germans to do precisely that and that is structural that no matter what happens in Ukraine. The Europeans are going to focus on National Security and defense as a top priority for the foreseeable future. This will be a generational coming of age for anyone living in Europe. In the way that 9/11 and the wall coming down, has been for a lot of Americans. This will this war in Ukraine. Will have that impact.
On the entirety of the European continent and the EU is the world's largest common market. It matters a
lot and I guess given the the necessity of the moment. We think that's a good thing. I'll be at an unfortunate one. It'd be great to not need to think about European countries individually arming up. But it seems like they should have done it before this and we might not be here if they had done it before this. I
think that
It is a good thing that Europe is together. No question. And by the way, Europe was coming more together. Over the last decade, the the nadir was the Greek crisis and the EU almost falling apart back in 2009 2010. But since then, we had brexit and brexit clearly taught the EU that none of them wanted to go through that, it helped strengthen the core European membership. We had the pandemic
And with the pandemic, a recognition that the wealthy countries needed to actually ensure that the poor countries were taken care of and a massive fiscal transfer from countries like Germany, and the Netherlands to countries like Greece and Bulgaria a really been Hungary and Poland even countries that weren't, you know, as aligned with the EU at all politically. And then of course, you have the Russian invasion of Ukraine where a country like Poland and Hungary are actually doing the leading, they're taking the
Refugees on the ground, they're deeply concerned about what this means for their security and it's bringing the EU strongly together. But you know, of course it's also happening precisely because there will be a new Iron Curtain and on the other side of the Iron Curtain will not be Eastern Europe. It'll be Russia. Belarus a small rump piece of Russian occupied Ukraine and a breakaway. Russian Republic inside Moldova, something probably no one's talked.
On your podcast before. And that is, that's not a fight. That is a disaster. That is a small group of population, badly treated kleptocratic governance, massively authoritarian and heading for ruin, but with a hella. But but armed to the teeth armed to the teeth and led by Putin. And that's that is when people ask me what's going to happen. How does this end? My view is what it's not going to end. What do you mean end? What's going to happen is we're going to have a much more unstable.
Able Global Order with this really angry sort of Russia fo Empire. That is that has been cut off from the West. Hmm. And and is angry about it that that is. That's where we're heading.
Okay. Well, let me kind of cycle through this morass again because this is a knife, unlike many topics. I touch here. I feel genuinely confused about what I think we should do.
What I think is would be the likely outcomes of Any Given set of choices. We might make and it's just it's, it's uncomfortable to be confused about what is perhaps the most important risk. We run as a civilization on the one hand. It seems to me totally untenable that we still live in a world where a single lunatic, you know, however, amenable to a psychological diagnosis. He might be or not. I made a single autocratic, single kleptocratic.
Eric Maniac, who has less and less to lose when his back is against the wall. Can threaten everyone in sight with death by Fireball? Right? And so we have a crazy autocrat, problem that globally. Speaking, we have to solve the technology is too powerful to have one person who can decide to hold the entire Globe. For ransom is just not a stable situation for us and we
To figure out some way to put that, you know, to close that version of Pandora's Box and I could be convinced. I think that this is the moment to do that, right? That yes, we're running a risk of him going, completely berserk, but he's not a jihadist, right? He's not ideological in the way. That would make him Payton. Leigh suicidal. He's somebody who has been rational or is it apparently rational up until this moment?
And in this frame of mind, I'm thinking. Yeah, you know I the distinction between Lithuania and Ukraine is less interesting to me. Why not really arm the ukrainians, you know, fully why not possibly enforce a no-fly zone for humanitarian purposes. Why not play the edge of this and unleash? A hundred percent of all possible sanctions so that we truly beggar Russia. I mean, the idea that we're still the Europeans are
Find gas from him seems just ludicrous. And why not maximize the chance that there could be some internal revolt against him right away. Maybe this is really the person who would it would solve this problem for us in the entire world is an assassin, right? Maybe we should the assassination game is the game. We should be playing here. And so in this frame of mind, I'm thinking, okay? Abidance Gaffin, you know, talking about regime, change is a gap. I can live with
Write this. Because this is the, the vocalization of what every sane person is thinking at this moment. And is there a path here agree, to make such an example of an autocrat? Right? That closes the door to this sort of thing happening in the future. I mean, if is that one possible path there? Now again, I can argue the other side of this entirely, right? So, which we will probably do, but just give me a reaction to that. Fairly. Hawkish frame of
mind. Well, one, we
We all want Putin out. There's no question. And if there was a way to actually accomplish that, I think that that actually was was feasible and didn't run existential risks. I think anyone in their right mind would be thinking about it. And Lord knows the Russian people have been suffering, you know, in some ways, the most through all of this. And I don't mean in the last five weeks. I mean, for the last 15 years, so, you know, this is not a leader who was in any way fit for purpose in his country. Now, we don't need to talk about
All the problems that American regime change has experienced over the past decades and the fact that the Americans being responsible for such a thing would not be received. Well all over the world but leaving that aside. I let's before we get to what can or can't be done to remove Putin. Let's talk about the initial steps that you mentioned. You said. Well, shouldn't we be? Arming them to the teeth? I think we're coming very close to doing that. The only reason there was a there was an argument inside the White House about these Mig.
Everyone talked about the Polish. Make sure we give them, the Polish makes there was a willingness to do it. It was not because the the the point was we were scared of Putin's response. It was an open question about whether the ukrainians would be able to fly them and secondly, the considered view by the US Administration that they would be knocked. They would be blown up before they had a chance to fly from whatever Ukrainian bases. They would be
be running their sorties out of that. The Russians just have too much control of the air to be able to make that work. And and the view was that if you decide to give the ukrainians after all of this debate, these couple does in Meg's. And then the Russians blow him up. That's worse for everybody. It makes a lensky look weak. It makes the NATO looks weak. So you shouldn't do that. That's that's number one, the amount. I think that the military support that came from NATO should have come sooner and should have been stronger. I agree with you on that point.
I think we were late on it. Part of the reason we were late is because the Europeans were completely unconvinced by American intelligence, that war was coming and the ukrainians, of course were actively undermining it. They were saying, you know, your catastrophists, you're putting us in a box, you're making this more likely to know. Call everyone. Calm down. That was the lenski saying that didn't make life easier either before the war actually started. I think that on the economic side, you know, you said that it's ludicrous.
That the Europeans are buying gas from Russia. I'm going to take the other side of that. I will say that. Let's keep in mind, the Chinese, the Indians. I mean, you know, every developing country around the world is doing some business with the Russians. And in fact, the Indian government, not only just remember our friends, you know, erstwhile allies in the quad, not only welcomed the foreign minister, the Russian foreign minister lavrov to Delhi, but he actually met with Prime Minister Modi was
The hell is that? Like that's a problem, right? While the Europeans are actually doing everything they can? They're the ones who have all of the economic dependence, on Russia. Many of those countries with over 50% of their energy coming from Russia. And they are taking it in the teeth to unwind that as fast as humanly possible. The Germans are saying that they will have two-thirds of their dependence on Russian energy, gone by next winter, and I think they'll get close.
To coming there. They just put an emergency in place that will allow for rationing to start of the German people. No, I mean, we're saying in the US were willing to take higher gas prices, but the Europeans after Decades of ignoring, this problem out of Decades, of of wrongly allowing their policy to become beholden on on core strategic Supply from Russia, which they never should have done. They are now unmask all together, moving away, as fast as they possibly can. I actually think the Europeans are doing
A lot here. And I think the by demonstration is trying very hard to after a disastrous execution of the Afghanistan withdrawal. And after big embarrassment on August and after four years of America First, where the Europeans really didn't think they could trust the Americans at all. I think Biden has actually managed a pretty strong coordinated policy set. Not easy to do where the Europeans are sacrificing a lot more but we are leading.
And if that means that the sanctions have taken a little longer and that means the weapons have taken a little longer. I mean, I'm prepared to make that trade so that addresses I think that addresses everything you were talking about before we talk about regime change in Russia. So
you're saying that the Europeans are still buying gas because it's just not actually feasible for them to zero out their dependence on Russia today. They actually need the need the energy and they can't get it some other
way. They are working as they working so much.
Harder and faster to get themselves out of that dependence than anyone would have expected. And I think that within three years by the end of 2020, for there will be no more Russian energy delivery to Europe and I think I'll be permanent. I think they're cutting it off. I think it's a very, very big deal.
But so that that's definitely in line with what I this half of me. This, you know, Sinister half of me thinks the devil on my left shoulder thinks should happen. And what, you know, why not just simply say, okay you
You broke your relationship with the liberal world order
the West, the
yeah, and there is no path back. Right? Like you're just like it. We, you're going to get out of Ukraine. Eventually. The ruble is going to be, you know, used for toilet paper and we're going to destroy you economically. Europe is going to get off your pipeline as quickly as possible and you don't make anything anyone else wants apart from fertilizer. We're going to solve that problem too. And you are now the new
North Korea. Congratulations.
Yeah, that. So, the last few sentences are where you veered away from reality because they can't become North Korea. They won't become autarchic because they have an enormous amount of stuff that lots of countries around the world will buy. And as I mentioned, the Indian Prime Minister just met with the Russian foreign minister. He didn't need to do that. He did and it's not just India, it's China. China's going to be the largest economy in the world by 2020.
2030 and Xi Jinping. Publicly is fully aligned with Putin's worldview. He's fully aligned with the idea that American policy towards Russia in Europe. Is is analogous to American policy towards China and Asia, right? The quad the indo-pacific strategy, aqus you name it? So you literally Russia will become completely cut off from the advanced industrial democracies.
Of the West and that is it. We had 141 democracies that voted to censor Russia in the United Nations General Assembly, but in terms of support for sanctions, it's only the rich democracies. That's it. That's a minority of the significant minority. The world's population. Of
course, I guess one question there. What, why didn't the alignment with China convince India that they should move toward us here? Because I'm given given India's adversarial relationship with China.
Because these aren't
all coordinated moving pieces of one Global puzzle. The Russians have been selling significant defense component tree to the Indians for decades and that's a perfectly functional relationship. There's a lot of energy Supply that goes from Russia India. Now, they can get a cheaper. The Indians are historically non-aligned that they like being a part of the Quad Visa Vis China, but Russia has never been featuring a part of that, that conversation. And so. And by the way, the Chinese foreign minister just went to Delhi.
And he didn't get a meeting with the Indian prime minister. So the Chinese know the Indians know who they prefer here. And you know, I think the United States has a better relationship with Modi. Then we have in previous with previous Indian PMS. It is becoming more strategic. But remember when the when the when the pandemic hit and the Indians were providing all of those vaccines for the rest of the world that would coordinate with the us then suddenly they had a huge problem and they ask please.
Please send us one plane of vaccines and the United States didn't do it when they had a real crisis. And so now we're having a crisis which has nothing to do with India from their perspective. And we're going to tell them don't buy oil gas and Military component tree from the Russians. They would tell us the screw ourselves. So this is not the not part of NATO and I think it's it's important for from a western perspective. Like, you know, you watch, it looks like the whole world is with us, know, a very small number of Italy.
Vance industrial, democracies largely rich, white people in Japan are with us. We're together on this, but that's it. And that's not the world. It's not even close to the world. It's not even close to the world's economy. Never mind the world's population.
So you don't you don't think the sanctions even ramped up to their absolute loudest. Volume are sufficient to harm the Russian economy enough to dictate any kind of outcome here because there's just going to
To be enough leakage, with China and the rest of the rest of the world, the developing World such that your you can't actually beggar Russia as a result of this.
Well, I mean, here's the interesting thing in, this may surprise you and I'm going to our time. Arguing the other side of my point for a second here, but it's interesting China's trade with Russia. In the last five weeks has actually gone down and that's because China, China's economy has a hell of a lot of private sector companies. And they have lawyers. They have General councils and, you know, they
And trade law, they understand sanctions law. And so they look and they say look, we don't care how how friendly she Jinping is with Putin. A we don't want to fall afoul of American secondary sanctions against us. So they are reducing their exposure to Russia. But what I am saying, what I'm reacting strongly against is that Russia will not become North Korea. They have way too much critical mineral wealth. They have weighed their way to important in terms of Defense.
Port to the second largest defense exporter in the world. After the United States, the world is to divided. The United States is no longer seen as the global policeman. We are not the architect of global trade. We are not the cheerleader of global values. And so, just saying that we want people to do this. We do have the global Reserve currency. We are going to hurt the Russian economy, structurally. I mean, they will be in a depression on the back of this, their GDP will probably contract by 10 to 15 percent at a
Mom. That's a big deal, but you said it, will it will the maximum sanctions be an action-forcing event that implies to me. Will Putin be forced to behave differently in Ukrainian? More broadly. Will he need to capitulate your because of the sanctions? And I think the answer to that is clearly now.
Hmm. Interesting. Okay. So now to talk the other side of my intuitions here, one thing that concerns me about
About any discussion of regime change, right? And therefore about Biden's now, very famous Gaff is that, you know, in so far. I mean, it doesn't matter how rational Putin has been up until this moment if we begin talking. As though, any feasible resolution of this conflict is going to entail his ouster that becomes synonymous with you know at minimum
You know, him being tried for a war crime somewhere or him being yeah, you know hung up by his heels in Red Square by his own people. I mean, there's just you know, there's no good outcome for someone if we're saying, you know, that whatever happens. Whatever happens when this game is over, you Vladimir or not going to be among the players. And so, putting his back that squarely against the wall, turns him into a, you know,
Functionally a martyr, right? Mm. It's like this is he's now not incentivized to do anything other than cause intolerable pain for everyone in sight. And so I, you know, I have a fairly strong intuition that for worried about that. We shouldn't be doing that and we should be building him, some kind of off-ramp and I'm wondering what you think about that. And what what an off ramp would look
like. This is, the, this is why I'm so pessimistic about where this crisis is going is
Because I increasingly don't see a feasible. Off-ramp, any offer a? I see because Putin's misjudgment was so bad on the reaction of the West, on the willingness of the ukrainians to fight on, on the Readiness and capacity of his own military, and he is just as a consequence. He's in such a worse position. The, I don't know what an off-ramp would look like, the could be remotely acceptable to Putin. Hmm. So I mean, look, he's already, he's
He's backed away from Kiev because he can't take it and it is possible that he won't be able to take the occupied territories of the donbas. Remember, he recognized that? Hold on, Boss territory. That's 2/3, greater than what the Russians were occupying after 2014 and what they continue to occupy when the war started? I think the best way to lead to an off-ramp.
Is to not allow the Russians to create facts on the ground that are unacceptable. And so, this is the time to give the ukrainians a lot more military capacity to prevent the Russians from taking all of the Dawn, boss. Hmm. Keep them in the territory that they formerly occupied. They've been blowing up, Maria poll. Now, for almost four weeks. It was a city of 430,000 ukrainians.
It's been completely devastated. Probably 20,000 Ukrainian, civilians are dead and and the Russians have destroyed it, but it's taken them a lot longer and they're still fighting there. As of right now. They're still fighting there. And if, if you can keep that fight going for another week or two and you can show Putin that he's incapable of taking more territory in the southeast of Ukraine. The done Boz. Well, then you kind of have a
The old 2014 status quo, ante plus a whole bunch of dead, ukrainians and destroyed architecture infrastructure. All the rest, but they haven't taken more land. Where if he takes additional territory in the annex. Is it into Russia? You know, it's all it's impossible to restart a negotiations process. Their, it's impossible to at any point, talk about how you get any sanctions removed or reduced. So and I agree that the fact that Biden has called him a war.
Alight, so I it's interesting everyone talks about this statement. He made at the end of the war starts, Pete. Warsaw. Speech is a gaffe where he said, you know, whatever. It was my God, you know, how can this man stay in power? We cannot let this man stay in power. I don't think it was a gaffe and what I mean by that is I think if you would ask by Dan after the speech was over, was he happy? He said it, he would have said, yes. I think the reason it became a gaff is because his overly cautious
Just staffers watching him ad-lib through the speech, and seeing the reaction at got immediately put out a, that's not our policy. And as you know, if you're on defense, you're if you're explaining you're losing right? And I don't think by needed to explain. I thought the statement he made the next day, which was, this was a moral position. That's exactly the way he feels the way he felt. And it's completely consistent with saying that Putin is a war criminal, but when you say Putin is a war criminal, I mean,
You are saying I can't deal with this guy going forward. Yeah, that's been clear.
If this we're going to get this guy in The Hague, if we have the power to do it, like this guy can't show up for a meeting because we're going to arrest him, right? And that's yep. Yeah, so
it's absolutely right. Yeah, so we have right now, we have the Americans and the Europeans altogether, but the farther, we go, the harder it is to maintain that. And one point is that you've got the French government that is desperately looking for an offer.
Any negotiation with Putin at any point on any discussion, doesn't matter how much he's lying. Let's just find a way to get a negotiated settlement. Move this through Biden doesn't feel that way. But I didn't think that there isn't actually an overlap in the Venn diagram between the west and Russia, the Westin Putin. And so there's really at this point, even though we prefer negotiations. There's not much utility in negotiations while the Baltic states and Poland and the United Kingdom actually don't want the war over.
Because they want to see much more damage done to the Russian military and economy. So they can't do this again. And the longer this persists, the greater those latent frictions, which haven't mattered much in the first weeks of the war because we're all just on offense all the time. Trying to put Putin in a box and trying to support the ukrainians suddenly, this Step 2 and step 3 and different approaches to those steps becomes more significant.
And and that's going to make this more challenging to manage precisely because Sam is, you mentioned because, right? It's hard to imagine how this possibly looks from the Putin perspective. Other than I'm on offense, other than I've got to find a way to bloody these guys because they want to take me out.
So then how concerned are you giving the logic there that he is going to escalate to the point of using tactical, nukes or chemical weapons or some other Weaponry, which is just on its face. Totally anathema to the laws of conventional Wars. We currently conceived them and therefore, he would do something that's going to force a response from us. That is now taking us far closer to
Something like, World War 3.
So I mean never say, never obviously in this environment, but I'm that's not what I'm worried about and worried about something else. The questions that you just raised are all
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