How America's Actions Impact the Rest of the Western World | Victor Davis Hanson

the views expressed by the Brits and by the Australians was more please America understand that Beijing is watching to see whether we have the willpower to stay the course with Ukraine because that will influence their thinking about whether they can safely do something on Taiwan yes now you will have heard that debate played out and I'd just be interested in your your your views on it well I can't speak for the Trump people but I have know some of them and I read what they've said I've talked to some of them and I think their position is the following if I could extrapolate or maybe it's impressionistic they feel that Russia with 30 times the territory 10 times the GDP three and a half times the population is going to wear down Ukraine and it's become a Verdon or the PM and to win you would have to arm Ukraine and traditional military strategy would say that they have to preempt they have to go into Russia and bomb Supply Depots On the Border uh bases oil insulations if they want to win and to do that against a nuclear power like Russia and under Putin would be very dangerous for the world in general so then they say what is the plan is the plan to have a a four year three year 5 year some 25% of the population of Ukraine is left and so is there a mechanism to deter Putin and stop the war and that's what they're searching for and I think what they kind of said is something along the following the larger that NATO gets the more vulnerable it gets because it has exposures where people in NATO will not flock to go so if they if they were in NATO somebody having capuccino in Florence is not going to run over to Ukraine and fight Russians and that's what they're worried about so what they have said is let us arm Ukraine to the teeth and Trump did give them offensive weapons in a way that Obama didn't dare and Biden held that himself when he came in for a while and let them be armed but not put them in NATO and then number two there is credibility on the D G and Crimea in the sense that no American president once Obama gave them up by not doing anything has said it is the it is the strategy or the policy of the United States and its allies to make sure in 2015 16 17 18 19 2020 21 22 to get back Crimea by force of arms and dboss to their rightful owners no one said that not OB Obama not Trump not Biden they have said that now and so a lot of the Trump people say the following if we could negotiate the future of the disputed donbas and Crimea that have 70% Russian speaking people that I have a feeling my own feeling is they don't want to go with Russia but who knows and there would be some way to adjudicate that or Putin if he Incorporated them he would we would be no worse off than he did before then the question question is well would you reward him well he's already had them since 2014 and he could say to his people I I lost 600,000 dead wounded and missing because I got an institutionalization of what I stole okay but I they're not in NATO and then Ukraine could say we're going to get him back to where he was on February 24th of 2022 and we're going to be armed and I think that's what their position something like that is and I don't quite see that's it's not surrendering or Ukraine it's giving them enough weapons to protect themselves but a lot of the anger of the Ukraine war is the priorities of the people that are advocating it and they're advocating things like we have to sink the black seat Fleet we have to go in and hit Russian supplies and there's no consequence they never say well Russia will do this or that they said no no no they won't they'll never do that we've had about 11 people as you know in the Russian Parliament and I wrote about it in the end of everything that have advocated using tactical nuclear weapons and that that's been dismissed it's completely a a joke I'm not sure that it is and you know there's this asymetry here in the United States we we hear that Israel must be proportionate it cannot act disproportionately and yet disproportionality as you know John is the only way to win a war and yet we're told that Ukraine must be disproportionate they just can't Tit for Tat they've got to go in there we're told that is Israel must text people they must drop leaflets and they must avoid civilian casualty that's a good thing nobody ever tells zalinski hey when you go in and attack with your drones and missiles Russian sites make sure you text all of the civilians in Crimea the DB they don't do that much less do they do it when they send a drone into to Russia they don't do that and they say to no one would ever say to Mr nyaho if it gets tough you can suspend elections and declare martial law you just have to do it but we take that as an obvious thing with Ukraine so the Trump people look at this and they say why don't you just apply the same standards unless you think that what Hamas did on October 7th is not uh a doesn't give them the right that what Putin did to Kiev but maybe they do believe that I don't know but they're saying why don't you just apply the same standards to both Wars and yet we have people on the left that want to go to war with Russia over Ukraine but they also want to stop the IDF from punishing The Killers the the machine that killed people on October 7th so and all of that gets messed up into the the nomenclature of isolationist or realist or something but I just look at the period of 2017 to 2021 and I know that Trump said some crazy things and seemed isolations but when I actually look what he did the world was so much safer with ir Iran was in its box the houthis were in its box Hamas within their box uh Putin didn't dare go in there South North Korea was not uh doing what they're doing now and when I talk to people that come to the Hoover when I travel from those countries they tell me that they don't want to be quoted they don't want to discuss Donald Trump but they felt much safer when he was president than Joe Biden

Channel: John Anderson

Views: 104,482

Keywords: John Anderson, John Anderson Conversation, Interview, John Anderson Interview, Policy debate, public policy, public debate, John Anderson Direct, Direct, Conversations

Id: pP5FK_kg9jo

Length: 7min 18sec (438 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 10 2024