Strength and Deterrence

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Hello, ladies. Hello, gentlemen.
This is the Victor Davis Hanson Show. We are recording on the last day of February, February 28th, in the year 2022.

I'm Jack Fowler, the host, the namesake, and star Victor Davis Hanson, is the Martin and Ely Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Wayne and Marsha Busky, Distinguished Fellow in History at Hillsdale College.

And he is a writer whose copious, copious material comes out every week, can be found at victorhanson.com. More about that later.

Before we begin this podcast, I would like to recommend to our listeners that they catch catch all of Victor's podcasts, but particularly good one from this weekend with Victor and Sammy Wink was from Ukraine to California.

And that was Victor's initial thoughts about what was happening in Ukraine the day this invasion started. But it's day five or six since then.

Lots changed, and we're going to talk about these developments. And we're going to begin with Victor's general assessments right after this important message.

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We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen show. Victor, my friend, a lot has gone on.
We go to bed, we hear, if you're watching cable news, it's will, will Ukraine survive the night? Will Kiev not fall?

Wake up in the morning and see, wow,

they're holding out. The expected 24-hour, 48-hour Russian victory has not materialized.
So, Victor, a few things packed in here.

I would like you, for our listeners' sake, my own sake, would you assess the Ukrainian response to to the invasion? Would you assess it as a military response?

Would you assess the Ukraine's diplomatic efforts to bring other nations around to helping them in their fight? And also, would you assess Russia's military efforts up until this point?

Well, diplomatically, emotionally, culturally, Mr. Zelensky has been absolutely brilliant because we know that there were teams sent out to decapitate the government, perhaps assassinate him.

He's been moving around. He's defiant.

He's sort of galvanized popular resistance.

And you know that's true, Jack, because if he had done the opposite, if he had gone on TV and said, I'm going to follow the, you know, the World War II example of the royal family or something of Belgium and go to England, or I'm going to go over to Poland.

and broadcast, it wouldn't have worked. People would have given up, I think.
And so he was very brave. He was very effective.

My only worry is that they had about 70,000 troops, they being the Russians in November.

And I don't know why Zelensky would say we need weapons when we had NATO and the United States, and he does need weapons. Why weren't we just sending thousands of javelin missiles, SAMs?

heavy mortars,

heavy machine guns, everything to him across those four NATO borders, because it seems like when you see these pictures of these long tank columns and convoys and i may be very wrong here and i want to apologize to listeners if i am but maybe they've been blown up tonight or this morning uh last night or this morning but they seem that the roads are not fully mined or blocked or there's not teams in gullies that are taking these These javelins, Jack, are very deadly.

They cost a couple hundred thousand, about 80 grand a shot. I don't know know why we didn't just saturate the country.
So that is my only misgiving.

The main thing is, though, that being said, it's sort of a nation in arms now, Ukraine.

And I think Putin, it's getting clearer and clearer since Thursday when he went in that he really did believe that given NATO's fecklessness and Americans' experience in Afghanistan and the

10 years of appeasement of him, that he really did think this whole thing would collapse, sort of like he went into Crimea and just took it, or eastern Ukraine, he just took it.

And I think he misjudged that. And now the question is, with all these sanctions and this world response, and he's losing a lot of soldiers.
And, you know, this is the age of YouTube.

Twitter and Facebook. When you see these poor Russian conscript soldiers, they don't want to be there.
And

they will cause disruptions in Russia. And he's on the back of a tiger now, and he can't get off.
And that's if he gets off, he's going, the generals or the oligarchs are going to get rid of him.

And that seems impossible, but it's not impossible if you're an oligarch and you've got $5 billion and you can't take off in your Gulf Stream and fly anywhere. You can't land in Cyprus.

You can't go to the Riviera. You can't gamble in London.
You can't do any of that because of restrictions on your money and airspace.

Or you're in the Russian military and you look at what you've got, and this guy is talking about nuclear weapons, and you look around the globe and you think Israel's got nuclear weapons, France has nuclear weapons, UK has nuclear weapons, the United States has as many as ours and they're better.

What is he doing? And then they look to China and China is thinking, we're just going to be quiet.

and we're going to play this out because we want to see what would be the reaction if we went into Taiwan.

And let's see how much damage Russian incurs from the global financial community, from popular opinion, popular culture, its elite, its students abroad. And is it sustainable? And is it worth Ukraine?

And if it is, when we end today, Jack, if he takes Ukraine tomorrow and he just absorbs the entire country and nobody does anything, then

we lift the sanctions finally and we go back to the gas deal, Taiwan will think, well, it was a costly price, but it was worth it.

But if it continues as it is today, today i think the chinese are going to be really depressed about it victor while i was preparing for the show i i i wrote up this next question and then yesterday came the news about the nuclear threat so let me add the nuclear threat it's less important than than the original question this is dmitry koselyov he is russia's chief propagandist and yesterday he went on russian television why do we need the world if russia won't be in it and talking about Russian sovereigns can toss 500 nukes at the U.S.

and NATO nations and obliterate them. I know you just addressed that, but I just want to put that out there.
That's fresh yet from yesterday.

And then in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, Victor, like day one, where I think most people, maybe even people in Ukraine, thought, well, you know, we may lose this overnight, Putin.

directly threatened Russia's neighbors, Finland and Sweden. And I think that threat may have had a galvanizing effect on NATO nations, even though Finland and Sweden are not members.

But regardless, it seems part of a grander scheme for Putin. It's much more than about controlling the Ukraine.

And in fact, last weekend, there was another statement he made to the effect of this enterprise, this warfare, was about power over Europe. So Victor, he's said a lot of things.

He's made a lot of threats, or others in his name have made threats. So, I want to know what your thoughts about these threats, particularly the ones directed at the North European nations.

And then, Elaine, just one other thing. You have a piece out yesterday in American Greatness.
It's called Putin's Predictabilities. And I think it's a must-read for anyone.

And it gives an idea of what motivates Putin. So, Victor, what about the threats and what motivates Putin?

And is the motivation for him different today on day six than it might have been, say, two weeks ago? Well, it's hard.

I mean, I think people make a mistake when they use rationality and they leave out emotion or his perceived grievances or petulance when they say things like, this can't happen in the 21st century, or we have borders, or

he doesn't know what he's doing, because it's inexplicable. He looks like he's crazy.
But I think what he's doing is he's telling the Russian people, this may or may not go well, but I'm all you have.

You have enemies all around the world. It's preposterous, but he's telling them that I'm not going to give up.
And you better be careful about me because I've got my hands on all sorts of buttons.

And you may not like me, but I'm all you have and I'm all you're going to have. And we're going to, you know, face down the world.
And so that's what he's doing.

The problem that he's having, though, is the world of 2022 is not like 1980 or something when he went into Afghanistan. It's much more complex.
It's much more interdependent.

And people in Russia, especially the elite, have a certain custom expectation of lifestyles that will be destroyed if all of these, not now, not enough to get him out of Ukraine immediately, but if they persist with these sanctions and you can't even get money out of an ATM or the Russian bank exhaust its $500 billion or the government does in reserves, then it's going to take a big hit on people.

And the problem with, I don't know, challenging all of Europe and the United States and its allies, and that includes people like Japan and South Korea and Australia that have been very critical of Putin is that you're creating a mass of hostility that is overwhelming.

And so when he says he's going to pick on Sweden, Sweden hasn't been in NATO, Jack. So in a perverse way, they're much better armed than Denmark or Belgium.

And they have a military complex themselves, and

they're very picky about their territorial waters or islands. And they're, am I sounding too chauvinistic being Swedish?

Because I've been very critical of the Swedes as pacifists, but I think it's a big mistake to take on, to just gratuitously threaten Sweden. At the same time, I mean, look at 1939 and Finland.

The last time the Russians went into Finland, they went in in November and they came out in April and they had about a half a million casualties.

So it's not, those are two countries that are a little different and they're independent now.

And even though they're not in NATO, it doesn't mean they won't side with NATO. And then when you look at NATO,

I know probably get into this later, Jack, but look what he's done, Putin. We've been screaming and yelling about the 2%

promises that all 30 members made and only two had met them. You know, I think it was Greece and the UK finally.
And then Trump went nuts and yelled and screamed.

And we got up to six or seven and they blasted him for that. What little he gained with $100 million and additional expenses he'd lost by throwing away NATO unity.
And then all of a sudden.

They're all lining up behind Germany. Germany, we're all going to spend the 2%.

Of course, they never say the fact that we didn't spend the 2% might have helped Putin invade Ukraine because we destroyed any semblance of deterrence.

But what I'm getting at is he has helped the West arm again.

They're going to rearm a lot, and they're going to get allies like Finland and Sweden that even if they don't quite go into NATO, they want to coordinate even more closely than they have been.

If he can't take Ukraine, the next time he threatens to go in someplace like Lithuania or Latvia, people are not going to listen to him. They're going to say, come ahead.

We saw what you did in Ukraine. So he's taken on more than he can handle.
And he,

you know, Michael Bloomberg said that China was a consensual society. And some of Putin's admirers in the West say, you know, well, he's, he does work with people.

That's true to the extent that Hitler had a constituency or

Stalin has. Everybody has a constituency, but it's not a democratic constituency.
But my point is, he does have this small circle of of rich people and military people and government

the apparat.

And if they feel that he is a national embarrassment, or if they feel that he's impoverishing them, or if they feel they can get rid of him and get somebody else in there that is more sober, they're never going to have a democratic revolution, but if they feel they can get a better dictator that presents better to the world, they'll do it.

And, you know, it's sort of like Stalin woke up on June 22nd of 1941 and he couldn't believe it. And then he went into isolation in his retreat home for about 10 days.

And when they finally came to fetch him, he thought they were going to kill him. And they could have killed him very easily.

You know, they didn't do it because they didn't know who else to put in there. So that's something to take into account.
And we can get into the other questions, but.

I wrote a piece today for American Greatness,

the Crowded Road to Kiev. And there are a lot of players in this matrix that maybe deliberately, maybe by accident, maybe naively created a false picture of Western strength.

And whether it's AOC and the green people discouraging energy or curtailing it, or the NATO pacifists and utopians and the EU people, or the left with this passive aggressive, I'd like to get into that, you know, from reset to reset that he's a warm puppy to he's a mongrel rabbit dog, all back and forth.

Yeah, there's a lot of culpability to go around for this, Victor. Maybe harping on this a little much, but your friend and Hoover colleague, H.R.

McMaster, he was on Fox, I think the day the invasion began. He warned right off the bat that this could likely prove to be the beginning.
of the end for Putin.

And this happened before any of the responses of any of the nations coming really to Ukraine's aid.

So I'm just wondering, would it be impossible to conceive that an inner cabinet, an inner sanctum, have cold, rational people who could have told Putin what I believe McMaster, who's very

not cold, but he takes the facts and he lays them out as they are, would give him that advice, like, this could be the beginning of the end for you if you do this.

Do you think that would be even feasible? Yeah, I mentioned that. I think, and I didn't see that interview, but you know, his office is right next to mine.

I talked to HR a lot, and I think he's got a good point. And his point is that it's not an easy thing to go into a country the size of Iraq.
And he was part of that effort, so he knows.

And he was part of the cleanup crew during the Arab Spring. And I was embedded with him for a while.

And when you go to places like Taji or Pelusia or these other places, and you see how vast Iraq is and how many people are there, and you think of what Ukraine is bigger and Russia really is not only has about the same amount of troops, about 200,000 that are actively in the country.

And so as a military man, he's looking at this and he says,

just because you have some first or two or three days success doesn't mean you're going to pacify this entire country.

And then second, the optics are much worse. You could argue that Saddam was a monster, and he was, and the radical Islamic elements were eager to make it even worse,

and that Saddam had caused wars and invaded countries and had violated all sorts of accords. But it's very hard to make that argument for Putin against Ukraine.
Ukrainians are beloved.

Everybody likes them, even though the government is utterly corrupt, as we saw with its interventions in American politics. So I think what he's doing, Jack, is he's looking at

the military

problem that Putin has. He's looking at the problem of invading a country that has had historic ties to Russia, the same religion.
Many people speak Russian, and he's got a lot of sympathy.

He's looking at all of the geostrategic, and he thinks, you know, this is not going to work as well as he thinks it is.

And then he's taking that fact and he's putting it in the context of Russian hierarchy. And I don't think he would say there's going to be some type of Arab Spring or Green Revolution or something.

I don't know what you'd call it, orange revolution that is going to topple him and then we're going to have a constitutional, you know, it's more like 1918 where the Bolsheviks would hijack anything or something like them.

But I think he's on the right track when he's saying that when you're a dictator and you have no constituency

and a democratic constituency or consensual, you have to be

unyielding and tough, but you also have to give concessions and make people invest in you and overlook your murderousness by giving you more money or more power you know when hitler by 1940 mid-44 hitler was not going out of his bunkers he stayed in and he you know they tried to assassinate him in summer 1944

and there were a lot of assassination plots and he had an absolutely no constituents the only thing kept him going was the generals got together and said,

how do we get rid of this guy when they're they're going to destroy not just him, they're going to destroy us and Germany. And after the failed plots, they said, you can't get rid of him.

The Gestapo is pretty strong. And if we cut a deal, we can't cut a deal.
They hate us so much, the things we've done. So we've got to fight for us, but we're not fighting for Hitler.

And then Hitler knew that. And so he stayed in power.
So I think that's what Stalin is trying to do to the Russians. He's trying to, again, say to them, okay, I may have screwed up.

I've got absolute power. I'm taking on the world.
but at this point, they hate you, Russians, just as much as they hate me, and I'm all you got to protect you. And I don't know how long that's last.

McMaster thinks that won't last long. That the generals, and he's met a lot of the generals, and he's he knows a lot of the inner politics in Russia.

But he believes, I think, from talks I've had with him earlier, and I think now from what you say on TV, he believes that

if he can't deliver the goods, and the goods are defined as a quick, prestigious, overwhelming victory in Ukraine with the addition of, you know, 44 million people in natural resources and gas and richest farmland in Europe, all to the new Soviet empire.

If he can't deliver that, as he promised, then there's going to be people who said, you know what?

If we're going to have a dictator, let's get a dictator who's a little bit smoother and doesn't do stupid stuff like this.

And I was thinking when I say that, Jack, there was a clip yesterday of putin when he had made those threats with his generals did you see their faces of the generals they thought my god what did he just say i'm not gonna i'm not i didn't sign up for this i don't want to go to war against the united states nuclear force i don't want to go to war against sweden and their sab jets or whatever they have i don't want to do that and we can't even win ukraine and this idiot is expanding the the war you know and it was kind of like, you know, I went to a meeting once with a bunch of people in 2003.

And we had gone into Afghanistan in 2001. We'd just gone into Iraq and there was hysteria because it was so successful that three weeks.

And I supported the war, but there were people in the room who said, and now on to Syria. And I quoted a line, you know, from Manstein's, a diarist in Manstein's army.

And when they were on their way, they thought to the Caspian oil fields. And they had even in June of 42, they went right through the Crimea.

That's why it's relevant, taken Sebastopol, I guess, in July. And they were on their way and they said, no enemy ahead, no supplies behind.

And the point was that these Germans knew that they were headed into oblivion, but it looked great.

And I think that's what a lot of people in Washington thought that after Afghanistan, you know, six weeks and then three weeks taking out Saddam, then it was going to go in and get Assad.

And then everybody was going to flock to us. The Renian revolution would happen, and it was just like going to be dominoes.
And that's what happens. And so that's not going to happen to Putin.

I'll just leave you with this thought. Just imagine, Jack, had he taken Ukraine in a week.
I don't even say a week. It's not even a week yet, maybe a day.

He thought he was, like he did Crimea or Eastern Ukraine. Can you imagine what the reaction would be right now? I'm not even sure Germany would have been shipping weapons anymore.

I think they wouldn't be saying, well, there's a pocket of people in Western Ukraine. Let's send, no, because Putin would say to him, you see what happened to Ukraine?

That's what's going to happen to you. And then people would say, I didn't pay 2% in NATO.
I don't sign up for that. Let's get that pipeline working.

So I hate to say that, but I think that's what human nature is like.

The fact that the Ukrainians of all people stood up to him and have lasted this long, have given the cover for all of this moral posturing from Europeans.

They sound like they're back in, you know, fighting Hitler again. Right, they wouldn't have,

they wouldn't have if he'd stalled, right? Well, it's kind of that run to the front of the parade and uh mixed with everybody loves a winner.

Yeah, hey, Victor, that is going to lead us to talking about Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, and we're going to do that right after this important message.

We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show. We are recording on February 28th, Monday in 2022.
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And if you're intelligent, well, you qualify. So now, Victor, back to subject matter.

And we're all exclusive on Ukraine in this. podcast, though we will talk about Germany relative to Ukraine.
So, quote, we need ammo, not a rod.

This was the rejoinder by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to President Joe Biden's escape offer.

And to you, well, I'm making an assumption. To you, to me, I think most of humanity, this showed courage.
It showed masculinity, which is something you're not allowed to talk about anymore.

And I think it showed something that was probably unattended by Zelensky because he's hoping for help from Joe Biden and America.

But I think it exposed exposed a weakness in Joe Biden for having even made the offer in the first place.

Of course, after he made the offer on the day, he took a helicopter as he went off for yet another weekend in Delaware.

So, Victor, to me, a very passionate statement, but it also made the tough guy, Joe Biden,

we've talked about on these podcasts for a long time, take it behind the punch your lights out, smack you, jam my rosary beads down your throat.

It made him look a bit gutless, I think.

So I wonder if I'm putting too much of my Biden disdain into this.

But before you answer and take this on, Victor, which I hope you'll just assess what Zelensky said here and Zelensky in general, we should note there's a poll that shows that most Americans believe that this war would not be happening if Donald Trump was president.

Victor, your thoughts.

You're absolutely right. But before I respond, I wrote something today, just a few hours ago, and it's in American Greatness.
And you mentioned Joe's tough guy talk, right?

And I wrote this, and I didn't, we didn't talk, of course, so we came to the same conclusion independently. I said, now we hear that midterm Biden has played the crisis wonderfully.

The surreal progressive take in this crisis is that Winston Biden has corn-popped the killer, Putin.

He's metaphorically taken the, quote, bully behind the proverbial gym and given him a whompie, slammed his head on the global lunch counter, and in Biden's deterrent fashion called him a chump, one of the dregs, a junkie fat, a line dog face pony soldier, and capped it all off with, you ain't white.

The point is, I think that

all that rhetoric,

all that rhetoric, killer, bully, and then he didn't. ship stuff, you know, Amazon Prime, quick, get over there.
He didn't do any of that. And you know, Zelensky knew that.

Do you remember in late January? It was almost as if he was giving up on Ukraine. He just said, I told him that I think the word he said was imminent.
They're going to invade. They're going to invade.

They're going to invade. He was right.
He was getting intelligence. But finally, Zelensky goes, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

I know my country better than you do. And I think he knew they were going to invade.

And he was angry that this guy was not giving him a express route of weapons, but kept telling everybody they were going to invade while he was desperately telling Putin, if you invade, the world's going to come to our assistance and you're going to be a pariah and the United States is going to help us.

And

Biden was sending the opposite message that, you know what, it's going to happen. Well, if it was going to happen, why didn't he do something about it? He could have said, invasion is imminent.

Can you imagine if there was any other president?

Even Bill Clinton would have, I don't think Obama would have, but Bill Clinton probably would have said, if you invade, there's going to be sanctions and we can start right now if you don't back off.

And I think Bush would have done that and Trump would have done that. So then the other thing is, think about it.
We just said, and I think the world agrees, reflecting the world.

I'm not driving opinion, obviously, but we all of our listeners believe that Zelensky has been an inspiration.

And that's same something because the guy was knee-deep in, you know, American domestic politics, the phone call of Trump, et cetera.

Alexander Vinman offered the Ministry of Defense under Zelensky's government. So we didn't necessarily have a reservoir of goodwill toward the ex-comedian, but we do now because he stood up.

So here we have the President of the United States, and he apparently must have called him and said, hey.

Get on the next plane and we're going to set you up somewhere. We'll fly right out.

And then the guy is afraid that there's going to be rumors and there would be rumors because it would leak all over Washington.

He says, I don't need a ride. I need weapons.
And think about that double-edged point that he was making. He was saying, basically, don't try to ruin the resistance.
I'm the resistance.

I'm the face of the resistance. If I take up on your offer, this whole thing collapses.
Are you crazy?

And if you're going to interfere and tell me what to do, why haven't you given me more javelins and Sams so I can win this thing? So, yeah, it was a rebuke of Biden.

And Biden, you know, we got to remember what he's done.

He was the one that came in and the Russians, who seemed to be fixated on oil in a way we're not, one of the first things they did this January was they went after the colonial pipeline.

I mean, last January, and the hackers, and they apparently understood that oil was a geostrategic asset because they shut down a million barrels in one day at the colonial pipeline.

And what did Biden do? He just copied Obama. Last time the Russians hacked this, Obama said, cut that out, knock that off, I think he said.
And so, what did Biden say?

If you're going to do it, here's 16 entities. Don't do it to these ones.
Be selective. We don't mind this, this, this, a pipeline.
You know, it's dirty energy, but don't do these.

And so, I think after Afghanistan and then pump oil, Vladimir, pump oil, Saudis. I will say that you're corrupt, royal family.
I will say you're murderers. I will say you, Putin, are a killer.

But I want you to pump this filthy, dirty fuel that we sophisticates have in abundance, but do not want to get our lily white hands dirty.

But we want you to do it, and then we want you to deliver it to us at a reasonable price and lower the world price. Can you imagine that message?

It's almost as ridiculous as John Kerry jetting around in this gas guzzling contraption. private jet while he gives that long long long face and says

manufactured face

I don't know what he's done to it. And it's, it's, it's like he's hired some, I don't know, Muppet designer,

a plastic surgeon from, I don't know, Bolivia to come up here and experiment on him. And then he is lecturing.
His chief worry is this could endanger climate change discussions with Putin.

Forget that 3,000 Russian soldiers and maybe thousands of Ukrainians are dead, partly because, partly, but partly because

we

cut back energy development thanks to people like Kerry. The world price spiked.
Putin's flush with over $500 or $600 billion in reserves.

Germany and Europe is dependent on Putin because they went with the Kerry.

agenda, not that it was his agenda, but shared that agenda with Kerry, shut down nuclear plants, shut down coal plants, shut down natural gas plants.

And we in the United States shut down anywhere from two to three million barrels. And so there's a lot of culpability that carry there.
So I'm not impressed with this idea that the left is.

Have you been noticing, Jack, you know, what they've done to Biden? They've done two things to him. Agenda or tactic number one is that, yes,

Obama did experience an invasion of eastern Ukraine. And on his watch, they did take Crimea.

and yes he did go into western ukraine under biden's watch and yes there was a hiatus between 2017 and 2020 but you people you stupid deplorables you chumps you dregs you irredeemables and clingers you don't understand why it requires a sophisticated analysis and the analysis is

that he was getting all he needed from Trump. So why did he go in there?

As if, you know, as I wrote today, he was saying, I guess they're writing that Putin and his inner circle were saying, oh my God, thank God Trump pumped a lot of oil. We didn't want all that money.

I'm glad he crashed the world price. And it was really great that he killed those crazy mercenaries of ours in Syria.
And you know what?

It'll make things interesting that he sold those anti-tank weapons to Ukraine. And you know what? And NATO's a pushover.
It'll give us a little competition if they spend $100 million more in defense.

And the U.S. should, it was about time they upped their defense budget anyway.
They were lackeys. Is that what they were thinking? That Trump, you know.

And then the other thing we haven't talked about finally, do you remember the hot mic in March of 2012? Everybody talks about Obama getting caught. Tell Vladimir that I need a little space.

This is my last election. And afterwards, I will be flexible on things like missile defense.
Okay.

But what they don't talk about were the three elements in that quid pro quo hot mic exchange to Medeved that went to tell Vladimir.

Number one, Obama was asking a hostile belligerent to manufacture a calm to aid his particular reelection campaign.

If you think that Donald Trump's phone call to Zelensky and saying, you know what, you have dabbled with this corrupt Biden consortium, and I'm going to give you weapons, but I'm going to hold it to you tell me what the hell happened.

That was bad. Just think of a president getting caught making a deal with our arch, one of our arch enemies at the time, and then predicating that deal on

lack of deterrence so that

he could benefit from his own election. So that was one thing.

And you know what? Putin did not go in in 2012 and 13, just as Obama had requested him.

Number two, in exchange for that, there was an assumption that after he was, if he said, give me some space during my election, I guess he was saying, you don't have to give me space after I'm elected.

I don't care. So he didn't give him any space.
He went into Crimea and he went into Ukraine. And we didn't do a damn thing about it, number two.
And number three, we did take out missile defense.

We told the Eastern Europeans, we're not going to do it anymore. And we had told Putin, well, It's not pointed at you.
It's pointed at Iran. These people are going to be blackmailed by a nuclear Iran.

We want to get a good system in Eastern Europe. And Putin said, get it out.
Okay. What if we had not done that, Jack?

Right now, what if we had a sophisticated missile defense system in the Czech Republic or Poland or Hungary or somewhere like that?

And when Putin said, I'm going to threaten you with nuclear weapons, at least somebody in Europe would say, well, they've got to get through our first line of defense first.

And so that was a really disastrous thing that Obama did.

And people just broke their backs trying to explain it, just like they're doing now, trying to explain, A, that Biden actually is tougher than Trump and that Trump gave Putin everything he wanted, which is a lie and therefore he didn't invade.

And then, as I said earlier, there's the corn pop Biden that trying to remember which analyst said Biden has performed beautifully.

And that's just a joke, but there's this idea that he's Winston Churchill and he's made that he's made Putin back down.

And I don't know how this affects them, but don't you think there's going to be a lot of panic in Washington when this is all over?

Because I think the analysis by third-party non-political people is going to be, A,

until you get your green nirvana, you're going to have to have a transformational period. And that's going to require inexpensive gas and oil.
And inexpensive gas and oil are good.

for a thousand reasons, among which are we don't have to get into optional military engagements. We can deter our enemies.
Cheap oil allows middle-class westerners to drive and to be warm at night

and to be cool in the summer. And it deprives Putin of foreign reserves.
And we can extract these fuels much more environmentally soundly than can the Russians. And don't you think also

that it will remind Germany of their strategic vulnerabilities?

And if we allow the, oh, take one example, the Cyprus-Israeli Greek pipeline to go into Italy, that that would be valuable, that Biden blocked, right? Jawbone down.

And so that's going to be a casualty of this whole thing. Another casualty is going to be we need to build back better and spend all this redistricting, pay people to stay home from COVID and

not spend it on, I don't want to say defense, Jack, because so much of the defense budget now is lost in social awareness, pensions, but I mean defense hardware, more ships, more planes, more guns, and less woke.

And the era of Mark Milley, I think,

he said a lot of things in front of Congress, but one of the things he didn't say was, here's how we're going to detour Putin from Ukraine. He was too busy talking about Kendi and White Rage.

So there's going to be some casualties. And Germany, of course, when Germany says that they're going to rearm and they're going to meet their 2%, what does that mean? It can only mean one thing.

Everything we have done and all the slanders slanders and smears that we've leveled at the United States as a war-mongering nation, and all the things we've said about militarizing NATO, and all the things about our historical debt to Russia because of our invasion, all that is out the window.

We were wrong. We apologize.
We're completely mistaken. You were right.
Now we're going to do everything you ask us in spades. That's where we are, Jack.
Yeah.

Victor, we'll talk a little more about Germany and maybe America's basement dwellers to conclude this podcast. And we'll do that right after this message.

We're back with the Victor Davis Hansen Show recording on the 28th of February. Victor, so two parts here for me.

One is prompted by something you just said about the cultural impact of what's happening in Ukraine. And visually, to see these Ukrainian beauty queens and grandmothers in the streets with automatic.

Wait, wait, wait. I don't want to interrupt you, but beauty queens, are you suggesting in a very sexist way that Ukrainian women have been famous throughout the world?

Well,

for all I know, these could have been some transgender people. You're talking, you sound like the

16th century Ottoman sultan who said, get me some more harem girls from Ukraine. Yeah, well, okay.

Wrong faith on that one, but that's okay. We'll find another.
But really, it's inspiring, right? This folks in their basements making Molotov cocktails.

And then I think of, you know, these candy asses in their basements, flaccid, I don't want to work here in America. There's even a huge Reddit subgroup about these stay-at-home losers.

So I think it kind of shines a light on this, as we've talked about before, the, you know, the pajama, FTSE pajama boy from Obama ads.

So that's one thing i'd like you to talk about if you feel like it the other thing though is just to wrap up about germany i would argue that germany has significant culpability for what's going on by sins of omission and shutting down its energy industry you know let me just add this if germany reacted not only by increasing its military spending, but by saying, you know what, we're not going to shut down our last few power plants.

I would take that as a hard sign of a correction. Anyway, Victor, your thoughts? No, I agree.
It's amazing the unity of Europe and the United States. I mean, just think for a minute, Jack.

Let's just say that when this thing started, Biden was George W. Bush or Donald Trump, and he talked really tough, and he might even sent the 101st to Poland.
You know what would have happened?

All of Europe would have said, here the United States goes again. We're neutral.
But in a weird sick way, because Biden was weak and

was taken advantage of, the Europeans said, oh my God,

there's no Trump. There's no, we're on our own.

This guy is right in our backyard. And the United States isn't going to do much at all.
And we better do something.

So in a weird way, and that's what happens in life, the laws of unintended consequences. You know, Trump's problem was that he understood that, but he was too loud.

You You know, he kind of telegraphed where Biden is in la-la-land, so he didn't, and Trump was Machiavellian, but Biden is sincere. He doesn't care about anybody.

And so, you know, he just goes to Delaware and said, well, it is what it is. But the point is the Europeans are suddenly now talking about defense.
They haven't talked like this in 70 years.

And unity. And can Germany help Poland? Can the Hungarians get together with the French? You heard Macron said, I couldn't believe it.
Macron, Macron, he sounded like Charles de Gaulle.

When Putin was ranting about nuclear, he said, I want to remind Putin that NATO has a nuclear deterrent, the force de Frappe of France, for example. I think they've got 90 to 100 nukes.

Britain probably got 250.

And we probably got... I don't know, 6,500 of them, and maybe 3,000 are deliverable.

Remember Obama, the two of them wanted to reduce our deliverables to a very small number, but we didn't do that, at least entirely. So, yeah, it's brought a lot of unity to the West.

And then here in the United States, it's very interesting when you listen to these analysts. They go on TV and conservatives have a different take than liberals.
Liberals are trying to,

you know, scramble like a squirrel in a cage, trying to say, we didn't appease him, we didn't appease him, we didn't appease him.

And our Green New Deal had nothing to do with this, nothing to do with this. And the 3 million barrels wouldn't have made any difference.
I know they wouldn't have made any difference.

And a military that is woke and know, it's socially justice is much more efficient.

They're just trying to spend because they know their culpability, but they still, they're still, and the people on the right saying, we don't like that SOB, Putin. And we understand

that

we enhanced him and empowered him with appeasement. You guys did.

And

he has a legitimate critique against Western decadence, but from a Hitlerian point of view. But that said, he's an SOB for going into Ukraine, and we're going to stop him as much as we can.

I think that's the conservative position. We're not going to send troops, which none of our business in their backyard.
But

he looked at the weakness and the decadence of the West, and he took advantage of it.

So we're going to make sure we're not decadent anymore, and then we're going to deter anybody like him who tries to test us. Okay, but there is a unity there, and I'm really surprised.

You know, you listen to people and say, hey, can you imagine that the former Warsaw Pact, they're sending their old MiG jets, they're offering them to Ukraine.

And then some analyst gets on TV and says, well, you know, that this is very smart because unlike the F-15 or 16, Ukrainian pilots are acquainted with MiG capabilities. This is an inspired move.

And another guy gets on. And there's kind of everybody's chipping in around the globe the longer that Ukraine wins.

It reminds me of a football game for the NFL championship or semifinals or something. And

the underdog is in the first quarter and it's like 21-0 and everybody starts leaving. And then some little quarterback scrambles, those won and then this and this and he fight back.

And then everybody is out in the parking lot and they go, oh, let's get back in.

And they start coming back into the Coliseum and they start, you know, they

put away their differences and they're inspired by this. this underdog and that's what's happened.
As far as Germany, they're guilty of sins of omission and commission.

They went whole hog and surrendered the government over to these green fanatics.

They destroyed perfectly safe nuclear plants, natural gas plants, and they thought that they were going to disguise that agenda by all of this public weeping and apologies.

I don't think the Germans apologize for anybody anymore.

They should remember what the German foreign ministers told the Greeks when, you know, after the 2008 meltdown, they weren't very very sympathetic.

So it's not as if they're known as a contrite people, but this idea that they went over and told everybody, well, we invaded Russia, so we have to help the poor Russian people.

So we allowed this $1 billion a day payment to Putin. And what the real...

The real answer was, is somebody in the German government said, oh my God, these green people have made energy so damn high and people can't warm their homes.

And Germany is not known for sunny days or it's not going to work with solar and Mercedes and BMW and Porsche will not be competitive with world automakers if they've got to pay this price so we need some natural gas we need it cheap and we need it from Vladimir we'll then put the cover or all of the apologies up there for the fact that we don't give a damn about NATO and we don't give a damn about Western solidarity, but we screwed up with our version of the New Green Deal, and we're not going to suffer world market loss because of it.

That's what happened. And the second thing, what happened is there's 30 countries in NATO.
I think six or seven

have met because of Trump the 2% investment in defense each year out of their budget. Germany hasn't.
It's about 1.4.

But the most important thing we got to remember is that because Germany doesn't do that, and because it's the second largest country in NATO by population after Turkey, but it's by far the wealthiest and most powerful on the world stage, it's intimidating people.

So it didn't just say, we choose not to do our one point, we're going to do 1.5, 1.6, 1.4 some years. We don't want to make the two, but you know what?

Anybody else that wants to meet the two, go ahead. It's no problem.
No, it didn't do that.

It sent out the message that this is what we're going to do, and this is what you should do and you should do and and they were almost subversive in nato so that was a really bad thing they did

and they all cloaked it in anti-americanism and anti-trumpism and then finally we have these pew polls and various international polls and i kind of beat that horse to death that show that the german people

this is why the leaders do it in a democracy the german people have a negative impression of the united states we don't poll 50

it got worse under trump but it started with with Obama and Bush, Bush during the Iraq War, then Obama, when he kind of spied with the CIA, supposedly spied on German cell phones of their leaders.

And then there was Trump who lectured Merkel right away about,

I don't think he used the Obama term free rider, but it was, I think he deadbeat or something. And they don't like us.

And they fact, actually, when they ask polls, would you like to have closer, warmer relations with Russia or the United States? They all polljack pro-Russia. Think of that.

And so then we have these 30,000 troops still in Germany. Many of them or most of them are combat troops.

And we're supposed to say, hmm, we've got a bunch of guys from Illinois and Wyoming and Ohio and Alabama. And they're going over there in Germany and they're armed to the teeth.

And they're doing that. Hmm, for what reason? They're doing that to protect the Nordstrom pipeline from Russia?

No.

They're doing that so that Germany gets help after meeting its 2%

no.

They're doing it to protect from whom?

And there's no purpose there. They should all be in Poland or Hungary or Romania or something.
So yeah, it's

ridiculous what Germany has done. And we've got to really rethink NATO.

We've talked about what's going to change, you know, with the woke movement and all these ridiculous green moons, but NATO shows in this moment that they know the answer organically, innately, intrinsically, even though they haven't done it.

But when push comes the shove and there's a Russian that might go into their country and they know what Russians are like after the Cold War, they know that you've got to up defense and you've got to stop this crap about windmills and solar panels can get you through to, as I said, to green Nirvana.

And they start to arm. And they'll go over the 2% if they think they have.
They have the very wealthy continent.

They've got to GDP the entire continent more than we do and so they can do it and so that that's going to be very interesting because i think we're in a position not biden but if we had a normal president we would be in a position to say thank you and don't you agree that countries among the 30 who do not meet their two percent obligations as they promised are deadbeats and therefore they're an albatross around our neck and that they create exposure to us under Article V provisions.

If they get attacked or invaded, we've got to come to their aid.

This was Trump's point when they asked him, you wouldn't come to the aid of anybody who didn't pay. And he said, no, that was a little extreme.

But I think NATO is going to say to them, okay, you don't want to make the 2%,

and yet you want us to drop our cappuccino cups and get in a tank and drive across the border and protect you from Russians. Why don't you do the following? Why don't you join Austria?

And they have a provision since World War II, they can't be a NATO or go join the Swiss and be happy with it. Just be like that, but get the hell out of NATO because you're nothing but trouble.

You don't contribute anything to our mutual defense, but you do create a lot of headaches by having greater exposure.

And, you know, it's kind of like a person who's a real estate guy and he's, he, he brags that he's got 30 houses.

And then he goes in to see his accountant and the accountant says, that's very impressive. You've got 30 properties.

He uses the word properties to sound very professional, but he says, hmm, this one's in a really bad neighborhood. And the upkeep is more than the rent.
And this one, the guys that haven't paid rent.

And when I look at your 30 properties, 25 are liabilities. You only got five winners.
So you've got to work with the five and get rid of the 20. And that's what they tell you.

And so that's sort of what NATO is like.

And I think there's going to be a lot of changes.

I think that the left right now, Jack, is paralyzed and terrified because they're starting to see this matrix, this exegesis starting to emerge as Ukraine both survived and yet was attacked.

And they're starting to see that there's certain elements, pieces of the puzzle that are coming together and they don't like it.

They're starting to see that a weak president without deterrence invites hostility after Afghanistan. And Biden did.

And you're starting to see you can't beg the Saudis and the Russians for energy that you have and you won't produce.

And that is a contributory factor to this inflation that's right before the midterm. They're starting to see that this new Green Deal that AOC starts lecturing the country.

They're starting to say something like, wait a minute, this person is like 30 years old and she's telling us what to do. She doesn't know anything.

And why did we listen to her and where were those three million barrels they'd help right and so and then they're going to try to say you know we support nato but if if nato agrees with everything we used to tell them when they insulted us as warmongers and cowboys and now they're doing exactly what we told them then maybe

we were right and they were wrong. And anybody who believes that the EU and NATO were the rejectionist NATO powers and the EU idealists were wrong or crazy.

So I think it's really going to hurt this utopian left. I really do.
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's easy to connect the dots.
You go green and you're going to get war.

I mean, that's essentially what's happened here. Victor, by the way, you mentioned Austria.
You also mentioned Germany and certain inability to admit mistakes.

And I got to say, as a guy that ran these national review cruises, riverboat cruises through Europe on a number of occasions. I mean, I like going to Austria.
I like Germany.

But if a waiter dumped a hot soup on your head, they would never, ever say, I'm sorry. There's just this like cultural inability.
Well, I have to say,

I've done 16 tours that I planned, but I couldn't do them without my partner, Al Philip, from Hillsdale.

And he is an anti-Austrian Austrian. And you've got to remember one thing about Europeans.
It's certainly true of the French.

If you go to France and meet a conservative or you meet a French conservative, they are better than any conservative in the world.

I mean, think of Ravel and all these conservatives that came out of there.

And when you meet an Austrian conservative, entrepreneurial person that loves the United States, they love it more than anybody.

So, in my case, I have really benefited from Al's friendship, Al Philip, because,

my God, he's a wonderful guy and he doesn't represent.

And well, one other thing, when you get an Austrian to talk about Austria or a French conservative to talk about France, they give you a more detailed critique than you can ever imagine.

It's really amazing. And I know that European conservatives are not with us on guns and anti-abortion issues, which are very important, but on all the other issues, your main thesis is correct, Jack.

I just wanted to ask a picky uni, scholarly.

pricky little objection to a minority in Europe that when they are pro-American and pro-capitalist and pro-constitutional government and suspicion of government, they do so with a passion and a knowledge that's really valuable to us.

Well, I stand corrected, which is something that happens about a dozen times.

So, what you're supposed to say, Jack, is that they do pour sue, but they do it on particular individuals that have attacked the United States or something. Maybe that's it.

So, all right, well, let's wrap this up by staying in Europe. And to our listeners who leave ratings at iTunes, thank you.
We recommend five. Victor's worth 10, but five is the most you can give.

So that's on iTunes. Hey, no matter what you listen on, thank you for listening.
We have many comments that are left on iTunes. We do read them all.

Here's one from one Centurion, and it's titled Tremendous Wisdom and Eloquency. I didn't know, maybe there is a word eloquency.
Anyway, quote, I am a former U.S.

resident now living in Norway, the land of the Vikings, although there is not much Viking spirit left in the population, I should add.

I start every day with a cup of English tea and the latest podcast from Victor, if available. Once completed, I feel whole and ready to face whatever challenge everyday life throws at me.

I've just started on The Dying Citizen, a highly recommended book for any defender of Western culture. Mr.
Hansen is sharing tremendous amounts of knowledge, wisdom, and common sense.

He is simply a blessing to anyone seeking to expand one's horizons. Thank you very much.
That's one Centaurian from Norway. Thank you, one Centaurian.
And thank you, everyone else who.

Could I add one last thing, Jack? Yes, it's your show. You do whatever you want.
From your Norwegian friend. You know, I have downplayed my Scandinavian roots.

You know, because when I was a kid, my dad made us buy these decrepit used volvos that looked like ladybugs. And I drove one.

and he put all the parts in the back i mean it broke down all the time and we had to eat swedish fry crackers. And I do have nice memories of my Swedish grandfather and speaking Swedish and all that.

But I thought it was a little much. My dad would say, of course, this is Swedish steel.
I thought, okay,

this must be better than the other steel. Or he'd say, your car didn't get dented, Victor, because it's made of Swedish steel.

of our, you know, we're going to have blood pudding. And I don't know what other things we had to do.
Oh, now we can fix an electrolux vacuum cleaner cleaner ourselves because it's a superior product.

And then we would, he'd try to rewire and it would electrocute us almost. But anyway, he was a wonderful person, but he was very proud of his Swedish roots.

And I guess I grew up in the period of, was it Olaf Palm and all the anti-Americanism and the Swedish, but in this age of identity politics and everybody's going tribal, right?

And I don't have any tribal affiliations. I come a Mongol.
The Davis side of my family were Welsh.

and then I have the Swedish side, and I think I'm going to start to go tribal and start to claim that I'm a Scandinavian because I kind of like what they're doing now. Yeah.
I mean, they're tough.

The Swedes said no, and they remind me of Eric the Red and Leif Erickson. And I'm going to get into the 1619 debate and say, wait a minute.

America started when Leif Erickson came here and the Swedes and the Norwegians and the Danes. So I feel now that I'm going to be starting to hyphenate my name somehow.

I'm going to take my C for Victor, and it's going to be a K from now on, Victor, sort of. I don't know if that's quite Swedish.

And I'm going to put maybe two S's on Hansen. I don't know what I can.

I'll have to consult my Swedish friends how I can have greater authenticity as a Swede, but I'm starting to get proud again of something.

Well, maybe on the website, you can post some reindeer soup recipes or

something to the cow horn.

All right. I think

we've had about enough. Hey, everyone, thanks for listening to the Victor Davis-Hanson Show.
God bless. Thank you.