Jeffrey Sachs on the Path to Peace in Ukraine

all right so today's event uh the path to peace in Ukraine um we know that um the Ukraine the the Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a violation of international law um it's been brutal it's caused immense suffering um but we want to bring in some additional context um for folks living here in Canada it's critical that we consider our own government's role in this terrible terrible situation um and unfortunately Ottawa has long been hawkish on the one year anniversary uh just two months ago of Russ

ia's Invasion um foreign affairs minister Melanie Jolie declared right now is not the time to talk about peace it's uh it's a time to arm them she said and a few weeks later she called for regime change in Moscow and criticized China's attempts to broker peace so it's becoming increasingly hard to argue that Canada is not de facto at war with Russia Ottawa sent two billion dollars in weapons um to Ukraine's reportedly has special forces on the ground trains Ukrainian forces in the UK and Poland

and offer significant intelligent support um and a few days ago two more former Canadian soldiers were killed fighting near bakmut um the operations uh operation unit fire training mission through that Canada has arguably been in a proxy war with Russia since 2015 uh with one aim of this mission to bring Ukraine um uh Ukraine's military into NATO so as many many have pointed out a central Factor driving Regional tensions is NATO expansion and since the early 90s Canada has pushed very hard to ex

pand NATO and most recently um our foreign minister Melanie Julie traveled to Kiev uh in January 2022 to promote Ukraine joining NATO so we want to find a way out of this and in order to do so we need to come to terms with the history of this war and so at cfpi we're asking that is it a further fueling the conflict Ottawa should push uh to negotiate away out of it and now it is my great great pleasure to introduce Jeffrey Sachs Jeffrey Sachs is a professor and director Center for sustainable dev

elopment at Columbia University he's authored and edited numerous books including three New York Times bestsellers the end of poverty Commonwealth economics for a crowded Planet the price of civilization his most recent book is the age of globalization geography technology and institutions tax was ranked by the economists among the top three most influential living economists and twice named as one of Time magazine's hundred most influential world leaders he's widely recognized for bold effectiv

e strategies to address complex challenges including from extreme poverty Global battle against human to do climate change International debt and financial crises National economic reforms and control of pandemic and epidemic diseases welcome Jeffrey thank you very much uh thank you for that uh wonderful uh introduction not of me which was very kind but of the subject of the importance of understanding the context and of the aggressiveness of the Canada uh as part of a U.S led Alliance I also I'

m delighted to be together with Professor kochanovsky whose work I really admire uh and he has an important part to tell about this just for context I was on the economic advisory team of President Gorbachev 34 years ago I was an advisor to president Yeltsin uh 31 years ago I was an advisor to Ukraine's president kuchma 30 years ago I was an advisor to president yuschenko about 27 years ago I know this story from the beginning this is a story about NATO expansion and uh this is a story that you

will not read in the mainstream media this is a story that the U.S government works overtime to hide and to disassemble and this is most unfortunate uh most governments don't tell the truth about anything anymore but I wait for the United States to tell the truth about anything anymore because I do not believe anything that comes out of Washington these days about this war and much else unfortunately sad to say this is a war that could readily have been avoided so many times because first the So

viet Union and then leaders of Russia said over and over again do not expand NATO to Ukraine is this such a hard concept to grasp I think we should just contemplate if Mexico and China make a military Alliance the United States is not going to say and prime minister Trudeau is not going to say well that's their choice it's an Open Door they can do what they want that's pretense or arrogance I don't know which for sure but the United States has said we don't care what Russia says about what we do

and it is formal NATO policy stated repeatedly our decisions of where we go cannot be influenced by Third countries period so NATO assumes that it can move to anybody's border without complaint or response if you want to know why this war occurred that's it that's the one sentence explanation the rest is details and of course people will say oh that's so wrong Professor sacks what what happened to you are you crazy because that's what I hear from people who read the New York Times each day beca

use that's what they're fed because we're fed stories I'm sorry I was there at these instances I was actually there Professor kochanovsky's the world expert on what happened at the maidan I was there the day after because I was asked to be there by the next government and it was explained to me how the U.S ngos so-called funded the protests on the maidan paid for it oh we'd feel great if the Chinese paid for the January 6th uh demonstrations in Washington we'd say oh that's just fine well the Un

ited States paid for the maidan but you won't read about it in the New York Times so okay we live in a world of lies and the United States is run by confidentiality except when somebody leaks stuff but everything is supposed to be secret so let's just disentangle for a few minutes what actually happened what actually happened is that starting in 1989 and 1990 the United States and Germany repeatedly explicitly represented to Gorbachev that NATO will not move one inch Eastward towards the Soviet

Union if the Soviet Union disbands the Warsaw Pact and you can go on the National Security archives of George Washington University the article is called what Gorbachev heard and just look at it online you'll find about 30 archival documents that tell the truth so the U.S promised no NATO enlargement and you know what I'll tell you a secret among the 427 of us the United States lied because already starting in 1992 there were full plans for NATO enlargement including by the way Ukraine as early

as 1992. I recently spoke with the leading historian who's working through archival materials he explained to me Ukraine was on the list already in 1992. because the U.S is arrogant I'm sorry to tell you another secret if we can just keep it among ourselves the U.S believes it's the it runs the world it's the sole superpower and it can do what it wants because of the American values we can do whatever we want whether it's subversive operations overthrowing governments launching Wars on false pre

tenses bombing Belgrade bombing Libya doesn't matter but don't expect to get the straight story because you won't starting in the mid-1990s there was already a detailed account of what the timeline would be if I can pull up an article I'll try while we're talking I just want to quote you from this big new Brzezinski who laid out uh in a foreign affairs article which is a kind of uh you know way that the Insiders explain to the New York Elite what's really going on and he wrote already exactly th

e game plan uh and I think it's just funny to to read it um let me see if I can find it okay so here's Brzezinski writing in uh 1997 September October issue of Foreign Affairs he says quote accordingly NATO and EU enlargement should move forward in deliberate stages assuming a sustained American and Western European commitment here is a speculative but realistic timetable for these stages by 1999 the first three central European members will have been admitted into NATO by that he means Poland H

ungary Czech Republic although their inclusion in the EU will probably not take place before 2002 or 2003 it was 2004. by 2003 the EU is likely to have initiated accession talks with all three Baltic Republics and NATO will likewise have moved forward on their membership as well as that of Romania and Bulgaria with their accession likely to be completed before 2005. check the box between 2005 and 2010 Ukraine will Ukraine provided it has made significant domestic reforms and has become identifie

d as central European country should also be ready for initial negotiations with the EU and NATO it happened in 2008. in other words brzezinsky's not speculating he's telling you the plan and he's laying out what is going to happen well this plan did not sit well with the Russians they said no do not move NATO to our nearly 2 000 kilometer border with Ukraine do not do it the United States is deaf so first came the first three expansions and then as you heard there were seven under George W bush

uh Lithuania Estonia Slovakia Slovenia Bulgarian Romania then in 2008 okay drumroll uh the U.S insists that Ukraine and Georgia will be members and if you look at a map all they're doing is playing out brzezinski's plan to surround Russia in the Black Sea because with Ukraine and Georgia you have Ukraine Romania Bulgaria turkey and Georgia completely surrounding Russia in the Black Sea that's the plan it's not even subtle so Putin said in 2007 look we want to cooperate we're trying to cooperate

but don't keep expanding NATO because you said not one inch Eastward and now you have it's 10 countries and now it's going to be 12 and then it's going to be 14 and you're surrounding us okay again the United States didn't listen but there was bad luck for the U.S which is the Ukrainian people did not want NATO expansion if you look at the opinion surveys and just go on Wikipedia to take a look because they're all collated in Wikipedia The surveys at each date about 10 surveys large majorities

against NATO enlargement and president Victor Yanukovych was elected and became president in 2010 and he pushed for Ukraine's neutrality and he pushed for Russia to have a long-term lease till 2042 in sevastopol and the Black Sea region where the Russian fleet has been based since 1783. that's a good reason to overthrow him which is what the U.S policy became by the end of 2013. so when protests broke out over yanukovych's delay in signing an EU accession agreement and whether those protests wer

e originally provoked or originally spontaneous I'll leave it to Professor kochanovsky to help us understand but soon they were militarized and paramilitarized by really um violent groups from especially from Western Ukraine and we know from a taped intercept on February 6th 2014 Victoria Newland discussing who the next government is going to be two weeks later and she describes on the tape her Partners back in Washington who are they the Veep that's Joe Biden and the veeps National Security adv

isor that's Jake Sullivan so the team is the same team is in power right now that played the overthrow of Yanukovych now Wendy overthrow occurred I got a call oh come to Kiev and meet the new government and when a government asks I went and when I went the maidan was still swirling with people and they U.S person explained to me oh how the US they were so proud how the U.S had helped finance this uh this uh these demonstrations this was an NGO explaining how much money they had put into financin

g the demonstrations it made me sick by the way to know this the contrivance and the role of the United States in the overthrow okay we're not allowed to talk about any of that so please keep this uh to ourselves it's just 467 of us but you will not read about this at all then we know the war broke out not in February 2022 the war broke out in February 2014. and again Professor kochanovsky is by far the authority on what happened in Odessa what happened in Crimea what happened in the dome bus bu

t already this was Civil War and already by 2015 NATO was pouring in weapons and there was a U.N backed attempt at peace especially the mints II agreement and supposedly Co guaranteed by France and Germany and the ukrainians brazenly this new Ukrainian U.S nato-backed government just said we're not implementing that so they signed it they didn't implement it Angela Merkel said uh a few months ago in a quite notorious interview oh no no it was just to buy time for Ukraine so it could strengthen i

tself well billions of dollars of weapons went in Biden came into office and Putin put forward a draft security agreement in December 2021 that was to be an agreement between NATO and Russia on security Arrangements calling for at the center stopping the enlargement I spoke to White House officials a senior White House official at the end of 2021 I said avoid the war For Heaven's Sake stop the NATO enlargement do you get it this has been the issue all along and I was told never we will never neg

otiate over that issue NATO has a quote open door just like I'm sure we'd say with Mexico if it allies with China I can't say the real word that applies to this because it's not in polite company but this is not grown-up Behavior this is provocation of War so in the middle of January 2022 the U.S formally rejected any discussion about NATO enlargement and if you read the minutes of Russia's National Security Council meeting on the eve of the invasion and the meeting took place I believe it was t

he 21st of February you can see all the statements they're all about NATO Putin opens he says we tried to stop NATO enlargement but they weren't serious and the United States is without any credibility whatsoever and then lavrov speaks next and he describes the negotiating process and how it failed and that the NATO countries were unwilling to discuss the disposition of NATO okay that's the war the war broke out within a month zielinski said you know maybe we could be neutral and negotiation sta

rted in Ankara with Turkish mediation and I spoke to the Turkish mediators I spoke to people who were deeply involved in this there was rapid progress made on the basis of Ukrainian neutrality then one day the Ukrainian showed up and said no we're taking a pause from the negotiations the best estimate given to us by former prime minister naftali Bennett in a very interesting long interview that he gave online a couple of months ago said yeah the U.S stopped it he said I didn't agree with them bu

t they thought that they needed to be tough towards China that it would be a sign of weakness to go along with this honest to God honestly it's worse than five-year-olds and so the war continued the negotiations ended we've had another year they don't care about the lives lost in Washington they don't care even Romney wrote an article saying this war is great Russia is losing Russia's being bled and not one American life is being lost he actually had the stupidity to write that or the the evil t

o write that okay that's the story if we want this war to end we gotta negotiate and it's got to be based on no NATO enlargement there is no other way this war will end why because if Ukraine is Victorious on the battlefield Russia will use nuclear weapons and if Ukraine fails on the battlefield well the whole thing's Moot and the third option is the war goes on forever which is American style Wars yeah sure we can just fight forever if we want peace we actually have to tell the truth which is t

hat there are limits to Nato enlargement and I'm sorry to say Canada is absolutely an accomplice to this and what's a shame for me is I grew up in Detroit Michigan Canada was due south for me so you were my Southern neighbor in Windsor I always regarded Canada as the same part of the continent because I knew that the United States was the crazy part of the continent but I'm not seeing in Canadian leadership now any honesty about this at all I'm sorry to tell you and I've had some interactions th

at I don't like because this is all gung-ho militarism and as Bianca said at the opening uh the foreign minister it was the foreign minister right Bianco who said this is not the time to talk about peace this is the time for war we don't have diplomats anymore ladies and gentlemen we just have diplomats trying to prove that they're warmongers we don't have any diplomats because life doesn't matter it's ukrainians there and the ukrainians well they are suffering beyond belief their government has

gambled everything of their country on the U.S backing it's a terrible gamble I tried to tell them ask the Vietnamese ask the nicaraguans asks Afghanistan ask Libya ask the syrians is it great to gamble with the U.S as your backer not so good thank you very much oh thank you thank you thank you thank you Jeffrey thanks for that totally brilliant and Incredibly clear uh presentation and just for helping us cut through this then um and to understand the historical timeline as well so important in

making sense of all of this um and the call for honesty I'm really hearing that loud and clear um also thank you for going against the grain so bravely um and telling it like it is I think the message is very clear um like you said we gotta negotiate um I found your messaging very a very sober reminder of the stakes um and the Need For Peace so um I do look very very forward to hearing more from you uh during the discussion period q a thank you Jeffrey we are now going to be hearing from uh Yvo

nne kochanovski Yvonne is a University of Ottawa Professor who has published four books and numerous articles including the far right um the euromaiden and the Maiden massacre in Ukraine um the hidden origin of the escalating Ukraine Russia conflict um so so happy to have you here with us uh welcome Yvonne thank you for the invitation it is a pleasure to talk about this issue um this event um but I think this is very important issue and this is a very crucial issue not only to Ukraine but also t

o Canada and many other countries and to many people in other countries so this is also a huge tragedy for Ukraine and ukrainians and as a Ukrainian scholar the Canadian scholar who specialize in the conflicts in Ukraine for a very long time I base my talk brief talk at this event on my academic research which I started since I got my PhD dissertation in the United States and I also specialize in the research policy of Western counties towards Ukraine and other popular countries so my talk is ba

sed on my academic research and uh I think this is a very important to I think emphasize that uh representation of this config in the western media and by Western politicians as Professor Jeffrey Sachs already mentioned is very far from reality and I think this is a I think a crucial issue because I base my research on original data on original sources I published my research in peer review articles and the books so this is why I provide my talk based on my recession original data and I can say

that this war in Ukraine again this Russia launched in February of 2022 was illegal based on false claims of a genocide for influence of Russians or Russian speakers in donbath was it the UK has a Nazi regime so this is was false well claim of course justification of the war by Russian because I studied these decisions again you can it's not near Nazi uh counties has not United government and there was no genocide operations in donbath and there was no evidence that there was imminent attack by

Ukrainian forces in donbath time to check um back this region of Ukraine which was controlled by separatists uh forces at that time which were supported by Russia but uh again uh I as I thought before this was started before the Russian Innovation this conflict which has a very devastating consequences to you can could have been prevented and avoided and it was possible for Ukraine to for instance become a successful country which would avoid Devastation from this war by declaring its neutrality

that you can would join NATO and chances of you can join your native in any case well close to zero in the near future or for the Civil future and this was acknowledged by zielinski this was acknowledged by NATO leadership and by Western counties but public is they did not want to talk about this and I think this was a misopportunity and in exchange you can could have been offered a membership in in the European Union which would promote it you can as economic development but also would help Uk

raine to become a democracy and um such countries similar countries other communist countries like the Poland or Czech Republic or Slovakia or Slovenia would have been examples of such a future development of hurricane in peaceful resolution or politics but this did not happen there was also a possibility of peaceful resolution of this conflict when uh was um as last initially accepted negotiations with Russia and him again agreed to a possibility of such a deal in which you can could have becom

e a neutral country and um and uh Russia again uh was uh basically uh I think According to some information published by Fiona Hill and other sources a western sources and Ukrainian sources Russia would have been agreed basically to repeat or achieve this not from occupied regions of Ukraine with exception of Don pass and Kenya which are announced by Russia so there was such possibility but after a Russian annexation of of uh these regions it became much more difficult to achieve such a peaceful

resolution but at the time this piece a deal in April of 2022 was basically blocked by Western counties because they decided to use you can basically as epoxy to fight Russia or to weaken Russia and I think this is I think very important development which was confirmed by a variety of sources inclusion Israeli Prime Minister that was first reported by Prince capalda a citing sources close to the landscape and so this is I think based on on a very solid evidence which is again not reported by th

e media or omitted by the media and this was a very crucial issue to understand this conflict in this level and this war actually based on my research started with um kind of again without justification it was legal Innovation and War of Choice by Russia by Putin but it conflict between Russian UK and violence between Russia and Ukraine and qualific in Ukraine which became violent started with maidan with the maidan masaka in particular and based on my research and based on overwhelming evidence

which are which was revealed recently by the modern Massacre an investigation in Ukraine this evidence shows that this massacre of modern protesters and the police was palpitated and organized not by the college government and his process but it was organized by elements of the Madonna position in particular finite opposition and origami origami parties which used this false like mafika to uh always thought you know coverage and to again says power in UK and this is I think was very important d

evelopment which is again not reported by Major media and SD media even so there are now testimonies of absolute majority of wounded model protesters there are over 500 Witnesses which report the same similar evidence the forensic examinations there are videos of such snipers which I published as my research the public available data published on in peer reviewed articles which is recently My article was accepted a new peer review article about my drama secretary and Revelations was accepted so

all this evidence is available but uh this is again not reported by the major media and I think this is just one example of misrepresentation of this Crucial Conflict and its Origins and how it was possible this conflict peacefully and also by um Alexander and Kenya was not a Russian region which supported separatists and joining Russia even before again a Russian annexation of this Crimea in particular in the 1990s there was a popular movement in Crimea for joining Russia and public opinion pul

se showed such support because Kenya was populated by ethnic Russians but again this annexation was illegal and international law and afterwards there was also start of a civil war in the bus in another Edition which was the Russian region according to survey data and according to other evidence and it was also populated by antique Russians Russia half of the population was ethnically Russian and um and this Edition uh basically there was another start of conflict uh kind of separatist boy in De

nmark and Russia first indicately supported this war and celebrities in the bus and later they intervened militarily in August of 2014 and invented 2015 and finally this conflicts which also became conflict not only in the UK but also between Western and Russia because Western countries supported the fact was supported violence obvious of the Ukrainian government in 2014 and um you can as a client state of the United States this led again an escalated this Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 aga

in which was illegal which led to a very terrible consequences to you came and I think a kind of a solution to this conflict military solution of this conflict would be very difficult kind of now to achieve is a specifically peaceful resolution of this conflict but maybe the solution to this conflict would be a second kind of would be much more negative in terms of consequences to you can because you can has uh still a big disadvantage in terms of weapons and in terms of community Manpower compa

red to Russia military personnel compared to Russia and Russia can still use nuclear weapons so chances of basically of you can defeat in Russia militarily by and checking back Crimea and donbath are close to zero but this means that if you can would rely on continue to rely on Military of course the possibility of winning this conflict is a very minimal and for this reason I think this is a policy which is would be very negative consequences to you can without any chances of success and this wo

uld mean that I think peaceful resolution is the kind of is there alternative which would be again a uh uh a real alternative which can provide much more would be more efficient to UK and ukrainians in the um in the immediate future and in the long-term future and I think this is again not mentioned uh by the media and by Publications who just Advanced uh military kind of um solution immunity kind of basically humidity or continuation of the wine you can to advance their own goals but this is ag

ain not a realistic option and I think this is why it's a very dangerous um you know development because this country can escalate and Russia can still use a variety of military weapons to escalate this conflict even though Russia is not likely to kind of be able to capture entire Ukraine all 30 of Ukraine but again in the case of any kind of development in UK I think Russia would still be able to keep control over a large part of Ukrainian safety and which again would be for you can would be ve

ry difficult to kind of uh to deal with the future because this would mean a loss of ability and a very significant economic loss and a very significant loss of life because of many very large number of community casualties and also civilian casualties and Devastation in different regions of Ukraine and again a very negative economic impact which has kind of such a situation in addition to this is also very large flow of refugees from Ukraine including to countries like Poland Germany and many o

f them also came to Canada and Canada offers such program but in addition to this there were also a lot of refugees to Russia and finally if I can mention in terms of policy of Western countries towards this conflict I think this policy can be evaluated based on academic recession based on academic sources which already mentioned but also I think it's very important to apply the same standards to Ukraine to policy of Ukraine as um if it would be thank you should be very difficult to accept in th

eir own countries oh thank you so much oh we I thought I thought we lost you but I think we got I think we got it all I think we're good thank you so much um Ivan thank you thank you thank you for that presentation um and for doing such painstaking uh academic work um highlighting the critical history and Regional Dynamics um in the lead up to this four that we don't read about in The New York Times or the Globe and Mail um and thanks also for your um compassionate suggestions about how to end t

his conflict the Alternatives that could benefit the people of Ukraine and warnings against increased military force please do consider getting a copy of uh one of Yvonne's books um they're great resources we've put the links in the chat for those um Yvonne is a Ukraine expert at the University of Ottawa and is doing very very important work and research it's so great to see all of the interest in this discussion um there's over 450 of us here at this live virtual event I think that's a good sig

n please do consider sharing this event on on your Facebook pages it's uh we're also doing this on a Facebook live it'd be great to have even more people uh watch and and get educated on these uh on these issues um so thanks so much um to our panelists um Jeffrey and Yvonne um we are uh now going to head into the Q a we have a little bit of time and um we do have a few journalists who have shown up and would like to ask a question we'll see if we can figure out how this works um Rachel if you co

uld help me um just promote um Michael to a panelist Michael Claussen from Bridge City News um or unmute him Rachel are able to do that yes Michael you should now be unmuted please speak hi thank you very much it's been delightful to hear this conversation um I have two kind of Forward Thinking questions the first one is what do you see as the ramifications of the generational loss of life in Ukraine is this dirt this is this question directed towards Yvonne or Jeffrey or both uh Professor sax I

got that right yeah yeah so well uh just briefly of course this is uh devastating for Ukraine uh because uh millions of people are refugees young people have left uh the economy is destroyed the cities and infrastructure are being destroyed it's it's a catastrophe and when this war started I said to the U.S and I wrote in public that um NATO and led by the U.S will make Ukraine the next Afghanistan uh and by that I meant a country left in Ruins by prolonged war and that's the path that we're on

right now uh of course to save Ukraine we need to stop the war through negotiations not by some military Victory this illusory victory over a country with 1 600 deployed nuclear weapons it doesn't even make sense what our governments say they have no plan they have no strategy they're politicians they're playing until the next news cycle they have no strategy thank you thank you and is that it did you have a follow-up yes one other one and I think it's related uh coming from a Christian perspec

tive the Bible says that every seed produces after its own kind do you see this and what's been happening in financial markets as the sun setting on the American Empire well I think if we're just speaking technically about it we are at the End of the american-led World by by fact uh not not even by these disastrous blunders but simply by the fact that other countries and of course most notably China but not China alone has very talented well-educated skilled uh people with a strong infrastructur

e and strong technology so a country the US with 4.1 percent of the world population should never presume to run the world or to write the rules we are intrinsically in a multi-polar world but the whole idea of neo-conservatism in the United States and that's the government we have right now and it's bipartisan it's Democrats and Republicans is that the U.S is the unique unipolar country and it must resist any potential competitors most importantly China and Russia is viewed as a you know more m

inor Regional threat it's mind-boggling but that is the literal View of Victoria Newland it is the view of her husband Robert Kagan who writes these books that are shocking in their naivete like the jungle grows back the whole theme of which is the world's a jungle the US is a garden and it's the job of the United States to stop the jungle it's gross that's actually and you that is the guiding principles and Canada please think clearly come on you guys are better than that really so please act b

etter than that don't just follow the U.S line into this these uh Wars of trying to defend hegemonic power the next one will be in over Taiwan that could end all of it even this one can end all of it today we took what seems to be another horrible step of escalation if it's true who knows whether it's true or not true but I was just watching the video that the Russian government has posted of Ukrainian drones uh intercepted over the Kremlin wrote to Leading journalists because they said the fina

ncial times wrote this afternoon I can't even make sense of it it said hold on let me see if I can find it because it's so so indicative of of the of the crazy mindset uh oh my God yeah it well they changed it from when I read it this morning now it says if confirmed the apparent attempt on Putin's life and the acknowledgment from the Kremlin would mark an extraordinary admission of Russian vulnerability instead of saying oh my God are we really going to have World War III it was taken all day b

y the financial times all afternoon is well look at this what is you know this is Russian vulnerability there are no grown-ups right now in our governments or in the media that parrot our governments it's I've never honestly I'm 68 I've been through the Vietnam War through the gulf Wars Iraq Afghanistan Libya Serbia Syria countless CIA overthrows of governments I've never seen anything like we're seeing right now and it may be because of this desperation of the US of uh somehow seeing its hegemo

nic rule questioned or it may be that they've lost their minds out of Decades of arrogance I don't know what it is thank you thank you for that commentary um we're gonna move on to the next uh journalist um Alex Kosh from the maple um Alex are you there hello hello yeah we can hear you hi um this is a question for Professor sax um so you appoint uh or to your your plea for Canada to to to see reason and to uh push for negotiations and diplomacy my question is like do you think that even if Canad

a wanted to do that that it would make an impression on the United States and NATO more generally does Canada have the clout to actually make a difference on this issue you Canada together with other countries certainly could help the United States to see reality so uh if Canada and France who I know looks a scans at this but dare is not say so many times the once in a while macron let something out uh Germany India Brazil China everybody knows that this is a disaster but nobody tells the U.S an

d a actually a European prime minister said to me a year ago I said why don't you say something and he said because they treat us like children a a prime minister of a major European country said that to me it still makes my skin crawl I don't know why they allowed themselves to be treated like children the United States is not all-powerful it's can't even it can't put one foot ahead of the next one these days so there's actually no reason but to say you know this isn't working so well we we act

ually need to think through this before the world gets blown up and there is no strategy on this because Ukraine could lose on the battlefield and if it wins it gets destroyed this is and and all we're told the only thing we're told Biden had one minute of honesty a year ago he said we're on a path to Armageddon all the newspapers immediately rose up in unison and said don't talk like that don't ever say that again we're not we're not allowed to say that it's it's unbelievable so yes Canada can

make a difference but not by itself but the fact of the matter is a lot of leaders know this but one by one they're scared thank you Jeffrey Alex um did you have a follow-up or yeah kind of related to that um I mean obviously this this conflict has resulted in new members of NATO being added so in the short term it looks like you know NATO is uh Stronger in a sense as a result of this war but in the long term do you think this war will uh actually weaken NATO standing in the International Commun

ity or will it continue to to grow in your opinion well the the most important thing is to Define the International Community the International Community is the US Canada Britain the European Union Japan Korea Australia New Zealand Singapore those are the countries that are aligned with the U.S the rest of the world is nowhere near this the attitude of the rest of the world is holy what are you guys doing and you're killing us in the interim because we actually have a lot of hungry people we hav

e a lot of problems you've disrupted the whole world economy and so remember that it's 20 of the world is the International Community according to the United States we and then they can't understand oh how could Lula say this how could Lula go to China how could the Saudis say this they don't understand anything about the world that I live in which is the other eighty percent of the world watching this the other eighty percent of the world ain't impressed believe me and they're not standing up a

nd rooting for the United States and what we consider the world or sometimes called the West which is a term I hate for basically because it's such a bad term to describe this but it is essentially the North Atlantic countries that have been the dominant countries for the last two centuries plus the honorary members Japan and uh and Korea um and the Anglo-Saxon offshoots so-called of Australia New Zealand that's it and uh they don't understand that the rest of the world actually has other concer

ns and doesn't want to back a NATO expansion war and doesn't want to live under the threat of nuclear Annihilation because of the unwillingness of Ottawa and Washington to negotiate over NATO enlargement so we're at the top of the hour now I'm going to try and then we have one last journalist Aiden from the Canada files are you there um we'll we'll have to be a little bit brief as uh We've Come pretty much to the end of our time but to Aiden please do ask your question okay great uh can you hear

me yep yeah yeah okay terrific uh thank you uh Nate and Jonah editor-in-chief of Cam files so I have a question for Mr socks so uh the capitals recently we interviewed uh Dimitri lascaris who is on a uh fact-finding trip to Russia and also Canadian Tamara Lawrence uh also went on a fat fighting trip to Russia a few months before that what are your thoughts on the value of fact-finding trips to Russia and understanding their perspective with this conflict as a general matter I'm in favor of all

possible discussion and Outreach of various kinds whether it's academics or cultural or Sports I I don't want to see Russia boycotted in the Olympics I find all of this idea of dividing the world to be extraordinarily dangerous and the idea that we don't talk to our counterparts to be extraordinarily dangerous for me you know fact-finding is fine and good in fact not just fine but picking Biden picking up the phone and speaking with President Putin wouldn't be bad you know even if they didn't ag

ree talk have a zoom together hear each other's points of view but that would require the maturity of maybe a 17 year old I don't know but these are kids these are children the way they behave and it's all bullying shouting taunting humiliating not talking so this is incredible when did prime minister Trudeau last speak to to President Putin and why not Canada's Got Big stakes in this is it just we repeat whatever propaganda we want or do we talk to each other hear the ideas that is my biggest r

ecommendation of all talk I think that is an excellent note on which to end our event today I wish we had more time wow that was so amazing um but that's all that our schedule allows for today um it's been Illuminating it's been important it's also a relief um to have such a saying and uh you know all those sobering dialogue because everything is at stake as we've heard from our speakers and we're not getting the information that we need um so please do share this event with your friends um let'

s do our part uh to move in the direction of peace and to challenge Trudeau's policies which is where we have a little bit of power um I want to thank our audience at home um I want to thank World Beyond War Canada just keep Advocates and writes actions today's co-sponsors thanks to Rachel small for your help but behind the scenes um thanks to Jeffrey and Yvonne for sharing your vast vast knowledge with all of us um and uh and for your bravery um I think we've all learned a great deal and in the

se Bleak times it was it was really wonderful to spend time talking about people so as Jeffrey said and I quote unfortunately there are no grown-ups here um and open poet Canada think clearly please yes um all right so good good goodbye everyone that's it for our program please do consider donating to the Canadian foreign policy Institute at foreign policy.ca donation um every every penny uh goes a long way we're on a shoestring budget um bye bye everyone bye Yvonne bye Jeffrey thank you that's

it for program piece bye