How war in Ukraine will end | Dave Smith and Lex Fridman

0:03 if you make everybody monsters and they're not human beings well you can't do diplomacy with monsters You can't make a deal You can't negotiate with monsters but you can with humans And like you know I'm sure there are you know like to our earlier discussion like maybe there are times where you're not you shouldn't negotiate or you can't negotiate with humans but it's better if you can and and we could use a lot more of that thinking Can we take that idea and uh move to the war in Ukraine sure What do you think is the path for peace there well I think what Trump is pursuing is like infinitely preferable to what Biden was doing You know what puts Donald Trump and and I don't think everything he's done has been perfect Um and I really did not like that mineral

0:50 uh deal that he was floating out for a while there I I think maybe that might be the best thing that came out of that Oval Office thing is that maybe that you know Donald Trump goes it's going to be very tough to do business like this and it's like yeah we shouldn't be doing this business deal anyway Um but and and by the way I don't think we should do it on a few re number one principally I think it is kind of like bullying Ukraine out of resources and I don't from what I understand they don't even have that many like fine minerals but whatever Um but it's also like well look if he's he was selling it to Zinsky is that's kind of a security guarantee you know cuz like hey if we're in business then if Putin messes with you he's messing with us But from my perspective like that's the whole point is you don't want to get into the business of giving out security guarantees I mean this is a real This is why George Washington was

1:35 against entangling alliances Like you give out war guarantees to too many places you might have to fight a lot more wars than you otherwise would have fought And also like there's simply we're in this weird position where America postures like they're so tough but really when it comes down to it we're not going to war in Ukraine There's no political will here Like I'm sorry Try to convince the American people we should send our boys to like I understand you're from the region but like for you or you have roots from there but like to the average American the idea of going to war over whether Luhansk is ruled by Kiev or Moscow is just they they don't even know what Luhansk is and if they met someone from there they would probably just assume they were Russian you know what I mean like they and they might be but whatever I think the first step to a path to peace is that you have to want to get a

2:22 path to peace so I think Trump's doing a good job in that do you think all three sides want peace from what you understand Obviously Trump legitimately fully with an urgency wants peace I think for sure Trump wants peace I also think Putin wants to wrap the conflict up And I think that Putin has Putin has been willing to deal for the entire leadup to the war and pretty much throughout the war And there's been a lot of solid reporting on this And I mean the sources on it are pretty impeccable the the head of NATO Stalttenberg I always mess up his name but he literally said that in late 2021 that Vladimir Putin actually sent a draft agreement to NATO and that his condition

3:08 for not invading he's like I will not invade but you have to put it in writing like he sent a a draft treaty to them You have to put in writing that Ukraine will not join NATO And then uh Stlenberg bragged about how he said no because we we won't let Vladimir Putin dictate to us whether we can expand NATO or not And then he was bragging He was like and look what he got more NATO expansion Finland and this and that So look at that And didn't even seem to notice like that Wait a minute You're admitting that you could have just promised not to bring Ukraine into NATO and saved hundreds of thousands of lives Seems like it would have been a much better deal It's it's going to be a much better deal than what Ukraine will ultimately end up getting So I do think I think uh also the Joe Biden's CIA director who was a CI CIA director's whole four years

3:56 uh uh William Burns uh when he was ambassador to Russia he wrote the net means net And in the memo and again this was dumped by Julian Assange This wasn't for the public This was just him writing to Condisa Rice to tell the secretary of of state his assessment And he said that his exact words were a decision Russia does not want to have to make And this was the decision about whether to invade Ukraine or not And he was like they say if you keep pushing for Ukrainian entry into NATO this could lead to a civil war And even worse and in that situation Russia would have to decide whether or not to intervene A decision Russia does not want to have to make So essentially it's like I think it's pretty clear from all sides that Putin didn't want it to come to this And and look I mean even after the coup in 2014 he he took Crimea

4:44 but he didn't invade the country I he sent he may have sent special forces in but I mean not the full-scale 2022 invasion And even for the civil war going all that you know he did it seemed like he I'm not defending the decision I'm just saying it seemed like he reluctantly uh debate you know what was it in 2014 or 15 when they had the plebbeites in Crimea and in the Donbass region and they voted to be independent He didn't take them then I mean he could have used that as a pretense for like hey they voted to be with us and he didn't I think he wants to end the war Zalinski from everything he's said publicly seems like he still feels like uh I mean I'm just taking him at his

5:29 word here that it's like well no look like we could end the war but we got to end the war It seems like he's moved from his position being like no we have to reclaim reclaim all of our territory to now his position is kind of like all right maybe we don't reclaim all of it but we got to be given some type of security guarantee in the future I think the problem with that is just again like I don't mean to be cruel about this because like it sucks that there's little countries that are next to big countries that kind of get bullied around about them but there also is a bit of an entitlement to demanding a security guarantee Like what exactly do you mean from America what that will go to war if you're invaded why are why do we owe that to anybody like that's crazy

6:14 I'm sorry You could just sign up to say that we'll go to war if anybody invades anybody I mean I hope nobody invades anybody but that I don't want us to get dragged into that That's a recipe for always being at war you know and I don't think that's right for our country So essentially I think Trump and Putin want peace and if that's the case I think we'll ultimately get to an end of this war So there's a lot of stuff to say here Let's actually start at the at the beginning at the foundation of this I think the thing that we left unsaid uh that's important to say is that Putin invaded Ukraine in uh February 24th 2022 And I think he is at least from my perspective the person who started the

7:00 war You could talk about NATO expansion You could talk about any other thing that led to it You could start at the collapse of the Soviet Union You can go all the way back as he did thousand years The reality is and this goes to our like deep discussion about the morality of war no matter the reasons the guy that like pulls the trigger first non-acally and keeps pulling the trigger that's the guy who's at fault Oh I I agree I'll say one standard like one standard for everybody The standard that I laid out before is the same one I said It's like did you absolutely have to do that you know once you start killing people by the hundreds of thousands it's like was there any other option are you telling me like you

7:46 absolutely had to do this um and I don't think that's right You know my my friend Scott Horton who I was talking to you about um who just totally brilliant guy even in his book there's a whole chapter of all the other options of what Vladimir Putin could do So you're absolutely right And there's a weird thing where like people say um like if you say that the west provoked this conflict that is a very different thing than saying that this conflict is that this invasion was justified And in in the same way that like you know if you if if you were at a a bar and someone goes and spits in another guy's face and then he pulls out a gun and murders them right there Like he's not justified in doing that That that is not okay You don't get to murder someone because they spit in your face Also if you were talking about like why

8:32 did he murder that guy i'd be like "Oh cuz he walked up and spit in his face That's why it happened." And that that is essentially my contention about this war And it is I I think it's just crystal clear that that's why it happened And listen it may be right or it may be wrong Um but if China or Russia ever like backed a street push to overthrow the democratically elected government in Mexico and then install a pro-Chinese or a pro-Russian government and then started pumping arms into that conflict and then kept floating out the idea that they were going to bring them into their military alliance DC would simply not allow that You cannot do that any more than the Soviet Union could put nukes in Cuba Like sorry That should be

9:18 said that that's really cold war 20th century in Yokoon thinking right it is the way the world works But like that's you should still punish I don't think outside of the neoonservatives I listen whether you're talking about the neoconservatives or going way before the neo any other group that has ever had control of US foreign policy going back to the um the cold warriors the Truman administration the Eisenhower administration I think you could take this back to Thomas Jefferson if this happened in 1801 there is simply no way that they would allow a foreign great power to come bring our neighbor overthrow their government and then bring our neighbor into their military

10:03 alliance I think there's no great power that would ever tolerate that First of all we're in a post-nuclear world right so meaning post there's nuclear weapons So the threat of somebody being on your border is just not the same kind of threat when you're a nuclear power which is why you know you look at Finland No I think in some ways it's more it's more of a threat in some ways Well he's not there's Putin is not upset about Finland joining NATO nearly as much Look I'm just saying to Vladimir Putin in his own words what his issue always was was the military hardware that comes along with NATO membership It's not just that you get into NATO but then you get all that military hardware there And he made a huge deal about the dual use rocket launchers in Poland which George W Bush put there after 9/11 So I think all of

10:51 those things are factors I think Ukraine the Crimea being their only year-long warm water port I think there's like several you know like elements to it But I do think a huge part of it is that there also the country's been invaded through Ukraine uh multiple times And so there's just Yeah it's it's he I think very reasonably within the grading on a curve of how reasonable governments are he saw that as a security threat But I we should make very clear because the way that comes across the full responsibility of the invasion of Ukraine lays at the hands of Vladimir Putin Sure I completely agree with that Vladimir Putin is uh Vladimir Putin launched a war where again I I don't know exactly what the numbers are I've

11:37 read a whole bunch of estimates some that contradict each other but the consensus seems to be it's at least in the hundreds of thousands possibly well north of a million if you're talking about the casualties on both sides And Vladimir Putin launched a war that led to that And he's responsible for that That being said you can also point out that the you know really what we're talking about here is the George HW Bush administration the Clintons Bush again Obama and then Trump And the people who were in charge of the foreign policy in that in in those administrations the same ones who gave us Iraq Afghanistan Libya Syria Somalia Yemen they were also in charge of our European foreign policy and they had the most reckless foreign they the most reckless policy of all was

12:25 their NATO policy and that they they drove up to this conflict with Russia with nothing but off-ramp after off-ramp after off-ramp and consciously decided that we're not going to take any of those We're going to drive it all the way up to this point And Thomas Freriedman for the New York Times interviewed George Kennan in 1998 And this is George Kennan was the the um like the cold warrior He was he's he's credited as founding the containment strategy in the Cold War and he was talking about uh the first round of NATO expansion which he and many other foreign policy grey beards opposed and he was talking and he was like this is the worst thing we could possibly do after the fall of the Soviet Union to now say that we had this alliance in

13:10 NATO that was an anti-Russian military alliance and now that the Soviet Union isn't there anymore and it's Boris Yelton's Russia that now we're going to expand NATO because of that And he literally said in 1998 he goes "The people advocating that we expand NATO are going to continue advocating it and advocating it and advocating it and then there will be a Russian reaction and then they'll say see that's why we were right to expand NATO but they'll get this completely wrong." When do you think a deal is reached i really have no idea what the timeline's going to look like I'm hoping sooner rather than later I think like um I think Donald Trump would love nothing more than to have some type of like big spectacle of ending this war some type of big press

13:57 conference or some type of you know what I mean and so I'm sure like if I my guess would be that's where Trump's mind is is how to do this in the best way that sells him the best and and you know um but I I think that already we're in a position where Donald Trump has put a lot of political capital chips into the middle of the table that I can end this war you know and he's going to look very very bad if he can't So he's very highly incentivized to get this thing done as quick as possible And so hopefully um that can that can happen soon It would be great if it could happen in the next month Yeah People on both sides outside of Donald Trump are telling me that it's

14:43 a it's a process Yeah There's a kind of implication it's going to is going to take a while which I really hate I really love Donald Trump's urgency Well it's also terrible There's something really awful like you know look when in innocent people dying in war at any time is is terrible but there is something profoundly awful and I've I'm old enough now that I've seen this a few times happen or I've lived through it a few times I've read about it happening earlier but it's like once you've kind of already decided the war is over and people still die you know what I mean i mean there's something almost like sadder about that cuz it's always like "Come on you already know." You know like when there'd be like a big you know there'd be like a bombing campaign in in uh in Afghanistan like when we already knew we were a few months away from

15:28 ending the war you're like "You got to kill more people like on the way out We already know we're leaving We already know that because there's something at least in the beginning they could kind of hide behind this justification." Or they could be like "Listen we're going to overthrow the Taliban and we're going to install our new government They're going to be a democracy It's going really good We have to do this in order to do this bigger project But then by the end you're like we're not even pretending anymore that we're doing anything more positive It's just someone dying in a senseless thing we never should have been in