Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Toomas Hendrik Ilves, ex-President of Estonia

Transcript

Toomas Hendrik Ilves, ex-President of Estonia · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Sometimes great conversations just happen spontaneously, organically, without any work,
• 0:09
  but usually they take some work, often a lot of work, and recently I had a great conversation
• 0:20
  that had taken a monumental amount of work. Even just to line up the logistics
• 0:28
  took a monumental amount of work. It was a conversation with James Lindsay,
• 0:34
  the mathematician and author and cultural critic who's become a firebrand, with an overarching
• 0:42
  planet encompassing mental philosophy about what's going on in the culture wars that they're
• 0:50
  driven by a neo-Marxist, almost apocalyptic cultural takeover that he has very intricate theories
• 1:00
  about how it operates and some think that James has gone off the deep end during the pandemic
• 1:05
  with dark visions of a new global order. But I wanted to talk to him for exactly that reason
• 1:16
  because he had been so astute and he's clearly so intelligent that I wanted to understand
• 1:26
  where he'd gone off the rails if he had. Now all of this is something of a diversion because
• 1:33
  this episode is not a James Lindsay episode. I was using an audio recording platform called Zencaster
• 1:41
  and theoretically it's supposed to upload the guest's audio and deliver it into the cloud
• 1:50
  in real time. But when we went to retrieve James's audio there was about a minute of audio and
• 1:58
  the only minute was the first minute of us chatting. So if you'd like to hear just a taste of
• 2:06
  the hour and 45 minutes of spectacular conversation between two, I would like to say moderately
• 2:14
  intelligent people with very different ideas about what's going on in the world sparring and
• 2:19
  sniffing each other's butts and trying to figure out where the other one fits into the world and
• 2:23
  whether you're dealing with an enemy or a friend where the boundaries of allyship and adversary fall.
• 2:32
  It was a fantastic and unreproducible conversation that has been lost to the sands of time. But here
• 2:39
  is a little taste just a tiny sneak peek of what we were talking about before we got into the meaty
• 2:46
  stuff. Ordinarily I would be in a studio but I kind of forgot that we were talking and we
• 2:52
  weren't really talking and then we were talking. That's good. Yeah that happens. I got my pumpkin seeds.
• 3:00
  Well that should help you out a little bit. Could you zinc up or whatever it's for? Do you consume
• 3:05
  any seeds? I sometimes consume seeds occasionally will consume pumpkin seeds. I'm not a big fan of
• 3:14
  pumpkin seeds actually. I don't really like them. I don't think I can't actually imagine what the
• 3:18
  difference is between a pumpkin seed and like a sunflower seed. Well you see some flower seeds come
• 3:25
  from some flowers. Right. And how long? The seeds are in pumpkins. They don't taste the same.
• 3:30
  Some flower kernels have a different flavor. I think the pumpkin seeds. How would you describe that
• 3:37
  difference? I don't know. I think that the I actually think the sunflower seed has a more
• 3:45
  pleasant flavor. It's a nuttier flavor. The pumpkin seed has kind of a more kind of organic
• 3:50
  almost. I don't want to say it tastes like compost but it's closer to taste than I compost.
• 3:57
  So there you have it ladies and gents. The philosophical musings of James Lindsay and me
• 4:05
  oh to say that it breaks my heart that you will never hear the full conversation is an understatement
• 4:12
  and yet one rolls with the punches. I am being very zen about the failure of zencaster ho ho how apt
• 4:21
  and I'm being zen about the general failure of conversations because I still hold out hope.
• 4:29
  I still hold out hope for the promise of what conversations honest conversations frank conversations
• 4:35
  free from bullshit can do for us. Now what they must do for us because is there any other way out
• 4:43
  of the pickles that we find ourselves in from the climate crisis to Ukraine to floods in Australia?
• 4:49
  Well that sort of is the same thing as climate crisis in my book but let's park that story for
• 4:53
  another day. Is there any other way out of all of our problems than to converse with one another
• 4:59
  to treat each other fairly to take each other's arguments with as much generosity as we can
• 5:06
  muster to take our own arguments with a grain of salt to be constantly self questioning.
• 5:12
  That is the stuff upon which civilization is made and so I blunder forth and I persevere in
• 5:18
  spite of the lost James Lindsay episode that you will never get to enjoy we're even much forward
• 5:23
  with many more conversations that are insightful frank beautiful honest raw and sometimes yes
• 5:34
  you guessed it just a little uncomfortable.
• 5:37
  Today on the show our first president or ex president I've had a prime minister on the show
• 5:53
  former prime minister of Australian Malcolm Turnbull have not had a president or any other
• 5:59
  head of state of another country in fact I just realized this is the first head of state on the
• 6:04
  show because Australian prime ministers are heads of government but not heads of state because by
• 6:08
  some peculiar happenstance Australia is not a republic yet and so our head of state is still
• 6:14
  Queen Elizabeth the second. This gentleman today was a head of state Thomas Hendrick Ilvis was for
• 6:22
  10 years the president of Estonia let me don't be offended if I just run you through some Eastern
• 6:28
  European geography and history here from them and I'm not implying that you don't know everything
• 6:33
  about Estonia okay and everything about Eastern European borders with Russia okay but just in case
• 6:41
  on the off chance that there's someone out there who maybe wants a little brushing up before we
• 6:46
  start talking about Putin and Ukraine and Estonian borders and things Estonia is one of only three
• 6:53
  countries three NATO countries that borders Russia okay so if you think in your mind's eye
• 6:59
  down below the Baltic states like from you know basically all the way from northern Europe down
• 7:06
  Russia doesn't share a border with any any NATO state because it's got a border with obviously
• 7:12
  Ukraine which is now completely smashed apart and then above Ukraine there's Belarus which is
• 7:18
  sitting in between Russia and Poland then you've got Lithuania which is the first of the three
• 7:26
  Baltic states which is wedged in between Belarus and Poland and the Baltic Sea and only then
• 7:34
  above that in this little patch of land in the very very far north east of Europe a botting Russia
• 7:46
  do you have the two Baltic states that actually have a border with Russia Estonia and Latvia Latvia's
• 7:52
  underneath Estonia's on the top and Estonia sits there across a bridge of water from Finland Finland's
• 7:59
  above it and then to to the east of it you've got this border with Russia so Estonia and Latvia
• 8:08
  and Finland the only NATO countries with a border with Russia and as a result they have not only
• 8:19
  the history and experience but also the depth of understanding of what Russia is up to and what
• 8:27
  it means to have to deal with the bear right on your doorstep not just nearby as in Poland's case
• 8:34
  Poland is buffered again by the Baltic states and Belarus and Ukraine I mean depending on how this
• 8:41
  all ends up if you ended up with Russian troops completely occupying Ukraine in perpetuity then yeah
• 8:45
  you would have effectively a Russian border with Poland but at the moment they've got this massive
• 8:50
  land mass of Ukraine between them and Russia Estonia doesn't and Thomas is an interesting guy
• 8:57
  because he was actually born in Sweden his parents were Estonian refugees Estonia was basically part
• 9:05
  of the Soviet Union it was invaded by the Soviet Union it was part of this whole sphere of this
• 9:12
  massive Soviet empire at its peak and his parents fled Estonia the Soviet Union had invaded
• 9:21
  during World War Two Soviet Union was obviously invading all over the place in World War Two everybody
• 9:26
  was and his parents went to Sweden a logical friendly sort of similar-minded place to be Scandinavian
• 9:38
  Nordic and he was born in Stockholm and he moved to the to the US and he actually grew up in America
• 9:49
  he grew up in New Jersey went to high school there graduated as valedictorian in the early 70s and
• 9:58
  he then went to Columbia University in New York got his bachelor's degree in psychology got a
• 10:03
  master's in psych from the University of Pennsylvania and so he's this very sort of cosmopolitan
• 10:11
  you know pro-Western like you know American cultured guy he still speaks Estonian with an American
• 10:19
  accent he says and it went back to Estonia and became he was a briefly a journalist he was
• 10:26
  working for radio free Europe and kind of producing you know news items during the Cold War to try
• 10:31
  to assist Estonian freedom fighters you'll hear a bit about that he talks about this a little bit
• 10:35
  and became by his accounts of rather unlikely politician and became the foreign minister of Estonia
• 10:43
  for a couple of years and then Quentin became an opposition politician and became president
• 10:50
  of the country in 2006 he served for ten damn years which overlapped with the Obama administration
• 11:01
  he left office just before Donald Trump was elected and he was in office for essentially the
• 11:09
  the rise of the Russian threat the rise of the Russian aggression towards Georgia the Crimean
• 11:18
  War of Ukraine in 2014 he was there in this little country this this very kind of highly developed
• 11:26
  highly digitized very internet friendly very free economy very liberal democratic you know incredibly
• 11:34
  wealthy and by Eastern European standards little country that was that has been really successful
• 11:40
  since the end of communism at becoming one of the most tech savvy countries in the world
• 11:47
  and he was instrumental in all of that I wish I'd been able to talk to him about that but you know
• 11:52
  there's only so many things you can talk about when you've got a massive water discuss and so
• 11:58
  I hope you enjoy this it look Thomas is a a very thoughtful old guy and so you have to get over
• 12:07
  the pace of the way that he speaks this is not like bubbly kind of rasma taz interview that some
• 12:17
  you know kid fresh out of political science class is going to give you but this is an
• 12:21
  interview that is that is soaked with the gravitas of experience and credibility so I hope
• 12:30
  you stick with it and get a deeper understanding of what's going on in the world at the moment
• 12:35
  through the eyes of someone who has literally been at the call face the one and only ex president
• 12:42
  of estonia tomas henry gyrvis
• 12:56
  can you give me an idea of and the list as an idea of what you were interested in doing
• 13:00
  when you were younger did you have aspirations to be a president to be a politician when you are
• 13:05
  zero in everlasting zero none none ever I did not have a desire to become president today that I
• 13:14
  did in fact so what did you like doing when you were a kid like did you have heroes and people
• 13:20
  you aspired to be no no I've never had any I've had very few people I've aspired to be so no
• 13:29
  where we got any further I just say that my name my first name is pronounced as if it were
• 13:34
  in germ and tomas not tumas yes I bet you have to say that every day to anglophone speakers
• 13:45
  I do sometimes I don't even bother hey tumas how you doing tumas yeah welcome to show tumas
• 13:56
  I am 68 I've had this for 63 years what was your name before tumas
• 14:03
  no I just didn't talk to people who are talking right got it got it
• 14:09
  everyone in estonia knows how to how to pronounce it what did you think if I'd ask you when you were
• 14:13
  15 what what what your life was going to be what did you think you would do probably an academic
• 14:20
  studying some aspect of biology why biology that was very good at it and it really interested me
• 14:29
  and I spent time doing it and then I got picked as a smart student to go do it at a college level
• 14:35
  at Columbia University on Saturdays and I thought it was really cool and I was 15 16 and reading
• 14:47
  college texts in molecular biology and I thought this was really neat stuff which I still do it's
• 14:54
  just that I I mean I had other interests basically what it comes down to is that Isaiah Berlin
• 15:02
  talks about two kinds of people the hedgehogs and the fox yeah and the fox knows many many many
• 15:10
  little things or a little bit about many things and the hedgehog knows one big thing and I am
• 15:17
  the ultimate fox there is nothing I know well but I have but probably in terms of broad range
• 15:26
  of knowing a little bit about things I do have too much of that though I hope it doesn't degenerate
• 15:34
  into knowing merely trivia did you ever think about journalism in the media a lot of journalists
• 15:40
  to foxes no I didn't no no I mean it was it was a rather peripotentic trip to becoming what I did
• 15:52
  become where I mean I basically from biology I went on to physiological psychology because that
• 16:01
  seemed more interesting and then I realized the in the doctoral program I was in
• 16:08
  that actually I it was all I just gotten good grades I had top grades all the time but it didn't
• 16:17
  really interest me and so then I did my little Jack Kerawak pitching across the United States and
• 16:24
  ended up fighting forest fires in Washington state in the Pacific Northwest and I don't know I
• 16:32
  mean somewhere along the line I started writing about stuff that interested me that had to do
• 16:38
  the stonium and what was going on with the country since it was being slowly destroyed and and then
• 16:47
  I was the someone contacted me and said oh you're writing about this stuff and we're looking to hire
• 16:53
  someone and I guess there weren't many people who were good at writing about this stony and English
• 16:59
  at the time and so I was hired by Radio Free Europe to be an analyst and then and then after that
• 17:07
  for without really wanting to they asked me to run the Estonian service which was the broadcast
• 17:15
  and the things for Radio Free Europe and I so I became a journalist and I was the chief editor
• 17:26
  and then and then the study became independent and because I've been helping the various people
• 17:33
  in the independence movement they I was asked to become the first post independence ambassador
• 17:45
  in Washington which I did and it was you know going from a fairly fairly comfortable middle class
• 17:56
  existence to hoping that the foreign ministry would send money over to pay us but those are the
• 18:06
  early days I mean Estonia now is a GDP per capita higher than Spain's but at the time it was
• 18:14
  $2800 US dollars the annual per capita GDP per capita so not much of a tax base there either to
• 18:24
  support things like an embassy but it was politically necessary and then I didn't plan on that either
• 18:32
  and then in 1996 there was some government problem and the president asked me to more
• 18:38
  basically commanded me to quit there and come to Estonia and become the foreign minister which
• 18:46
  I then did basically for the next six years five and a half years and that was planned either
• 18:56
  and then you know eventually my friends convinced me to run for the European Parliament and I
• 19:06
  won overwhelmingly and so I was there and I was chairman of the Farrant Affairs Committee
• 19:12
  vice chairman sorry I was not chairman either European Parliament and then the centrist parties the
• 19:20
  center right center left then the liberals came to me in 2006 and asked me to run for president
• 19:27
  and I said I don't want to run for president at all and they said don't worry you won't win
• 19:35
  but he wants you to run to put up an effective opposition to the incumbent I said yeah well that
• 19:42
  I'll do and then so on the day of the election I was sitting there I mean we have a parliamentary
• 19:50
  system and we have we have an electoral college and then as they as the votes were coming in
• 20:01
  I don't know is this a family show or yeah no no you can you can swear well I mean I the votes
• 20:08
  the the sooner the tipping point came I said oh shit now what and that's how I became president
• 20:17
  excellent summary I mean other stuff I've I've had some agency in and certainly digitization of my
• 20:23
  country has been one that I have been pushing for almost 30 years yeah while I want to talk about
• 20:29
  that but let me just talk about your period as as foreign minister because maybe you have insights
• 20:36
  from that about the situation with Russia today your foreign minister about five years after
• 20:45
  the end of the Cold War and you're in the country which is right next to Russia this new
• 20:52
  version of Russia posts Soviet Russia what what did you think that Russia would become and how did
• 20:58
  you handle Estonia's relationship with it what did you think the future relationship would be
• 21:04
  well one of the key things and there have been a number of articles which I've been in in the
• 21:08
  last week or two one in I guess political sort of titled we told you so but was the Russia never
• 21:17
  treated its immediate neighborhood the way it it psychophantically psychophantically approached
• 21:24
  Western Europe and the old George Kenan line that led for Russia you can only be if you're a
• 21:32
  neighbor of Russia you can only be a vassal or an enemy as always applied and continue to apply
• 21:39
  during the Cold War and this was it was really no different so Russian behavior toward us was
• 21:45
  extremely foolish and obnoxious and threatening even back then while people were having their
• 21:53
  Boris Yeltsin feasts it was not good and it was it wasn't arrogant overbearing Russia that we
• 22:02
  had to deal with and not not only Estonia basically all countries that had been occupied
• 22:14
  by the Soviet Union had that same issue and then of course there were those who chose the
• 22:19
  vassal path and then there were those who were deemed as enemies how did you navigate that as
• 22:24
  foreign minister you were foreign minister for a little less than two years before you left and
• 22:30
  became an opposition politician but was there a was there a well I had only one goal I mean I
• 22:38
  didn't really give it to him about them I came in since I had unlike the rest of the
• 22:45
  foreign policy establishment had been convinced that Estonia had to join the European Union
• 22:51
  and because everyone just wanted to join NATO and I had concluded from my time studying things
• 23:01
  and talking to people that there was no way Estonia would get into the
• 23:05
  international without being in the European Union because of the
• 23:09
  Russophilic opposition of Germany France and and the UK at the time plus some other countries
• 23:18
  and I realized that if were we to become members of the European Union they could no longer
• 23:25
  exercise their veto and NATO because that would be vetoing a fellow EU member which
• 23:32
  not only is not done but secondly would bring political disaster and so I focused on that
• 23:39
  and secondarily on getting into NATO when Russia really was not I mean we don't really care
• 23:46
  about Russia except when it's obnoxious it's not it's not we don't know it's kind of like so what
• 23:53
  you know let them do their thing it's when they become obnoxious that we have to be concerned with
• 23:59
  and the the EU and NATO the joining of EU and of the EU and NATO happened simultaneously in 2004
• 24:06
  or at least in the same year is that right and then yeah and then you took on the euro as a currency
• 24:15
  seven years after that in 2011 the first former Soviet Union former Soviet state to take on
• 24:22
  that's the way that stops out let's let's eliminate the term former Soviet Union we were
• 24:27
  merely occupied but and I would say that 31 years after and this is a best law of mind but 31
• 24:36
  years after we reestablished independence I don't want to ever hear the term former Soviet Republic
• 24:43
  in 1976 I was I graduated already Columbia University and I read the newspaper I read the
• 24:55
  New York Times every day there were lots of articles about Germany but 31 years after World War
• 25:02
  II no one ever ever said the former Nazi Reich of Germany when writing about the Vitsav
• 25:11
  Sundar or the economic wonder no one ever talked about France as formerly Nazi occupied France
• 25:18
  we the the this is a zombie state and we I don't like zombies as the former Soviet Union is a term
• 25:29
  that I will not count in it is is Putin resurrecting the zombie he well being one yes I would say
• 25:43
  that it not in the concrete sense of exactly the Soviet Union but the I mean many ways it could
• 25:52
  make the case that he wants to resurrect is the Russian Empire in its 1913 borders and certainly
• 25:58
  with all of the trappings of empire what were your dealings with him as president well mostly I
• 26:04
  overlap with with the Dmitry Medvedev or Dima the dim as I call him not with Putin I mean we
• 26:13
  recall that there was this kind of fate to switch yeah just explain that to people who aren't across
• 26:19
  it well I mean because there was a limitation the true term limit for the president
• 26:28
  of Russia at the time and once your two terms were up you had to leave and so Putin basically
• 26:35
  made his prime minister Dmitry Medvedev president for one term and and in the meantime continue
• 26:44
  to be president I mean in terms of a in terms of the person who called their shots but then you had
• 26:51
  a kind of fake president there named Dmitry Medvedev who was quite a lightweight I would say
• 27:00
  and didn't make decisions himself so it was just kind of a puppet but that his term overlap with
• 27:07
  my term in terms of direct dealing I mean I met him yes but never have a long long sort of
• 27:14
  negotiating discussion with him the I'm interested in what you thought that he and Medvedev were
• 27:22
  doing at the time and what their ambitions were for Russia if you look if you look up your profile
• 27:29
  on on the encyclopedia Britannica what one of the sentences in your entry is that your critics
• 27:36
  who had expressed concerns about your foreign policy experience as president were silenced by
• 27:42
  your management of Estonia's difficult relations with neighboring Russia what does that mean
• 27:48
  I have no idea why would there be critics my entire background was in foreign policy by that time
• 27:59
  so well I mean I don't know I mean manage not to get invaded that's pretty good when your
• 28:05
  neighbor of Russia I mean given that during my presidency they invaded both Georgia
• 28:12
  and they invaded invaded Ukraine what did you do when they invaded Georgia let's take that first
• 28:21
  well that's it well that was one of the more interesting episodes in that I
• 28:27
  well first of all the day before I was called by Misha Shakhishvili someone who I had been
• 28:33
  advising for a while and he said he's going in and I said I said don't do that he said we have
• 28:39
  to respond I said don't do that I mean I realized it's hard but don't do that anyway so next day the
• 28:46
  war started I was called by the Polish president the late lek Kaczynski and he was boiling man he said
• 28:54
  let's do something let we have to let's make a protest and I said great so we we worked out
• 29:01
  statement strongly and condemning all this and other East European countries signed it
• 29:08
  and it had no effect none whatsoever no one even noticed so the next two days later he calls
• 29:15
  me back and he said this is ridiculous what are we going to do and I sort of flippantly said just
• 29:22
  because I know what to say because I mean on the one hand I wasn't surprised by the lack of
• 29:28
  attention to what these eastern wags were saying on the part of the western countries but on the
• 29:36
  other hand we need to do something we could always go there and he said I'll pick you up tomorrow
• 29:42
  morning go away Georgia well to go to Georgia well this was a famous incident we saw so he
• 29:52
  rounded up the rest of the crew that is to say the well we got the prime minister of
• 29:59
  Latvia the president of Lithuania and then we flew to Zaparagia which is in southern Ukraine picked up
• 30:11
  president Yushenko and flew ultimately well we didn't we didn't fly it to Blesi because the
• 30:18
  Russians wouldn't allow us to enter Georgia airspace or they did not give us permission so we flew
• 30:25
  to Azerbaijan and then we drove in a caravan to the border and there we had a new car I mean we had
• 30:34
  a another caravan meeting us and since they were afraid of getting bombed by the Russians we drove
• 30:39
  down from the mountains mountain pass fortunately in the moonlight without lights to Tbilisi where
• 30:48
  there was where we got somewhere and it was clock night a clock at night and there was a massive
• 30:54
  rally and we went and spoke there so you can kind of Google find all those picks what impact did you
• 31:00
  want to have well to stop the war with some people do argue that our presence probably at least
• 31:07
  game Russians pause on since they were 40 kilometers out of Tbilisi and could have made it there
• 31:14
  another day they didn't want to end up fighting with the the Baltic cartel well I think it does
• 31:21
  well to kill five had to stay probably not probably not a good look even for Putin so what happened
• 31:29
  after that when you got home and was there a lesson that you took away from the Russian campaign in
• 31:35
  Georgia well the main lesson was the perfiddy of the western Europeans in the European Union
• 31:43
  and so at the same time Nikola Sakoze was there and he purposely announced his peace plan which
• 31:52
  meant that we would end the cooperation agreement with Russia between the EU and Russia which
• 32:01
  was a big foreign aid program for Russia until the Russian troops left and then six weeks later
• 32:10
  with the meeting of the prime ministers of the European Union he himself argued that the
• 32:17
  cooperation agreement must be restored and the East European said well he hasn't gotten the
• 32:23
  troops out your program it's your treaty and he forced it through and came out himself and saying
• 32:31
  thank god common sense prevailed one of the more ridiculous moments of my career as president
• 32:38
  but but he has been convicted of corruption so I surprised so wait the French president insisted
• 32:47
  that Russia but Russia's deals be re-honored just six weeks after the end of hostilities which
• 32:54
  weren't even really over when Russia operated Georgia it was the Russian cooperation agreement
• 33:04
  that was contingent upon removal of Russian troops I mean 14 years later they're still there
• 33:11
  they never left but his deal was contingent the agreement was contingent upon the departure
• 33:17
  of Russian troops which they have not done but that was his great coup but it didn't last for long
• 33:23
  so were you able to talk to president Sakoze about that at that time I was so disgusted I didn't want
• 33:30
  to ever see him again do you think Putin took a lesson from that yeah I think you saw that
• 33:38
  no those westerners they're so stupid they won't do anything which was in fact true since
• 33:44
  shortly thereafter with the Obama administration the US initiated its reset program once again
• 33:52
  showing the naivete of the west and of course he got a further was further bolstered by the
• 33:59
  lack of any serious response to this massive violation of the of the whole post war World War
• 34:08
  2 order when he invaded and incorporated Crimea I mean he just got a little tutting there and
• 34:16
  things got a little more serious after they shot down a civilian airliner and the Malaysian
• 34:22
  airliner MH 17 even then there was there was one of these interesting UK moments where
• 34:34
  now the the cabinet meets at 10 Downing Street and then when the cabinet leaves then across the
• 34:41
  street from 10 Downing Street all the paparazzi are lined up and one of the paparazzi had with a
• 34:50
  big telephone lens managed to capture a picture of a document that was under the arm of a minister
• 34:58
  which said roundly condemn everything the Russians have done in the loudest and strongest of
• 35:05
  terms point two do absolutely nothing except no policies that would in any way affect Russian
• 35:13
  investment the UK I mean so now this was no longer perfidious France it was perfidious Albion
• 35:22
  you know the the joke about a British an English revolution or an English demonstration chant
• 35:31
  which goes what do we want incremental change when do we want it as soon as is convenient for everybody
• 35:37
  you mentioned the Obama reset you were you a president when Obama was elected what what did you
• 35:46
  make of his election what did you make of the guy initially well I mean I was quite impressed
• 35:52
  and certainly I thought it was a milestone in US history and that the United States I thought
• 35:59
  this was this one of the great moments of American history in that after centuries of racism that
• 36:07
  a black man could be elected president as we've seen subsequently he was a two term president
• 36:15
  but what followed him was a resurgence of white nationalism that I never would have imagined
• 36:24
  and his administrations attitude towards world affairs in striking the Iran deal and pulling off
• 36:33
  the what he claimed was this reset with Russia the criticisms that people make of
• 36:39
  that was also the red line about and serious of chemical weapons yes and the pivot to Asia did you
• 36:47
  know the criticism of the Obama administration is that it was a bit polyanna or naive about
• 36:51
  real politics who did you share that view well over time yes I mean I had much higher hopes
• 36:58
  and he had a fairly good cabinet ash Carter was one of the smartest defense ministers or
• 37:05
  secretaries the defense that there has been I didn't think very highly of his foreign secretaries
• 37:14
  or secretaries of state department but I mean I thought Carrie was exceptionally weak and he
• 37:24
  continues to be that I think extremely naive and sort of polyannaish the main thing with Obama is
• 37:33
  that he really couldn't care less about foreign affairs and his motto on foreign affairs was again
• 37:38
  to quote him don't do stupid shit which actually was translated into don't do anything
• 37:46
  what did you make of his pivot to Russia and did you think that that was an overture that was
• 37:50
  worth making or did you think that was ignorance or naivety and did you talk to him about it
• 37:57
  well you actually had a pivot to Asia not the Russia sorry the the the reset in Russia and the
• 38:04
  but the reset well I think that was part and parcel of the pivot to Asia is that well I mean he said
• 38:10
  that Russia is a junior varsity team which maybe in fact be true but nonetheless I mean it meant
• 38:19
  that we don't really have to pay attention to Russia because they're so insignificant in there
• 38:24
  and the real threat to the United States is China which is probably also true yeah
• 38:30
  by many accounts that pissed off Putin yes well that did but I mean the problem that we have I
• 38:37
  mean someone wisely said that Russia is a hurricane China's climate change and I mean in the long
• 38:46
  term we will all have to deal I mean why am I telling an Australian but China is strategically
• 38:57
  and for forever Russia is a country that basically makes itself important by being a pain in the
• 39:09
  ass there's a lot of focusing on the one biggest own country it goes around and evades its
• 39:14
  neighbors I mean this is I mean the I mean I don't even want to go into the psychology of all
• 39:20
  of this but it certainly I think affects more than simply the current leader there's an
• 39:26
  argument that one he is in the west told us that the you know this is an understandable reaction
• 39:33
  on Russia's pot to the west's bungling of the end of the Cold War a NATO expansion the demeaning
• 39:41
  of Putin through lines like Obama's that you just cited that this is hypocrisy on the west's
• 39:48
  pot because if you look at the the United States I don't buy any that personal NATO did not expand it
• 39:54
  was the desire of the East European countries that understood the threats that led to their wanting
• 40:03
  to join first in 1999 Poland Hungary and the Czech Republic and later on we joined this was not
• 40:14
  that NATO was oh we're gonna we want to go out there it was the opposite it was trying to convince
• 40:19
  countries that we should be part of I mean that as as sharing those same values of liberal democracy
• 40:27
  that we what would like to be in NATO that that's that kind of that's a nonsense trope that I
• 40:34
  basically consider anyone who takes that picks that up from Putin as a Putin shield because it has
• 40:40
  no value to it whatsoever and there are a bunch of American academics pushing this though advise
• 40:47
  them all to read Andre Kuzarev's tweet or Andre Kuzarev's interview just yesterday Andre Kuzarev
• 40:55
  was the part minister of Russia under Boris Yeltsin the first and last civilized Russian foreign
• 41:01
  minister since 1917 but I mean a genuine sort of person of the intellectual far to fairs
• 41:11
  professor type and he he says this is all nonsense this is just this nonsense that this was never
• 41:20
  the case that and so he wrote that piece and then I sort of didn't I mean he wrote the interview
• 41:27
  appeared yesterday and then I wrote and this especially applies to John Mearsheimer and Emma
• 41:36
  Asperger who's too leading for phone or exponents of this idea to which I was supposed to
• 41:43
  surprisingly Andre Kuzarev retweeted exactly that's who we had in mind yeah yes yeah
• 41:52
  Mearsheimer you look that up just my Twitter page you've also tweeted about tens of millions of
• 41:58
  people being on the brink of encountering the worst two weeks of their lives because of one man's
• 42:03
  and his nation's psychopathology yeah well that was two hours before the anniversary of the attack
• 42:11
  I mean in addition to Mearsheimer you know Mearsheimer is the most celebrated academic who holds
• 42:15
  this opinion but there are many journalists and commentators on the left hand right you have
• 42:20
  Tucker Carlson on the right on the left you have John Pilger the Australian academic you have
• 42:26
  Glenn Greenwald the very serious it can be taken seriously it strikes me that I mean they might
• 42:35
  have some grand geopolitical point on the hypocrisy question if you take it you know if you
• 42:41
  imagine what it was like being a small country in the western hemisphere during the cold war perhaps
• 42:47
  if you imagine that you were Honduras or Nicaragua or Cuba but they're not making any sense
• 42:53
  if you actually take into account the validity of the lives of the people who live in central
• 42:59
  Europe and Eastern Europe I mean if you believe that Ukrainians and Estonians have agency then
• 43:05
  their arguments make no sense right but they don't I mean this is part of the Russell centric
• 43:12
  world view that assumes that all of these which is how which is very common and also in Germany I
• 43:18
  would say and that the you know that really the deal is ought to be made between Germany and
• 43:24
  Russia and the decision land there or the countries in between really just our pain of the ass
• 43:29
  that we have to get rid of and that was certainly pursued by Adolf Hitler in 1939 to 1945
• 43:37
  and basically an economic terms was pursued by Germany after the fall of the wall bizarrely
• 43:47
  enough making 10 to 15 times more money off Poland and the checks than they did ever with Russia
• 43:54
  and then has continued until until February 28th for the 27th I guess three days I mean basically
• 44:03
  what we did what happened and I think this is something people really ought to think about more
• 44:08
  deeply but that it is early in the game but something that we call the post-Cold War era which
• 44:15
  perhaps began somewhere between August 1989 and the closer and Christmas 1991 between the
• 44:26
  first democratic elections in Poland and the collapse of the Soviet Union formally in 1991
• 44:34
  December and in between saw the fall of the wall and the end of communist domination of Eastern
• 44:41
  Europe and and of the Soviet Union all that until February 24th of this year which incidentally
• 44:49
  is our independent stay in Estonia unfortunately but nonetheless that was the end of the Cold War
• 44:56
  post-Cold War period and all of the assumptions of the post-Cold War era were thrown out
• 45:03
  more importantly what was thrown out in some ways was the post-war era since what the post-war
• 45:12
  era was defined by beginning with the UN Charter and followed up by the least here on this part
• 45:20
  of the world the Helsinki agreement and later the Paris Charter and the fundamental assumption
• 45:29
  that you cannot change borders through use of force or even threat of force aggression is a crime
• 45:38
  I mean that was set in stone at Nuremberg and that that was something that was in fact followed
• 45:46
  even by the Soviet Union more or less at least in the European side of things of course obviously
• 45:52
  they did invade Afghanistan and that is over it is now I mean what in what February 24th then
• 46:01
  was tell the world that in fact yes you can and we will I mean one can and one will change borders
• 46:09
  through invasion that there are no sanctions really for more crimes and we see you know the use
• 46:18
  of thermovaric weapons and the indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas I mean we're back to
• 46:29
  pre May 1945 and so the world has changed and how we're going to deal with that is going to be a
• 46:37
  problem for all of us and your big neighbor there is kind of looking at this and going hmm what does
• 46:44
  all of this mean and I would say it is certainly in the interest of Australia that the the transatlantic
• 46:55
  alliance show to show the Russians but thereby also to China that changing borders through military
• 47:06
  aggression is a no go yes you're right to point to the fact that a lot of the concern in Australia
• 47:14
  is about the robustness of military alliances and stability as they pertain to China and concern
• 47:22
  about whether or not Beijing will be taking signals from what's happening in Ukraine and could
• 47:27
  potentially make a move of its own everyone's looking at Taiwan closely but why do you just before
• 47:34
  we move on why do you make February 24th the date of the end of the post-Cold War era
• 47:40
  because that's the day at 5.30 in the morning Ukraine time that Russian made it
• 47:48
  February 20th oh right okay yes of course I thought you were talking about the cancellation of
• 47:53
  Nord Stream or or Germany doing something is there how what do you make of that came on the 20s
• 47:58
  that came later or somewhat I mean Germany I mean the first really big response was the 180
• 48:03
  degree turn I mean actually a senior German officer told me last week the 540 degree turn in
• 48:10
  German foreign policy after February 24 in which all of shawts basically trashed 50 years of
• 48:17
  ospolytyk their whole attitude of lundeldurchar hundel are changed through trade oh we'll just
• 48:25
  trade a lot with the Russians and they will become just like us democratic and human rights respecting
• 48:31
  yes it's a funny argument isn't it we get that yeah yeah it's convenient that that argument
• 48:40
  both makes you rich and also is a way of cleansing your conscience of doing business with with
• 48:48
  tyrants it serves multiple purposes I hear people say that the Western European response shows
• 48:54
  that they do have a spine do you not see it that way we'll see too early to tell to quote
• 49:00
  Joe in line right you know the line Joe in line yeah yeah whatever what do you think of the
• 49:09
  French revolution yes to early detail yeah that's probably a powerful nonetheless I look it's
• 49:17
  two weeks it's now two weeks and five hours since they invaded we'll see if this is what
• 49:25
  the results will be but in any case it will be very difficult from now on to really make that case
• 49:31
  my concern now is that any whatever the slightest concessions are they will immediately try to
• 49:41
  the west was it oh okay listen well sorry about that least action you but now we won't
• 49:47
  it was February 22nd by the way that Nord Stream was was frozen so that's why I got confused by
• 49:52
  the date it was the couple of days before the invasion that Germany cancelled cancelled that
• 49:56
  so it's sort of back to front but so suppose we bungle this Thomas and the you know that at least
• 50:03
  Putin gets out of this in in a manner that he regards as having been worth it whatever that means
• 50:12
  are the Baltic states at risk are the Baltic states at risk well you know one of the
• 50:26
  members of NATO membership and in fact why Ukraine wanted to be member join NATO is that we have
• 50:34
  Article 5 and so an attack on the Baltic states would be basically put onsk and Thomsk and
• 50:42
  there could also kind of in a bad position like they wouldn't exist I guess the fear the fear is
• 50:50
  that Putin doesn't believe that the U.S. will go all out on Russia if Estonia is invented but now
• 50:58
  that the problem is well first I would just basically say where the West Berlin of this era
• 51:05
  well the problem is that if the United States or any member of NATO vetoes article 5 that would be
• 51:11
  the end of the alliance because soon as article 5 fails what he just wants then no one will
• 51:20
  trust it anymore so I mean if you so what is keeping the alliance together is this fear that well
• 51:28
  if we don't keep it together then we're all alone each one of us right but if you had an
• 51:34
  isolationist president in the White House if you had a Donald Trump in the White House then he
• 51:38
  may well say well I'd rather lose the alliance than start world war three Estonia can go to
• 51:43
  Russia it's true well this is why I mean you know these are kind of the things you have to deal
• 51:50
  with in Baltics right but right now we don't have that we do not have that situation and as long as
• 51:56
  we don't have that situation I'm not going to speculate about it hmm what's the best thing for
• 52:04
  the West to do now I mean what's the sort of best what's the best card to play
• 52:09
  well I was certainly armed Ukraine to the teeth with drones and I'm looking here right now just
• 52:19
  it just happens in my Twitter feed seeing a video of apparently by Raktar drones absolutely
• 52:27
  destroying a Russian tank column just blowing it up so that's what they need more drones more
• 52:39
  Western assistance and of course if we have what what I mean what is what is getting bad of course
• 52:50
  is that the Russian military defense yesterday admitted they had used a thermobaric weapon which is
• 53:00
  probably one of the cruelest most disgusting weapons sort of nuclear weapons just explain what
• 53:07
  thermobaric weapons do they well they're they suck all of the oxygen out of your lungs for an
• 53:19
  eradious of 500 meters just if you use it then everyone dies in the area yeah it's totally
• 53:26
  indiscriminated it's a it's a sort of a a bomb of terrorism and of course you use the cluster
• 53:32
  weapons has been used the cluster weapons also banned have been used massively in residence
• 53:38
  against residential areas I mean we're talking serious war crimes and there are a number of
• 53:42
  initiatives already to initiate war crime a war crimes tribunal against Russia I think that's
• 53:50
  that must be done absolutely and I have already seen that the Germans have initiated investigations
• 53:58
  the Spanish there was a mission another initiative that at the international court of justice to
• 54:10
  would sign on by 39 countries including my own this will come I mean I think we may need a special
• 54:18
  number why not hold it in a number I mean I think that's where we are heading do we know we're
• 54:26
  the thermobaric weapon went off it basically I mean if people don't haven't heard about these
• 54:31
  things that they they basically suck as Thomas said they basically suck all of the oxygen out of
• 54:36
  the air and then ignite it so that your lungs get decompressed you suffocate and then and then the
• 54:41
  whole thing explodes horrendous for civilians completely indiscriminate do we know where it was
• 54:47
  Thomas we don't know the Russian I mean this was the Russian M.O.D. said they had used it and
• 54:55
  this was reported by the UK Ministry of Defense you can just google UK Ministry of Defense and
• 55:04
  thermobaric what's the what's the likeliest I've asked what what card we should play what do you
• 55:10
  think the likeliest outcome of all of this is I mean just in terms of whether or not it turns
• 55:16
  into an Afghanistan style quagmire whether Putin gets frustrated and you know does a Grozny
• 55:23
  on Kiev whether he pulls off some kind of unexpected victory can you gaze into your crystal ball
• 55:34
  well his first of all I mean one thing that where he's completely off and it shows his his the
• 55:39
  problems if you're run if you're a dictator is that he said oh well we'll just replace the
• 55:45
  president and then you know the whole thing will be solved which was what the initial plan was
• 55:50
  not understanding that you know you can you I mean it's a lensky is yes a unifying figure but without
• 55:58
  a lensky and any any puppet I mean Ukraine is not going to stop fighting you know after all of
• 56:05
  this you think the Ukrainians I mean why would anyone think that the Ukrainians would not keep fighting
• 56:10
  to the death then of course after all of the atrocities which we see every day coming in they're
• 56:16
  not going to give in and they will fight to the death and that is just the way it's going to be
• 56:24
  and so I don't see a way out of it as long as there are Russians on on Ukrainian territory Russian
• 56:31
  army units I mean the thing to keep in mind is that ethnic Russians are are the primary
• 56:36
  targets at least in areas like Kharkiv but they just happen to be Ukrainian citizens right so it's
• 56:42
  kind of like you know Japanese fought in the US army and Germans fought in the US army during
• 56:48
  World War II I mean that's the same thing and they were furious fighters ferocious fighters
• 56:56
  and so that's that's one path that he's really screwed up on and that's just going to be a
• 57:03
  problem for them he can level Ukraine creating a massive massive refugee crisis in Europe since
• 57:13
  unlike Syria and other refugee crisis or at least the main one 2015 in in Europe these are not
• 57:24
  Syrians coming across the sea these are Ukrainians who I mean people from a country that borders
• 57:32
  for European Union countries Poland Slovakia Hungary and Romania so Landroot and if you have a
• 57:40
  Ukrainian passport you have visa free travel you don't have to apply for asylum and on top of that
• 57:48
  the European Union wisely actually announced the policy saying that anyone with a Ukrainian passport
• 57:56
  escaping the war can stay at work and live in the European Union for three years and we'll see
• 58:03
  what happens just it was a very smart move so there are two million at this point I mean an
• 58:10
  increasing by the by the hundreds of thousands every every day I think you know we had we had
• 58:19
  4,000 two days ago 5,000 yesterday in Estonia and so we anticipate it's going to keep going up
• 58:28
  how are they getting to Estonia bus I mean you're the end of the line really you know you you leave
• 58:36
  Ukraine you you need to really want to go to Estonia but I mean well Estonia is a I mean it's by far
• 58:44
  the most successful post-communist country so it has a really it has a stellar reputation we're
• 58:51
  not calling it post-soviet remember Thomas I said post-communist I'm just teasing yeah no I just
• 58:59
  mean yeah I mean you you need to you know you cross through a lot of other EU countries before you
• 59:04
  get to Estonia well I mean you have on the way if you come to Poland then there's
• 59:11
  Lithuania and then there's Lithia and then there is Estonia in the back you can keep
• 59:17
  going to Finland if you really want but you need a boat don't you Estonia but you need a boat
• 59:23
  don't you or is there a bridge no there's a boat yeah it's it's 80 kilometers well you just
• 59:30
  get on a boat it's not it's not expensive to take a ferry from Estonia to Finland incidentally what's
• 59:39
  the border with Russia like what what is there if I if I'm in Estonia and I drive to the Russian
• 59:44
  border what do I see you see a barbed wire fence where there is but the bulk of it is water so
• 59:53
  yeah but there are land there are land crossings yeah what we have built we have built an
• 1:00:00
  extension is there basically we have a a barbed wire fence and then the perimeter of about
• 1:00:09
  I don't know 500 meters I mean the sort of a sort of I don't know where less maybe 200 meters
• 1:00:17
  and then of course cameras everywhere so we see whenever someone is coming over the border
• 1:00:23
  and there's a road you can drive between Estonia and Russia well there's several border crossings
• 1:00:30
  hmm is it armed is it is there a military presence at all not right now we have we have
• 1:00:40
  non-military sort of police-based border guard I mean that's kind of the civilized thing to do yeah
• 1:00:49
  if we fast forward 20 years into the future do you think that border looks the same as it does now
• 1:00:57
  um minimally minimally I mean one I mean the the the border fence is there in its current state more
• 1:01:11
  out of a concern for smuggling illegal immigration I mean I I mean a Russian
• 1:01:22
  Babushka living in Estonia gets a larger pension than the average salary in Russia and that
• 1:01:28
  was before the massive devaluation so you're a variable croissants if you're a Russian Babushka
• 1:01:38
  and you go to Russia right now you get your pensions in euros I'm sure I would much rather be
• 1:01:48
  in Estonia than than many other places I can assure you but you're not worried that that
• 1:01:54
  border will someday be militarized well I mean that's up to Russia that really is up to Russia
• 1:02:05
  I mean if it starts behaving um continues to behave it the way it is there will be a lot more
• 1:02:13
  pressure to to militarize the border right now we don't do that but I suspect that would I mean
• 1:02:22
  it's basically the same kind of border as all of the other countries of NATO that border Russia I
• 1:02:30
  mean right but I mean I sort of offense offense basically I mean you know one suggestion I mean
• 1:02:37
  you know I mentioned earlier the question is whether or not Putin believes that the US has the
• 1:02:44
  stomach for World War III in order to defend Estonia from Russian aggression and part of the
• 1:02:52
  response to that currently is the suggestion from some hawks that we need to emphasize to Russia
• 1:02:58
  that NATO is still coherent by arming NATO's eastern flank would it be a good idea to send troops
• 1:03:05
  from a number of different NATO countries to be stationed there permanently well temporarily at
• 1:03:11
  least in Estonia facing Russia I mean currently under the under the under the Russian NATO or
• 1:03:18
  NATO Russia founding act of NATO voluntarily said they would not put any substantial troops or
• 1:03:25
  or material in the countries that have joined the NATO since 1997 and the Ukraine war doesn't change
• 1:03:35
  that commitment for you well I think it's become kind of unoperative the American sector alone
• 1:03:44
  in Germany had 400,000 US troops now I mean if actually if you just I mean given that okay I don't
• 1:03:52
  know how many people lived in them how big the American sector was there were three or there were
• 1:03:57
  four actually I mean it was UK France US and the Soviet Union now there were 400,000 troops to say
• 1:04:05
  just the West just in West Germany which had a population of what 63,000 63 million that proportion
• 1:04:13
  to Estonia would mean 8,000 US troops just to be proportional and that's underestimating because
• 1:04:21
  we probably would have more brits in French too I don't think that's really the way anyone will
• 1:04:28
  be willing to go but certainly the NATO Russia founding act is dead in the water and in terms of
• 1:04:36
  permanent stationing of NATO troops I think that will be inevitable and I think and bringing
• 1:04:42
  considerably more in terms of weaponry and armaments here is all and also in the cards or should be
• 1:04:50
  yeah it seems sort of quaint to abide by an old NATO agreement with Russia when Russia is
• 1:04:55
  stampeding across the sovereign nation yes well I mean it kind of loses all of us meaning
• 1:05:02
  Thomas I won't keep you any longer you've been generous with your time and your ideas do you
• 1:05:08
  want to uh do you want to cast your mind into the future what let's talk about Estonia specifically
• 1:05:14
  just to end with what where do you want Estonia to be when my kids are grown up how well they're
• 1:05:22
  your kids okay well 20 years from now I would say that there is an alliance of liberal
• 1:05:35
  democracies that because of the digitization of the world is no longer dependent upon geography the
• 1:05:41
  way it traditionally has been one of the one of the the massive changes that we have not really
• 1:05:50
  appreciated sufficiently is that the era of kinetic war ended in 2007 with the world's first
• 1:05:58
  visible cyber attacks against my country so I mean the any history of cyber war will begin with
• 1:06:04
  Estonia because before that it was old sub-Rosa and but one of the results of the of kinetic war
• 1:06:16
  you know we're leaving leaving aside currently Ukraine but say war between between a developed
• 1:06:24
  countries will be cyber you see in an Australia you see it in the US and you see it in across
• 1:06:33
  across Europe is that distance no longer matters Newton's second law force equals mass times
• 1:06:40
  acceleration which is the basis of all kinetic threats loses all meaning if you don't have mass
• 1:06:46
  you don't have acceleration because that brawl acceleration is distance divided by time square
• 1:06:53
  in other words tiling tokyo torino toronto they're all equidistant one impact of that is that
• 1:07:05
  our defense alliance is no longer need to be geographically determined I mean and NATO
• 1:07:12
  after all the Stanford North Atlantic Treaty organization and why is it the North Atlantic Treaty
• 1:07:18
  organization well precisely because tank logistics bomber range fighter or bomber refueling
• 1:07:27
  fighter range troop logistics all of those things that doesn't that becomes meaningless in
• 1:07:35
  a in the in the world we have entered so there's no reason why there should not be a strong defensive
• 1:07:42
  alliance that incorporates the countries of Europe that are liberal democracies the western hemisphere
• 1:07:50
  those that are serious liberal democracies not to mention Taiwan and Japan and South Korea and
• 1:07:58
  New Zealand and Australia and whoever else qualifies as a genuine liberal democracy I would ask
• 1:08:05
  actually as for a last question on my part the only question on my part is why is New Zealand not
• 1:08:10
  sanctioning in Australia is there is a sense in New Zealand New Zealand thinks of itself as being
• 1:08:20
  well look the critic of New Zealand says it's because New Zealand has no guts and no principles
• 1:08:26
  it's a squishy little country that wants to appease everybody and please everybody the the
• 1:08:32
  ally of New Zealand says that New Zealand has a progressive outward looking vision of the world
• 1:08:39
  that is expansive and non-doctrine air non-dogmatic and non-bossy attitude towards things and is
• 1:08:47
  an inclusive and you know semi neutral comfortable place those would be the two rival ways of
• 1:08:57
  describing that that position and I think Australia sees itself more as the mate I mean it's
• 1:09:04
  may sound silly to a European or an American but within the context of the South Pacific and the
• 1:09:08
  Asia Pacific as a major power that has that has to sort of be the the deputy sheriff of the western
• 1:09:15
  world in this area and has to be stronger and more clear headed and have a harder more principled
• 1:09:23
  stand about things I think that would be the well that's certainly the impression I have had
• 1:09:28
  always of Australia I mean given its participation in in the past 120 years in all kinds of well
• 1:09:37
  that passed 100 years not all of it very good I mean very pleasing to Australians obviously in terms
• 1:09:44
  of the use of Australian troops but we're one world we're two Afghanistan yeah in Iraq I mean
• 1:09:54
  in Iraq I mean I would say basically people see Australians as a responsible a responsible
• 1:10:02
  country that realizes that you need to do your share and that's that's really kind of the image
• 1:10:08
  but you know I was just surprised when I just yesterday looked at a map of the countries that
• 1:10:14
  were participating in in sanctions and there was Australia but no New Zealand I mean I think I
• 1:10:23
  think Thomas that may also just be an accident of which political party happens to be in power in
• 1:10:28
  which country there have been conservative New Zealand governments in the past in the 80s and
• 1:10:34
  I think 90s which probably would have done it at the moment they happen to have a left wing progressive
• 1:10:40
  government led by a very charismatic young woman who is sort of renowned for being a conciliator and
• 1:10:46
  so you know maybe things things could have been different well maybe they should look at videos
• 1:10:50
  of what's happening to civilians yeah yeah it's great to talk to you take care of yourself take
• 1:10:57
  care of your your country and hopefully we'll cross paths in the future take care okay cheers bye
• 1:11:08
  uncomfortable conversations is produced by Stefan Postuma follow me Josh Seps on Twitter and
• 1:11:13
  Instagram for all the latest may your day be fruitful your mind humble your enemies generous
• 1:11:20
  and your conversations perfectly sparklingly delectably uncomfortable