#277 How Does the War in Ukraine End?

No matter what happens in Ukraine, the Europeans are going to focus on national security and defense as a top priority for the foreseeable future. This will be a generational coming of age for anyone living in Europe in the way that 9/11 and the wall coming down has been for a lot of Americans ... This war in Ukraine will have that impact on the entirety of the European continent...

When people ask me, 'What's going to happen? How does this end?' My view is it's not going to end. What do you mean end? What's going to happen is we're going to have a much more unstable global order with this really angry, sort of, Russia fo-empire that has been cut off from the West and is angry about it. That's where we're headed.

The challenge that we have right now is that Putin's misjudgment was so vast that his position and the position of his country, under any scenario, is going to be vastly worse than it was before he invaded.

I think the amount that has been done for Ukraine, despite the fact that they aren't a NATO member is kind of astonishing. It's certainly shocking to Putin. I think it's shocking to Xi Jinping. And here I'm talking about the destruction of the Russian economy, including freezing a majority of their Central Bank assets.

Russia will not become North Korea. They have way too much critical mineral wealth. They are way too important in terms of defense exports ... The world is too divided. The United States is no longer seen as the global policeman. We are not the architect of global trade. We are not the cheerleader of global values.

The reality of this war in Ukraine is that the peace dividend is over, and that's a truly tragic thing.

There will be a new Iron Curtain. And on the other side of the Iron Curtain will not be Eastern Europe; it'll be Russia, Belarus, a small rump piece of Russian-occupied Ukraine, and a breakaway Russian Republic inside Moldova.

This is not just a conflict between Russia and Ukraine; it is a conflict between Russia and NATO.