🔥 Col. Jacques Baud dives deep into the current political landscape in Europe, questioning whether the European Union is setting itself up for disaster. What are the EU’s challenges and missteps?
In this exclusive interview on Dialogue Works, Col. Baud provides his expert analysis on the EU’s geopolitical and economic policies. 🌍💬
📺 Watch now as we uncover the critical issues facing Europe and the road ahead for the EU. 🚨
#ColJacquesBaud #EUMissteps #EUChallenges #EUPolitics #EuropeanUnion #PoliticalAnalysis #DialogueWorks #Geopolitics #EUForeignPolicy #EuropeanCrisis #CurrentEvents #GlobalPolitics #Europe2025 #PoliticalExpert #EuropeFuture #EU2025 #JacquesBaud #PoliticalInterview #EuropeanInsight #GeopoliticalAnalysis #EUImpact
In this exclusive interview on Dialogue Works, Col. Baud provides his expert analysis on the EU’s geopolitical and economic policies. 🌍💬
📺 Watch now as we uncover the critical issues facing Europe and the road ahead for the EU. 🚨
#ColJacquesBaud #EUMissteps #EUChallenges #EUPolitics #EuropeanUnion #PoliticalAnalysis #DialogueWorks #Geopolitics #EUForeignPolicy #EuropeanCrisis #CurrentEvents #GlobalPolitics #Europe2025 #PoliticalExpert #EuropeFuture #EU2025 #JacquesBaud #PoliticalInterview #EuropeanInsight #GeopoliticalAnalysis #EUImpact
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00:00Hi, everybody. Today is Monday, April 28th, 2025, and our friend Colonel Jacopo is back
00:00:12with us. Welcome back, Colonel.
00:00:13Thank you. Thank you very much for inviting me, and hello to everybody.
00:00:18We had a meeting between Donald Trump and Zelensky in Italy, in Rome, and it seems Zelensky
00:00:29was asking, as Donald Trump has mentioned in his sort of talk with the press, that Zelensky
00:00:35was asking for more weapons. And I don't know if you know the role of Emmanuel Macron. He
00:00:43was going to participate somehow in the talks, and then he was rejected. How can we understand
00:00:49that? And here is what Marco Rubio said, Colonel, in terms of what's going on. The current situation
00:00:58of talks, of negotiations between the United States and Russia.
00:01:03...that he is voicing, Mr. Secretary, why hasn't he imposed sanctions yet?
00:01:11Well, because I think we're still hoping to see that this effort works out in diplomacy,
00:01:16and that we can bring these two sides closer together. I mean, the minute you start doing
00:01:20that kind of stuff, you're walking away from it. You've now doomed yourself to another two years
00:01:25of war, and we don't want to see it happen. I think what's important, and really ways,
00:01:29is there is no other country, there is no other institution or organization on the earth
00:01:33that can bring these two sides together. No one else is talking to both sides but us,
00:01:38and no one else in the world can make something like this happen but the president. This is
00:01:42a very significant responsibility and a really important opportunity, and we want to make sure
00:01:47that we work it all the way through, that we don't walk away from something that can actually
00:01:52work or that can actually lead to peace, but we also don't want to continue to spend time
00:01:56on something that's not going to get us there. So throughout this process, it's about determining,
00:02:00do both sides really want peace, and how close are they or how far apart they are after 90 days
00:02:06of effort here, or over 90 days of effort? That's what we're trying to determine this week.
00:02:10There are reasons to be optimistic, and there are also reasons to be concerned. It's complicated,
00:02:14if this was an easy war to end, it would have been ended by someone else a long time ago,
00:02:18but right now the only one who can bring these two sides together to end this war is our president,
00:02:22President Trump, and we're doing everything we can to see if we can get that done here over the next
00:02:26few days. And if they want to put an end to the conflict in Ukraine, why do they need to
00:02:33send more weapons to Ukraine, which it seems that Emmanuel Macron is advocating for that,
00:02:38and here is people in France protesting that.
00:02:59Colonel, people are not happy with sending weapons, more weapons to Ukraine. They don't want to die in
00:03:04this war in Ukraine. They don't see an end to it. But how do you see the way that Emmanuel Macron is
00:03:11behaving, for example? And because one of the main factors that Marco Rubio was mentioning is
00:03:18the continuation of the conflict. They're getting to some point that they feel they cannot reach a deal.
00:03:25We know how important the role of Europe is right now.
00:03:29Well, the question you asked requires a lot of answers. It's a very complex thing. So what we have
00:03:41seen in the Vatican is apparently, I say apparently because even in France there are some debates about
00:03:48what's what really happened. But apparently Zelensky wanted to talk to President Trump. And
00:04:01Macron came and apparently wanted also to be part of the discussion. There is a sense in Europe that
00:04:11that if Zelensky and Trump would talk together, eventually Trump will prevail. And that's the reason why
00:04:21they always try to short circuit this relationship or discussion or possible discussions between
00:04:31Zelensky and Trump. And by the way, I think the Trump team has understood that. And that's the reason why
00:04:40why we had all these discussions in Jeddah and Riyadh and not in France, in Brussels or somewhere else in Europe,
00:04:48because the Americans have sensed that the Europeans always try to get some kind of influence over
00:05:00Zelensky in order to avoid any kind of settlement or discussion or talks happening.
00:05:09And that's that's was exactly that was exactly that's my interpretation and the interpretation of many
00:05:17that it's exactly what we have seen at the reduced scale in the Vatican, because there was those three chairs
00:05:24that were prepared for three people. Some said it was for the translator, but Zelensky speaks perfectly English,
00:05:31or at least enough English to be understood by Donald Trump. So there was no need for a translator.
00:05:38And therefore, this third chair was most probably for Emmanuel Macron, who tried to impose himself in the
00:05:47in the discussion. And he was politely rejected by Donald Trump. And eventually we had this discussion between
00:05:58both Zelensky and Trump alone. So and we see also in the proposal that was made by the Europeans, I mean,
00:06:07last week in London, you had two position papers that were confronting each other. The one proposed by the
00:06:17Americans, I would say in the in the right order, I would say the one proposed by Europe and Ukraine,
00:06:24and the one proposed by the Americans, which in fact, was patterned over the one it is based on the
00:06:34Kellogg concept or plan or you can call it as you want, but rearrange or patterned on the basis of the
00:06:46Ukrainian euro proposal. And you had two different papers with significant differences. But in a significant
00:06:57difference between the two is that the Americans propose to mediate in fact, or to how to say that, to
00:07:08propose talks or to sponsor talks between Ukraine and Russia, but without me being part of the talks.
00:07:21So in fact, the Americans just want to press the two parties to go to the table. The Europeans have a
00:07:33different approach. They want a discussion where you have on one side, the Europeans, the US and Ukraine,
00:07:39and on the other side, Russia. And that's very clear in the paper. So there is always this idea that
00:07:46that Ukraine is a junior team, if you want, and the senior team must have must sponsor or help or guide or direct the junior
00:08:03Zelensky team. And that's I think it's not a good approach. I think the American approach in that case is probably make more
00:08:16more sense. We have to the I mean, Rubio said in a previous interview that it was a proxy war between
00:08:25the US and Russia. This is clear. Rubio understands, as the rest of the team, the Trump team, that
00:08:36it was a proxy war between the Biden administration and Russia. But that's I think it's important to
00:08:43understand. And as Trump has said repeatedly, he doesn't consider the war as his war. This is
00:08:53Biden's war. And therefore, that allows him this posture, allows him to take the position of a mediator.
00:09:02He can mediate the discussion and prompt or provoke or press the two parties to go to the negotiation
00:09:15table. I think that's the way it happens and the way the Americans want to keep it. They don't want to
00:09:23be involved, because that would mean they are continuing the Biden strategy. And they don't want that.
00:09:33We have also to acknowledge. And that's that's also the reason why Trump is the only Western leader who can
00:09:41talk to the Russians, because it's no break with a previous his previous policy, if you want.
00:09:47But for all the others, let's take Emmanuel Macron or Keir Starmer, they have been adamant to continue the war.
00:09:55So now they are trapped in their own narrative. They cannot really go backwards and say, oh,
00:10:02now we have to sponsor a dialogue with Russia. So Trump, because you had this election and
00:10:11because he was elected last year and came into office in January, he can he has the luxury of
00:10:20looking the conflicts from outside. If I can put it that way, as in my view, the Europeans should do.
00:10:27I mean, I always said Zelensky is a Ukrainian for good or bad reasons, probably bad reasons. But
00:10:38that's that's that's that's that's my assessment. But for good or bad reason, he's in the conflict and
00:10:45he has a position obviously against the Russians, because this is the enemy. On the other side,
00:10:50you have the Russians and they have a similar position. They are involved in a conflict.
00:10:55They consider Ukraine as the enemy. Therefore, you have two parties considering the other as an enemy.
00:11:00That's normal. But I still don't understand why outside observers are still considering being
00:11:13part of the conflict. That's that's that's exactly a position European position. They are part of the
00:11:20conflict, in fact, and they behave as if they were Ukrainians. And even if they never came up with any
00:11:31solution to the conflict, not even military, they just provided weapons, but they in fact they just
00:11:40had the conflict rather than finding solutions. And both politically, that means diplomatically,
00:11:51and militarily, the European Union was never tried to find an exit. They had no exit strategy,
00:11:59there are no exit policy, and it didn't help Ukraine to get out of the of the conflict.
00:12:07So now they want to be part of the discussion. But they have been exactly those who have prevented
00:12:15Ukraine to talk. Remember what happened in February 2022, later in April 2022, and later in August 2022,
00:12:29when every time Zelensky tried to open the dialogue with Russia, because from the very beginning of this the the Russian
00:12:41special military operation, Zelensky felt that he went on the bad in the bad direction in the wrong direction.
00:12:52And that's the reason why already one day after the beginning of the special military operation,
00:12:57he asked for negotiations. So Zelensky probably intuitively
00:13:02understood that what he hoped to have to be an easy victory over Russia because of the sanctions and all that.
00:13:16He felt that it was wrong and tried to move backwards. But who prevented that?
00:13:26On the 27th of February 2022, the European Union came and said,
00:13:31no, the discussion that were going on in Gomel at the Ukrainian-Belarusian border,
00:13:39the European Union said, no, there will be no discussion. We provide 550 million euro of weapons for Ukraine.
00:13:48No discussion. They repeated exactly the same thing in the end of March 2022, as you had the discussions,
00:13:59and that was reported by the Financial Times at the time, and by the Ukrainian press, including
00:14:06Ukraine and so on. And then the European Union came again. It came back with a second package of
00:14:15half a billion euro for weapons. They said, no, you don't talk, you fight.
00:14:22So you have this constant pressure of the Europeans to continue war despite
00:14:31what Zelensky wanted. And now you want those same Europeans be at the negotiation table with Ukrainians.
00:14:40It's totally absurd. And that's the reason why I think the Trump team has understood that if you
00:14:50want to achieve anything in terms of a dialogue or discussion or at least opening a dialogue,
00:14:58you need to keep the Europeans far away from the negotiation table because they will not be
00:15:06a fake factor of peace. There will be a factor of war. And we can definitely see that in the project.
00:15:13They have submitted at the the so-called London conference last last week.
00:15:19Coming back to what Senator Rubio, oh, Senator, sorry, Marco Rubio, I always used to say,
00:15:33obviously, but coming back to what Rubio said, it's true. And that is to the credit of Donald Trump,
00:15:43is that at least he's willing to engage the Russians on the issue of peace negotiation and is ready to engage the Ukraine as well.
00:15:56So at least someone in the West is ready to talk to the Russians. And I think that's obviously to his credit.
00:16:04The problem is that, as we have said many times, he has a good intention, which is to disengage the US from this conflict and by the same token to have probably an agreement between the two parties, which is good intention.
00:16:22The problem is, again, that he has no strategy to address that. That's a real problem, because that explains exactly what we have seen in the last months, in the last, it's more than a couple of months now, that we are going back and forth.
00:16:44Nobody knows exactly. We talk about negotiation, but there have been no negotiation yet on a peace.
00:16:53What we have seen so far are, in fact, two sets of discussions.
00:17:00The first one is a first discussion between the US and Russia in order to restore normal diplomatic relations,
00:17:11including, including the reopening of the embassy in Moscow and in Washington, D.C., and to have a normal diplomatic flow of relations, if you want.
00:17:26That's the first step. And that's what happened in Riyadh and Istanbul and more recently in Jeddah.
00:17:36Sorry, in Istanbul, I think. It was on the 10th of April. Anyway, so that was the first set of discussions.
00:17:47And then you had another set of discussions between Witkoff and Putin, between Trump and Zelensky, and including the discussion and the conference in London.
00:18:05And this second set of discussions is about establishing or setting kind of a position paper for the parties, because precisely the Trump administration started this process on the backdrop of this article of Keith Kellogg that he wrote early April 2024.
00:18:34And what was published on the website of the America First Policy Institute.
00:18:41And but that was just an article that was that was essentially a criticism about Biden's policy.
00:18:51But there was no plan yet. Since then, Keith Kellogg has worked this article out in order to have some kind of a plan.
00:19:04And all the efforts of the Trump administration in the last couple of months was to have the Europeans agreeing on that position, which is a position paper period.
00:19:23The discussions between Witkoff and Putin was for Witkoff to understand the Russian position and to understand up to which point the Russians are ready to talk and what is negotiable, what is not.
00:19:45This is something that was a criticism that has been made by others, Alexander Mercurius and others, that the Keith Kellogg so-called plan never took into consideration what the Russians said.
00:20:05And the baseline for the Russians have been clearly explained by Vladimir Putin on the 14th of June 2024, just before the so-called peace conference in Burgenstock in Switzerland.
00:20:25And there he said the two basic conditions to enter into the negotiation process.
00:20:35So it's not something to be negotiated. This is something that this is the threshold that Russia will have will demand in order to start the process.
00:20:50And namely Ukraine out of NATO and the Russian authority or sovereignty over the four regions of Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk and Lugansk.
00:21:06That's it. There are no other requests. These are the two requests.
00:21:12And when you look at the Case Kellogg plans and the various the variants of it and all that, he never took these basic conditions into account in due date.
00:21:29Because any plan, basically any plan that you would draw should take into account this, because otherwise the Russians would simply not take part of the negotiation.
00:21:39So there is no point having what was proposed both by the Europeans and by the Americans at the London conference was to have this recognition of the Russian authority based on the contact line.
00:22:01So based on the military front line, which excludes basically one third of Zaporozhye, Kherson and Donetsk Republic.
00:22:14So there is no chance that the Russians will start any negotiation process without this baseline.
00:22:26Meaning that any plan should start with that.
00:22:30And that was not the case. And that was not the case. And that's the reason why the Trump nominated or asked Witkoff to discuss with Putin in order to see what what is the margin or the freedom of movement, if you want.
00:22:50Because at the end of the day, what we will have are two positions.
00:22:57You will have a Ukrainian position.
00:23:00Obviously, or hopefully agreed upon by the Western actors, let's put it that way.
00:23:09And you will have a Russian position.
00:23:12Obviously, the two papers or the two positions will differ significantly.
00:23:17And that's the purpose of the discussion, the negotiation.
00:23:21When we negotiate, it's precisely to bring together positions that are essentially different, but progressively by giving something to other and taking it's a give and take exercise that you do.
00:23:40And progressively, incrementally, you should have those two positions coming closer and closer to each other to reach a common position, which eventually will be an agreement.
00:23:54That's that's the process.
00:23:57I've been part of several discussion of this kind.
00:24:01And it's a very tedious process because you come from a very solid position and then you know that you will have to give something to the other in order to have the other also giving something in return.
00:24:18And therefore, the two positions will get closer.
00:24:22But the problem is that, as I said, Trump knows probably where he wants, where he's heading to, probably, but he has no very clear objectives on that, but certainly no strategy.
00:24:35And the Europeans on their side have neither a strategy nor an objective.
00:24:41I should say, you know, the other way around, they don't have an objective.
00:24:45They don't have any strategy to reach that objective.
00:24:48And that's the problem of the Europeans, because if you don't know where you are heading to, it's very hard to get there.
00:24:57You know, and that's exactly the problem of the European Union.
00:25:01And when you if you talk to people like Emmanuel Macron, who change their mind every second day, I mean, there is no way you will achieve anything.
00:25:11And that's that was the purpose of the London conference to agree on a common position paper in order to support Ukraine in the discussion with Russia.
00:25:27Because it needs Ukraine needs to have a departure position.
00:25:33You see, and that was exactly the problem.
00:25:37So there have been no negotiation so far, or let's say not between with the Russians.
00:25:45It's just a matter of understanding who has which position and what where are the position of departure for both sides.
00:25:57And that's that's where we are here.
00:26:01And in that sense, Marco Rubio is right when he said at least you have almost you have only one Western leader who is ready to address this question.
00:26:15And that's that's that's Trump with the risk, of course, that if it doesn't achieve anything in the short term, that will become his war.
00:26:32And that's the reason also why he's reluctant to provide any support weaponry and all that, because he doesn't want this conflict to be his.
00:26:44He would like this this conflict to be his war.
00:26:46He would like this this conflict to be his peace and leave the war aspect to Biden.
00:26:56You see, that's where we are.
00:26:58And that explains the reason why Rubio said that if the Europeans are not able to find a reasonable position, then U.S. will withdraw and they will leave the baby.
00:27:20I mean, Ukraine in the arms of the Europeans.
00:27:25And that is a guarantee for failure.
00:27:30Because any conflict, regardless of the conflict, I mean, military conflict, I mean, will hand will end into can end in two different ways.
00:27:42A it's a negotiated solution around the table that you discussed or through a decisive victory of one of the belligerents.
00:27:58And if we were in a situation such as probably March 2022, when more or less everything was open, then you could have a position like the Europeans and say, OK, we continue.
00:28:17We continue we can take the risk of continuing fighting because there is a chance on both sides to win.
00:28:26But now we are in a very, very different position today that first of all, definitely we have seen that since summer 2033 that the Russians are the dominating power and they are winning the other winning side.
00:28:51And there is nothing that indicates that Russia is weakened or that the course of events can be reversed.
00:29:04Meaning that and on the other hand, by the way, on the Ukrainian side, we see a shrinking armored forces with less and less equipment.
00:29:16And we can say that since the end of 2022, all the equipment, old former Soviet equipment that Ukraine still had, has totally disappeared from the battlefield.
00:29:33If you look at the pictures we have seen in the course area, for instance, or in other areas, we just see Western equipment.
00:29:43And one one one three the those I don't remember the name of those armored trucks that were used for made for Iraq and now used by the the the the Ukrainians.
00:30:06These are all U.S.
00:30:09These are all U.S. equipment, basically.
00:30:11You don't have original Russian equipment anymore.
00:30:15So and all that is shrinking.
00:30:19If you see the amount of vehicles and equipment that has been destroyed by the Russians just in course, you can see that the the equipment of the Ukrainian army is shrinking at an enormous high speed.
00:30:37And at the same time, they have problems with the personnel.
00:30:42And that's that's the reason why they opened up the possibility of having people younger than 25 years of age of being involved on part of the armed forces.
00:30:58So we see that on the Ukraine's Ukrainian side.
00:31:03Things are not going so well.
00:31:07I'm not even talking about the economy and all that, but that comes into addition.
00:31:13So it's not the right moment to speculate on a possible Ukrainian success.
00:31:21And that's exactly what the Europeans are doing.
00:31:25So I think the the the approach that the Europeans have to press Ukraine not to negotiate with Russia and continue fighting.
00:31:40Even if we accept it, it would have been it would have made some sense in March 2022 today has no sense anymore.
00:31:51And that's the recipe for the total destruction of Ukraine.
00:31:57And that's what Vladimir Putin, by the way, indicated just a few days ago when he say we'll fishing will finish them off.
00:32:06You know, so we have here a very interesting situation in which we know that Ukraine is on the verge of being totally defeated.
00:32:22And there is no, let's say, visible solution for that.
00:32:29But at the same time, you have the Europeans who don't have the slightest idea of how to find a solution to the problem,
00:32:40who don't have any idea about some kind of exit strategy.
00:32:45But they are still promoting the idea of continuing fighting.
00:32:52So this is, of course, there are a lot of denial behind this.
00:32:59But behind the denial, I think there is a certain intellectual problem there, because I don't see what I mean.
00:33:11I mean, it's always easy to do to make war with the blood of others.
00:33:18And that's exactly what the Europeans are doing.
00:33:21They are making war with the blood of the Ukrainians.
00:33:26And it's easy to do so.
00:33:28But in reality, we are probably in the same kind of madness that we had during the First World War.
00:33:38Where people always hoped for the victory tomorrow, but it never happened.
00:33:44And so we killed a lot of people for nothing just because we hoped that somehow victory would fall from the sky.
00:33:55And we are exactly in the same situation in Europe.
00:33:59So, that definitely raised some concerns, at least to me.
00:34:06Kalal, who's in the driving seat in Europe?
00:34:11Is there any evidence for that, to see who's driving the show, who's running the show in Europe?
00:34:22We know that Germany together with the United Kingdom and France are the major parties.
00:34:29But I don't see that much of rule for Germany between the United Kingdom and France.
00:34:36Who's the main player of the game in Ukraine?
00:34:41That's another problem.
00:34:43There are none.
00:34:44You know, it's not a collective, there are no collective vision of that.
00:34:50I mean, yes, there's a collective vision in a sense that they want to have Russia defeated.
00:34:56But that's just a mindset.
00:35:02This is not a strategy, you know.
00:35:06When you talk about who is in the driving seat, when you ask who is in the driving seat, we see that we have a multiple one-man show.
00:35:19You have Macron making his show.
00:35:21You have Ursula von der Leyen making hers.
00:35:25Kayakalas making hers.
00:35:28Keir Starmer making hers.
00:35:29And Mertz, who tries to find some place in the spotlight.
00:35:38But we see that this coalition of the willing, that was supposed to gather all Europeans under the same idea, with the same objective, and with the same approach to the conflict,
00:35:54failed.
00:35:55Failed totally.
00:35:56You see that the Italians are less emotional than the French, probably more pragmatic.
00:36:08That's also the...
00:36:11I mean, Giorgia Meloni, the Italian Prime Minister, doesn't like Macron.
00:36:18Macron.
00:36:19That's the first thing.
00:36:20She just hate him.
00:36:22Because, probably, she understands that Macron is a guy who shows off.
00:36:28That's all.
00:36:29There is no substance behind Macron.
00:36:32He's just someone who talks nice buzzwords, find the right expression, or is very keen to be in the limelight.
00:36:47But there is no real substance in what he thinks.
00:36:52There is no...
00:36:53And that explains why he changed so often his position.
00:36:58And he flip flops all the time.
00:37:01Because there is no real understanding of the problem, first of all.
00:37:06There is no strategy to address.
00:37:09I mean, though, let's say, intellectual perception of a solution has none.
00:37:19And we see that not only as regards Ukraine, by the way, but we see that internally.
00:37:28And probably because, in France itself, he's not able to have precisely the right strategy to address problems in France, that he tries to have a higher profile on the foreign policy stage.
00:37:46That's probably the reason.
00:37:50But we see that he tries to engage in various...
00:37:55He tried also with Iran, with Palestine, and all that.
00:38:00But since he has no solid understanding, solid views on how this conflict should be treated, it doesn't last long.
00:38:14So he's just here to be in the headlines, and then he vanished.
00:38:21So there is nobody there.
00:38:23And Keir Starmer, it's very similar that Macron, probably less flamboyant than Macron in a certain sense.
00:38:36Because he makes a lot of promises, but he has not the means to fulfill those promises.
00:38:44He knows it.
00:38:47And that's also the same with Mertz, but with a different perspective.
00:38:53Because Mertz understands, in Germany, that the whole population...
00:39:01And we see that through the growth of importance of the AfD, this right-wing party, which is very adverse to European Union, at least the foreign policy of the European Union, and adverse to any attempt to go to war with Russia.
00:39:26And its importance is growing in Germany.
00:39:35And I think now it has become, in terms of what the polls say, I mean, that is always subject to caution, but apparently today the AfD is the most popular party in Germany.
00:39:53And it's not a party that belongs to the current governing coalition.
00:40:00So Mertz has not a total freedom when deciding.
00:40:06He has no real majority behind him to make decisions such as going deeper into the war in Ukraine.
00:40:16So he's halfway, if you want.
00:40:21Meaning that, if you look at those main actors, and I'm not even mentioning Ursula von der Leyen and Kayakalas, because these are people who have not been able to develop a sound and reasonable, I would say, strategy for Ukraine.
00:40:41In the last three years, their only input was to provide new weapons.
00:40:46They never came up with any idea to solve the issue.
00:40:50Even before, by the way, because Ursula von der Leyen was one of those Western leaders who advised Zelensky not to fulfill the Minsk agreements.
00:41:03So basically, we see people who act in a very emotional way.
00:41:10And when I say emotional, it's not, it's the real term.
00:41:17Because when we see the reaction, for instance, when we talk about the Victory Day on the 9th of May in Moscow.
00:41:26And when you see that the European Union is now preventing or tries to prevent anyone from the European leaders to go and assist the parade in Moscow.
00:41:44That means that those people, and Ursula von der Leyen is a German, her grandfather used to work with those who occupied Ukraine, in fact.
00:42:01No, these people have not swallowed the victory in 1945.
00:42:08That's the real thing. Somehow, they have not swallowed the victory.
00:42:14And therefore, they are totally directed against Russia.
00:42:21So there is there is no way we can expect any sensible solutions coming from them.
00:42:28So coming back to your question.
00:42:30No, there is nobody in driving.
00:42:32There are some views that are more.
00:42:34I mean, again, the only common point or common aspiration, if you want, is to see Russia being defeated.
00:42:46But there is no agreement on how to achieve that.
00:42:52With what which means.
00:42:55And what for?
00:42:58Because when if you want, let's assume, I mean, I understand the Ukrainians, they want Russia out of Ukraine.
00:43:06OK, that's legitimate. That's the country they want to have their country as it used to be.
00:43:12I mean, if they had thought about the problem before, probably the Russians would have not come in the first in the first instance.
00:43:23But OK, they they had bad policies that eventually led the Russians to come and make their operation.
00:43:32But OK, let's let's forget that.
00:43:37And we understand that the Ukrainians would prefer to have no Russians in Ukraine.
00:43:42I understand that.
00:43:43But what is the idea of Ursula von der Leyen?
00:43:52It goes beyond of that.
00:43:53And we have heard Kayakalas last year saying that the the name of the game is not simply to have the Russians out of Ukraine.
00:44:05The name of the game is to have Russia disintegrating or better said in the official State Department terminology to have Russia decolonizing.
00:44:21Or split among different ethnic groups that are composed of the whole Federation of Russia.
00:44:30And so that's the goal is to have Russia split into pieces.
00:44:37That's that's the ultimate goal.
00:44:40And again, OK, they have this idea, but they don't know how to achieve that.
00:44:48And that will suddenly not be achieved by simply supporting Ukraine.
00:44:56So these are people who simply hate Russia for various reasons, probably because of history or family history.
00:45:06But they hate Russia.
00:45:08So they support Ukraine.
00:45:11Knowing that Ukraine eventually will probably be destroyed.
00:45:18But not knowing how to achieve that, having no strategy, no real objective or tangible, concrete objective and no strategy to address these objectives.
00:45:33So we have that's why I said we have a sum of one man shows rather than one single view on the on the how to solve the crisis.
00:45:48Colonel, the other conflict for the United States is the situation in the Middle East and the talks between Iran and the United States.
00:45:59We had the third, the third round of negotiation talks.
00:46:03And in in in this round, it was not only by diplomats talking to each other, but technical teams or somehow negotiating with each other to find a solution for the conflict with Iran.
00:46:22Here is what Netanyahu said, and I would assume that he wants to put pressure on Netanyahu, on Donald Trump.
00:46:31The deal that works is a deal which removes Iran's capacity to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
00:46:41By the way, the only reasons you enrich uranium is to have nuclear weapons.
00:46:45There are dozens and dozens of countries who have civilian nuclear programs and they don't enrich uranium.
00:46:52So Iran is constantly thinking, well, we have to find a reason why we're putting these things in bunkers under mountains,
00:46:57maybe for radioisotopes, right, for medicine or for nuclear submarines.
00:47:04Give me a break.
00:47:05They enrich uranium for one reason and one reason only, and that's to make nuclear weapons,
00:47:10which they use to destroy my country and threaten America.
00:47:13Once they have the weapons of delivery, ballistic missiles, ICBMs, intercontinental ballistic missiles,
00:47:19they will threaten every city in the United States.
00:47:22That is a palpable danger to Israel and to the free world, and it must be prevented.
00:47:29The way to prevent it is to dismantle all the infrastructure of Iran's nuclear program.
00:47:36That is a deal we could live with.
00:47:40Yeah, you get the tone of his argument.
00:47:47And with what's going on with what we've heard from the teams, from the two parties,
00:47:52do you think it's just some sort of fantasy for Netanyahu?
00:47:58Because it doesn't seem that the American part is asking for that.
00:48:04No, the Americans are not asking for that.
00:48:07And what we hear from Netanyahu today is in fact the continuation of a constant idea,
00:48:17not really a policy, but an idea of the Israelis since the early 50s to have the US physically engaged in the Middle East.
00:48:29That was a constant effort of the Israelis.
00:48:33And it started, in fact, with the famous Lavon affair in Egypt in the early 50s,
00:48:42in which the Israelis started bombing campaign in Egypt, bombing US and British interests,
00:48:51like consulate embassies and things like that, in order to provoke British and or American intervention in Egypt,
00:49:07in order to have them physically committed to the Middle East.
00:49:11This became the, you can see, check it in the Lavon affair in Wikipedia, for instance,
00:49:18even if Wikipedia is a very bad source for information at large.
00:49:22But OK, that became the Lavon affair because this bombing campaign,
00:49:28which is essentially a terrorist campaign, was sponsored by the Israeli intelligence,
00:49:35the military intelligence at that time, if I'm not wrong.
00:49:38Lavon was the Ministry of Defense.
00:49:41And that was one of those attempts to have the Americans involved in the region.
00:49:48So and since then, it has been a constant same approach of the Israelis.
00:49:53And now we have this.
00:49:55I mean, that's that's why I was called.
00:49:58I mean, I say Iran is the best enemy of of Israel.
00:50:02I mean, Iran has absolutely nothing against Israel.
00:50:06They have no common borders.
00:50:09They don't have contentious issues, essentially.
00:50:12So Israel has a problem with Iran.
00:50:15But Iran has no problem with Israel.
00:50:17But Israel has problem with all these neighbors.
00:50:19So it's not it's not really a surprise.
00:50:22Now, if we go back to what Netanyahu said, Iran is enriching uranium.
00:50:31And it's true.
00:50:32And this has been inspected by the International IAEA, exactly.
00:50:47Many times.
00:50:48And in fact, it gives the answer why Iraq enrich uranium.
00:50:54It's because precisely other countries don't have the capacity to do it.
00:50:59And in fact, for Iran, enriching uranium and selling rich uranium is a business.
00:51:06So that's the perspective that we have from Netanyahu.
00:51:12That's the only purpose of enriching uranium is to have nuclear weapons is stupid.
00:51:19It's wrong.
00:51:20It's a lie.
00:51:21There are other applications and Iranians are selling that.
00:51:25And that was basically, that was not basically, that was in fact, that was set into the Joint Comprehensive Comprehensive Agreement for Iran, the GCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for Iran.
00:51:49That was set in that it was authorized for Iran to have enrichment capabilities and capacities in order to sell that to other countries.
00:52:02The problem is that this enrichment process cannot be stopped.
00:52:06And since the US has prohibited any trade with Iran, Iran is constrained to keep and to store this enriched equipment, uranium.
00:52:24But in fact, it's not enriched to the military grade level and it is still commercial grade and it can be sold to other parties.
00:52:35Now, another element that we need to, because Netanyahu wants to delegitimate the right for Iran to enrich, not aluminum, but uranium in the GCPOA.
00:52:54Anyway, as in the status of the IAA, it is explicitly said that enriching uranium is an inalienable right of countries.
00:53:10Inalienable right, meaning that every country who has obviously the capacity to do it is entitled to enrich uranium, not for the purpose of making weapons, but for commercial issues.
00:53:29And let me remind you that just a couple of weeks ago, as Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, presented the annual report on the threat situation in the world.
00:53:47She explicitly said, and it's explicitly written in the report, by the way, that as it was already stated in a national intelligence estimate of the CIA in 2007,
00:54:05that Iran has stopped its idea of having nuclear weapons in 2003.
00:54:14And since then, it has not made any plan to resume the research on and the development of nuclear weapons.
00:54:27That was said, and she, in fact, she said exactly that, that the intelligence community assesses that since 2003, Iran has no longer any plan to have nuclear weapons.
00:54:47So Netanyahu is lying.
00:54:48Netanyahu is lying.
00:54:49Netanyahu is lying.
00:54:50And even the Americans have said that in 2007.
00:54:53There's a famous, you can download it, it was, you can find it on the internet.
00:54:59There's this national intelligence estimate of, I think it was October 2007 or November.
00:55:06I don't remember.
00:55:07Anyway.
00:55:08And now the intelligence community repeats exactly the same thing, exactly the same wording as it was in the national estimate of 2007.
00:55:21That since 2003, there is no development of nuclear weapons and there is no intent to do it.
00:55:27And I remember that, I think it was in 2012 or something like that, as you had Netanyahu talking at the UN General Assembly with the famous drawing with the bomb that was drawn on a paper.
00:55:44And he was with a marker marking the red line and, you know, the different steps of producing a nuclear weapon.
00:55:54And that was September 2012, if I'm not wrong.
00:55:59And just weeks after that, you had a leaked document of the Mossad that appeared and said that there is no indication whatsoever, whatsoever, that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon.
00:56:21So that was, and probably the leak was intentional, because that was probably a way to say that Netanyahu just lied to the international community.
00:56:35And he's constantly lying.
00:56:37That's the trouble with this guy, because everything he said is demonstrably wrong, demonstrably wrong.
00:56:48It has been demonstrably debunked by intelligence organization, including the IAA.
00:57:03And the international, it's always IAA.
00:57:08International.
00:57:09International.
00:57:10International.
00:57:11Exactly.
00:57:12I always mix, because there is the acronym in French, the acronym in English.
00:57:17It's difficult to get both.
00:57:19And you work with different languages, it's always a problem.
00:57:23Sometimes I mix Italian, German and English and French.
00:57:28So it becomes a mess in my head.
00:57:30More seriously, coming back to this.
00:57:38Before, and I mentioned the GCPOA before, and just before Trump left the GCPOA in 2017 or something like that, the IAA had made 17 inspections of Iran.
00:58:04And on 17 occasions, the agency confirmed that Iran was complying with the treaty.
00:58:14So when we look at official statements and of international organizations, U.S. intelligence,
00:58:27we see that they are consistently saying that Iran has no intent to develop a nuclear weapon and has not made any step to do so.
00:58:42Remember that before that, in the early 2000s, Iran considered the idea of having a nuclear weapon.
00:58:50And they studied the feasibility.
00:58:53They made a feasibility study of that.
00:58:57The CIA tried to...
00:59:04They had an operation against that.
00:59:08They managed to provide Iranians with the blueprints of a nuclear weapon.
00:59:16But in this blueprint, they managed to make mistakes in order to be able to track the evolution of the project in Iran.
00:59:27And the Iranian engineers looked at the blueprints, identified the mistake, which was extremely difficult to find.
00:59:37But they found it and they decided that it was a hoax.
00:59:44And eventually they decided that making a nuclear weapon in Iran would probably cause more troubles than solutions.
00:59:56And probably it was not a good idea to develop that.
00:59:59And that's the reason why they probably changed their mind and developed ballistic missiles and...
01:00:07But conventional ballistic missiles and probably engaged in the hypersonic technology.
01:00:14What we have seen in action last year during the two true promise operations of the Iranians.
01:00:25Showing that, by the way, you don't need nuclear weapons to achieve success.
01:00:30But having alternative technologies can bring chances of success against Israel.
01:00:37So, from that we can derive the fact that Netanyahu is lying when he's talking about this.
01:00:46He's not...
01:00:49He's simply trying to press the US to be involved in Iran.
01:01:00Now, from the Trump perspective, Trump doesn't want to be involved in any conflict.
01:01:06He has understood that being part of a conflict is a waste of money and resources.
01:01:14And what he needs now to make America great again is precisely resources.
01:01:21Human resources, financial resources, industrial resources.
01:01:27He doesn't want...
01:01:28He doesn't want...
01:01:30It's not that he doesn't want, but so far, the only industry that survived the Cold War is the military-industrial complex in the US.
01:01:42But as we see, the military-industrial complex is probably a source of income for many billionaires.
01:01:51But it's not a solution for a state.
01:01:55You cannot live just based on manufacturing weapons.
01:02:01This is not what the consumers want.
01:02:04You need to have a lot of other capacities and capabilities.
01:02:09And that's what Trump wants to do.
01:02:12And that's the reason why he wants to spend energy and resources to reshore industry in the US.
01:02:23That's why he wants to disengage from Ukraine, disengage from Palestine, disengage from Iran.
01:02:35And concentrate on China, put pressure on China.
01:02:39Why?
01:02:40Because China is the major competitor to the US.
01:02:43It's very simple.
01:02:44But at the same time, to compete with China involves two things.
01:02:56First, to be able to make China weaker, if I can put it that way.
01:03:05But at the same time, you have to make America stronger.
01:03:10And reshoring industries because a lot of investments.
01:03:15Not just in building new production or manufacturing facilities.
01:03:21But also a lot of effort in terms of training engineers.
01:03:30STEM graduates, as they call it in the United States.
01:03:34Science, Technics, Engineering and Mechanical.
01:03:39So, and that requires a lot of investments.
01:03:43And that will also be fruitful, not just in a couple of days, but in a couple of years and all that.
01:03:53Meaning that you need to rebuild those infrastructure.
01:03:57You need to rebuild a training and education system in the US because this is obviously missing.
01:04:07If you compare US to China and even Russia and even some European countries.
01:04:13To say that the US has lost his position in terms of having graduates that can assume the development of technologies and all that.
01:04:28Most of the innovations that you find in the US are in fact produced by foreigner brains.
01:04:34You know, these are brains that are imported.
01:04:39And that's that's the strengths of the US.
01:04:43They have the funding for those brains.
01:04:45They are ready to pay for those brains.
01:04:47I have other friends who have their kids coming out of the Zurich engineer school, which is a very high rated.
01:05:01The Polytechnical School of Zurich is very high rated in the world.
01:05:06But you have a lot of American companies ready to spend a lot of money to have those engineers going to the US.
01:05:16So because they need brains, they don't have enough brains in the US.
01:05:20So if you want to have in the long term this competition with China, you have to rebuild that.
01:05:28And not just that, you also have to rebuild an infrastructure.
01:05:32You have to build a network of railways, of highways and so on and so forth.
01:05:41Electricity, for instance, also is a problem in the US.
01:05:45The US is one of the countries that has the most failure in the power grid because these are all private companies.
01:05:54So they tend to save money on maintenance.
01:05:58As a result, you have a very aged power grid system that collapsed at every time.
01:06:06So that's especially true on the West Coast of the US.
01:06:13So all that requires a lot of investment, a lot of resources, a lot of human resources and all that.
01:06:22So there is no room for war.
01:06:24And that's the reason why Trump tries to be disengaged from those wars.
01:06:30That's the positive aspect. That's a positive aspect.
01:06:34I'm not sure the way he wants it is taking to address these problems and to achieve these objectives.
01:06:42I'm not sure the way is the best one.
01:06:44And when we talk about the way we are talking about the strategy is probably not the best one with tariffs and all that.
01:06:52Again, that's that's can be debated by we can debate that.
01:06:58But this is the idea.
01:07:01And on a certain sense, I think the intent is a good intent.
01:07:09And the problem is that those people like Netanyahu who try to have others making war for them are the spoilers of peace.
01:07:25And we have seen that with Netanyahu.
01:07:27He has a strategy of provocation for everyone in the region.
01:07:33They never managed to have a consistent foreign policy in order to have good relations with their neighbors.
01:07:46They don't want to have good relations.
01:07:48It's very strange.
01:07:50It's a very strange culture that they would like to be loved, but they make everything to be hated.
01:07:58I try to understand that.
01:08:01For me, it's beyond understanding, but that's the way it is.
01:08:06And they are hated.
01:08:08But OK, so there is no real surprise there.
01:08:12So that's a little bit the situation in which we are.
01:08:17And again, the problem is that when those people like Netanyahu
01:08:27who are feeling that they are losing ground, they might be tempted to do irrational things.
01:08:35And that's that's the danger.
01:08:37And we have exactly the same thing with Zelensky, by the way.
01:08:40And they are the same culture.
01:08:41They came from they come from the same region, from the same area.
01:08:45They have the same culture, the same way of thinking.
01:08:48And we see this.
01:08:49We have addressed that a couple of times already, that you have a lot of similarities in the way Netanyahu and Zelensky deal their own crisis.
01:09:03By refusing any kind of negotiation, trying to impose their solution to others and failing because they don't have strategies.
01:09:17They are the illustrates perfectly something that I probably have already said in your program.
01:09:25But I think it's very true with both of them is what Sun Tzu used to say 3000 years ago or 2500 years ago saying strategy without tactics is just noise before defeat.
01:09:42Yeah, exactly.
01:09:49Thank you so much Colin for being with us today.
01:09:52Great pleasure.
01:09:53That was my pleasure.
01:09:54Thank you for inviting me.
01:09:56Thank you for inviting me.