Knowing that Tucker tried for three years to get this interview with Putin, we should assume that Putin would come into the room prepared. So, it makes sense that Putin wanted to give us a history lesson because he assumes, rightly, that most Americans do not have any clue about Russia’s history.
He didn’t do this to bore us, he did this to inform us and set us at ease. To tell us that he is a man with a perspective that he believes he can justify. He’s not a frothing-at-the-mouth cannibal who desires world domination.
No, Putin’s aim was to elucidate, calmly, the nature of the conflict, laying out the missteps made along the way. And I believe he was effective to those that stayed with him. Because, never once did Putin talk down to his audience.
How many Americans learned that Putin asked Bill Clinton for Russia to become part of NATO, thus ending NATO’s raison d’etre?
Or that Bush the Lesser unilaterally abrogated the ABM Treaty?
Or that the Minsk Agreements were our last hope for a settlement of the differences between the Donbass and Kiev, and that Putin was the one pushing to make them work?
......What does matter is that is how Putin views this conflict. And we have to deal with it. Period.
What also matters is that those who stand behind Putin are even less patient and circumspect than he is.
In order to avoid that bigger war only the oligarch class wants, we, as people, have to accept some responsibility for it getting to this point. Without that there can be no basis for a negotiated settlement.
This conflict between the West, and this includes all of Europe, the UK as well as the US, and Russia is one with existential consequences.
What Putin said, quite clearly, is that this ball is in our court. We can either sit down and have an honest discussion of a negotiated future or we will be at war. If that is what we in the West want, it is what we will get. Putin has put his sons on the line in eastern Ukraine. Are we?
You can dig in on being right or we can have peace. But, we cannot have both.
Read it all: https://tomluongo.me/2024/02/13/what-everyone-is-missing-about-the-putin-carlson-talk/
