Vivek Ramaswamy: belief

Transcript context

…What kind of peace deal do you think is possible, feasible, optimal in Ukraine? If you sat down, you became president. If you sat down with Zelenskyy and sat down with Putin, what do you think is possible to talk to them about? One of the hilarious things you did, which were intense and entertaining, your debates in the primary, but anyway, is how you outgrow the other candidates that didn’t know any regions. They wanted to send money and troops, and lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and they didn’t know any of the regions in Ukraine. You had a lot of zingers in that one. But anyway, how do you think about negotiating with world leaders about what’s going on there? Yeah, so look, let’s just get the self-interest of each party on the table, and to be very transparent about it. From everyone’s perspective, they think the other side is the aggressor, or whatever. Just get it on the table. Russia is concerned about NATO shifting the balance of power away from Russia to Western Europe when NATO has expanded far more than they expected to, and frankly, that Russia was told that NATO was going to expand. It’s an uncomfortable fact for some in America, but James Baker made a commitment to Mikhail Gorbachev in the early nineties, where he said NATO would expand not one inch past East Germany. Well, NATO has expanded far more after the fall of the USSR than it did during the existence of the USSR, and that is a reality we have to contend with. That’s the Russian perspective. From the Western perspective, the hard fact is Russia was the aggressor in this conflict, crossing the boundaries of a sovereign nation, and that is a violation of international norms, and it’s a violation of the recognition of international law of nations without borders are not a nation. And so, against that backdrop, what’s the actual interest of each country here? I think if we’re able to do a reasonable deal that gives Russia the assurances it needs about what they might allege as NATO expansionism violating prior commitments, but get codified commitments for Russia, that we’re not going to see willy-nilly behavior of just randomly deciding they’re going to violate the sovereignty of neighboring nations and have hard assurances and consequences for that. That’s the beginnings of a deal. But then, I want to be ambitious for the United States. I want to weaken the Russia-China alliance, and I think that we can do a deal that requires, that gives some real gifts to Russia conditioned on Russia withdrawing itself from its military alliance with China. And this could be good for Russia too, in the long run, because right now, Vladimir Putin does not enjoy being Xi Jinping’s little brother in that relationship. But Russia’s military combined with China’s naval capacity, and Russia’s hypersonic missiles, and China’s economic might, together those countries in an alliance pose a real threat to the United States. But if as a condition for a reasonable discussion about where different territories land, given what’s occupied right now, hard requirements that Russia remove its military presence from the Western hemisphere. People forget this, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, we don’t want a Russian military presence in the Western hemisphere. That too, would be a win for the United States, no more joint military exercises with China off the coast of the Aleutian Islands. we don’t want a Russian military presence in the Western hemisphere. That too, would be a win for the United States, no more joint military exercises with China off the coast of the Aleutian Islands. The kinds of wins that the United States wants to protect the West’s security, get Russia out of the Western hemisphere, certainly out of the North American periphery, and then also make sure that Russia’s no longer in that military alliance with China, in return for that, able to provide Russia some things that are important to Russia. We’d have to have a reasonable discussion about what the territorial concessions would be at the end of this war to bring it to peace and resolution and what the guarantees are to make sure that NATO is going to not expand beyond the scope of what the United States has at least historically guaranteed. That I think together would be a reasonable deal that gives every party what they’re looking for, that results in immediate peace, that results in greater stability, and most importantly, weakening the Russia-China Alliance, which I think is the actual threat that we have so far, no matter who in this debate of more or less Ukraine funding has really failed to confront, that I think is the way we de-escalate the risk of World War III, and weaken the threats to the West by actually dismantling that alliance.…

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