Ben Shapiro: evaluation

Transcript context

…Do you have a disagreement with what Destiny said? My main problem with Biden’s policy with regard to Ukraine is that he outsourced the end goal of the war to Zelenskyy early on. Now, that might make sense if that goal were something that he was willing to fund to the point of achievement or if Zelenskyy could have achieved it on his own. But right now, and this has been true since pretty early on in the war, it’s a point Henry Kissinger made, that pretty early on in the war, it was very clear that for example, Crimea was going nowhere. The Russians had control of Crimea, barring the United States giving permission to fly F-16s over Crimea, nothing was going to change over there. The same thing was true in most of the Donbas, in Luhansk and Donetsk. That was not going to change. Zelenskyy’s stated goal, and you understand it, he’s the leader of Ukraine, is that there was a predation on his territory in 2014 and that the Russian sent their little green men across the border, and then they took all of these areas. And so he, as the leader of Ukraine, is saying, “Okay, I want all of that back.” Now, the reality is that the US’ interests had largely been achieved in the first few months of the war, meaning the revocation of the ability of Russia to take Ukraine and just ingest it. And two, the devastation of Russia’s military capability. I mean, Russia has just been wrecked. I mean, the military is in serious straits because of the war in Ukraine. From an American perspective, I’m very much pro all of that. I think that we have an interest in Ukraine maintaining a buffer status against a territorially aggressive Russia. I think that the United States does have an interest in degrading the Russian military to the extent that it can’t threaten the Baltic states or threaten Kazakhstan or other countries in the region. The problem I have with Biden’s strategy is as always, I think that it’s a muddle, and I think muddles tend to end with misperceptions. War tends to break out and maintain because of misperception, misperception of the other side’s strength, the other side’s intentions, and all of the rest. People misperceive what’s going to happen. They say, “I’ll cross that line and nothing will happen.” This is what Putin thought. He thought, “I’ll cross that line. They’ll greet me as a liberator. And because the United States just surrendered in Afghanistan, essentially, they won’t do anything, and the West is fragmenting because NATO’s fragmenting and all the rest of this.” And obviously, he was wrong on all of those scores. t surrendered in Afghanistan, essentially, they won’t do anything, and the West is fragmenting because NATO’s fragmenting and all the rest of this.” And obviously, he was wrong on all of those scores. The problem for Biden is that as with virtually every war, no end line was set. And so it became out recently that it was widely reported that actually there was a peace deal that was on the table in the first few months that Putin was on board with that basically would’ve seeded Luhansk and Donetsk and Crimea to Russia in return for solidification of those lines. American and Western security guarantees to Ukraine, right? Ukraine wouldn’t formally join NATO, but there would be security guarantees to Ukraine. We’re ending up there anyway. It’s just taking a lot more money and a lot more time to get there.…

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