Sarah Paine: belief

Transcript context

…Especially if there's no retirement plan for Putin. One of the things that's interesting from Wars in Asia, is that there are things that are seen by one side as a deterrence are often seen by the other side as a provocation. The embargoes from the U.S. are seen by Japan as a deadline to attack. I think you had some other examples like this. People who are less empathetic to the Ukraine cause have said, “Extending NATO, which we thought would be a deterrent, was that actually a provocation for Putin?” What should we just generally make of that lesson? First of all, I think you should look at the people living in the countries in question. Before we decide that Americans are the important people in the world, or since we're in Britain now, British, and therefore anyone in between doesn't count, I believe that's wrong. All of the countries that joined NATO desperately wanted to join NATO. They've had a whole history of Russians doing terrible things to them. I'm not making it up. This is what Russia's been up to. They have been correct that Russia is going to do more terrible things. They were correct in doing everything they could to get into NATO and also be in the EU. It's incredible to remember what the standards of living of people in Eastern Europe that the Soviet Union had dominated were and what it is now. Since they have been freed of Soviet domination, it's been a massive compounding of standards of living. It's allowed people your age to travel the world and have a lot of aspirations in their lives. They can do podcasting. [Laughter]…

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