Q I think what John is saying is there are smart ways and dumb ways to pursue power. The containing China is a smart way. What we're doing in Ukraine is a dumb way. Whereas it seems like you're saying that all power seeking behavior is bad. That's not the game we should be playing. We should somehow opt out of that. Is that, is that kind of where you're going?
A It's a, it's not a bad way to say it, but I would, I would put it in another way. I read a, a very good book, uh, John's, um, and, and John described, I'm gonna quote him, but he can quote himself afterwards, he, he, he said that the regional hegemons, ah, don't threaten each other, actually. Why? Because we have big ocean in between. I, I deeply believe that China is not a threat to the United States, and I deeply believe the only threat to the United States period in the world, given the oceans, given our size, and given the military, is nuclear war. I deeply believe we're close to nuclear war because we have a mindset that leads us in that direction. We have a mindset that everything is a challenge for survival and that escalation is therefore always the right approach. My view is a little bit of prudence could save the whole planet. So why I don't like Ukraine is that I don't see any reason in the world that NATO has to be on Russia's border with Ukraine. I was, as I said, Gorbachev's advisor and Yeltsin's advisor, and they wanted peace and they wanted cooperation, but whatever they wanted, they did not want the US military on their border. So if we continued to push, as we did, we would get to war. John explained that better than anybody. We're now at war, and even this morning, there is further escalation. Uh, Blinken has said, well, if the Iranians give these missiles, t…
AI assessment note: “It's a, it's not a bad way to say it, but I would put it in another way.”