and political moralizing, exhausted. so what factors need to be in place in order to end it once and for all? ok, because i'm now joined by richard trubinstein, professor of conflict resolution and public affairs. i george mason university professor rubinstein. it's great to talk to you. thank you very much for your time . thank you. i'm glad to be here. now you wrote in one of your recent articles that the best time to undertake piece talks is when the parties, the warring parties having stepped out, di, military efforts declared that they would never ever talk to the enemy. do you think we have reached that point in ukraine? i think that we're approaching it. we may not have reached quite yet, but i think we're getting very close to it so that in fact i'm a number of us who are studying the, the conflict and who are in conflict resolution. are sensing that the, the, the time seems to be turning on. you know, that it's, it's been very,

very difficult for, for people like me. and many of my colleagues who think that there should be negotiations as soon it's been very difficult for us to get a hearing. it may be the mainstream newspapers, the new york times, the washington post and so forth, are not running or not running our up as are letters to the editor. and it's very distinguished group of people, people like jeffrey sachs, of columbia, or richard falk at princeton and others are finding themselves i have been silenced . but the, i think this is changing, and in fact i notice even in the new york times this morning, there's a quote from an expert in the rand corporation who is beginning to talk about the possibility of negotiations and well before we go deeply more deeply into that can actually oppose what i think is the most crucial question in discussing the possibility of these talks. and that is, who are the warring parties? who do you think are the sides to these indeed horrific and hard breaking conflicts?

well, i certainly agree with you about both horrific and heartbreaking. and i think that the, the part is in conflict resolution. the usual rule is that you negotiate with the parties who are most alienated and who are and you know, using violence against each other. so that the, the immediate parties would be great in russia. ok. but it seems clear, especially given the history of this conflict and given the issues that are involved in it, that they can, that the notion can't stop there. i think they might well start with the green russia and deal with issues and immediately in the spirit between those 2 countries. but they would have to proceed to the next phase in which europe

and the united states were also involved. i think that's again, a very interesting and indeed a crucial point, whether the talks need to start or proceed to involve the united states. because when we consider the openness of the parties, russia is open for negotiations, i mean, must go for produce a statement almost on a daily basis that it's open for talks. it is the ukrainian leadership that pass certain legislation banning itself from engaging in the talks. but is any of that relevant without a more explicit and frankly, more genuine and more principal position of the united states on the issues of war and peace and ukraine. again, taking into account all the contacts, the under surface on the ground contacts that lead to this war. yes, i think you make a very good point and they will have to,

when we think about how we get, we began and i have to say that in my opinion, i think, i think, i think for russia to move against ukraine as it did, i think was a mistake, and the one who strikes the 1st blow is always a disadvantage afterwards. but even so that conflict that blow, it may be unjustly struck, but it was not unprovoked. there was a deliberate, a refusal to discuss major security issues with, with russia, with president putin who wanted to discuss the want to talk about a restructuring of the european security architecture. that has to be done. it seems to me that that issue has not disappeared, hasn't gone away. and certainly if the united states were in the same position, i having, you know, rocket base is positioned on its borders and so forth. and we were, you know,

we wouldn't sit back and take it either. so those issues have got to, it seems to me reappear at some stage. and even if not in the 1st year, just quite russians decision to move into your brain as a, as a mistake. i think that's a huge and as essential tragedy for russia and, you know, all the strategic for calculations notwithstanding. i think it's still, it's a major tragedy for, for our people because many of us have relatives in ukraine and we suffer from that war. not as much as the craniums, but it pains us as a huge deal. but going back to the strategic issues. as far as i know, more than half of ukraine's current budget is subsidized by the west. many of the weapons it's using on the battlefields come up either from the west or with the help of western financing and many western countries. and 1st and foremost, the united states and is doctrinal documents. strategic documents described russia as, as anatomy as an adversary and advocate the policy of active containment of

my country through neither expansion. do you think that war would ever be able to come about or be sustained without the help of the united states? no, i think the united states was a visit was a moving party in the war and the united states domination of nato is also is also clear. a great tragedy is, i think, really, exactly as you say that this relations us, russian relations have been framed in terms of this, an intense animosity and not simply based on that and it disagreements over policy. but something that goes deeper and we've been trying, we've been some of my colleagues and i've been trying to analyze this for,

we've been working for 2 or 3 years, talking to people and so forth, trying to find out where this is coming from, where, why special intense, and in my study, if you take a newspaper like the new york times, i mean, you simply can't find an article that has anything nice to say about russia at all . and by the way, they also don't have anything nice to say about china. so ok, so one possibility is that the u. s. position in the world now in some ways is being challenged. the u. s. position of the world has become uncertain. and it's a very strange situation since the u. s. is by far the dominant military power in the world that several people says not since the roman empire is 1. 1 power been so militarily dominant, but, and yet there are signs of weakening of the weakening of this. so, you know,

this kind of, this global hegemony. so in other words, there's a kind of defensiveness about the united states position. when you say that there is animosity, i think it's one sided, animosity the russians don't. hey, the americans, i mean i myself started in the united states, we read the american literature. we have many friends in the united states, and then american lifestyle has long been infatuated here in russia. but when you say that the america feels challenged, i don't understand what is that challenge? i mean, do we challenge the american by the american, stayed by the very fact of our existence by the very desire to develop our sounds or our neighborhood by our i think boy, you know, birth given right to build connections with our neighbors and with other countries what is it that is challenging the united states from our side? united states, i think, is not being challenged by russia. i think the challenges are over different,

sure. made my own feeling about it. when i say defensive, by the way, i mean what i mean, what i'm trying to point out is that very often aggression, aggressive activities and anti social activities are the result of fish of a person feeling threatened feeling or feeling the fear of the exactly, that's the underlying emotion there, but what i'm trying to understand is, what is it that the united states is fearing, given that again, it's the most powerful country of the world is the most prosperous country that will, it still has lots of the leverages to, you know, produce outcomes that it desires what is it, what is it that threatening it on the inside i'm? i'm almost tempted to tell you, go back and look at the history of the, of the late roman empire. and you'll see a nation that was threatened not so much from outside, but from, by the internal divisions and in an unsolved social problem. when you b,

u. s. as a, as a nation, which and you know, in many ways it's got a wonderful history and it's that done wonderful things. but it also is one of the most unequal societies on earth. it has a, there's a radical growth in any quality, social and economic inequality. the very rich have never been richer, the pretty much everybody else control compared with them is for, there's great suffering among large sections of the population in the country, and particularly people living in the industrialized areas and in urban gatos and so on. there's tremendous suffering, and yet these problems are not being solved for a number, for reasons that we could talk about this. and i'm sure you would agree with me that projecting those problems on to other nations is not going to how the situation. i'm sure that there was a little people in power who are trying to make those strategic decisions, including a decision to, you know,

pump your crane with weapons or provoke china over taiwan incessantly. i'm sure they understand that this in and of itself is not going to how the, you know, power divide or the income divide within the united states. what do you think is that ultimate motivation? what are they trying to get for themselves without people there? well, it's not rational when you, you know, when you talk about motivation, you're talking about rationality. and what i'm saying is that when people are feeling threat failure, people threaten by internal disunity and people feeling if you talk to look at the . busy pause and ask the people in the us how they think the country is doing. the man, the great mass of people say they think it's doing very badly. and people start looking around for scapegoats, especially, you know, if you're not, if you're, if you've been taught not to blame your own system. if you're not supposed to be thinking about ways that the system could be restructured to become more fair and

equitable and so forth. to everybody, then there's a tendency to strike out at others and at scapegoats. i mean, that's one part of it. the other part of it. and the answer your question seems to me is that the world in many ways is becoming multi polar. that the u. the u. s. has been the super, the sole superpower really now for some considerable period of time for decades. but now we're dealing not only with russia, which is in many ways, resurgent great power. china, which is clearly a great power. can this country learn to deal and to operate in a multi polar world as one great power among others? that's a big question and it's, it's going to take some re education here is going to take some work on our part to accept that new reality. a professor, romans thing, let's discuss some of the ways how the united states can take that very difficult

and perhaps unpleasant lesson after a short break. we will be back in just a few moments. stay tuned. a in i is the aggressor today. i'm authorizing additional strong sanctions. today. russia is the country with the most sanctions imposed against it. a number that's constantly growing. a list of course seniors you speak on the bill in your senior, mostly mine or wish you were banding all in ports of russian oil and gas or g i g,

hopefully with the literature. we're pretty good regarding joe, by imposing these sanctions on russia has destroyed the american economy. so there's your boomerang. ah ah ah

ah, welcome back to was a part smith return to invest in professor of conflict resolution and public affairs and george mason university. professor reuben's thing before the break we were talking about the it's very convenient habit on the part of the american to leads to sort of projects that own and competency on to other nations and constantly search for the enemy an external enemy. but as a unconscious, as it may seem, there are also many people who believe that that is a deliberate policy, deliberate strategy on the part of american decision makers. and as you can imagine here in moscow, they are not many people who believe in moral or democratic underpinnings of american actions in the ukraine. but many here give washington a credit for actually being quite strategic and rational because they believe that, you know, whether you like it or not. washington has succeeded in p ukraine against russia.

and it's exceeded doing that at a very low cost, you know, roughly $900000000000.00 and you know, thousands of ukrainian and russian, but not the american lives. and from a strategic point of view, that's not a bad outcome. do you think that's really something that k without any deliberate thought on the part of the american decision makers? so, you know, it's hard to say what's deliberating, what's not deliberate. i think that the, i think that the, that the decision to, to support ukraine would listen to support your grain. i mean, you might say in one way it was made quite early, was made in 2014, if not earlier, because the weapons flow started to started a large scale at that time. so it was not simply

a response to the invasion, although the invasion made some ways impossible for you to not to respond. but i think you're, you're right to denote at the beginning of your statement that there is, there is some rationality involved here. and i think it's important to point out that all sides in this war, both especially russia and united states have in some ways, limited the kinds of military activity that they're, that they're engaged. and there is a lot of self limitation going on on both sides and united states armed gradients to the teeth, but with many, with many modern weapons, but has avoided giving them weapons they could strike deep into into i thought i would argue that they're the only reason for that is to maintain the appearance of a proxy war and prevented from, you know, becoming a true kinetic war. because if that happens,

the cost to the united states would be much higher than they are at the moment. and again, this could be, you know, a rational way of waging a war, but pretending not to wage a war. which brings me to a question we sort of touched before, but didn't quite answer. do you think there any motivation at this point of time for the united states to support peace talks? what could be possible piece benefits for the united states? because from a strategic point of view, it seems to be getting quite a lot and that's where i think there's a change, a change in the air that things are starting to shift their united states as a, as a, as an electoral democracy, as a, as a country divided between 2 parties has probably never been more intentionally divided, not since the american civil war has been so intentionally divided between the democrats and republicans. but also it's almost,

it's so even very evenly divided. and i think that in this kind of situation, it's a, it's a make. the democrats are starting to realize it's a major mistake for them to be giving the republicans a piece, a piece blank in their glass in their platform to be given the piece issue. turning the pieces you over to the republicans and i don't think they want to go into it, but it didn't hurt them that much in the, in the election. that's just taken place for various reasons. i think the main reason being that the election was really about donald trump and a few issues like abortion, much more than about foreign policy. but i don't think the democrats want to go into 2024 with this war going on. i think you actually are helping us here very handsomely to connect the 2 issues, the american foreign policy and the internal divide that the united states is

facing. and i wonder somebody who analyzes international conflicts. i'm sure you have a certain perspective on, on what could possibly, how the united states he'll, it's an internal internal ones. and one thing that i noticed is that in the run up to the midterm elections, both the republicans and the democrats portrayed the mixture of the other side as a, as a major existential threat to the country. and the republicans did it as much as the democrats. i think the democrats actually did it even more than the republicans . do you take that as just fiery convenient rhetoric or is it indeed a sign of a perilous gap between the not just the 2 parties, but between the 2 parts of the united states? yes, i think i think it is a sort of a barrel. and in fact, my university is, you know, we're doing a forum on november 18th. we're going to do an all day assume forum on the

underlying causes of this polarization and what can be done about it. and, and, and i think it is dangerous, and i have to say that in conflicts like this. and also you might say the same thing about ukraine, you can reach a point that the people in conflict resolution called the painful stalemate in which both sides are hurting. neither side is, is able to win a decisive victory. neither side is going to say we're going to win a total victory, unconditional surrender, and all of that, that's not an, that's not in the cards. and when you have a painful stalemate and neither side can when totally, and then there's hope of a decent shot of a piece with honor of just face. then i think which conditions are actually right. ok for conflict resolution. and i think that maybe also true in the case of our

domestic conflicts here. that is, people are getting people are really getting tired. i don't think about northern ireland for example, whether the violent troubles were taking place. and all of a sudden women organized a peace movement in northern ireland for both both catholics and protestants. and the main message of the movement as we're tired of this violence is not getting us anywhere. so let's try, let's do something different. i think there's that feeling i think is growing here and i am hoping and praying that it, that it grows faster because i think the way our of our current impasse is to start reconsidering some basic questions about the way we do business in in this country. in the u. s. and in the west in general. so many of the problems that

dividers are really valuable. if we were thinking more imaginatively about ways of forms of social reconstruction. you mentioned this conference that your university is going to be hosting soon, and i'm sure it's not going to feature any russian experts, although i think the russians could bring you some very interesting perspective on that. and i want to use this opportunity to quote one of the russian analysts who i thought had a very interesting analysis of the years, mid term campaigning. and he suggested that over the last couple of years and what, what's been happening in the united states is essentially a match between here and theory. the democrats are trying to milk the fear as much as they want, or is they can, the republicans are trying to ride on the fury and both a very strong, very potent emotions, but not very productive. they accelerate the dynamic, but they don't create anything lasting. and you mentioned that, you know, some of the, perhaps grass through the effort of reaching out to the other side. but do you

think the american system, at this point of time, the electoral system will allow those initiative, those grassroots good will initiatives to sort of rise up to the, to the upper echelons and make the politics in general, more cooperative and more productive for the society as a whole, well, i would have to say that they would re, of course, the elite will resist change because you know, that they, they're profiting from the current situation. but i think there is, there is a certain time there are possibilities, at least in our history, our history, also your history suggest i want to be organized strongly on a local level when they get fed up enough. and when the new generation of leadership appears or change changes possible. so i'm hopeful and when i talk to my students, when i see what the young people are doing, when i see were, you know,

or piece organizations, for example, in, in washington dc are doing. and i received them and i see, for example, the development of a stronger and stronger feeling that there ought to be negotiations. and then that makes me hopeful that it can be, will be forced to listen. her now are you and many other thinkers have commented on the proliferation of weapons in the united states over 400000000 guns in the, in a country all 330000000 people. and i think it's one thing to only gone for self protection . it's quite another thing to pointed at another human being. we all have sort of building natural safeguards against that and people need most people only do that when and i very sense of security as the central security is threatened. i wonder if the political divide at least the way you feel it, the way you sense it,

because there is no way of i'm definitely answering to this question. do you think the political divide has reached such a proportions when people would so seeing that immediate survivor with political issues? well, it's not, you know, it's not quite there yet. and the movement is dangerous. you know, the direction in which things are going. busy is dangerous, it's people are, i don't, people are not, most people are not buying guns now because they're, they are getting ready to fight or civil war against, you know, the, the left against the right or whatever on there. but when they, when they buy guns, it, it very often indicates that there was a, it's a complicated business. but one of the things that it indicates is a deep distrust. not even so much of the other party in this political conflict, but

a deep distrust of authority and view as people in the, in the states where gun owning is most frequent and, and guns are a kind of secret issue. and you asked them why, why, why do you need, why do you think you need a gun? and clearly, you know, you don't need a military style automatic weapon to go hunting. so why are you buying these, these? these are automatic weapons, and they will tell you that they, they are afraid that the government is going to become tyrannical. in some ways it seems total, it seems irrational and bizarre. but then of course you realize that these are people who are feeling betrayed very often by government. these are people who are the promises made them. busy have not been delivered promises a prosperity and security and happy family lives.

their children will do better than they will be, you know, with the ability to even express those hopes. i think it is a very highly constrained i. i tested that as a, as a, as a journalist, the russian journalist with american education. but you cannot reach american audiences unless you subscribe to a certain point of view. i mean, i think they exit the level of censorship in the united states at this point of time is tyrannical. and i'm saying that as somebody who has a very good knowledge of russian propaganda and the censorship in this country. but as much as i hated, we have to put an end to this conversation too because we exhausted time. so i really, really appreciative of your thoughts as your agreement to talk to us at this point of time and very happy to do it. thank you for asking, and thank you for watching hope to hear again next week on will depart and

mm. mm mm ah. watching it was a year, a shorter one, but i'm not going to stay like a newborn you sit on with

is the aggressor tune chose this war. today i'm authorizing the additional strong sanctions with him when the banding all in ports of russian oil and gas by imposing these sanctions. i brush you as destroy the america, so there's your boomerang. i where you're suffering the i was really hitting people in the pocket a visit.