Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello, welcome to Call It Like I See it, presented by Disruption Now, I'm James Keys, and in this episode of Call It Like I See it, we're going to discuss the Russia initiated crisis in Ukraine and consider what the US and the global community in general should be doing about it, if anything.
And later on, we're going to take a look at the Tuskegee Airmen and discuss some of the incredible things they did in the European theater in World War II.
Joining me today is a man who eats so many shrimp, he has iodine poison.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Tunde.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: Ogonlana Tunde, you ready to show the people why they can believe you're a boss?
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm just laughing.
I started feeding shrimp to my turtle this week.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Oh, nice. He's eating. He's living good.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: Now. You got me all nervous about that. You know, my boy's all excited. He's actually getting real meat and not all that processed, you know, dry food that he used to eat.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: He's living good.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Now I got to worry I'm hurting him another way.
[00:01:18] Speaker A: Nah. We're recording this on February 22, 2022, and I do want to get right to the discussion today. Reports are that Russia has deployed over 100,000, well over 100,000 troops on the Ukraine border and even recently has had troops into regions of Ukraine that are presently controlled by Russia backed separatists.
Now, this comes only a few years after Russia took control of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine and ultimately annexed it and made it part of Russia.
So much has been said along the lines that Russia may be coming back for more and is willing to invade Ukraine to get it.
So, Tunde, to get us started, what do you think of all these reports that a legitimate hot war may be imminent here? Do you buy it or do you think this is kind of overblown or what's your thoughts here?
[00:02:09] Speaker B: Well, it's amazing that. Just to state it for the audience, as we're recording this, it's really in real time, I think overnight, because we're recording this in the morning. Overnight, it was announced that Russia has now put troops into the occupied areas of the Ukraine.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. The areas that the Russia control or the Russia backed separatist control. They've. They have troops there now.
[00:02:37] Speaker B: Yeah, like I was so. And now it looks pretty much like something is imminent, you know, and who knows where it go? That's why I said it's pretty interesting as we're recording this, you know, it's kind of real time. I'm definitely not going to be bold Enough to try and make a prediction, however, I would say based on kind of historic patterns, along with understanding kind of the nature of someone like the Russian leader Vladimir Putin. I would tend to think he didn't go all this way just to turn back, because I understand that part of this journey has been a long, not only a cultural need to try and reunify the ussr, but also they have been feeding information which I guess I would call propaganda to their own population about what's going on in Ukraine and how the ethnic Russians in Ukraine have been treated.
So I do think that for Mr.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Putin, there's questions, we'll get into that, but there's questions on whether what they're telling him is true.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: Correct. Or whether they say propaganda specifically as a way of means of communication. But my point is just saying, no matter what's true or not, I think that the justifications for invasion have been made domestically in Russia.
It might almost be expected.
And I think that when a nation moves this much, kind of from a logistics standpoint, hundreds of thousands of troops which require, you know, they got to sleep somewhere, they have to eat, there's ammunition, there's missiles, you know, this is not something he's doing just as a joke to then turn around and say, oh, guys, I didn't mean it like this. So I do think that he's serious. I think the way that the rest of the world responds will determine how he moves again, that's what makes it unpredictable. But I do think we're here at the first, I would say potential for real, true military conflict since 1945 on the European continent. And I will exclude the Serbian cruise.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: Well, you're talking large nations.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I mean. Because I know that there have been skirmishes and, and unfortunately, deaths in Europe caused by military action, but not at this level. We're talking redrawing borders on maps, all this kind of stuff in a large scale way that might involve the whole continent. So, yeah, this is, this is serious stuff.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I, I believe everything that you said. And, like, in terms of, like, that's along the lines, I kind of view it. I will say this, though.
Putin is kind of a master of intimidation and leverage.
So he may, like, it's not a given necessarily that they're, they're coming in guns blazing. Yeah. He also could be using this to create other dominoes to fall. Just, for example, like, they've been backing people in Ukraine that are working from the inside of Ukraine to, you know, like, basically say, we don't want to be part of Ukraine, we don't want to be part of Russia. So there's, there's areas that those people control now. Those are the areas that Russian troops have entered now. But they've been doing a proxy thing for a long time, basically. So the putting the troops there, it may embolden the separatists. It may, you know, that causes dominoes to fall as well. That may make the people of Ukraine a little more shaky, more willing to, to, to start giving up things at the table. So I think at minimum, he's trying to push the buttons. And, but once you get to a certain point, like you said, like, you can't just turn around and go home. You, you know, they're there for certain things and as you said, what it looks like they're there for, based on the reporting. Based on what? This goes back, you know, years. I know Fiona Hill has been quoted on this stuff from a while back, which is a US Analyst of this area, who's a US Analyst. This area that Russia does want to reacquire, this land, you know, like this land and then there's other land. And they want to make sure also that NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, they don't want NATO against Russian borders. So there have been, there have been an ongoing kind of tough talk and so forth as far as NATO people, countries, excuse me, that were formerly Soviet blocked, Warsaw Pack countries that have now entered NATO, and Russia wants to prevent Ukraine from becoming those. So there's several levers basically, that we know Russia wants to pull and it just depends on really, do they want to pull all the levers? Do they want to say, no, no, this is just going to be part of our country again and by any means necessary, or is it just we got to keep NATO out? We have to. We want to maintain trade, but we want to do this, we want to do that. We want to open up, you know, additional energy sources or whatever, you know, like sources of energy or ports and so forth, so that we don't all the way know, we, we can surmise based on intelligence and so forth, what we think their ultimate goal is or what their target is, but we don't 100% know. And so that's why I don't know that it's imminent. But I mean, as of this morning, like you said, troops are on the move. So it seems like it's imminent. But everybody's weighing a bunch of things right now. You know, the west is weighing a bunch of things as far as how they're dealing with them. Putin's weighing a bunch of things. He's. It's a game of chicken, really, you know, in terms of who's going to do what.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's where the propaganda is so important, because it is really a psychological warfare right now, which is like you're saying is perfect, the game of chicken, and who, who's going to blink first?
And a lot of these things are saber rattling, trying to get people to blink.
And, you know, one of the things I think we should note about NATO is NATO was developed Post World War II, during the Cold War, as a way to protect Western Europe against the aggressions of the Soviet Union at the time, which during, you know, because after the war, the Allies, you know, basically split up Europe, long story short, and Russia got certain, what they call Eastern bloc countries, the Polands, the Hungaries, the Romanias, the Czechoslovakia, so on and so forth.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: Got the meaning in their sphere of influence, so to speak. Correct. Like, they were the ones who were kind of the, the, the, the, the shield over them or the curtain over them that, you know, the red curtain. But the, in this, in the way that they could be a part of their, their domestic affairs and they could kind of, you know, exert influence in that way.
I just wanted to say what you meant by that. Yeah.
[00:08:50] Speaker B: So really, what this became in the second half of the 20th century, the cold War between the United States and Russia kind of represented two ways and two ideologies of formulating societies. If we can really go to 30,000ft, where the Russian way was really an authoritarian style, the repression of individual freedoms, the repression of, you know, dissent, political dissenters, the repression of, I would say, kind of political outliers like homosexuals, religious minorities, all that kind of stuff. Where in the west generally, it was seen as more of an open democracy, freedom of speech was tolerated in most of the countries, you know, blah, blah, blah. Right. And so I think what we have going forward here is, is a lot of this stuff, as we see with this global populism, is creeping back into these fault lines of authoritarian versus open societies, and we may begin to see the, the global tensions again that we saw, you know, I guess, prior to the Second World War, begin to play out that way.
[00:09:57] Speaker A: Yeah, there was. I also wanted to mention, though, there was a piece you had just mentioned that I thought was very interesting in terms of how we were talking, like, I call it the game of chicken. And you're like, it's a chess match. There's people are moves, counter moves, a lot of it, as you pointed out, being psychological, a piece I wanted to bring in or ask you about that with that was there's been some concern raised that the way the west has handled this, with the tough talk with the, you know, he's gonna invade now, he's gonna invade tomorrow, he's gonna invade the next day, he's gonna invade the next day.
That they risk turning Putin into a sympathetic figure, that then he would become something that people said, oh, you guys are just trying to make this guy out to be a villain or things like that. So what have you thought in this buildup here, that of what we have going on, what have you thought about the way that the west has handled the, the, the way they're talking about what's happening and the way that they're almost preparing their population for, hey, something might be about to happen here. And also by being public about it, trying to put pressure on Russia, I don't know.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: It's a good question because I think that's where, again, we're watching the kind of psychological warfare play out in front of us because we're all the targets of it, meaning each nation is trying to sway everybody, their own population and the rest of the world onto their side. So I think that the west is doing what they can in terms of trying to alert, like we've heard that it's been noted for weeks that Russia would try a false flag operation, which is a false attack on itself, in a sense, within the, you know, or an attack on the, on the ethnic Russians in Ukraine that they caused themselves.
[00:11:38] Speaker A: And then blame Ukraine and then blame.
[00:11:40] Speaker B: Ukraine as a reason for justification, which is interesting. You know, again, so much of this mirrors what Germany did in building up to the Second World War. They had a false flag operation in the Reichstag and blamed the Jewish guy. That was their beginning of their justification for what they began to do. So it's, it's there. These things have been done in the past, and I think what the west has done is understanding the patterns that have played out in this continent before and the kind of style of the Russian way of doing it, like understanding that the false flag operations would probably be used. I think what they've tried to do is through the global media is get ahead of that narrative and say, hey, look, this is what could happen, this is what might happen. And so what happens is, you remember, I think it was what, a week, week and a half ago from us recording here the, the Ukrainian separatists, quote, unquote, I guess, who are There they, they want to join. Russia had shelled a kindergarten that was also kind of in the ethnic Russian area. And so had the west not been crying from the rooftops about the potential false flag operation, perhaps Putin would have been able to use that as justification. But I think it was effective that the west has been kind of transparent about what might happen in that way, because once that shelling happened, I think the west was able to prove, hey look, this was actually done by their own side.
[00:13:07] Speaker A: Which is interesting though, because on an international community standpoint, yes, but Russia still use that, as you said, Russia has their own national propaganda that they're doing as well.
They didn't say what actually happened there in Russia today or whatever on their national broadcast. They said that was Ukraine that did it. So they still were pushing these narratives that Ukraine is so bad, these people are so bad in Ukraine that we have to do something to their own people. Because as you said, it's multiple different things being balanced here. Russia's trying to justify conflict to their people. The west is trying to prepare its people that there may be a conflict and we may, you know, like the reason you would do that is because if you may consider yourself wanting to step in, then you got to prepare your people for saying, hey, you can't just spring it on them like, oh, this happened, but we're sending all these troops there. And so, and I think a key thing to point out here is that NATO is a defensive treaty. And so NATO does not go around looking for places to occupy or attack and so forth. By and large they're more so tied to the status quo or maintaining as far as what people have right now from aggressors. And so it's interesting from the standpoint that NATO is looking at this because really what, where the concern comes, and I mean this is where you look at, as you pointed out, you know, just understand how historically these type of things go is you don't want things to snowball. You know, like again we saw Crimea, the Crimean Peninsula and that, you know, that happened, you know, what about seven, eight years ago? Six, seven, you know, about seven, eight.
And from there, you know, it's, it's land conquisition, you know, we're taking over land and so forth. And so this looks to be another shoe to drop there. And it's again expanding back out the Russian Federation to kind of encompass what the USSR once was, is what it looks like now, whether that is or not. But ultimately what I'd want to say with this though is that the way that it's being handled on the West, I think, is the right way, because the, as you pointed out, when things happen, if there's no context provided a lot of times, then whoever gets out there first controls the narrative. And so by getting out there with, oh, this is what we think is happening, oh, this is what we expect, you actually can prevent someone from getting out there, quote, unquote, first and saying, ah, see this, this kindergarten got shelled. This was Ukraine attacking us and they missed, or they purposefully headed the kindergarten because you had already put it out in people's minds that we know that this is a, this is kind of the next move that they're looking to make is to create some kind of justification. So I think they've handled it well. I think that propaganda, though, it goes both ways. So, I mean, obviously Russia is going to try to find sympathetic ears in the west to their, to what they want to do for whatever reason, and try to lean on them to put, to try to make Putin a sympathetic figure here or Russia sympathetic figure here. But you just have to, that's just going to exist no matter what. There's nothing that the west can do to prevent that effort. They're just going to have to work harder. You know, do be better in terms of getting the real information out there. And people who are going to be more discriminating in terms of what they're hearing and where they're hearing it from and what the motives might be behind from hearing it will be able to kind of see left from right, ideally.
Yeah.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: And I think, you know, one of the things that's interesting is we have to look into the fact that this is really a long game for Putin. And I think that's where we don't appreciate, I think, in the United States, because we're such a young country, that other parts of the world have a different level of pride and kind of the way they relate to themselves. You know, you have like the Persian Empire, you know, the Iranians, they go back a few thousand years. You got the Chinese empires, you got Italy has its pride over the Roman history and all that stuff. Greece still has its pride over the Greek Empire, all that. And so Russia.
[00:16:58] Speaker A: Pride is a key word there. Yeah, yeah, it's a creek.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: Exactly. Just like we have a lot of pride, think about the pride that so many Americans have, let's say, in the southern heritage, a Confederate flag. I mean, that's an example and how young our country is. So imagine if you had a thousand years of history of that kind of stuff. That's all I'm saying is that we. We just as a nation, can't appreciate that type of length of cultural history yet because we just haven't existed that long. And so Russia, I mean, Putin has cited going back to the ninth century.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: As to certain justifications as to why he wants to do this, because Ukraine was part of Russia back then. I mean, it's just like when we hear about Muslims that are still mad at Christians for the Crusades 1500 years ago. So some of this stuff we have to recognize as much as we don't kind of appreciate or even, like, maybe even have a certain respect for those kind of views, other people have them. So you got to understand that that's there. The second thing is, and if it's.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: A source of pride, if it's something they look at like, it doesn't have to be rational, so to speak, to be something that's meaningful to someone. So it can't be like, oh, well, that doesn't make sense. So therefore, you know, that nobody could think that it's like, no. I mean, people can assign meaning. We talk about it. We've talked about it this month. We've talked about it, you know, in other shows. Like, people can assign meaning as far as, you know, their own personal worth or whatever to a lot of different things, you know, and once they do, that's just the reality you have to deal with. You could try to. If it's in your own country, you could try to have it be about more. If it's about negative stuff, you have to be more about positive stuff. But it's. It's what it is. It's part of our human condition, you know, to. To assign meaning or pride to certain things about what we think define us or make us up. No.
[00:18:39] Speaker B: And so. And that's well said, and that's why I brought up, you know, one of the domestic issues that we've had, you know, especially in recent years, flare up again about our own cultural. What are we gonna do with some of our historic information?
Because look at how many Americans still have pride in that.
And it becomes an issue of contention culturally. So getting back to the Russian stuff, though, Putin has made various statements, if you just listen to what he says. I mean, he calls the Russian loss in the Cold War that, you know, in the late. In 1990, 91, the kind of breakup of the Soviet Union, the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century.
And this was a 20th century that had two world wars, the Holocaust, you know, The Mao and China stuff. I mean, there's a lot.
[00:19:22] Speaker A: All the tens of millions of people that Stalin killed, too.
[00:19:25] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:19:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: So, I mean, other. Yeah, that's a great point. Others would say the whole Russian expansion under Stalin was one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century.
And so what we can surmise from that and then from his actions since, I mean, number one, he's been the only leader of Russia really, since its breakup, since the early to mid-90s. Starting in the 90s, Russia began to send spies to the United States, for example. So they have been an adversary of ours post Cold War.
Those are well documented. The people that came here and had families and really infiltrated the United States.
Then let's just fast forward a decade from that early 2000s part you got in 2010, there was a large spy swap and we busted a big Russian spy ring. Look up names like Anna Chapman, for example. And then you've got, fast forward five, six years later. You've got Maria Butina, who was the Russian spy that infiltrated a lot of conservative groups here in the US and the NRA, for example.
She was deported in 2018 and now serves in the Russian Parliament, for example. So we have well documented examples that Russia has been trying to destabilize countries.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: Like the United States, our friend.
[00:20:40] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: Like.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: Like the United States through infiltrating us over a long period of time. This isn't like they sent a spy here and two weeks later that person's in some building, you know, messing with stuff. This is decades of attacking us from within. And this is.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: You didn't even mention, like, remember our Senate bipartisan reports talking about how during the election times, Russia does all these operations to try to make Americans hate each other. Yeah, that's exactly what they're trying to do. They don't really care which side wins, necessarily. If they think one side will make Americans hate each other more, they'll do that. But generally speaking, they just want to form it discord, because it leads to.
[00:21:18] Speaker B: What'S already happened now, which is Americans even questioning why we need to protect Ukraine.
Why are we messing with Russia? You know, that helps, you know, Russia. And that was a very strategic move by Putin, which was a long game. And that long game has allowed him to annex Georgia and take that back over in 08, and then he annexes Crimea in 2014, and he does all this in front of the world. And when you look at then what does all this mean? Why would he have to go through this? This to all These machinations, right?
Several reasons. One is, if you look at Russia itself is basically a third world country. And I don't mean that in a disrespectful way. It's got some beautiful cities and all that. I mean it as they really only have natural resources and they have now, you know, they have one of the largest nuclear arsenals, which means no one's going to mess with them. But if you look at the latest numbers from 2020, the United States, the largest economy, had a $21 trillion GDP that year, Russia had 1.5 trillion in GDP. So it's just not even comparison, right.
For example, Apple's market cap is 3 trillion.
So we have one of our companies in the United States is bigger than the whole Russian economy. Now. Just it gives you an example, right? And so Russia, Vladimir Putin had a choice, in my opinion, in the 90s.
He could have kind of not decided to go this route and not feel that the loss of the Soviet Union as the way it was was the greatest tragedy in the 20th century that he had to make up. And he could have, you know, started trading with the rest of the world, kind of getting on board with some of this democracy stuff, you know, acknowledging minimum.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: He could have gone the right route of China, which is like, okay, yeah, we're going to authoritarian kind of mindset, but we want to get it. We want to play in this economic game and you know, like, get, get really get in and make a lot of money. Like, yeah, China has, their economy has shot up basically because of that decision. Now, you know, China's the second biggest economy in the world. And it was because they decided to go that route and they kind of showed that you don't have to really open up your political and government style to really take advantage of all this money that's going around. But yeah, as you pointed out, Russia didn't want to do that. Basically, they wanted to keep the kind of cronyism system, the cronyism set of economic structure set up where just the people who are cool with the people in the government control all the resources and that's it, and not go the way of markets and investments and so forth and kind of letting the winners win and continue to win and so forth. So that was a decision, like you said, he looked back in the past and wanted to reach back into the past and bring that what was, what used to be into the present instead of looking into the future and saying what could be.
[00:24:09] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and that's a great point because one of the Differences I think between China and Russia kind of today and I'd say in the last hundred years. I'm not going to go back further than that. Is that China again their history is one of the empire, the creation, the expansion from within.
Even though I know that China does steal our secrets and they, you know, obviously they have their own spies doing stuff and they, and they copy as well.
China is much more, has a much bigger pride I think on just their own self autonomy and being able to grow from their own center. Where if you look at Russia's just that's what I mean by the recent history of the last hundred years. Russia's culture has really been plunder.
So I could see where a guy like Putin was less maybe thinking of oh we gotta now make Russia a manufacturing hub and create this engine of sustainability internally as opposed to being upset that they lost, being embarrassed that they lost the Cold War and saying I gotta go back and get mines. Right. And he would like to go back in there and this time it'll be different. It won't be Stalin using only the state power to plunder. Putin would go in, keep an air of, you know, a facade of autonomy in these areas and have allow them to still keep their own politicians and all that, but only ones that Putin would approve of so that the oligarchs can go on there and plunder and loot. So what would happen is the same setup that the Soviet Union once had but like kind of maybe a 2.0 like you said, maybe more of a Chinese style where it's authoritarian but it doesn't appear the same Communists.
Exactly the same communist look and.
[00:25:58] Speaker A: Be careful though that to not combine the discussion of the political and government side and the economic side. They're related point but the like they're not going to some communist thing from an economic standpoint like as you pointed out, they're going to have the rich people that are cool with the people in power take over and control all of the economic engines, so to speak. Which is not. That's not a market system. That's not.
[00:26:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:22] Speaker A: That doesn't encourage innovation.
[00:26:23] Speaker B: That's just, that's really fascism if you really want to define it that way.
[00:26:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And so that's where China kept its a government style of authoritarian type of. You know, like we run this, you know, our, our single party rule. Only one party is legitimately power can legitimately hold power. All the other parties are bad and whatever. China kept that but they put more in, you know a it more they went more towards the market economic system that didn't try to maintain tight control over all means of production in the economy and let private investment come in and so forth. But I want to get to the final piece on this that we wanted to discuss, and that's the why. Now, you talked about some of the stuff as far as why Putin may want to be. May be doing what he's doing, but I want to know why or I want to discuss. I should say I have some thoughts on it, but why should we in the west care? Why should the United States care? Why should NATO care what Putin is doing in these. In these areas? You know, like, Ukraine isn't at point at this time a NATO member. They've been trying to get into NATO, at least their leadership has and so forth, but they're not a NATO member. And that's one of the demands of Putin is that to promise that Ukraine will never become a NATO member. But nonetheless, why should we. You know, it's not part. So I say they're not a NATO member, meaning if they get attacked, it's not. The treaty doesn't automatically say, hey, we got to go in there and protect them, but why should we care? You know, like, is this something that we should care about? Is this something that's worth the money that it undoubtedly would cost if we. If we're going to get involved, you know, and, you know, so just give me your thoughts on that.
[00:27:56] Speaker B: Great question. I would say this. We don't have the time to get into it, but everyone should just look at Germany's takeover of the Sudetenland prior to World War II, which led to basically the buildup of World War II, because this is extremely similar to that.
Germany was embarrassed after the Treaties of Versailles after World War I. Yeah. After World War I, they felt that they were the great Germanic thing, and Hitler had this vision of reconstituting it.
[00:28:28] Speaker A: And which is very similar to what is thinking right now.
[00:28:30] Speaker B: That's why it's worth everyone having a read. And I think that's why I say I bring it up, is because, you know, certain Western powers were also kind of naive to the fact that Hitler was going to do this. And I want to be very careful, too, because I know we always run a risk of comparing anybody to Hitler. I'm specifically talking about the buildup of Germany's invasion of its neighbors, period. When I make the comparison, I'm not trying to say that Putin's gonna start the Holocaust or anything like that. So I know that Hitler's Name is a very. Can be a powder cake. So I just loaded it out there. Yeah.
So we're just talking specifically military strategy and that kind of chess game as you lead up to some sort of, you know, war. And so a lot of these same excuses were used. Oh, you know, these, these are ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia.
They want to be part of Germany. And then the same thing, a false flag operation was used, propaganda was spread in Germany that 300 Czechs were killed, which was false. And it gave Germany the pretext domestically to go in. And what happened was the rest of the world just sat and watched it. And then when he went into Czechoslovakia soon after, sorry, Poland, that's when England declared war on Germany and the whole thing started.
So now it's a very similar thing. You've got ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
You've got now this idea that they're somehow being hurt. That's the propaganda that is being played internally in Russia. And clearly Putin's already made the move in 2014 to annex certain parts of Ukraine. Now why does it matter? Ukraine is a sovereign nation.
This is the first time a country has invaded another country since 1945 on the European mainline.
So this is a big deal because prior to 1945, Europe had two world wars. And Europe, I mean, a lot of people, again, we don't have this living memory anymore. We're used to Europe being this kind of civilized bastion of society and, you know, a peaceful place for all our lives generally. And that's not the way history has played out. Second World War, I mean, Europe looked like the Middle east today was always a nice skirmish every 20 years, every generation. And you know, prior to, prior to 1945, it was 20 years prior. 20 to 30 years prior World War I.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: Well, the world wars were really just, they showed like prior to the World wars, they were, there was always conflict in Europe.
And the World wars showed though how with the improvements in technology, these wars that Europe keeps fighting, kept fighting for the last, for the last millennium now are like, like the stakes are raised. It's not just people out there with muskets running around.
And so with the stakes being raised and this really gets to the point, I think you're going, I'll just throw it back to you in a second. But just if Russia is going to start invading countries in Europe, eventually he's going to hit a NATO country and that's going to trigger this treater and there's going to be a world war again. And there were so many things done after World War II. Because we saw how serious this stuff was getting again, with technology on top of these, all these conflicts that there were so many things put in place to prevent it from happening again. And those things over time, as you said, as the living memory has gone away, those things have kind of been unraveled a little bit. And now we're getting a test to that, basically. But this is the kind of road that could lead us to another world world war. But so the question becomes, do you address it in the bud? Do you kind of sit on your hands and hope that nothing, you know, that it ends here, that they'll stop now, they'll stop now. You know, you pull the Neville Chamberlain type of thing, which I know you wanted to talk about that, so I won't even explain what.
[00:32:19] Speaker B: I mean. You already did. That's all right.
[00:32:20] Speaker A: We can keep it. I'm not going to explain it though. But, but, you know, like, so there. But there's a lot. So I mean. But no, go ahead.
[00:32:26] Speaker B: Well, that's why, because, because I know we're, you know, we don't have all day for this, so I want to kind of keep it moving which way? And that's why I say the audience would do a good job looking up, and I'm glad you brought it up, people like Neville Chamberlain and what happened when, when, when, when Germany invaded the Sudan land. Because it's amazing how similar it is to right now. And so let me.
[00:32:45] Speaker A: But, but Chamberlain was the guy that stood. He was the leader of, of Great Britain at the time and before Churchill took over. And he stood for. He's like the Avatar for appeasement, basically. Like where, like, oh, come on, these guys, they're going to stop. You know, we can, we can talk it out. They're not going to keep, they're not going to keep this aggression up. And so he, after Germany kept invading people, he became the pariah, so to speak, like, yo, you've been trying to again, appease this situation and clearly all you're doing is you're not appeasing, you're enabling. So.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: But yeah, well, no, that's a great thing because it actually helps me. I'm glad you said you actually explained it, but it helps me frame a little bit where we are today, again in that similarity, because nothing happens kind of in a vacuum, right? Neville Chamberlain was basically duped by German propaganda. I mean, in a sense, and I hate to say it like that because it's not that he's an idiot necessarily, but he, because he wanted to believe in what the Germans were telling him.
And so what it's very similar to today because the Russians have done a great job in infiltrating the American, you know, and I would say more so on the conservative right this time. Unlike in the 60s, they were trying to infiltrate the left. So Russians have been constantly trying to pick at our society, trying to find a semen or an opening of where they could disrupt.
[00:34:06] Speaker A: And basically they're trying to find all times, they're trying to find the path of least resistance.
[00:34:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And the reality, that's why I bring up the 60s as kind of the opposite, meaning they don't really care. They're just trying to find which seam can they get through to disrupt a bit. And in today's politics, the receptive ear.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: What's. Meaning what's the receptive ear?
[00:34:27] Speaker B: And that's where again, look up Maria Butina. That's where it was important to have spies inserted in the right places to find who would be receptive. So the reason I bring that up is because just like with Neville Chamberlain, the, the Russians have been effective in courting certain areas of power in the United States.
So that as they were doing things like going into Ukraine in 2014 and taking, basically annexing a whole section of a free country that is our ally that enough internal opposition to doing anything about it in America would exist. I mean, that is a good chess move by the Russians.
And then you fast forward post 2016, what happens. Think about what the Russians were able to do to our domestic politics. You had in 2013, 2014, we had clandestine operations trying to thwart corruption in Ukraine to maintain a democratic system there, because they didn't want that oligarch stuff in Russia stretching west. Because you're right, countries like Ukraine are like buffer states, but the countries to the west of them are like France. You know, you kind of don't want this stuff creeping too far west. And so what happens is, and one of the things that I'll just stop myself and say, why, why should we care is because Ukraine's our ally and the Ukrainian president has been crying on TV now for help from us. So that's one reason why should we should care. So I just want to add that.
[00:35:59] Speaker A: Now there's a human piece about this as well.
[00:36:02] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying. This is our ally and we got to save face in front of the world. How do you not have an ally against an aggressor who's been an aggressor against us too? Russia is our adversary.
[00:36:10] Speaker A: So It's a tough spot because, you know, and I think, let's make sure we mention that. And it's a tough spot nonetheless. When you have an aggressor like this and you know, just on the world stage, who has, who is big enough and strong enough to create problems for a lot of people, then how you deal with that aggressor is it's not just easy, oh, we'll just bomb them or oh, we'll just, you know, we'll just stay in our own affairs. Like it requires a little bit of tact, it requires a little bit of foresight, it requires diplomacy.
And you keep, you know, the big stick, you know, as well. So how, like it's, it's, I would venture to say it's almost impossible to know in advance how you should do it because your hindsight is what is always 2020. But at the same time, what you do have to do, you have to stand for something ultimately. And if we're the United States, if we're saying we're the shining city on the hill, Ukraine is not like they're trying to do things the way that we say that countries should be trying to do things as far as markets, as far as democratic elections, open society and so forth. And so if we just watch them get swallowed up like that by, you know, just by, by a hostile neighbor, then just in terms of like, are we no longer who we say we are basically, or is that something that we're not even doing anymore? And if that's the case, then just stop saying that. You, you know, like stop talking American exceptionalism, you know, like, don't talk about that. If you're, if you're going to turn around and say, oh, well, when this happens, then, you know, like we, we just stay in our own affairs, you know, because that's a different kind of worldview approach to international affairs. One that previously had been deemed to be shortsighted. You know, like when World War II came out, like the people that were saying, no, we just focus on America, we'll stay on what our own stuff is. That was proven to be a short sighted view.
[00:37:53] Speaker B: Then Pearl harbor happened when we did that.
[00:37:55] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, and also we were a bunch of other problems that we were just trying to keep, keep down and so forth. So ultimately, you know, I think what a lot of these type, when you're in pressure situations, a lot of times people look outwardly to try to figure out what should they do. You need to be aware of what's going on outwardly. But you really should look inwardly in terms of. Because your own guiding principles have to be your guiding light. Because no matter what you do, if you act on your guiding principles, then you can live with that. You know, you can live with, okay, well, this is. I'm acting in accordance with what I believe. And so I think that's ultimately what Americans have to do. You know, if we're government, other people, each American has to do it. And ultimately that's why you're going to have Russia trying to influence swaths of America to say, oh no, this, you, this isn't your fight, guys. This isn't anything for you. You know, and. And ultimately, if you're getting that message, you know, like, I just like, you should be skeptical of everything, be skeptical of that message. Why are you getting that message?
[00:38:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think also, I mean, part of it is as Americans, you know, there's always a streak, I think in every nation. And ours is no different of some people are just like, hey, we don't need to deal with the rest of the world. We just want to keep it, you know, all here.
But if we do want to be the leader of the world and what we used to say, right, the leader of the free world, all that kind of stuff, then we do have a.
To protect nations that are trying to grow in a democratic way. And I know we're not perfect. I mean, we did this show, remember, one of our early shows was on the book Confessions of an Economic Hitman. We recognize the CIA has a bad reputation over in the 20th century that, you know, America has done things overseas that we're not all proud of. But at the end of the day, you know, I'm American and I'm going to root for at least our country being on top with some of these games than.
[00:39:36] Speaker A: Even if it's not perfect, Tunde.
[00:39:38] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:39:38] Speaker A: Even if it's not perfect. Wow.
Some people tell me you can't root for your country unless it's perfect.
[00:39:45] Speaker B: I'm not getting back into that.
But just real quick, I want to finish up the why and then I know we got to jump is just looking at just for about 90 seconds this trajectory of this last decade or so we had again going back to the Crimea incidents, we then trying to help the remaining parts of the democratic pieces of Ukraine not fall under all Russian control through clandestine efforts.
That's when at the time, Vice President Biden, probably from an optics standpoint, hindsight being 20 20, this should have been maybe somebody else, but he had his son Hunter Biden go sit on that board of that energy company in Ukraine and get paid 50,000amonth. So all that optics looks bad, but part of the reason was to have an American that had a tie in to high levels of government that could be trusted to go in there and be an observer and kind of eyes and ears for the corruption and what was going on there.
[00:40:42] Speaker A: Because that goes back to that cronyism piece. Like the objective from Russia in that sense was to get Russia aligned people on that board so that, so they could then operate in a way that was consistent with Russia's interests. And so the interest from the U.S. from Biden's standpoint was to get some Americans on there or some people that he could trust to be, to keep an eye on it as a deterrent for them outwardly going rogue and to, to, to, to keep an eye on, and try to exert our own influence on, on that and to keep them open, keep them operating in a way that was consistent with our principles.
[00:41:19] Speaker B: Yep. And so, and so, and that's why, that's why I'm glad you explained it like that, because it's important to though, that's the why. Like, are we a country that has those principles or not? And so fast forwarding then to the last few years, remember this is where the Russians were effectively able to disrupt us and to cause propaganda stuff.
[00:41:38] Speaker A: Right.
[00:41:39] Speaker B: So we have, then the propaganda begins that something happened with Hunter Biden and all that. Still no one can really put a finger on what it was.
And Hunter Biden has yet to be prosecuted or held, you know, legally liable for anything, even when his father was out of office for four years.
Right. I mean, so, so again, this is where I look at propaganda stuff because I think there's never a there there.
But then, well, to your point, all.
[00:42:07] Speaker A: Of the Hunter Biden stuff was stuff that was in Russia's interest. All of that, all of the kerfuffle in the US about Hunter Biden was them being opportunistic to sow discord in the United States to get us back. Basically for us thwarting their attempt to make that. I believe it was the energy company, that energy company work at their behest. They got that was them getting us back. Like, oh, okay, well, you're gonna stick somebody on this board here so that we can't take it over. Oh, well, we're gonna go to your population and make people hate you or hate this part of something for that. So we got you back.
[00:42:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So think about what happens then. Our own president, President Trump gets kind of caught up in this and, you know, I don't know what, what the real motivation was for him. I'm not in his head, but remember, his first impeachment was about Ukraine because Ukraine is our ally. Russia had already taken a piece of their land and our. One of the few bipartisan things that happened in the last few years was a 99 to 0 vote in the Senate.
And the one person I guess didn't show up, the 100th senator, to send $400 million worth of javelin missiles to our allies Ukraine, so that they could defend themselves against further Russian encroachment because they were actually in a real war, which, you know, we didn't really get reported here. And so what happens is then the President, United States takes the opportunity to tell the Russian, sorry, the Ukrainian president, well, hold on, hold on. I'm not going to send these missiles unless you come to the United States and give a speech on the floor of the US Congress that says that the son of the guy running against me for president is corrupt in your country.
[00:43:51] Speaker A: Tunde, he wasn't running at that time. This is way before Biden started running. This is just a guy I think is going to run against me in the future. I want to try to undermine him. So I'm going to make this money that's already been allocated to you. I'm going to contingent that on you doing this favor for me. And so, yeah, it gets real nasty.
[00:44:12] Speaker B: And that's what I mean.
[00:44:14] Speaker A: Well, let me say that because we gotta jump.
[00:44:15] Speaker B: But yeah, I know.
[00:44:18] Speaker A: What that really makes you question when you look at that in context, it's just like. Well, hold on.
That also, that kind of a move right there is in Russia's interest. Of course, Russia doesn't want us sending those Javelin missiles there. Russia wants to sow discord here. So it's like, wow, like we've been, whether we know it or not, we've been intertwined in this, this Ukrainian Russian conflict and our politics have been intertwined in it already. And so there is no, oh, we're just gonna stay out of it. Like, we're already in it. And so it's just a matter of how are we gonna be in it at the bottom where things drop on our head and people can tell us it's pissed and it may or may not be, or, excuse me, people tell us rain and it may or may not be, or we're gonna get in at the top and start calling more shots. As far as, okay, well, here's what's happening. Here's what's not happening, so.
[00:45:03] Speaker B: Well, that's a great point to end.
[00:45:05] Speaker A: It is.
[00:45:06] Speaker B: I'd rather be the one peeing. I guess that's what I was trying to say earlier. Right. Like, I recognize we're not perfect as a nation, and we have done things to other countries that, you know, they can all cry and gripe about. But, you know, if I got to choose, I'd rather be the one pissing and telling someone else it's rain than getting drops on me and being told it's rain when I might not be trying to figure it out.
[00:45:27] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:45:27] Speaker B: That's basically.
[00:45:28] Speaker A: But no, I mean, I think we can end there, man. That's a. You know, it's an interesting topic, though, like I said, and that's the biggest takeaway is that we're not some disinterested observer here. Like, we're already involved. This has already been, you know, like, been a major part of our politics and, you know, for. For years at this point. And so, you know, we gotta. We gotta pay attention. And so. But the other thing I wanted to discuss with you today, and there's no easy way to transition to this, but it's something we wanted to talk about as, you know, we close out. Black History Month was the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, which is something people. I feel like most people have heard the. The name. Excuse me, the Tuskegee Airmen, but not many know, like, just what they did and how successful they were and so forth. So I wanted to throw the floor to you first. Just, you know, thoughts, you know, like, what's your. What would you take away? Or what do you think people should know about the Tuskegee Airmen and what impresses you the most about them?
[00:46:18] Speaker B: I mean, I think from. From. What do we know about the Tuskegee Airmen for? Most people know of them as a group of, you know, men that were pilots in World War II. Black men during a time of segregation when blacks were not allowed to do certain things like fly planes in the military.
And so they broke barriers like other examples in the 20th century, whether it be Jackie Robinson and baseball or whatever. So I think that's kind of the flyover history that most of us get is.
[00:46:55] Speaker A: Well, yeah. And, like, because before them, it was like, oh, well, black people can't fly planes. And, you know, like, it's a bunch of, you know, just the.
[00:47:02] Speaker B: You know, just the same old stuff.
[00:47:04] Speaker A: Yeah, same old American and the same old stuff. We've heard about it.
[00:47:07] Speaker B: People can't do this stuff, and we.
[00:47:08] Speaker A: Don'T want them until they do it. It's always.
[00:47:10] Speaker B: And they're not smart enough, and they're too lazy and too stupid. Yeah, exactly. Until given a chance out of necessity, in this case, because of a world war.
And blacks proved it wrong like they have so many times in the past. And so I think what stands out to me in some of the more recent documentaries, things that I've read, is the continued uncovering of some of these historic facts.
So I didn't realize in terms of the amount of decoration that was awarded to the Tuskegee Airmen. And what was interesting is it took until the 1990s for a lot of this to become public, because, again, some of this history, when we talk about it in today's world in 2022, I think that a lot of Americans would find this unbelievable because what we're talking about are people, Americans, who went and fought for this country, but were purposely not recognized because of who they were.
So I didn't know that the Tuskegee Airmen, who really got a chance in 1943 and deployed in 1944. And think about it, the war ended in 45.
[00:48:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:25] Speaker B: So it's not like they were there since the beginning.
Again, due to wartime. It was a necessity that we just needed more pilots. And eventually, you know, there had been Since World War I, some blacks trying to push the government to allow blacks to fly, but that didn't happen until it was necessary.
And so in just that short period of time, there were 1578 combat missions flown by the. By the Tuskegee Airmen. One hundred and seventy nine of those were bomber escort missions, and they only lost 27 total bombers over seven missions.
So compared to an average of 46 bombers for the whole 15th Air Force of P51 groups. I'm just reading here they destroyed 125. Sorry, 112 enemy aircraft in the air, another 150 on the ground, and 148 damaged. And they shot down three Messerschmitt Me. Two hundred and sixty two. So those were the first fighter jets in history, which I think less than 10 were ever shot down in the history of the war. So to know that three were shot down by the Tuskegee Airmen is impressive.
They destroyed 950 rail cars, trucks, and other convoy vehicles.
And they took a torpedo boat out of action, and 40 boats and barges were destroyed. So, you know, they. They received three. Three Distinguished Unit Citations, one Silver Star, 96 Distinguished Flying Cross Crosses to 95 airmen, 14 Bronze Stars, 744 Air Medals and eight Purple Hearts.
Those. That's, again, like we talked about in. In other shows this month. That's history that's not taught in schools.
And again, I think now these things are better access, this type of information.
[00:50:18] Speaker A: Much more accessible now.
[00:50:19] Speaker B: But I think that the history of the second half of the 20th century and, you know, what would have happened if America embraced this information and taught it to school kids, both white and Black, in the 40s and 50s and 60s, we might have had a different transition in the civil rights movement because more Americans would have been accepting that blacks actually did something positive in the country's history and contributed. And I think that's when we go back to talking about the importance of stories like this. It's about.
It's not black history.
This is American history. And just saying that blacks have contributed to it. And it's another example that, you know, when given a chance and an opportunity, blacks show they can compete just the same as whites can.
[00:51:03] Speaker A: And so, yeah, I mean, and that's obviously, that's something that you and I, you know, like, we look at that and say, like, of course, but that's something that United States has wrestled with, you know, like its whole history. Like, that's not some simple concept, basically, that, like, that's something that America was almost, in a sense, in part, built on that not being the case, you know, in order to justify, you know, subjugation and so forth. And so examples of these, like you said, these are things that should be a part of America's narrative as America continued to almost, in a sense, I mean, in this, it sounds more insignificant, I think, saying it this way, but America's finding itself, in a sense, its whole self and not just a side of it or a piece of it, but the whole. That ultimately, as. As America uncovers more of its whole, it becomes stronger. And I think that, to me, is really the takeaway from the Tuskegee, the Tuskegee Airmen, which. And they're called that because they were trained, you know, by. By and large, down at Tuskegee, Alabama, which there's actually a historically black college there as well. But the lesson is, is that as we bring more parts of America online and into the push for whatever we're pushing for at the time, guess what? We are better. Like, we are all better. We're all benefited from that. Like, America, all those accomplishments that you listed, those things help the war. Like, those. Those help win a war. Like, that's. Without that stuff, it would have been harder to win the war. So it's like, well, don't. Obviously everything is not. Not war, you know, but with anything that we're trying to do, let's try to enable everyone to be a part of it. Let's try to make sure everybody can contribute and give people opportunity as opposed to in advance, arbitrarily, just keeping people out, you know, and you putting our energy that way. So to me, that's. That's really the big, big thing to. To that you gotta look at here is that, you know, like, we. We can do more together, basically, if we use all of our resources and don't keep one hand tied behind our back.
[00:53:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's why for some, this type of information is threatening. Because if people get more of this type of information that when given a chance, other groups of people can do the same thing as your group that's threatening to some people only if.
[00:53:26] Speaker A: Now, we talked about what you take pride in earlier, but only if what you take pride in is your group and not your problem. Country.
[00:53:32] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:53:32] Speaker A: If you take pride in country.
[00:53:34] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:53:34] Speaker A: Then you're happy if people are doing things on behalf of your country. If you take pride in your group over your country, then it has to be your group.
Yeah.
[00:53:41] Speaker B: Or if you only see your country as being deserving from a certain group to accomplish things and others not to. And that's where I wanted to kind of add, too, is what's left out with this type of history is not only those accomplishments, but the adversity that many had to face. And again, I think today, for many of us, it's almost unbelievable the conditions of hate that these men endured. I mean, I'll just read a quick excerpt and then I'm done here. From a piece here, this talks about an example of what they had to endure at one of the military training facilities, because at the time, all the commanding officers were white and a lot of them were segregationists. So they weren't happy that they were put in charge of black men. So I'll quote here. At least four of the trainees had flown combat in Europe as fighter pilots and had about four years in service. Four others had completed training as pilots, bombardiers and navigators, and may have been the only triply qualified officers in the entire. In the entire Air Corps. Several of the Tuskegee Airmen had logged over 900 flight hours by this time. Nonetheless, by Colonel Selway's fiat, they were trainees.
So after all those. Imagine going, spending four years or four times that you were in Europe as a Combat pilot coming back to the US and being put as a trainee because you're black. And that's what I mean. The fact that these guys didn't revolt is to be commended, you know, like, meaning, you know, people, you know, have an issue with social unrest today and all that. I mean, these guys had a right to be in the street back then, but they just persevered and stayed focused. And so I'll finish with this one. Off base was no better.
Many businesses in Seymour, which was the town where the base was, would not serve African Americans. A local laundry would not wash theirs, their clothes, and yet willingly laundered those of captured German soldiers. So imagine being a black man fighting in a war for your own country to come back home and to have a laundromat say, we're not going to wash your clothes because you're black, but yet we will willingly take the clothes of a German powder that happened in the United States. And that town is not the only example. And so, again, if we want to teach facts like this to our children today, today there's many Americans that would say that we're teaching them to hate their country or to hate whites or whatever. And that's not the fact. You're teaching facts of history so that we all understand what can happen if, when we're talking about the first part of the show, Russia aggression, if an authoritarian type of mindset creeps in to a society, this type of treatment can happen. And Jim Crow segregation is one of the ultimate forms of authoritarianism.
[00:56:27] Speaker A: Right.
[00:56:28] Speaker B: So it's, It's.
[00:56:30] Speaker A: Well, as we talk with our theme for the whole month, is that understanding this type of stuff, the stuff that, that makes you feel good and the stuff that makes you uncomfortable, actually makes you better equipped to deal with the complexities of today.
[00:56:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:56:43] Speaker A: And like, part of the big problem we see today is that people want things to be all one thing or all something else. And that's it. And it's. That's just not how the world works. Like things. There's complexity in the world, and that may make people upset or make people uncomfortable, but that's the way the world works. And so in seeking the. To make things all one thing or all one way, oftentimes it leads to these negative outcomes where you just have to treat a whole bunch of people very terribly because you want to just in your mind say, oh, this is all good or this is all bad or whatever, or you get this complaint that you can't learn about things because it adds complexity to it. It's like, oh, well, there's some good stuff and there's some stuff that's not great or stuff that we want to learn from. And so ultimately, there's a mindset at play that you have to, in order to equip yourself to deal with the present again, you just have to be able to have some level of understanding of the complexity in the past.
And if not, then what ends up happening, as you pointed out, is that forces some intentional and some unintentional end up bringing us back to bringing the past back to us. And that's, you know, what we're trying to prevent. A lot of times when we're talking, whether it's Black History Month or whether it's just understanding the history in, in Europe or understanding different things. So I think we can wrap from there, man. Yeah. But, you know, we definitely appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of Call It Like I See It. You can find us wherever you get your podcast.
And until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:58:11] Speaker B: I'm Tun Dug Onana.
[00:58:12] Speaker A: All right. Subscribe to the podcast, rate us, review us, and we'll talk to you next time.
