13:22
“Well it’s been what? 75 years since the end of the second world war. We’re at the end of a very long period and the institutions that grew up in the aftermath of the second world war, this thing that you hear about all the time: the liberal the world order or the post-war world order. It’s collapsing, it’s falling apart and it’s probably appropriate that it should. If for no other reason because most of the world doesn’t want it. We emerged from World War II almost untouched. When I say untouched I’m talking about our countries, the infrastructure, the industry and the economy. That’s why we became the world’s great lone superpower for a long time. It wasn’t because somehow or another we had outperformed everybody else necessarily. Although we know we have a good record in agriculture and high high-end manufacturing and so forth. But it had a lot to do with the fact that everybody else was exhausted, everybody else was prostrate. Well the world has recovered. And if you look at the numbers of Nations or countries in the world that have declined to participate in the sanctions regime aimed at Russia on China and for that matter others. It’s really Europe, the United States and the rest of the world is largely not interested. Even when you go to Japan, the Japanese said well we’ll go ahead and sign on for your sanctions. However we’re not going to stop importing Russian oil and gas, we’re not going to end our joint exploration and development projects with the Russians in the Sea of Japan and in the Curel Islands. In other words, fine, we’ll do what you want to a point. The other thing is the Japanese and the Chinese for a very long time have been doing business in their own currency with each other, not with the dollar and you’re going to see I think now a real Rebellion against what I would call Dollar dominance. In fact I think it’s already begun and the most populous nations in the world India and China are both utterly opposed to everything that we’ve been doing towards Russia. So I think we’re at a strategic inflection point of gargantuan proportions. The world is about to change dramatically, so this whole U.S led dominated liberal post-war order is going to end. And never lose sight of the fact that let’s face it we’ve printed more money than we should have, we put ourselves in a terrible position. We exported most of our scientific industrial base, our manufacturing capability. And then we’ve been through this process of throwing open the borders, admitting millions of people. What happens when the inevitable economic downturn comes? What happens when the economy collapses and I think it’s going to. Certainly the financial systems are in a lot of trouble. The FED has clearly lost control. You put all these things together and I I predict that within six months no one will mention Ukraine at all, it’ll be a distant memory. Because we’ll have so many other problems to deal with here at home that the world will simply pull in our horns if you will. I’d be surprised if we don’t withdraw most of our forces. I think you’re going to see a huge change, permanent change in the Strategic distribution of power in the near future as a result of the things that I just mentioned. Well there are various conflicts in Africa but they’re not of particular importance on the international level. I would say that right now India China Japan Korea Southeast Asia, no one in Asia is interested in going to war with anybody, absolutely not. The only people in Asia talking about war are people in Washington D.C. We’re the ones that keep trying to organise this anti-chinese Alliance and people in Asia understand China, they understand the threat of Chinese economic imperialism. They’ve lived with these people for thousands of years, it’s not a new it’s not a new problem. They do not see China as this great military threat. I don’t think we should either, but the Chinese feel very threatened by us militarily. And I think you’re going to see that will definitely change uh the calculus in China vis-a-vis the United States, which is unfortunate. Russia is certainly not interested in going to war with anybody. This whole thing in Ukraine was something they felt compelled to do for their own National Security. And I think one of you pointed out that the Ukrainians had uh had strategic aims of attacking Russia. Well I think that’s true, we know there was a large buildup of Ukrainian forces across from these dunbas republics. It looked as though there was a plan to attack the two autonomous republics bring them to heal and then eventually turn on Crimea believe it or not. This is sort of insanity, in my judgment as well. So you this is sort of Russia intervention was in a way kind of a preemptive strike to deal with the threat they saw metastasizing. And if they didn’t attack it it would eventually catch up with them. And that’s even before you begin talking about the potential to place missiles in eastern Ukraine that we would provide that could reach Russian targets that are important to Russia’s nuclear deterrence within a few minutes. All of that was unacceptable, Russians made that very clear and they’ve been talking about this for decades. But I think on a global level right now, there may be small brush fire conflicts and Wars at various points in time. But truthfully there’s no appetite for a major war right now, in Europe or the United States or in Asia. There may be in the future trouble between the Turks and Iran and I think we’ll see more instability in that area. But not on the scale that we created through our interventions in Iraq and Syria. Globalised West has its own oligarchs, let’s be frank. And they are pulling a lot of strings. The interesting part is that we’ve worked our way into a financial crisis and into an economic one here in the United States. That I think is going to end up entrapping all of these people in something they didn’t expect. And I don’t think things are going to quite work out as they’d hoped and that’s very obvious in Ukraine right now. This thing in Ukraine will end at Russia’s convenience not ours. And the impact globally of this terrible and pointless and stupid war, that has killed far too many people for nothing is going to have far-reaching consequences for the United States.”