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Notes -
Minor note but obviously someone isn’t going to fold and throw away their entire negotiating hand in a war during a podcast.
The sophisticated version I’ve heard is simply that since the end of the big war, European nations have not attempted to conquer one another or to annex each other’s territory. Europe thus has a historical interest to make it as hard and consequential as possible for any nation which attempts to do this.
Meanwhile, Putin’s frame where historical claims of great civilizations and uniting the ethnicity through territorial annexation is important has historically resulted in horrific and likely unending bloodshed on the European continent.
For anyone on the western side to begin discussing the problem from within Putin’s frame is already to cede ground to his worldview.
Instead Zelensky has cast him as a naked assed barbarian who lives in a world of historical tribal claims rather than the modern world based on the principle of territorial sovereignty.
Zelensky did however lay out the historical context of Ukraine. The nation who gave up nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees which were subsequently not respected. That has significance. He also in my opinion could have painted the broader historical picture for westerners of why Ukrainians have historical reasons to resist domination under Moscow. Something about one of the largest man made famines in human history? I’m not sure how big a part of the Ukrainian psychology that event is. He probably could have done a better job here.
But in the end as @TequilaMockingbird says, conquerors of territory often operate on some great historical mythos in their own head. However even so, there still may be reason to consider them naked assed barbarians whose concept of grandeur isn’t compatible with the interests or frame of the rest of the world. Simply having a grand theory of history doesn’t correlate well with being a force for good in the world. It’s quite often the opposite.
Yeah, a podcast is 100% the place to be doing PR aimed at the people who are going to listen to it (probably not Putin), it's definitely not the place to make concessions or to commit other own-goals (not speaking Russian seemed obvious to me, although I haven't listened to the podcast.)
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