China's leader Xi Jinping is continuing his high profile state visit to
Russia where he's been warmly greeted as an old friend by President Putin,
Beijing's build this visit as a trip for peace.
Mr Putin said that Moscow was always open to negotiation.
The Americans have already warned that China's negotiation plan
on Ukraine could be just a delaying tactic quite a bit to unpack in regard to
the meeting between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin in Russia.
Now this is yet more evidence of this multipolar geopolitical
environment with the United States in the West.
Of course, aligning against Russia and
there is now a closer relationship between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.
Now, the real question is, are we getting closer to a cold war or
are we already in a cold war?
I think that's an interesting question.
So I wanna kind of break down some of the latest reporting on this story.
So we've learned today that the President of Taiwan is also set to meet
with the United States next week and
Japan's Prime Minister just did a surprise visit in Ukraine today.
So it's kind of showing you where the alliances are,
together these meetings reveal a rapidly dividing world stage.
Now let's start with the meeting between Russia and China.
Now Beijing entered the talks with a message of peace.
Obviously, a lot of this Stuff, I don't wanna say take it with a grain of salt.
But you should always be skeptical, you should always be asking questions.
Don't take what world leaders on any side say at face value.
But with that said,
Beijing recently issued its position paper on the conflict between Russia and
Ukraine itemizing a 12-point peace plan that could settle matters.
Xi comes to Moscow in the wake of China successfully ushering in a thaw in
relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
A diplomatic feat, the United States had little ability of its own to accomplish.
Now, the 12-point plan that was put together by China is a cease fire,
calls for a ceasefire, but
they stopped short of calling it a peace deal or a peace plan.
I'll give you some details of what those bullet points are of their
proposed ceasefire.
But what's really interesting is it seems as though there's openness towards this
proposal from Ukraine, but absolutely no openness coming from the United States.
And I think that's an interesting dynamic which we'll get to in just a moment, Jake.
>> Yeah, so look, there's a reason why these issues are complicated as American
politics is oftentimes complicated because you're looking to see who's right.
And oftentimes in foreign policy, the answer is neither.
So there's a bunch of warmongers here in America who are saying,
my God, she and Putin, Hitler and Mussolini will get to that later, right?
And they're trying to drive us to war.
So those guys are wrong in America.
On the other hand, she's government is terrible.
They do treat the US awfully.
They are getting cheap oil from Russia and looking the other way
as Russia does an aggressive attack into Ukraine and starts a war of aggression.
So Russia is wrong, China is half wrong in this case,
we're half wrong because we keep pushing for more conflict.
So the one thing that is correct is look, China's peace deal.
>> It's not a peace deal, the ceasefire.
>> No cease fire offer offer okay is not anywhere near perfect.
Okay, and it leans towards Russia, that's why Russia loved it.
The part of the reason that Ukraine is open to it is because they don't want to
piss off China too much and have pushed them further into the Russian camp,
but it's a start, okay.
Whereas we have offered nothing in terms of negotiations and peace, etc,
partly because we're profiting off the war and hurting Russia in the meanwhile.
So understand that when you hear American news, it's often free from
the American perspective, leaving out all the things that we are doing wrong.
>> Right, and understand what China's interests are here.
I mean, Jake mentioned the cheap oil coming from Russia,
about 40% of China's oil comes from Russia.
So there is an economic purpose for this alliance.
But on top of that, there's also this interest,
in keeping this alliance with Russia in an effort to counterbalance some
of the military aggression that China is note seeing from the United States.
So just to be specific in what I mean on that, so for instance,
you have Japan, which after World War II had committed to essentially being
pacifists on the world stage.
However, in recent months,
they are changing their military posture with the persuasion of the United States.
For instance, the US Marine presence in the Japanese islands has been increasing
in an effort to essentially respond to China, should China invade Taiwan?
They're also bolstering Japan's missile capabilities,
think about what this signals to China, right.
So they see this as a military threat.
On top of that,
you have the United States bolstering Australia's military capability as well.
So the U S military presence in recent months especially has increased in
the Pacific.
China sees that as a threat and their alliance with Russia according to Chinese
officials is seen as a way of kind of countering that military US presence.
With that said though I wanna go back to the ceasefire offer
that was drafted by China and the points that I see here kind of interesting.
So there's vague stuff in there like ceasing hostilities, okay.
But abandoning the Cold War mentality,
AKA weakening NATO protecting citizens and prisoners of war.
Obviously, that's something that Russia wants,
forbidding nuclear warfare and protecting nuclear power plants.
That's clearly a message in favor of Ukraine against Russia.
So let's be clear about that because of course,
Russia had been targeting a nuclear power plant in Ukraine through this war.
Supporting the Black Sea grew brain initiative which would allow Ukraine
to export grains through three major ports.
Obviously their economic interests for Ukraine, they're ending unilateral
sanctions, keeping supply chains stable, promoting post conflict reconstruction.
And both Russia and Ukraine claimed that they're open to this plan,
now to Jake's point, this isn't perfect, but it's certainly a start.
It's a way to push toward diplomatic talks as opposed to only focusing on warfare.
The ceasefire plan was followed almost immediately
by a statement from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he
was open to considering parts of the plan.
Zelensky said he wanted to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping.
China historically respects our sovereignty.
Zelensky told the media a meeting between him and
she would benefit our countries and the security in the world.
He said and finally, in Moscow Foreign Ministry spokeswoman
Maria Zakharova said Russia was also open to China's plan and
wanted a diplomatic and political settlement to the war.
>> Yeah, so one more time, guys, neither side is correct.
So I told you earlier, you're gonna get news from the American point of view.
Most of you are and you should be wary of that because we have our own interests.
Including mainly the incredible amount of money that we spend giving
money to the defense contractors to give weapons to Ukraine and to Taiwan.
Right? And there's deep corruption in America,
the bribery that those companies can do to politicians to egg on those sales,
which then eggs on war.
But that doesn't mean that Russia and China are innocent in victims, right?
And you will hear that point of view as well in the media and
that is not remotely true.
It's at best simplistic, if not pure propaganda.
So no, the Russian government here led by Putin
definitely wrong in starting a war of aggression for his imperial ambitions.
It's absurd and he's a monster for doing it now, kidnapping kids from Ukraine,
bring them over and and basically trying to wipe away their identity.
And pretend that they're Russian kids by the way, that's a page that
he took out of Xi's book in China, which is what they're doing to the Euros.
So if you see people minimizing the crimes of Russia and China,
it's weird, you should question their motives, right.
So any either side saying Americans so innocent or Russia so innocent.
It's absurd on its face, right.
They all have different economic and imperial ambitions and
that's why they are in conflict.
The people that are the real victims are the folks who are caught in between like
Ukraine and Taiwan.
And so and by the way for the record, our policy of ambiguity in
our policy regarding Taiwan and China is the correct diplomatic strategy.
Because if you say, hey China know that is Taiwan and is independent,
it forces China to appease their own domestic base.
And go yeah, we're not going to accept that it is part of China and
go to military conflict, right.
If we say, well, we're not going to defend Taiwan.
Let's be on this guy's, China would take it within the week.
Okay, I don't want to exaggerate, but it wouldn't take longer than a week.
If you said Taiwan, you're on your own.
So we got to be in the middle there.
Sometimes there's a reason for diplomacy, even if it sounds like BS,
there's a good reason for it.
>> I agree with you on that.
I want to end by also providing the United States government
perspective on what China is doing here with a ceasefire proposal.
So President Joe Biden is not buying it.
I wanna go to graphic five here where he says Putin's applauding it,
meaning the ceasefire proposal.
So how could it be good?
The idea that China is going to be negotiating the outcome of the war.
It's just not rational, but is reminiscent of we don't
negotiate with terrorists, which was a right wing Republican
position when it came to our invasions in the Middle East, right.
>> You know what it actually is that's exactly right, Anna.
And if in fact, Dick Cheney had the famous line, when Iran basically offered their
surrender of their nuclear program after we invaded Iraq,
they would have give that deal.
It's on the record was a fantastic offer.
They nearly gave up, would have given up everything.
But Dick Cheney said we don't talk to evil.
Okay.
The reason they say nonsensical things like that is because
those scripts are written for them by their defense contractor donors.
They say, hey, do propaganda like this.
We don't talk to terrorists.
That sounds like a really good framing.
I mean, who wants to talk to terrorists?
We don't talk to you.
Of course, you don't wanna talk to evil, right?
It's all marketing is to create more conflict, sell more weapons.
And if you're a mainstream media clown and you think, that sounds like,
conspiracy theory really you don't think millions of dollars given
by defense contractors and campaign contributions.
And jobs once they retire to both politicians and generals, you
don't think that's relevant, you have to be a lunatic to think that's not relevant.
>> In fact, hold because I also wanna share some details in regard
to how the media manufactures consent for perpetual war.
The latest example is from an op-ed written in the Wall Street Journal where
they didn't disclose the fact that the writer works for military contractors.
But before we get to that, I also wanna say, look,
Zelinsky felt some openness toward diplomatic talks.
And then immediately after President Joe Biden dismissed China's role in this and
dismissed China's proposal Zelinsky changed course.
Because he's taking cues from the country that is providing him with the military
weaponry to ward off Russian soldiers following the dismissals from war.
Washington Zelensky, reverse course,
he stopped talking about his interest in parts of the Chinese peace plan.
Instead, he resumed requests for
more weapons shipments again saying Ukraine needs F-16 fighter jets
to take Crimea to which defense contractors say I jump in it.
>> Yeah, so Zelensky would prefer peace.
That's why he was open to the Chinese offer in the beginning, but
he can't not do with the weapons.
So when America says, no, you are not to have peace,
you are to keep fighting and keep buying these weapons systems,
okay, and keep making the American tax pay for it.
Well, then Zalensky has no choice because if he doesn't have weapons,
he's going to get rolled over in the next day because it's not like Russia is going
to out of the goodness of their heart go.
Well, now let's be fair.
Okay, there is no fair in war, but
there's something that is very telling that you can take away from all this,
America is never pushed towards a peace offer in this entire situation.
Now, you can say, hey, well, look if you get p try to get peace now you might have
to negotiate on some land that Russia has taken, etc.
No, you can start with an offer that you like.
You can say, no land.
But here's the other things that we're willing to consider etc.
But America has put forward nothing whereas China has put together a proposal.
And if you don't need to say, hey, cut off all aid to Ukraine to say at the same
time, the American government, you better offer up a peace treaty.
It better be real and you better represent the interests of the American
people who actually want peace and not perpetual war.