Hello and welcome to a couple of Europhiles. My name is Bailey Alexander and I'm here with Frances on Lake Garda. We're located two hours from Venice and one hour from Europe's most romantic balcony in Verona. So anyway, where to start? Where to start? We do like discussing cultural realities and European politics and we will get into regime change here in Europe. What about this ceasefire, Francis? It appears to be confusing the finest diplomats out, diplomats out there. And some are wondering if this is perhaps a ploy to get some time, if only to get rid of Zelenskyy's regime. BecauseI think most people would admit that Zelenskyy, or shall we say his hyper nationalistic regime, is probably the biggest obstacle to, to negotiate peace. So what, what do you think, Francis?
Yes, that's a very interesting question. The question really revolves around is Trump playing four dimensional chess or is he an idiot? There seems to be no middle ground.
Essentially, Trump is trying to negotiate peace. He doesn't really want war, he does want peace, but his major objective is to try and re establish financial and commercial relations with Russia. America is in need of a lot of raw materials that the Russians can provide. The Americans can also provide a lot of expertise in things like mining and resource extraction, which the Russians will be happy to take. So working together to improve either side's economies would seem to be the thing to do.
Unfortunately, Trump has an incredible amount of baggage, both from the Biden administration and also from most of his allies in NATO, although he's working on that. So he can't just say, you know, the Ukraine thing was a horrific mistake. We're going to pull everything out and we're going to go do business with the Russians. That's the way it is, girls. He has to ease into it and try to negotiate both sides to try and put the whole thing to bed. So he talked to Zelenskyy. He's been quite harsh with Zelenskyy, and he got him to agree to a ceasefire. The Russians are not interested in a ceasefire because they want a fundamental end to the war. They are interested in peace, but they're not interested in giving the Ukrainians a chance to regroup and rearm and then come back and kill more Russians. So they want to put an end to it quickly and they want to keep the pressure on until Ukraine finally agrees to the conditions that they're setting, which have changed over the course of the war.
The Russians initially started by saying, you can keep everything.
We just want you not to be in NATO and stop killing people in Donbass and allow them to speak Russian. That was the Istanbul agreement, and they rejected that on the advice of the west, thanks to Boris Johnson and Biden, who was standing behind him.
And now there are four republics instead of two that have voted to join Russia and are now part of Russian soil, and that becomes the new red line for Russia. We're going to keep all of our oblasts and we're going to make you not be in NATO and we're going to denazify you, and we're going to make it so that you're not going to attack us in the future.
So one of the Russians demands is that the Ukrainians have an army no bigger than 80,000, and right now it's 800,000. So 90% of that army needs to disband if they're going to meet the Russian red lines. So those are tough conditions for the. Basically, they have to admit defeat. And the Ukrainians, unfortunately, are still being egged on by people in the UK and in France and other places, the Germans, the new guy seems to be a complete nut job. So, you know, they're hoping against hope that in some way, shape or form, they can get a better deal by continuing the struggle rather than succeeding to the Russian conditions. For a ceasefire, and they're trying to make it look like it's the Russians fault for not allowing them to take advantage of the ceasefire and regroup and rearm and all the rest of it. So it's a very, very twisted situation.
A lot of people have been arguing that Trump is not really informed. He doesn't know what's going on.
He is not plugged in. But the Russians have basically sidelined General Kellogg, who nominally Trump's envoy for peace in Ukraine, and Trump didn't have any problem dismissing him. Trump is negotiating with Witkoff and directly with Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, and they're not really paying too much attention to the Ukrainians or the Europeans.
A whole series of Europeans have gone to Washington to try and change his mind, and they file into the Oval Office, get handed, know, the consolation prize and filed back out. Not one of them has changed the American position at all. So the latest one was Mark Ruti. He went over there just a couple of days ago and he's come back and now he's saying, oh, Ukraine is never going to get into NATO, even though a week ago he was saying it's inevitable. So, you know, it seems that the Trump effect is still working and he still has the whip hand. He's in charge.
: Mark Rute, who Gorgeous George Galloway refers to as an ex cosmetic salesman.
: Yes, him. Yeah, he's extremely tall.
we lived in Amsterdam. I ran into a lot of people that were, you know, closer to seven feet. A Dutch trait, to be sure. But what about this von der Leyen? You seem to think her days are numbered. And I think most people would agree she is. She does not have the residents of the member states.
Yeah, it's tricky.
The European Union wasn't put together in the same way that the United States was. Right. In the United States, the 13 colonies send representatives to a continental Congress to decide how they were going to create a country and how it was all going to work and who is going to be in charge and how it was going to execute. Right.
Europe never had that. Right. Europe had a bunch of independent countries who agreed that it made sense not to have any more wars between them and that they should basically focus on trade and open up their markets and handle things commercially. But nobody sat down and said, you have to give up your sovereignty, or these are things you're not allowed to do, and this, that, and the other. So it's sort of, you know, by accident almost, that you have the commission essentially claiming that it has Authority that no one ever gave to that commission.
So Von der Leyen in particular should be a kindergarten school teacher.
That's about her level. She. She basically thinks she needs to tell the unruly children what they have to do. You know, you have to brush your teeth. You got to basically eat an apple. You got to do this, you got to do that, you got to drive green cars, you know, and forth and so on. So right now, she has essentially worn out her welcome in a lot of places. And the nation states are beginning to exert their authority, which they never conceded to Brussels. Now, Brussels thinks it can essentially blackmail nation states by controlling the European funding that is aggregated for different purposes, including Covid recovery and saying, if you don't do what we want, then we will not give you the money that you're supposed to. That is open to challenge in the courts. And it takes a long time. But she's not winning those cases all that much. So she now has some serious rebels, Orban and Fico, and she has the whale in the depths that hasn't really committed yet, although everyone is afraid of it. And that's Italy, because Italy is now one of the. It's the third largest economy in the European Union, and it is the one that has a popular elected leader, whereas France's leader is running on 47 negative percentage points of popularity in France. I mean, it's hard to imagine anybody being less popular than Macron in France. And the guys in Germany are just nuts. They're trying to. They held an election, they can't get a coalition together.
They're really not in a position to dictate to anybody how to move forward because they have to get their own house in order before they can step back on the stage. You know, it's. You're sitting there, you haven't got your costumes on, you haven't figured out how you want to do it. You need to basically stay backstage until you're ready and then come on and say something.
But they haven't figured that out yet. So it's just a huge mess.
I'm just surprised at how dismissive everyone's been of Europe as a bloc lately. Through this, throughout all this drama, at least recently in the last few weeks. I mean, if you look at Italy, budget and trade surplus record, non EU exports, one individual was saying Europe was irrelevant. And the only way they. The only reason they had any money to begin with was through the Silk Road and through Venice once upon a time.
Europe has been at the center of world.I mean, that really is ridiculous. The Silk Road is great.
You know, they were trading, you know, intrepid Europeans went to China and basically brought back goods and services from China into European markets.Europe, at one point or another has conquered 90% of the rest of the planet.So name me a continent that has done a quarter as much as Europe.
Italy has 80%. You know, a huge percentage of the cultural heritage of the world.
Art, sciences, invention, you know, everything. Theater, literature, modern day banking.
They invented the modern legal system, they invented the microchip. What say you do?
Yeah, yeah, we met a lot of stuff, right.
And it's always been that way. Europe has fought an awful lot of wars, okay?
And most of the wars have been on European territory, including the two big ones. But the point is that the Europeans are used to destroying everything, picking up the pieces and rebuilding. Okay? Particularly the Germans. The Germans are very good at that. Before there was a Germany, there was hundreds of little city states and they were in a constant state of war. And you know, the German farmers would come back, find their farms all burnt by, you know, foreign mercenaries. Their women were raped, their children were killed, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they would pick the pieces up and rebuild and make it bigger and better than before. So they have a long history of figuring out how to fix things after it's all disastrously screwed. So anybody who's out there saying Europe is over and it will never rise again is not a historical person. He has no historical background. Europe has always risen and it will always continue to rise as far as I can see. And let's see what happens, but let's not try to put things into a perspective that is only one or two years long. Right? You need to take a more like a 10 year perspective. Right now they've really screwed the pooch and they really have messed things up on their economy. And it will take longer to get back up to speed, but they will.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: That speaks to America blowing up the Nord stream. What is interesting, and I guess this is through propaganda and I'd be curious because we've never discussed this, but how and why has Ukraine become this glue for EU member states to glob onto and to use as this rallying cry?
Do you remember when this specifically happened? Because it certainly unfolded before our eyes.
Yeah, it is a mystery to me. I can't explain it really. But what I know is first of all, EU member states are not all.
Speaker A: That keen and we're not anti Ukraine, we actually house some people. Francis worked with someone, an engineer, and we actually found a place for their family because they were escaping to Portugal after the war. So we're not anti Ukrainian and we're just extraordinarily sad about the loss of life and of course, the millions that have flooded into Europe. I mean, it's a tragedy.
: Yeah, it's a tragedy. But basically what happened was the European Union is very careful about expansion.
They only expand based on the Copenhagen criteria. It took the Romanians and Bulgarians a long time to actually meet the criteria before they were allowed to join that their economies had to be aligned, their judicial systems had to be aligned. They had to demonstrate that their economy wasn't going to get destroyed by unfettered competition coming in from Europe before they could become member states.
And Europe is interested in helping to build new members up so that they can participate in the plan. And it's worked for most of the countries that have joined, including the UK The UK was in terrible shape before it joined, and then they got a lot of benefit from being in the European Union before they left again. So, you know, the European Union has tended to do that, but they need the starting point to be something viable. Okay. And Ukraine as it is right now, with the corruption that is rampant throughout that organization, that whole country, and the state of their economy, particularly after a war zone, it will be a giant magnet that would pull all the capital out of the European Union if they and would destroy the European Union to actually admit it as a full member. So no one is going to do that because it has to be unanimous.
: I'm sorry, who's going to pay for the reconstruction?
: The tooth fairy. But who cares who paid for the reconstruction at the end of World War II? Well, the Americans lent the money in the Marshall Plan, which they got paid back, in order to do the reconstruction of Germany and the things that were destroyed in World War II. So there will be a plan at some point. And what Trump has said is, you know, We've already sunk $350 billion into this thing, and we want mineral rights for $500 billion to make up for it. So we're willing to put money in if there is a chance that we'll eventually get some of it back, you know, we'll invest.
Because it's. We all know it's such an extraordinarily corrupt country.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: Yes, I know, but that can be cured, right? I mean, the point is that if it's destroyed, it needs to get fixed and they need to get rid of all these idiots and they need to put in people that will actually be focused on rebuilding it. And then they need to accept the capital that's necessary to do it. The Russian part of what was Ukraine, the four oblasts that are now part of the Russian Federation, they're already being rebuilt. Mariupol is a shining example of what the Russians are doing. The Russians have no problem investing and basically rebuilding all of the parts that are destroyed on the other side without any recourse to anybody else's money. They've already done it for the most part, away from the front lines. So you would expect that when peace breaks out, they'll do the same thing in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and the other oblasts that they'll be controlling. They're good at that, so they'll do that no problem.
The Chinese are the.
Didn't they develop a 57 floor building in 10 days?
The Chinese, yeah, the Chinese are super good at doing it. Right. The Chinese are perfectly happy to send their construction teams in there to do it really fast, but somebody has to pay them. So the question is, when you figure out who's going to pay them, let the Chinese go to town.
They're the world's top construction people.
Right now you were talking about for not the other day. What did you want to say about Vernacci, though?Yeah, I mean, I'm actually interested. Roberto Fanacci is a European Parliamentarian who was elected to represent La Lega, the. The League Northern. It used to be the Northern League, now it's just the League, which is Matteo Salvini's party. But he is looks like he's going to break away and form his own political party in the near future. But he is, you know, an interesting character. He is in the European Parliament and his speeches don't, you know, they'll strip the paint off the walls. He's really going after Von der Leyen in, in. In the European Parliament.
ll, first of all, he's Italian, but second of all, he's. He's not a nobody, right? He's not a politician. This guy was the general in command of Special Forces, right? He's seen the bear, he's gone to combat. It's like he's an actual war hero, right?
He knows everything there is to know about the military and the military industrial complex and all that. And his point, which I think is resonating with a lot of Italians, is right now The European Union and Trump are saying you need to increase your spending on defense to 5% of GDP because you need to spend all this money for defense. And his point is? Well, we're trying to defend against the Russians. The Russians right now have an economy one ninth of the size of the European Union. Their military spend is like a fraction of what the existing European military spend is.
But they're spending the money wisely. Right? They're actually getting bang for their buck. They're getting great planes, they're getting new missiles that are hypersonic. They're actually spending money extremely wisely. So his point is it's useless to just spend money. That's like putting a banker in charge of your army, you know? Oh, yeah. All we need is to spend more money and it will be great. We'll be able to defend. It's not true. You need, you need competence, you need the right weapons, you know, top line equipment, you need logistics, you need people, you need to motivate those people. You need to pay them and you need to train them and so forth before you have an actual defense that makes sense. And nobody knows this better than he does. So when they pick on him because he sounds like he's in favor of Russia or he's not in favor of giving any more money to Ukraine anyway, he has the credentials that absolutely destroy all the people trying to pick on him. So he's actually quite an interesting character and we should keep an eye on him in the future because he is not going to go away. He's probably going to play more of a role in future elections.
So what's the latest on, did I read correctly that Mertz had passed the first hurdle with getting his coalition together?
What I read is that he may have to start negotiating with the AfD, which he swore blind. He would never do what he's done.
One of our commentators said the AfD are not fascists and we don't believe they are either. So we agree with our comment.
Yeah, the AfD are nationalists, okay? There's no doubt about that. They want to stop the useless war. They want to refocus on the German economy.
They want to focus on reducing energy prices so that they can be competitive again, which is not stupid. Right?
They need to do that. So whoever is responsible needs to do that and not spend 800 billion euros on defense.
It's insane. You need to fix your economy before you can afford to spend all this money on defense if in fact you need it. The defense spending doesn't actually improve economics. I Mean, it does in little places, like places wherever they build bombs. But the military spend is not an economic benefit. The Chinese spend their money on things that create employment, that generate new wealth for their people. And that's what everybody should be doing. We shouldn't be spending so much money on the military. And Trump's initiative that he's talked about, although he hasn't done, where he's going to meet with Putin and with Xi and try to reduce the nuclear arsenals and come to a global understanding of how the big powers interact with each other without spending so much money on the military is a welcome breath of fresh air. Everyone has blindly spent additional every year. They increase the military spending everywhere. And the Russians and Chinese are doing it in reaction to the Americans.
And if the Americans are willing to reduce the forces, then they probably will be, too. And then we'll all be living in a safer, more democratic place without the fear that the whole thing is going to go up, the balloon is going to go up. Ukraine needs to be settled. I think that there will always be a Ukraine. The Russians have no interest in running the whole country. They just want the eastern part, which is Russian speaking and essentially are happy where they are to be Russian. And then the rest of the Ukrainians can run their own thing as long as they're not a threat to the Russian Federation. That's the Russian position. And they're not going to come in against Poland or any of these other places either, because Americans have learned this in Afghanistan you go to a place, or in Iraq, you go to a place where they don't like you and you try to run it. And what happens is they come out at night and basically stab you while you're asleep and then slink away to the shadows. You don't know who they are. You don't know who's doing it to you. It's just always low level conflict. And the only way to stop that is to kill everybody, which is what Genghis Khan did.
So, you know, you don't want to take over a country that hates you. It's simple as that. You want to beat their army and make sure their army is not a threat to you, but you don't want to run it and you don't. Conquest is a thing of the past. We don't want to hold places that don't want to be held by us.
I think that's basically obvious to anyone that studies history, but it's not obvious to a lot of pundits, a lot of retired generals and A lot of people that are doing a lot of talking, none of them on the front lines. I know, but there might be a.
Lot of back channels going on. You know, we've. All of us have been listening to Lavrov for the last two, three, four weeks. You know, Lavrov is interesting. I remember we had a Russian couple over for dinner a year ago. Who knows when they were. They were here on asylum, but they had nothing negative to say about Putin. But I asked them about Lavrov and the. The wife, and they were super smart, very ambitious, successful, interesting couple, just a dynamic couple. And the. The wife said. She just said, we. We laugh at Lavrov. And I thought that because whether or not that's true, I didn't say anything. But it's important how the world perceives him and the world. If you listen to Judge Knapp, I mean, all of those guys absolutely idolize him. He is old school, right? He's got this way about him. And he's been in the business since 81, and he worked in IT. He was an ambassador here in America. So the guy has been around and he does have a way that's over 40 years. 40 years.
[00:27:12] Speaker B: I mean, Lavrov has been 41 years in service, a tremendous amount. The Germans used to have a guy named Genscher who was a Liberal Democrat. And he would always be the foreign minister because whichever party won and became chancellor, they would have to make a coalition with these guys, and he would always get the Foreign Ministry. So he was the foreign minister for something like 20 something years. And they used to joke that if two planes crashed, Genscher would have been on both of them. Right, because he was like constantly flying around the world, pushing the German foreign policy.
Very experienced guy.
The reason I brought up Labrador is because he has very specifically. He has been the one in the public sphere specifically, over and over again.
Explain Russia's position and why they, in fact, would not accept this ceasefire. That's why I just find this so fascinating because everyone is confused about it. But someone said. Someone found a word they said when Rubio. He said, well, there could be room for elections because the problem with Ukraine is the problem with Ukraine. I mean, they are a huge obstacle. I don't think we can underestimate that.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: Migraine, migraine. Ukraine.
[00:28:34] Speaker A: Keep on bringing up my age today, at 61 years of age, I have never been triggered. The day I saw Zelensky, I was triggered as if I just down into my bones. I knew this guy was bad news, but, you know, he's he's been placed there and he, he plays a role. He's an actor, as we all like to say. And the war has been. Been really hard on us. Like I said, our gas bills have not gone up. Italy has been very savvy about dealing with. With several issues under the radar. It's hard to believe really what Trump is up to, to, to really have a lot of faith. But people that seem to understand him do feel as if he does want to resolve this. And he thinks that Ukraine is a joke. He's like, what. What is this Ukraine? You know, he doesn't seem important to him. Zelensky seems like a clown.
He doesn't think Europe. He thinks Europe is a joke, more or less.
Trump's focus is very domestic. He wants to improve conditions for Americans. And in his view, everybody's been taking advantage of Americans for a long time. So none more so than Zelensky and the Ukrainians. Right. Well, he doesn't have a lot of sympathy with Starmer.
[00:29:45] Speaker A: Grifters are going to graft, man. Right.
[00:29:47] Speaker B: Grifters are going to graft with McCraw or any of these guys, really.
So he's going to impose the tariffs, which he thinks are reciprocal, and therefore whatever they do to us, we do to them, blah, blah, blah. Now, a lot of people are going to argue that that's not fair and that his interpretation is perhaps not well thought through.
[00:30:07] Speaker A: Michael Hudson, whom a lot of people respect. Michael Hudson, he's into his eighth decade and he has a great deal of respect. He understands money as well as anyone and trade specifically. He is convinced this is a bad idea and that people will not invest when there is so much instability and unpredictability. And if one thing Trump is, of course, he's transactional, but he is incredibly unpredictable. And this is not.
: Yeah, but, you know, here's the thing. He's trying to fight America's corner, and he would have no problem accepting and understanding that the Europeans should be fighting their corner. Right. And Meloni should be wanting what's good for Italy. She says she does, but she needs to show that she is. The Germans ought to really care about what's good for Germany. And what's good for Germany is to re establish the Nord Stream pipelines and re establish their industrial competitiveness. So, you know, there's a lot of actions that are going on. We don't at the moment. It's very fuzzy. It's very hard to predict how things are going to end up. But one thing is for sure, Trump's election and his subsequent actions have proved a monumental catalyst that has shaken everybody awake. Right? There's all sorts of stuff going on, and it's a result of his actions. And some things will be bad and some things will be good, and everybody's going to strive to fight their corner, and hopefully the Italians are going to fight their corner and get some benefit for Italy out of whatever comes out. So, you know, it's not wrong to basically go and make changes to the existing world order and try to shape something better.
[00:31:59] Speaker A: But it's unfortunate. We can't get rid of Macron until, what, 27.
[00:32:04] Speaker B: We can't get rid of Macron at all. We're not French voters. But the French can get rid of him fast. Plenty fast. Sure, they can throw paving stones through the LSA palace.
They invented something called the guillotine when they needed to sort out one of their previous rulers.
You know, the French, it's like they're talking about the Sixth Republic, which is very interesting, because at the moment, the French government is the Fifth Republic, and it is possible that the actual political order can be overthrown and replaced with a new version in the Sixth Republic. And they're talking about that. So, you know, gosh knows. What I know is, if you had to make an investment right now, I would invest in popcorn.
Okay, so I think it's time to wrap up. Thank you so much for listening. And I like to announce at the end of the podcast that my latest book is called the Personal Legends of Piemonte, where I interview 12 Northern Italians who have fulfilled their destiny. And it's written in both English and Italian. So I wove 12 stories around the 12 interviews, which are really interesting. Wine and cheese makers, herbalist, famous chef, a teacher, a bureaucrat, a car mechanic named Luigi, who is absolutely fantastic. He's got great jokes and great stories. But like I said it, the first half is in English and the second half is in Italian. So if Italy is on your bucket list, if you've got a trip in the near future, you can brush up on your Italian. So, hey, thanks so much. And please check out my
[email protected] for further information.
Okay, ciao for now. Agriba d'Arci.
Ciao for now.
