Hi everyone and welcome back. My name is Glenn Dyson and I'm joined today by John Meersheimer and

Alexander McCurice to discuss these developments in the Ukraine Proxy War. So it's good to see you

both again and I guess there's a lot to discuss. That is, Trump began his presidency by recognizing

three main criteria.

No NATO except territorial concessions, and there would be no American security guarantees,

which is more or less what Russia had demanded.

I guess why the three of us were a bit optimistic at the time, but then he went back to the unconditional ceasefire, which means not actually addressing any of the things that Russia demanded.

And now there's been this sudden return, or at least seemingly a return to, yeah, no NATO, some territorial concessions, yet a lot of ambiguity, what exactly security

guarantees would entail. So I'm very interested to hear what the two of you make of this.

John, or shall I, I mean, I will say this. I mean, I'll say this? I mean, I will say this.

Did you start? Yeah. Why don't you start?

I'll say this. I mean, I think that this whole idea of security guarantees came out of discussions that he had with Putin, in which clearly they did discuss the security situation in Europe and in Ukraine.

And this is where I'm starting to get concerned,

because it was then taken away from that meeting in Alaska,

as if the Russians had agreed to security guarantees,

which I don't think they have,

at least not in the sense that they're being talked about

in Europe now and by Trump himself. I, Trump sometimes gives the impression that he's giving

security guarantees to Ukraine on behalf of the United States.

Then he pulls back on that.

Then one moment he talks, no troops on the ground.

Then he floats the idea of the United States playing some kind of a role in terms of air power and all of that.

...