Well, howdy there, Internet people, it's Bell again.

So today, we're going to talk about Trump, Tripwire troops, and talks about Ukraine.

When Trump had his meeting with Putin, Putin ordered Trump not to allow Ukraine into NATO.

Immediately, the promise of what's being called Article 5 like protections was

being floated. Article 5 is the clause that would be invoked to bring all of NATO into a fight.

Because of broken promises in the past, Ukraine is understandably hesitant to accept promises

or guarantees that aren't formalized

through NATO.

This brought about the discussion of Tripwire troops.

Tripwire troops are not something that often gets discussed in the United States, because

we as a country like to pretend we'd never do something like this. I've known people who have served as

tripwire troops, who didn't know that's what they were. If you served in Berlin during the

Cold War, you were a tripwire troop. Korea, same thing. Now in theory, the troops are there to act as a deterrent. The U.S. put troops in

West Berlin to tell the Soviets, if you take Berlin, you'll have to go through our forces,

and it'll start a war. So what's the difference between a tripwire troop and a troop

just simply defending the territory? In most cases, the tripwire troops have exactly zero chance of success in holding the territory.

They're there to become casualties in the event of an attack, and therefore the public at home will support the war and counterattack.

It's an incredibly cynical theory of deterrence,

but it's used all over the world. Just to demonstrate that it isn't just the U.S. that engages in this,

and because I know we have a large number of British and Canadian viewers, pretty much all of your

troops in Germany from 1957 until about 1970 were a

tripwire force. The theory at the time had them being destroyed by Soviet nukes within

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