Goody, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. And it's the biggest dozy of a dangerous

idea of all when it comes to world peace. It's the reason why the Ukraine war ever mattered in the

first place. The dangerous idea is this, that prior to the Second World War, certainly prior to the First World War,

the majority of humans, in the majority of places, the majority of times, lived under regimes

that were constantly under threat of attack from their neighbours. And we invested vastly too much

in both human capital and in money and treasure and blood in avoiding being invaded

or trying to invade other people. And World War II changed all that. And we managed to erect

the imperfect artifices of the United Nations and NATO and other international norms, all underpinned

by an American security guarantee that ensured that

countries would not just randomly send tanks over the borders of smaller neighbors and try to take

their land. Russia's invasion of Ukraine changed that, and we now stand at a precipice, which is

sort of no less pressing than it ever was, at which

it seems entirely possible that the President of the United States and the leader of Russia

will come to some kind of an arrangement to effectively allow Russia to win this war.

It's worth reminding ourselves what the stakes are, taking a snapshot of where the

conflict currently stands, what the upsides, downsides, perils, opportunities are of the current

situation in Ukraine, what Donald Trump is trying to do, what Vladimir Putin is trying to do,

and whether or not the interests of the people who actually live in central and eastern Europe

should matter to us at all. Thus, we invite back on the show,

the one and only Misha Zelensky. Misha was the Australian Financial Reviews correspondent,

war correspondent in Ukraine from 2022 to 2023. This is his second appearance on the show. We had him on

in 2022 to give us a snapshot at a very different time during that conflict.

...