George Barros
speaker
576 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard 6 Jun
George Barros’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
I'm highly skeptical of that. We could talk about the reasons why. At which point, the Russians will actually be able to, I think, stalling the tempo better, operate a little bit more effectively. And if they can get some other concessions from the US, which in my opinion would be a massive mistake, sanctions relief,
cutting off intelligence sharing for the Ukrainians, and all this under the rubric of normalization with the Russians and that sort of thing, then the Russian rate of advance will expand drastically.
Very difficult to forecast this administration, Mike. Yeah, good point.
Look, if we look at President Trump's stated objectives, which include not getting Ukraine into Minsk III, a band-aid fix that they're simply just going to not solve the underlying causes of the conflict, but just give the Russians a reprieve to go back into Ukraine at the time of their choosing, then this is going to be really bad. Trump said he doesn't want Minsk III.
Trump says that he wants a robust, stable peace. He wants to ensure that this is permanently over and settled. And those are all good and positive things. Now, if you look at the current Russian demands, they're not compatible with President Trump's stated objectives, which means that actually it's the Russians who have to be coerced into concessions.
I think President Trump has exhausted or come close to exhausting the options of, hey, we make some concessions. The Ukrainians make some concessions, the Russians make some concessions, and they're on turn. That's not working out. So now, I think imposing a decision point on President Trump, which is, we try with carrots, how are we going to use sticks?
And part of the ways that you can go with the sticks are, of course, the economic tools against Russia. Try to target the price of oil, bring it down, cooperate with OPEC. German-American, like cheaper gas prices as well. You could hit the Russians with some tariffs or other things, but our trade volume is pretty low, so it's not really going to be a decisive tool there.
The biggest tool that you could do is keep Ukrainians in the fight. You give them more aid, give them support. You give them the intelligence so that they're charging, you'd be that more effective, even if we don't give them anything else. And then you continue to tell Vlad, well, Vlad, we're going to give the Ukrainians enough to keep them in the fight for another six months.
And that means for another six months, you're going to be losing 45,000 guys per month. That's over 100,000 wounded and killed Russians by the time we come and talk again. So you tell me how you're doing in six months, given that you have a labor shortage of a billion people now, it's going to be even worse. So I think that's sort of the approach. And I don't know.
At the same time, the Russians are being intransigent about their own objectives. They have made the ceasefire for the Black Sea, the maritime domain ceasefire contingent on preliminary American sanctions relief, which should be a non-starter. I mean, there's really no reason to do it.
They want to have sanctions relief for some Russian import and export banks and people that work with agriculture, foodstuffs. It's just free butter for no reason, really. we really shouldn't be in the business of helping the Russians out in that regard. So, we'll see.
But I'm hopeful that President Trump will realize that his stated objectives, which in principle are good, that actually leads to a very natural conclusion, which is we got to keep the Ukrainians in the fight because the Russians got to back down from their non-starter demands.
I see it as a possibility to be explored. I mean, you could work with OPEC. I mean, that's what Ronald Reagan did back in the 80s is we worked with OPEC. drive down the price of oil, that in combination with the Russians losing a lot in their war in Afghanistan, those helped put in the final nails of the coffin of the Soviet Union.
So, I'm not going to say it's not possible, but what I will say is that the maximum pressure campaign that is necessary to get the Russians to back down is not achievable with economic tools alone. The main driver of the Russian pressure points are their losses in Ukraine. And so, we're going to talk about how do we get the Russians to a better spot.
The strategy has to... I think it should include economic instruments, like trying to bring down the price of oil, but that should be in addition to the sustained military support. Now, I remain hopeful that we could do it, especially if we can get the minerals deal signed, because then that could become a mechanism through which the Ukrainians are not the recipients of military aid for free.
but the minerals deal can then become a means of financing.
It's very interesting when you bring that up, when you especially mentioned that President Trump just a couple of weeks ago was talking about how he would like to have American personnel operating Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is in Russian occupied territory as well, which implied- negotiations or war fighting that has to come under pregnant and then American jurisdiction.
I'm not sure what the Trump administration is thinking about how that's optimal, but if we're a world where the Ukrainians and US Americans get some of those minerals and get Americans supporting defending Europe's largest nuclear power plant, and the Russians' front line goes closer to Russia and further away from mainland Ukraine, that's a win in my book. So we'll see. Sure.
Independently, just using the European defense industrial base, at this time, no. And the reason why is because, look, the Europeans have money. Money is not the issue, but a lot of it has to actually do with the manufacturing capacity. Europeans are doing a lot in recent years to augment their defense industrial base, but as is with all things European, too little too late.
And when you need a factory today, you need to start breaking ground on the factory three or four years ago. Yeah. And so the timelines aren't exactly lining up. Europeans are expediting it. I believe the European Commission, they're currently talking about a decades long European regarment initiative where they're going to spend somewhere around
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