Sarah Paine

Yeah, but there are things that you just cannot convince other people.

Another key thing and strategy is you can have a very worthy goal, but you need to look at it carefully and go, is it feasible?

I don't think it's feasible to make Xi Jinping change his mind.

Because he's of a particular background and this is what he believes.

And he has a whole bunch of other Chinese people around him who believe the same thing.

And we're in the Second Cold War.

It's going to be a long wait until they change their mind.

If you think about Gorbachev's generation, they decided, Gorbachev said over and over again, we cannot live like this anymore.

Right?

The realization is that their standard of living was lousy compared to the West, so clearly they needed to reform and do things.

But that was his decision and his generation's decision to reassess and do something else.

It's going to be a long wait until the Chinese reassess or the Russians reassess.

So then you have to think about protecting yourself and working with allies, your friends.

Oh, they still played.

It's interesting.

So...

Putin has, Russia lost, the Soviet Union's fractured at precisely the time that China's rising.

So during the Cold War, China's really weak and Russia's in the dominant position.

Well, I guess that's reversed.

So Putin is dumping all his ordnance on Ukraine, his whole his Cold War stockpile.