Tomas Ilves

And I was, I mean, I was in Munich in 2007 when he gave his speech.

In fact, there's a picture of me in the front row with Angela Merkel and with, well...

Because that was his really aggressive speech where he really for the first time.

Yeah, that was where he came out.

And there's a book that just came out of the reactions to that speech.

And my reaction, which I wrote about there, is like, oh, well, that's what we've been saying all along.

Whereas people from the more Western parts of Europe were saying, oh, my God, what has happened?

Well, because they thought they could do business with it.

I mean, you know, there was literally business, but also political, diplomatic business.

I mean, the hope was there, and the hope didn't go away.

I mean, the hope didn't go away even with the annexation of Crimea, which was a fundamental violation of the UN Charter, the prohibition on changing borders through aggression.

But, you know, Angela Merkel, a year later, and a year after the shoot-down of MH17, killing 300 people,

mainly Dutch people, she signed the Nord Stream 2 agreement.

So, I mean, international law was trumped by... Business.

Business.

Well, I'd say it's two-tiered.

People in government are worried about

about what this means, but given our dependence on a robust US response, we less than other countries are willing to criticize the United States at this point.

So I'm kind of an outlier, I mean, I can,

I can and do say what I want.