The Truth about Authoritarian Labels

Connecting the Dots with Dr Wilmer Leon (audio)

This week our guest is the incomparable Mark Sleboda!

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TRANSCRIPT: Dr Wilmer Leon (00:48):
Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I'm Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode of this podcast, my guests and I will have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between current events and the broader historic context in which they occur. This will enable you to better understand and analyze the events that impact the global village in which we live. On today's episode, we will discuss the recent belt and road form for international cooperation. Recently, over 500 people were killed as a result of an Al Ali Arab Hospital bombing in Gaza. And the US has provided Ukraine long range attack s missiles for insight into this. Let's turn to my guest. He's a Moscow based international relations and security analyst, mark Sloboda. Mark, let's connect some dots.

Mark Sleboda (01:58):
Pleasure to on connecting the dots.

Dr Wilmer Leon (02:02):
So Russian President Putin recently went to Beijing to participate in the third Belt and Road forum for international cooperation. Mark, how significant was this meeting?

Mark Sleboda (02:17):
Yeah, so I think that this meeting was significant for a number of reasons. First, for President Putin on a personal situation, it is the first time that he has left Russia since the Wess pushed international criminal court charged Vladimir Putin with the crime of helping families and caretakers in East Ukraine move their own children out of the range of Kiev regime artillery that had been bombing them for the last 10 years, also known as abducting children, which evidently is a crime when Russia does it in a time of conflict, but is not a crime when the US does it, when they move thousands of children out of Afghanistan and many thousands of children out of Vietnam in a previous generation of conflict. But besides that, the Russian Chinese relationship bilaterally, I think is probably the most important bilateral relationship for both countries. And both presidents seem to have a good working relationship, often described as a friendship and a deep understanding with each other.

(03:47)
And each time one of the others has been reelected to their positions. The first country that they go to is each other's, and I think that is a symbolic sign of the relationship, how important it is with each other's countries. But in a wider perspective, this Belt and Road Forum summit, it is actually the 10th anniversary of China's launching of the Belt and Road Project with the goal of which is to build deep infrastructure all along certain geographic pathways along a lot of what could have been considered the old Silk Road to facilitate trade and connections between the countries of this part of the world. And this is something that China does wherever it goes and does business is build infrastructure because it considers that as a long-term investment, not only in the process of conducting trade, but of helping their trade partner develop to a level where they can better trade with each other.

(05:09)
So physical infrastructure, but also schools, hospitals, things like this. Now a lot of Russian and Chinese and many other countries, leaders have done a lot about talking about the construction of a new, more multipolar, fairer and more equitable world order. And this would stand, I think, in contradiction and an obvious opposition to the current rules based orders. We make the rules, we give the orders of US led Western global hegemony, but in this emerging, shall we say, nascent being born multipolar world order, there are several countries that come to the fore as the first among equals, but certainly China and Russia, our foremost political drivers amongst that. And China stands of course head above the rest if only in terms of their population and their economic strength, which by many measures already exceeds that of the United States. And if there is a meeting and a display of this alternate world order of which China is playing such an important part, a China centric world order, if you want to call it, that was on display in this Belt and road summit.

(07:00)
It was a bringing together of all the countries participating in this physical implementation of a more multipolar world order. The only Western leader in attendance, very interestingly is the right wing prime minister of Hungary, the foreign policy black sheep, victor or Bond who has refused to participate in the West's proxy war in Ukraine. And its existential economic war of sanctions weaponizing its control of the global financial and economic architecture against Russia, primarily from a Hungarian national interest perspective rather than any great love of Russia or the Russian president, which is I think a position that most people would agree is something that should be something that every world leader should aspire to, that they put their own nation's interest and people above all others. Although in the current world that's not even specific. It's not, we know that it's not the case.

Dr Wilmer Leon (08:25):
Just asked Olaf Schultz in Germany that question you mentioned each time gee and Putin get elected, we keep hearing from Western narrative, particularly from Biden authoritarians, authoritarians G is an authoritarian, Putin is an authoritarian, can just briefly explain the fact that they're elected, they don't control their elections. They have different electoral processes than we do. They have different democratic constructs than we have, but that doesn't mean that they're authoritarian.

Mark Sleboda (09:14):
Yeah, I mean this is a label that is tapped on essentially to any country now that lies outside of US-led western global hegemony that does not align itself and does not meet the West's self-reflective standard of what democracy looks like. And it really, it is a way of exerting moral superiority. The idea that we are both morally and systemically superior than those people over there who are our adversaries in a different time. It was communists of course, and there have been other labels in history and certainly labels are applied to the Western countries. They are imperialists. They are hegemons. This is a standard othering device. I live in Russia, I immigrated to Russia from the United States, and I have lived here for most of two decades. And I have to be honest, after having some experience as a volunteer for the US Democratic Party, I find that politics in Russia on a whole is no more or less substantive than the democratic nature beneath the sheets of politics in the United States. I don't want to go out of the way to make it seem like it's a democratic utopia or anything like that far from it. But on a whole, knowing the warts inside and out of political systems in US and Europe and now Russia, I think that over in a general context that they're expressed themselves roughly equally. There is

Dr Wilmer Leon (11:18):
Politics plus they also reflect the intricacies of their cultures. And so I was having a conversation with some folks a couple of days ago and I said they were, oh, well G is an authoritarian. And I said, well, I've seen polls from Harvard and Princeton and some other western universities that show like 96% of Chinese people like their government. And I think it was 87% of Russians polled like their government support government. So if it's working for them, then who in the world am I to say that it's not good, it's not right, or what we have is better. I know Joe Biden would love to see 60% approval rating, let alone 96% approval rating.

Mark Sleboda (12:15):
Yeah, I think not only approval of the current government, but I've seen similar polls that asking peoples of different countries whether they think they live in a democracy and quite overwhelmingly, certainly over the 50% margin, the people of Russia feel they live in a democracy and certainly the people in China do as well to an even greater degree. Again, it doesn't look like western liberal democracy, but perhaps you could consider it of a more technocratic bureaucratic nature. But as you point out, there is a thousand multi-thousand year history of Chinese bureaucratic constructs that they are laying their future and their choices on top of. Meanwhile, in the United States, people generally feel that they don't live in a democratic system, that their government is not responsive to their needs and interests. And you could say that that is, oh, I mean all the people in Russia and China are ignorant.

(13:35)
They don't know the real situation of what they live and what we live in. And I got to tell you, Russian people, even Chinese people, despite the great Chinese firewall, their coordinate of the internet generally have a far higher degree of reading and understanding western media than the other way around. That is they hear our perspective and thoughts, but as Westerners, you quite often don't hear at least on your own media unless you go actively looking for it, the opinions and perspectives of other countries. So I think that assumption that all the people over in that other part of the world, they don't live in a real democracy and that they think they do is only a sign of how brainwashed and ignorant they are compared to us enlightened people on the shining city on the hill. That is a hallmark of the supremacist ideology of exceptionalism that unfortunately has come to dominate not American political culture, but I think far more important, the American political elite, the ruling class. And that has disastrous consequences for us foreign policy and the world.

Dr Wilmer Leon (15:05):
You are absolutely right. I've been to Iran twice and was very blessed to lecture at probably somewhere between 10 and 15 universities throughout the country. And as I traveled throughout Iran, I was amazed at how well informed the questions that these students asked me. They were right on it, man, in terms of an understanding of the politics of the moment. And again, the questions that they asked me were spot on. It indicated that they were going beyond the rhetoric, they were going beyond the talking points. And it was shocking to me how well-informed in spite of the wall that you talk about in terms of the internet, they were on point, man.

Mark Sleboda (16:11):
Yeah, I think it's interesting that this label is applied to adversaries like Russia and China, Russia, which has opposition parties and elections. They don't do very good right now because since the economic catastrophe of the nineties, I think the Russian population has been more united in their political vision of a path out of that and forward and retaking what they see as their place in the world after the self dissolution of the Soviet Union. That will not last forever. And a lot of people question whether it will last after Putin at all. But there is opposition political structures. The biggest opposition political party in Russia is the communist party of the Russian Federation, which polls generally somewhere around 15% of the population. And in foreign policy, it must be said, they largely agree with the current government of Vladimir Putin, but in domestic issues, they constantly fight for the Duma for things that leftist parties always fight for, more social benefits, more spending on education and medicine and other things. And if anything, I think probably the communists would probably, if they were leading the country, would probably take a more hard line foreign policy position than the current government. I think that when the US

Dr Wilmer Leon (18:02):
Speak to that, because a lot of people listening this will say, wait a minute, a harder line than Vladimir Putin. Oh my God. You can't get a harder line than that when the people making those observations have never listened to the man, have never read any of the speeches that he's given. And so they, again, he's evil, he's insane, all of these, he's a dictator, all of these kinds of things.

Mark Sleboda (18:36):
Yeah. Again, the fact that they don't hear what Vladimir Putin has to say for himself because the western media specifically does not reproduce it for them. And I have to say that Russian media does this. I mean, there are still government funded projects in Somi that translate word for word western articles in print media and televised and put it out there for Russians to listen to, not only from the United States and Europe, but from all over the world. That tradition doesn't exist on the west. It's not that it is banned, although in some cases in Europe, Artie and Sputnik are banned, aren't they? Or everything is done to take them off the airwaves as is done in the United States, and of course not just with RT and Sputnik, but now with press TV from Iran. And there are calls of course to do the same to the Chinese CCTV and now even Al Jazeera in the current climate because as the state media arm of Qatar, they are now seen as being anti-Israeli.

(19:55)
So a very similar phenomenon is now taking place. And in a previous conflict, there was very much the same argument being made about Al Jazeera over the situation in Iraq. So this rears its head regularly, but why is the authoritarian label not linked to actual authoritarian countries? That is dictatorships, that are politically geopolitically allied with the United States, right? Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, these are states that are starting to diversify their foreign policy. Saudi joining Brix and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is a dialogue partner and identifying China as their most important trade partner, but still they are very much linked to the United States, and certainly they have been for decades. Qatar has a giant US army base, similarly in Kuwait, the UAE. Why are the actual monarchic oligarchic dictators of these countries not referred to as authoritarian? Because the label is more about oppositional geopolitical alignment than it is in domestic,

Dr Wilmer Leon (21:27):
Domestic government leadership,

Mark Sleboda (21:29):
Any real assessment of their domestic political system. And I have to

Dr Wilmer Leon (21:34):
Say mbss is chopping heads. I mean

Mark Sleboda (21:38):
Literally as a chopping more than heads, these bones aren't sorry. Right. As a veteran, well, I'm both a military, a US military veteran and shall we say a veteran of the US political system with all the warts that the US political system has with its systemic suppression of third party movements. And I'm talking, I mean Americans don't even know this for the most part, but their own two parties of power, the Republicans and Democrats regularly sue third parties to keep them off the ballot, right? I mean, they regularly go to court every election cycle to keep them off the ballot and the whole structure of 50 separate elections and the intricacies run by the party in power, either the Republicans or the Democrats in the state does everything possible to prevent the emergence of any other voice than those two and the electoral college and the eternal problems with campaign finance and lobbying. But Americans somehow feel their political systemic superiority so strongly that they don't even think when their political and media elites judge the political system of another country. And as far as most Americans reflexively are concerned, they think they are the only democratic country on earth and the only good people, which is really kind of another iteration of we are the chosen people of God, political meme throughout history.

Dr Wilmer Leon (23:35):
What is more authoritarian than not having a presidential primary in a system that is based on primaries? What is more of a dictatorship than imposing Joe Biden upon Democrats instead of holding a primary look at what the Democrats did to Bernie Sanders during the Hillary Clinton campaign, hence Julian Assange's email leaks, which demonstrated all the machinations that the Clinton campaign went through to see to it that Bernie Sanders could not become the Democrat nominee. What is more authoritarian than that?

Mark Sleboda (24:28):
I got to tell you.

Dr Wilmer Leon (24:31):
Am I right?

Mark Sleboda (24:32):
Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I don't want to go too much myself into US domestic politics because

Dr Wilmer Leon (24:40):
I just raised that

Mark Sleboda (24:40):
As examples myself from that. I don't want to cast stones. I don't necessarily feel that it's my place to, but I'm actually a confession. I'm originally from Scranton, Wilkesboro, Pennsylvania. That's where I was born. Anyway, that's also Joe Biden's hometown, where he was born. And I distinctly remember the video. I mean, I was too young at the time to remember it politically, of course, but I've seen the videos of Joe Biden running for Congress admitting open, right, that the system is corrupt, that corrupt people are elected to office, and that at the time, the only reason he wasn't corrupt is because he wasn't given the money by the oligarchs, by the rich of the country that he had asked for because he was too untested of yet, but that if he was, he would've taken, I mean, I think there is no greater condemnation of the US political system than admissions like that coming from the very seat of the president, or I mean, shall we take the words of prior presidents Jimmy Carter coming right out and saying, America is no longer a democracy. It is an oligarchy.

Dr Wilmer Leon (26:11):
You mentioned that President Putin went to China for the conference and that this was the first time that he had left the country in quite a while. That to me speaks volumes in how comfortable he must be in the midst of the Russia, Ukraine conflict. His country is at war, and he feels comfortable enough to leave his go to China for a couple of days. That to me says that he's comfortable not only in his position domestically, but he's also comfortable in his country's position internationally.

Mark Sleboda (26:59):
Yeah, I don't think Putin does. He perfectly understands, I think as a leader what he knows and what he doesn't know. And he has made it quite clear that he does not micromanage his generals in the conflict and in the intervention, the special military operation as they call it in Ukraine, the intervention in the Ukrainian civil conflict that has been going on for a decade. Also, of course, neither Russia nor China, nor it must be said, or the United States or India, are signatories to the Rome statute of the international criminal court. So that is not an issue on the trip. In fact, when the international criminal court tried to bring charges against the US, US leaders and military leaders for crimes, alleged crimes, yeah, committed in Afghanistan, in Iraq, they sanctioned the court, they sanctioned the judges, they sanctioned the prosecutor, they threatened to remove funding from the United Nations. They put arrest warrants out for the judges and the prosecutor until the issue was withdrawn. From my understanding is there were even threats made against the families and lives of

Dr Wilmer Leon (28:44):
SDA was the judge. Yes. I don't remember her first name, but her last name is sda, and her family was sanctioned and threatened.

Mark Sleboda (28:54):
Yes. So I don't place any credits to that. And one of the reasons I don't place any credits on these charges is anything more than an instance of geopolitical capture of a un institution, which unfortunately happens far more often than it should. But my full disclosure, my wife is from Crimea, which is considered, at least according to the us, to still be part of Ukraine. And we have family all over East Ukraine, and there are some 5 million Ukrainians living and working in Russia. And that is a side of that conflict. The fact that there has been a civil conflict in that country since the openly US backed overthrow of the government there in 2014 is the internal divide in that country. And again, I know Americans think that through their propaganda bubble of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the ancient three networks and Fox and CNN, that they have a better idea what is going on in Ukraine than most Russians do. No, they don't because there are 5 million Ukrainians living in Russia who tell them all the time on tv, in media and in person because of how much families are interrelated on both sides of the border, they know far, far more about what is happening and has been happening politically in that country, not only for the last year or two, but of course going back decades. And it is the height of hubris, I think, to think otherwise.

Dr Wilmer Leon (30:48):
Switching gears a bit, recently, over 500 people were killed as a result of the Al Ali Arab Hospital bombing in Gaza. And we are seeing this escalation of the conflict in occupied Palestine. As I've been listening to President Xi, as I've been listening to President Putin, they have been trying to find a way to first of all bring about a ceasefire and second of all, negotiate a settlement. I listened to Joe Biden talk about peace, but all he really seems to say is we back Israel a hundred percent. We'll provide more weapons into the region, but we need to have peace. So

Mark Sleboda (31:44):
Go ahead. Joe Biden has also said, you don't need to be Jewish to be a Zionist. And I think

Dr Wilmer Leon (31:49):
And has said very clearly that he is a Zionist

Mark Sleboda (31:52):
And has said that if Israel did not exist, then the United States would have to create it to pursue its interests in the Middle East because it serves such as a convenient platform for the US projection of power into the Middle East.

Dr Wilmer Leon (32:11):
Wait a minute, lemme throw one more in there. Tony Blinken said the last time that he was in the region, he said, I am not only here as a Secretary of state, I am here as a Jew. So forget independent thinking. Forget being a neutral arbiter here in a Jewish state. That sounds more like imperialism and

Mark Sleboda (32:38):
Neocolonialism than anything. Mark Sabota. Yeah. Tony Blinken also by the way, mentioned that his family were originally from Russia and that they left the country, his grandfather because of pilgrims in Russia. And I'm really interested in the timing of pilgrims and his grandfather because certainly in the distant past there were pilgrims against Jews in Russia as there were many countries, but within the lifespan of his grandfather, it would make me really seriously question that characterization and feel he's inflating his family's political disagreements within the country. But that certainly also says in the current tensions with Russia in Ukraine and the proxy war there, that he also has a personal ax to grind as do so many people driving US foreign policy on the region like Victoria Newland, whose own family is originally from Ukraine, so there is that as well. But Putin, the Russia has already put forward at the UN Security Council a resolution calling for immediate ceasefire, and this was shot down by the US and Western countries with the US saying that the resolution could not, they couldn't vote for it because it did not criticize Hamas enough, which is obviously the most important thing when you're trying to craft a ceasefire to stop people from actively killing each other.

(34:24)
Russia and China have been in lockstep on their calls from this. They to a certain extent have been trying to be neutral in the sense that they are refraining from, I think overt criticism of one side or the other in the interest of attaining that ceasefire. Brazil, by the way, also put forward a UN security council resolution calling at least then for humanitarian ceasefires. And that was actually vetoed by the United States as well as France and the UK in lockstep there. Russia and China have been clear, while they don't support the tactics of Hamas, they feel that this is just the latest consequence of a long-term policy of a pretense of a peace process while backed by to the hilt by the us. Israel goes about its process of what it calls settlers, which is a policy of ethnic cleansing and colonization of Palestine, of the Palestine.

(35:41)
America, of course, does not recognize the state of Palestine, Russia and China both do, and they think they've made it clear that this is a result of the West, the world, but most importantly the West because they're not do it, not recognizing the Palestinian state, not granting its sovereignty and its own borders, and its right, of course, to defend its own country and borders and people a right that they extend to Israelis, but not to Palestinians. Because you'll hear from multiple US politicians and political elite that they don't believe that the Palestinians are a people to, which I would say you really, really need to go visit Gaza or the West Bank then. And Americans also seem to not understand, and I'm not so sure it would make a difference, maybe it would that a third of the Palestinians are actually Christians. I mean, would that help their perception, help them get past the inherent Islamophobia involved in the issue?

(36:54)
I don't know, but maybe people should point that out to them that it might help the situation some. But yeah, Russia and China have been quite clear net. Putin has talked to Netanyahu. He has also of course talked to the Palestinian leader, ABAs in the West Bank, and his government has been in contact with Hamas and the other political factions in Gaza. He's also been nonstop on the phone with every major Arab and other world leader that has interests in this conflict, Iran, Hezbollah the like. And he has been trying to do his best towards trying to come to some kind of sane cessation of hostilities. But instead, what we get obviously from the Biden administration, from the eu, the Western countries in general, is they have obviously given a green light to Israel to do a ground operation in Gaza. And Israel has demanded of the, it's a city of some more than 2 million people that has been rightly called the world's largest concentration camp or an open air prison with walls built around it. The real solution is the recognition of the Palestinian state, and that's the only way to relieve the pressure of the people in Gaza.

Dr Wilmer Leon (38:59):
One of the things that I found incredibly telling and quite a contrast was as Tony Blinken was on his Middle Eastern tour talking to US allies, the foreign minister of Iran was on his tour of the region talking to Iranian allies. In fact, lemme take a step back. When Trump assassinated Qem soleimani, the revered Iran in general, Iran said, we will retaliate. And a lot of people thought that that meant, oh my goodness, well, over the next few days, Iran's going to do something and Iran didn't do anything. Now we've got Tony Blinken, he was on his trip. Joe Biden was there on his trip, and at the same time, the Iranian foreign minister was talking to Iranian allies, and now the Iranian foreign minister has come out and said, Israel, your time is up. Talk about what an even height, another escalation of this conflict could mean in the region and what it could mean in the world.

Mark Sleboda (40:21):
Yeah, there was an interesting article out yesterday in the Financial Times where an anonymous US official acknowledged that as a result of the US and the rest of the West, so wholeheartedly backing Israel in this to the degree that they have, and this obvious green light for the ground operation, which is a ethnic cleansing of Gaza, of the Palestinian population, ordering 1 million people to get out of the way. Of course it's an impossibility, where would they go is the most obvious question, even if you were able to order a million people at a time to leave their houses. But there is an alignment of global sentiment and forces, political forces going on the financial Times. This US official and the Financial Times laments that as a result of this, that this is incredibly damaging to us influence in what the US usually likes to call the global south, where if you think of the West, you think of the rest and he says they will never listen to us again. I mean, if they were already, then we've lost them, not just the Islamic world, but more broadly. And because of the recent reproach month between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the normalization of diplomatic relations, thank

Dr Wilmer Leon (42:18):
You, China.

Mark Sleboda (42:19):
Yeah. It's brokered by China and not all peaches and cream. But the last week saw the first direct phone call between the president of Iran and the Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, and they both agreed, they expressed a common position on what is happening in Palestine, in Gaza, and is what Israel is doing and how unacceptable it is. And that is already an amazing geopolitical change. Like the world has shifted, and I have to constantly ask myself, is this real right that the world has changed so much? And there's a saying attributed to Lenin that decades pass and nothing changes. And then at other times in weeks, decades pass decades of change ensue. And we're I think, living in one of those periods, one of those latter periods now where things are changing so fast and we

Dr Wilmer Leon (43:37):
Minute, wait a minute, a minute. Because to that point again, China helped to broker the reproach mon between the Saudis and the Iranians and the United States was in the process of brokering a reproach mon between the Saudis and Israel, and then Hamas attacks Israel and the Saudis say out Israel, that conversation we were about to have, let's put that on hold because that decade of change has taken place in the matter of a day.

Mark Sleboda (44:17):
Yeah, Saudi Arabia was really looking for under, shall we say, a newly foreign policy mature Moham bin Salman, who has obviously changed himself a lot in recent years from what he was when he first came into power as the heir to the ailing king who has really been running the country. He is looking for a multi-vector foreign policy with a minimal amount of conflict. So he wanted to have the foreign policy options with bricks, with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, but it doesn't mean that he wanted a complete severance of relations with the United States either. And since the Trump administration, the US has been pushing very, very hard on their policy of trying to get Arab countries to recognize in Israel and to normalize relations, diplomatic relations, and others, which would also be tantamount to accepting Israeli occupation of large parts of Palestine and ever increasingly more so, you can see where the Palestinians probably regarded a normalization deal being pushed by the US between Saudi Arabia and Israel as an existential issue for them.

(45:55)
Because as by many standards, the most important Sunni Islamic country, because of its holding not only of world's energy reserves with oil, but also the two holy mosques, the way Saudi Arabia goes, the rest of the SUNY Arab world would inevitably follow, and that would end any hope of Arab support for them if this deal went through. It. Also, by the way, the sweetener is a security guaranteed deal with Saudi Arabia, which would effectively elevate Saudi Arabia in security technical terms to the status of the relationship between the US and Israel, IE preferential deals on weapons systems, access to more advanced military technology, full access to intelligence training. Everything that the US provides now to Israel would also be provided at the same level, the same prices and so forth, more or less to Saudi Arabia. That was the sweetener of the deal, and I believe that Hamas' motivation in the, they killed civilians. I mean, there's been a lot of, I think, obvious beheading of babies. That's Kuwaiti incubator, baby type disinformation ized to, but that's not to excuse that they use terrorist tactics. They killed civilians. On the

Dr Wilmer Leon (47:36):
Other hand, wait a minute, and don't forget the Russian killing of babies in the Ukraine, the women's hospital that wasn't a women's hospital.

Mark Sleboda (47:48):
That is I think, a case for the point, again, for the way the US wages information war mostly against its own people, which is another fascinating at a rabbit hole to go down. But I mean, it's not to say that Israel doesn't routinely kill, I mean, on an essentially daily basis, Palestinian civilians through its process of settling, ethnic cleansing, political

Dr Wilmer Leon (48:18):
Oppression, it bulldozers, villages, indiscriminately arrests, detains people without charge, and basically

Mark Sleboda (48:29):
Regularly summarily executes people who resist that,

Dr Wilmer Leon (48:34):
Right?

Mark Sleboda (48:35):
So anyway, I believe that Hamas' primary motivation in launching this attack, a wasting military resources that they had spent years building in secret plans that they had. The timing of this tells me that it was to prevent that Saudi Israeli reproach month deal being pushed by the US from going through, because they saw it as existential for them. And if that was the goal, then it has been successful because as a result of Saudi's disproportionate response to, if Israel had said, we are going to do a targeted anti-terrorist operation in Gaza against the Hamas and the Islamic Jihad leadership who were responsible for this, and the people who carried it out, I think there would've been a very different global reaction to this. If instead we didn't have Israeli leaders saying that we're going to destroy Gaza, that we're going to wipe Gaza off the face of turn it to

Dr Wilmer Leon (49:54):
Dust,

Mark Sleboda (49:54):
Dust, and that all Palestinians civilians are the enemy. We heard that from Naftali Bennett. That would've been a very different situation. And there is, I think a much more substantial reaction, not only from the usual suspects, we've heard that from Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, the Sufi, sorry, the Shia organization there. That is demonized wrongly in this particular case because it doesn't use terrorist tactics by the US and Israel, and no country in the world really outside the West as a terrorist organization that if Israel goes a ground operation and begins cleansing Gaza, then Hezbollah will open up a second front war on the Israeli north, and then there will be a two. Iran has voiced very similar that prospects that if the Israeli government's atrocities against the Palestinian people, which as a result right now are approaching 4,000 dead, which by the way is almost four times the number of people that the Hamas' operational s of flood attacks killed four times.

(51:35)
So obviously proportionality is not an issue when it comes to Israel, but that Iran would feel the need to intervene. We've heard even further, surprisingly, from the government of Jordan and the king of Jordan, right? Not called authoritarian by the way, but because he was educated in Oxford, I mean, he's largely regarded across the Arab world as a western puppet, as a western aligned Arab leader with a very large Palestinian refugee population, and a people who feel very close to that situation. Jordan has come out and said that if Israel looks set to drive the Palestinians out of Gaza as they appear to be planning to do, then Jordan would consider it an act of war. Which I mean, that totally surprised me coming from the modern. Now, a lot of it is probably motivated out of self-interest of the Jordanian king. If I don't react the way my people want me to, they will overthrow me in order to be able to do something.

(52:53)
But regardless of his personal motivations for it, it is certainly something I did not expect. And if Jordan does, so other countries around will become involved, and then there's the prospect of other countries or say Hezbollah as an organization becomes involved, that the US becomes involved. The US has two aircraft carriers. Well, the second one's steaming on its way to the Israeli coast right now, as well as a marine amphibious expedition ships with some at least 2000 Marines. And Joe Biden has kind of, I don't know on some type of idiotic loop reel, been saying about Hezbollah and Iran don't even, as it shovels tens of billions of dollars of emergency military support of crucial military supplies into Israel. And Biden is calling for 10 billion in military emergency, military or financial aid, sorry to be transferred as well. Russia is sitting there. Russia has military bases in Syria, naval base, several other military bases where it helped prevent a US backed jihadi overthrow of the Syrian government there with the us it must be said, still illegally occupying eastern Syria, east of the river, Syria's oil fields and wheat fields, and Turkey still sitting in northern Syria with a hundred thousand Jihadists still on its payroll.

(54:46)
But Russia has these military bases in Syria, and it sees the US just down the coast a little bit with two aircraft carriers. And Putin has asked the question, what are you going to do with those two aircraft carriers? And they're resulting fleets, Hezbollah seriously. And Putin was obviously expressing that he doesn't believe that. So Putin ordered that Russian jet fighters, they're most modern variants, fifth gen fighters will now be patrolling the Black Sea, the extent of it with al hypersonic long range missiles that have a range of a thousand kilometers. And he very directly pointed out that fired from the Black Sea that those missiles can hit US aircraft carriers where they're sitting in the Eastern Mediterranean and again, hypersonic. Hypersonic, yeah. So very, very hard to shoot down, if not impossible. And he said, this is not a threat. This is a response.

(56:03)
And basically he is saying, if you attack Syria, and it has to be said that Israel has already bombed Damascus airport very heavily again, and they've been shelling Southern Lebanon, if you attack our military bases in Syria, then will take out your aircraft carriers, right? I mean, you see where this spiral of escalation is leading, right? Israel goes into Gaza, Hezbollah, maybe Iran go in, Israel conducts cleansing operations in Gaza and Jordan and probably half of the rest of the Arab world join in. They join in, and the US joins in the US attacks Syria as part of this, because Iran power projects through Syria, Russia has bases in Syria. Russia bases get attacked. Russia attacks the US boom. We're in World War III in another conflict, right, that is going on simultaneously with ripple effects from the geopolitical tension and the conflict going on in Ukraine. So all of this has me feeling very much as my used to say, as a long tailed cat in a room full of

Dr Wilmer Leon (57:22):
Rocks, rocking chairs, and I want to reiterate hypersonic missiles. That means that Joe Biden has basically sent two targets for Russia to attack.

Mark Sleboda (57:40):
Now, Russia is not going to just attack American aircraft carriers

Dr Wilmer Leon (57:45):
World

Mark Sleboda (57:46):
War ii realize. No, I realize that it's meant as a deterrent,

Dr Wilmer Leon (57:50):
Which, so what is a deterrent that does not deter?

Mark Sleboda (57:55):
That's a good question. Unfortunately, I think Russia has seen several red lines be crossed in the recent years with the US escalation in Ukraine and hasn't responded, which has led numerous White House officials to say outright, we don't believe in Russian red lines. That means that we can keep poking the bear. And no matter what they do, they won't respond because they fear a nuclear conflict more than we do. That is, well, it's more than madness. It is the death of mad. It is the death of mutually assured destruction, which takes us back to a very early Cold War era that we should all be afraid of.

Dr Wilmer Leon (58:44):
Just really quickly, we have just about two minutes left, and I'm glad you made that point, because whether it's Ukraine, whether it's Syria, whether it is the Black Sea, the United States seems to continue to believe a, when Vladimir Putin or when Xi Jinping says something, they don't mean it. And when they make a commitment, they will not honor it. And what I have come to see over the years is they don't bluff. They don't play, they don't joke. We got a minute.

Mark Sleboda (59:22):
Yeah. So how to mesh that difference between, I think demonstrable reality and what the US ruling administration as seeing as their politicized reading of their opponents, that does not match up with reality. That's a recipe for disaster,

Dr Wilmer Leon (59:46):
Really. Wow. Well, I want to thank my guest, mark Sloboda. Mark, thank you for joining me today.

Mark Sleboda (59:54):
Thanks for having me, Dr. Leon. It's been an honor and a pleasure to be on the show.

Dr Wilmer Leon (59:58):
Thank you, mark. Big shout out to my producer, melody McKinley. Thank you so much for joining the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wimer Leon. This is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history, converge talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter on connecting the dots. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe. Leave a review, share my show, follow me on social media. You can find all the links below in the show description. I'll see you next time. Until then, treat each day like it's your last, because one day you'll be right. I'm Dr. Wier Leon. Peace and Blessings. I'm out.