the department of justice and the fbi would find their guy and they would prosecute him. it isn t that that wasn t essential, that strategy. it just meant that we weren t perceiving the threat as something bigger. this is the new face of terror, osama bin laden, the 39-year-old renegade son of a saudi billionaire, an islamic fundamentalist, elusive, mysterious. his academic training was in economics and public administration. he brought the sensibilities of a businessman to terrorism when he creates al qaeda. call it terror inc. private jets, swiss bank accounts. he gives orders via the net. when it comes to issues like motive, money, network, he is one of the few in the world who has all the various components. bin laden, who had been a de facto ally of the united states during the soviet invasion of afghanistan in the 1980s, turned on the united states.
non-soviet invasion of poland in 1980 that we ve discussed before and ian has written about. you know, i think the soviet invasion of afghanistan and america s response, the carter administration s response, led by mika s dad, was really revenge for vietnam, is to create a soviet quagmire in that country. i think if we are talking about afghanistan, putin s stance today is informed by a much more recent afghanistan episode, which is the withdrawal of the u.s. and its allies from afghanistan last summer, which made reinforced the impression that the biden impression was weak, was focused on east asia and not other parts of the world, and that there might be an opening for putin here to exploit. so i think that s what is in putin s mind as well as our response, chiefly economic, to the seizure of crimea in 2014
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the threat of sanctions in the toughest sanction she will oversee. they thought this would deter putin. even if he was assembling a huge army on the borders of ukraine. they continued with the policy. as you pointed correctly they resorted to the magical thinking. they said putin was going to invade in a certain day last week, he somehow would not. it s been a debacle. i m reminded of the worst year of the presidency in 1979 when the iranian revolution was followed by the soviet invasion of afghanistan. i think this could turn out to be worse. i think the consequences of this failure. it could be catastrophic for ukraine but they will extend far beyond ukraine. the chinese are watching this in their thinking if this can be achieved in ukraine then we may be able to do something similar in taiwan in a couple of years.
president zelenskyy. there are a lot of things that can happen inbetweeners two scenarios. there is so much that has not played out on the ground. but also every day that goes by and russian troops continue to push in that puts them at risk as well, they are taking losses as well, they are taking losses as well this is something that will go back and forth for the next several days or weeks. you mentioned next several days or weeks. you mentioned the next several days or weeks. you mentioned the losses there, was president putin caught slightly surprised by how robust ukraine s defences have been? that could be part of the dynamic playing out. and with the losses that are unfolding, both on the ground and, apparently, in the air, this is something that president putin is going to have to think really hard about and, going back to the days of the soviet invasion of afghanistan and looking at the losses, the significant losses the soviets took there, we re only in the early phases of