stock here: The transcript is not verbatim, but cleaned up a bit, from a part ramble conversation. As the CIA meets with Z last week ( why should that even be allowed ), and the assistant Director to the FBI resigns this week, it is clear that Dunderheads are making the world a more dangerous place.
It really can’t be ignorance and incompetence, so it must be aprt of some plans.
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When Everything Becomes “Russian Propaganda”
Propaganda, Ukraine, Europe’s Energy Crisis, and the Dangers of a Political Narrative That Cannot Be Questioned
One of the more troubling developments in Western political discourse is the increasingly elastic definition of the word “propaganda.”
Traditionally, propaganda meant deliberately manipulated or misleading information intended to advance a political cause. Today, however, the term is increasingly used to describe information or arguments that simply contradict an approved political narrative.
That was one of the central themes of a recent discussion with Norwegian political scientist Professor Glenn Dies.
His concern is not that propaganda doesn’t exist. Of course it does. Russia uses propaganda. Ukraine uses propaganda. The United States and European governments use propaganda. Every major power engaged in a geopolitical struggle attempts to shape public opinion.
The more interesting question is this:
What happens when merely questioning the official narrative is itself labeled propaganda?
When Reporting a Fact Requires a Disclaimer
Dies offered a revealing example from his own experience.
After a Russian election, he posted the results and noted that United Russia had performed well. A Norwegian newspaper subsequently accused him of spreading Russian propaganda.
His offense was apparently not that the election numbers he posted were false.
The problem was that he had failed to add the required political context—namely, an explicit condemnation of the election as illegitimate.
In other words, simply reporting the result was deemed insufficient.
The implication was that certain facts could only be mentioned if accompanied by the proper interpretation.
That distinction matters.
A healthy political system should allow people to argue over whether a Russian election was fair, manipulated, partially legitimate, or completely fraudulent. Evidence can be presented. Observers can disagree.
But if one interpretation becomes mandatory, the discussion stops being an inquiry and becomes a loyalty test.
Dies argues that this process gradually empties democratic debate of meaning. Instead of debating facts, citizens are told which conclusions respectable people are expected to reach.
And anyone who refuses may find his credibility attacked rather than his argument answered.
The Paradox of Modern Liberalism
Dies connects this problem to what he considers a contradiction inside contemporary liberalism.
Classical liberalism is built partly upon tolerance.
People inevitably possess different religions, philosophies, political preferences, and ideas about the good life. A liberal society therefore allows individuals to pursue different visions while respecting the rights of others.
But modern liberalism also contains a powerful idea of historical progress.
Society is assumed to be moving toward increasingly enlightened positions. Once a particular position becomes identified with progress, continued disagreement can cease to be treated as legitimate disagreement.
Tolerance therefore risks becoming conditional:
You are free to disagree—until society has decided that the debate is over.
At that point dissent can increasingly be characterized not merely as wrong, but as extremist, dangerous, hateful, disinformation, or foreign propaganda.
Whatever one thinks about Dies’ broader philosophical argument, the underlying democratic problem deserves consideration.
A society confident in its institutions should normally be capable of answering bad arguments rather than suppressing them.
Europe’s Energy Trap
The conversation then moves from propaganda to a much more tangible issue:
energy.
Europe spent decades constructing an industrial economy around relatively inexpensive energy, including large quantities of Russian oil and natural gas.
The geopolitical rupture following the Ukraine war fundamentally changed that arrangement.
European governments dramatically reduced their dependence on Russian energy and looked elsewhere for replacement supplies.
The strategic logic was understandable: governments did not want to finance a country they regarded as an aggressor.
But energy markets do not respond to moral arguments.
They respond to:
- supply,
- demand,
- transportation capacity,
- refining capacity,
- geography,
- infrastructure,
- and price.
Dies argues that Europe effectively replaced the traditional definition of energy security—reliable energy from diversified sources at affordable prices—with a political definition:
Energy should come primarily from countries whose governments share our values.
That may be a defensible foreign-policy objective.
It is not necessarily an economically efficient energy policy.
Sanctions Do Not Make Energy Disappear
There is another complication.
Oil and natural gas are global commodities.
If Europe stops buying from one producer, that energy does not necessarily disappear from the world market. Trade routes often simply reorganize.
Europe may buy more energy from the Middle East or the United States.
India or China may then purchase more Russian energy.
Refined products can subsequently move again through global markets.
The political map changes.
The molecules often do not.
The result can be considerably greater transportation costs and economic friction without eliminating the underlying commodity from world trade.
This is one reason sanctions can produce consequences far beyond their intended target.
Energy Becomes Food
Perhaps the most important part of the energy discussion is something frequently overlooked:
Modern agriculture is an energy system.
Food production depends upon:
- diesel fuel,
- natural gas,
- fertilizer,
- tractors,
- irrigation,
- refrigeration,
- processing,
- shipping,
- and global logistics.
Increase the cost or reduce the availability of those inputs and eventually the grocery store notices.
A modern supermarket creates the illusion that food simply appears.
It doesn’t.
Behind every loaf of bread is an enormous industrial network involving fertilizer production, farm equipment, transport, milling, packaging, warehousing, refrigeration, and distribution.
That system is extremely productive.
It is also highly interconnected.
Dies worries that geopolitical fragmentation threatens precisely the global supply chains that made inexpensive food possible.
That doesn’t mean famine is inevitable.
It does mean that wealthy societies should not assume severe food shortages belong permanently to history.
The Problem With Different Rules for “Us” and “Them”
The discussion repeatedly returns to another feature of wartime propaganda:
identical actions are described using completely different language depending upon who performs them.
A military strike by one side may be described as:
- strategic,
- defensive,
- necessary,
- retaliatory,
- or intended to pressure the enemy government.
A comparable strike by the opposing side may be described as:
- barbaric,
- terroristic,
- criminal,
- or evidence of inherent aggression.
Sometimes those distinctions are justified.
Military targets, civilian casualties, proportionality, intent, and international law genuinely matter.
But sometimes rhetoric replaces analysis.
Dies argues that governments lose credibility when the public notices that principles appear to change depending upon which country is acting.
And once citizens perceive a double standard, they become suspicious even when governments may actually be telling the truth.
That is one of propaganda’s greatest long-term dangers.
It doesn’t merely deceive people.
It destroys confidence in institutions.
Ukraine and the Meaning of “Support”
Nowhere is this linguistic problem more important than Ukraine.
Western political leaders frequently speak of “supporting Ukraine.”
But what exactly does support mean?
Does supporting Ukraine necessarily mean continuing the war until all occupied territory is recovered?
Could supporting Ukraine instead mean seeking a negotiated settlement?
Could it mean neutrality?
Could it mean accepting territorial concessions to stop further casualties?
Could it mean continuing military support while simultaneously pursuing negotiations?
Those are different policies.
Yet they are frequently compressed into a single emotionally powerful phrase:
Stand with Ukraine.
The danger of such language is that the desirable objective—helping Ukrainians—becomes inseparable from one specific strategy for accomplishing it.
Anyone questioning the strategy can then be accused of opposing the objective.
That is not sound reasoning.
A person can genuinely want Ukraine to survive while disagreeing profoundly about how that goal is best achieved.
Zelensky’s Peace Mandate and the Lost Alternatives
The interview also revisits an important aspect of Volodymyr Zelensky’s rise to power.
Zelensky entered office with overwhelming electoral support and presented himself partly as a candidate capable of ending the conflict that had begun in eastern Ukraine after 2014.
Dies argues that this history has largely disappeared from today’s discussion.
Whatever one’s interpretation of why negotiations failed, several questions remain worth asking:
What diplomatic options existed before 2022?
Could the Minsk agreements have produced a durable settlement?
Was Ukrainian neutrality ever genuinely possible?
Could Russia have accepted a sovereign but militarily neutral Ukraine?
Could Western governments have accepted such an arrangement?
Could Kyiv?
And after Russia invaded in February 2022, were the early negotiations in Turkey capable of producing an agreement?
These remain heavily disputed historical questions.
But disputed questions should be investigated—not declared illegitimate.
Proxy War or Defense of Sovereignty?
At the center of the argument is an uncomfortable strategic reality.
Two things can simultaneously be true:
Russia invaded Ukraine.
And:
Western countries can use Ukraine’s resistance to weaken Russia.
Those propositions are not mutually exclusive.
States rarely participate in international conflicts from pure altruism. They pursue strategic interests.
The United States has openly sought to weaken Russian military capabilities. Russia pursues its own strategic goals. European governments pursue theirs. Ukraine pursues its survival and territorial interests.
The problem begins when governments pretend those overlapping interests do not exist.
Dies’ most controversial argument is that Ukraine has increasingly functioned as a Western proxy against Russia—and that prolonging the conflict may serve geopolitical interests that are not identical to those of ordinary Ukrainians.
That claim can and should be debated.
But dismissing the question itself as “Russian propaganda” prevents the debate that democratic societies supposedly exist to permit.
How Much Sovereignty Did Ukraine Really Have?
The interview also revisits Western influence in Ukraine following the events of 2014.
Dies points to several examples he believes demonstrate unusually deep American involvement in Ukraine’s political system.
One example is Natalie Jaresko, an American-born former U.S. State Department official who received Ukrainian citizenship immediately before becoming Ukraine’s finance minister in 2014.
The interview also discusses former Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, American involvement in Ukrainian political appointments, Western-supported NGOs, and U.S. financing of Ukrainian civil-society organizations and media.
From these examples, Dies advances a broader geopolitical argument:
A hegemonic power does not necessarily conquer another state directly.
Instead, weaker states can gradually outsource important sovereign functions to the dominant power.
Security becomes dependent upon the dominant country’s military.
Finance becomes dependent upon its currency and banking infrastructure.
Political institutions become dependent upon foreign assistance.
Civil society becomes dependent upon foreign foundations and NGOs.
Media organizations become dependent upon outside funding.
Eventually sovereignty can remain intact legally while becoming significantly constrained practically.
Whether Ukraine crossed that line is debatable.
The underlying phenomenon is not.
Great powers have always attempted to influence weaker states.
The Problem of an Overextended Hegemon
That leads to another major subject of the discussion:
American military overstretch.
During the decades following the Cold War, American security guarantees looked extraordinarily attractive.
The United States possessed unmatched military power, enormous financial resources, and the logistical capability to operate almost anywhere on Earth.
Smaller countries could therefore outsource a substantial portion of their national defense to Washington.
But guarantees become more complicated when several conflicts occur simultaneously.
Weapons inventories are finite.
Air-defense interceptors are finite.
Ships are finite.
Aircraft are finite.
Industrial production is finite.
Military manpower is finite.
The United States now faces obligations or strategic commitments involving:
- Europe,
- Ukraine,
- Israel,
- the Persian Gulf,
- South Korea,
- Japan,
- Taiwan,
- and numerous other regions.
Dies argues that the transition from a unipolar to a multipolar world exposes the limits of that system.
When every ally relies upon the same arsenal, eventually somebody discovers that the arsenal is not unlimited.
Military Bases: Protection or Tripwire?
This creates an interesting paradox surrounding American military bases overseas.
For decades, hosting American troops provided a powerful security guarantee.
Those troops functioned partly as a tripwire.
An enemy attacking the host country would inevitably kill Americans, making U.S. involvement much more likely.
But in an increasingly contested world, bases can have the opposite effect.
They can also make the host country a target.
Thus countries must continually evaluate a difficult tradeoff:
Does hosting a great-power military increase security—or increase exposure to that power’s conflicts?
The answer depends upon geography, military capability, alliances, and the adversary involved.
There is no universal answer.
Europe’s Coming Crisis May Be Political, Not Military
Dies ultimately believes Europe’s greatest problem may not be Ukraine itself.
It may be political legitimacy at home.
European governments face a difficult combination:
- expensive energy,
- industrial pressure,
- higher defense expenditures,
- war fatigue,
- migration disputes,
- weak economic growth,
- and growing support for anti-establishment parties.
Governments have responded in several countries by constructing political “firewalls” around parties they consider extremist or unacceptable.
Supporters argue these measures protect democratic institutions from anti-democratic movements.
Critics argue that excluding increasingly popular parties simply convinces their voters that democratic institutions exist only when they produce approved outcomes.
That creates a serious dilemma.
If a political system continually tells voters that democracy is sacred—but that certain electoral outcomes cannot be tolerated—eventually some voters may question the sincerity of the entire system.
Dies predicts that Europe could therefore experience a crisis of legitimacy rather than simply a conventional political realignment.
Whether that prediction proves correct remains to be seen.
But the warning deserves attention.
The Danger of Making Diplomacy Taboo
Perhaps the most disturbing theme running through the entire conversation is the gradual disappearance of diplomacy as a respectable position.
During the Cold War, American and Soviet leaders negotiated constantly.
They negotiated while fighting proxy wars.
They negotiated during nuclear crises.
They negotiated arms-control agreements.
They negotiated because the alternative could be catastrophic.
Today, however, advocating negotiations can itself sometimes be portrayed as weakness or capitulation.
That is dangerous.
Negotiation does not mean trusting your opponent.
Negotiation does not mean surrender.
Negotiation does not mean accepting the opponent’s narrative.
It means acknowledging a basic reality of warfare:
Almost every war eventually ends through some combination of military facts and political negotiation.
If discussion of possible settlements becomes politically forbidden, governments risk continuing wars long after the strategic conditions have changed.
Ukraine Cannot Be Reduced to a Slogan
The tragedy in Ukraine is ultimately that real human beings live underneath all of these abstractions.
Behind phrases such as:
- “territorial integrity,”
- “strategic defeat,”
- “standing with Ukraine,”
- “defending democracy,”
- “Russian aggression,”
- and “Western imperialism”
are people.
Soldiers die.
Families lose fathers and sons.
Cities are destroyed.
Refugees leave homes they may never see again.
Young men fear mobilization.
Russian families bury their dead as well.
No geopolitical theory changes that reality.
And no propaganda campaign can erase it.
When Everything Is Propaganda, Nothing Is
There is an irony at the center of the entire discussion.
Governments label inconvenient narratives propaganda because they fear those narratives may weaken public confidence.
But excessive use of that label may accomplish precisely the opposite.
When accurate information, questionable information, legitimate criticism, foreign influence, alternative analysis, and outright fabrication are all placed into the same bucket marked “disinformation,” the word gradually loses meaning.
Citizens begin asking:
If everything that contradicts the government is propaganda, what isn’t?
That is a dangerous question for any democracy to provoke.
The proper answer to propaganda is not an official monopoly on truth.
It is more information.
More evidence.
More debate.
More transparency.
And more willingness to admit when our own side is wrong.
The Road Ahead
Dies ends the conversation pessimistically.
He believes the Ukraine war may be approaching a particularly dangerous stage, where battlefield deterioration could produce rapidly increasing casualties and pressure for escalation.
Whether that assessment proves correct is uncertain.
But one principle should transcend one’s position on Russia, Ukraine, NATO, or the European Union:
The closer a war moves toward catastrophe, the more important open discussion becomes—not the less.
We should be able to condemn an invasion while questioning Western policy.
We should be able to support Ukrainians while questioning whether continued warfare serves them.
We should be able to criticize Russia without pretending Western governments are incapable of propaganda.
And we should be able to criticize our own governments without being accused automatically of serving a foreign one.
Democracy is not demonstrated by allowing people to repeat approved opinions.
It is demonstrated by allowing people to question them.
Because once political discussion requires mandatory conclusions, we are no longer debating propaganda.
We are practicing it.
