The Human Side of Science | 11min snip from Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

Speaker 2
Are there any bad guys in the world? I mean, are you a fan of Kim Jong Un North Korea?
Speaker 1
I'm not a fan of these people. I want to have normal relations with them. That's another interesting case, by the way. We said in the late 1990s, we will take steps for building a relationship so that North Korea would not become a nuclear armed nation. And then John Bolton came in in 2002 said, that's all stupid. We don't have to do anything with these people. And so on. So where are we today? Of course, we're in an vastly more dangerous situation than we were 20 years ago. No thanks to any U.S. common sense.
Speaker 2
What would you have done with Hitler in 1939 when he invaded Poland?
Speaker 1
We did what we did, which was to fight him after every evil and perp- We
Speaker 2
actually appeased him first. He thought he was very generous in his view of Hitler and his intentions.
Speaker 1
I don't think that the generosity was right. I think the intention to negotiate was right. But then Hitler exposed himself for completely what he was. You know that quote about appeasing? You know that quote about appeasing crocodiles. Yeah, but by the way, it was not to make too much of a point of it because Chamberlain was not very clever or astute to go back and declare peace in our time. But that's different from trying to negotiate. And the fact that Hitler absolutely violated every single word that he said is what made Churchill be able to be Churchill. So this is fine. If the negotiations fail, you do something different. This is clear. I'm not saying that everything gets solved by negotiations, but we're going out of our way, out of our way every day to avoid negotiations. And we've been doing that for 15 years in the particular case of Ukraine. I know it because they never negotiate over this. They don't even negotiate. That's the whole point. No one to talk to.
Speaker 2
I want to talk to you before
Speaker 1
we finish. That's not true.

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Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

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