let's come to some of the international issues it's been like I said just barely three weeks since Trump came to office he signed more than 25300 executive orders including the one on tariffs that's coming today the most significant foreign policy phone call I guess happened yesterday uh when he spoke to both President Putin for the first time I think in in in many many years and also to president zalinski and and Mr Trump is convinced that this is the beginning of of the all elusive peace uh in Ukraine this this use of ceasefire that that
he says Ukraine and Russia should have been get working towards yesterday I think what happened yesterday number one was quite amazing and number two uh I think it plays to India's advantage in a significant way and let me tell you what I think happened uh I think uh president Trump and especially the comments of Secretary of Defense heith yesterday made it clear that the United States has gone a long way towards accepting the main two conditions that the Russians demand uh to settle this war I'm actually very surprised that this happened uh hexi said that
uh and Trump said that uh Ukraine would not be in NATO uh and moreover uh hexi made it clear that we're not going to give uh Ukraine security guarantees this means that it is possible to get a genuinely neutral Ukraine which is the first demand that Putin has made the second demand is that the west and Ukraine accept the fact that Russia has annexed Crimea and it has anex those four easternmost oblas uh in Ukraine and hexi basically said yesterday that we're going to do that uh he didn't specifically say what territory uh the Russ
Russians could keep from an American perspective but he implied that the Russians can keep what they've already conquered and maybe a bit more uh and these are the two major demands that Putin has made of the West and of Ukraine and it's not surprising that the Russians were ecstatic about what happened yesterday the Europeans and the ukrainians are profoundly upset and many people uh in the United States are profoundly upset about what Trump is doing Trump has fundamentally reversed or appears to be fundamentally reversing uh the Biden administration's foreign policy now why is this good
news for India uh the Biden Administration was very upset with India for not cracking down on the Russians for not having an antagonistic relationship with Russia because of Ukraine uh well if Trump flips the policy and Trump wants to work with the Russians and have good relations with Russia uh and end the war in Ukraine largely on Russia's terms uh that means that the Trump Administration has no incentive to put pressure on India over Ukraine and if anything it has an incentive to work with India to get India to back it up as it moves
towards a settlement with uh uh Russia over the Ukraine issue so I think this is good news for India and in my view it's good news for Ukraine I I I'll come to the the the India part in just one second why would the ukrainians accept such a deal they have to give up about anywhere between a fourth and a and a fifth of the territory that they had before this War Began there are no guarantees security guarantees there is no NATO membership uh why would they agree to this it's not clear they will agree
to it right I mean uh and and and we also have to see what happens with the Europeans there are three players here uh the Europeans uh the ukrainians and the Americans now the Americans are the principal driving force but as you're saying you know we have to get the ukrainians on board uh and if they don't accept this deal that could be a real problem and I don't know how Trump will finesse that but uh there's no question that Trump is moving in a fundamentally different direction than the Biden Administration ation was moving in
and really what's going on here is that the Trump Administration is facing up to the fact that the Russians are going to win this war the Ukrainian military is falling apart on the battlefield it's suffering serious defeats is in real trouble and what Trump and his lieutenants are saying is that it's time to shut this one down there's no way we can shift the balance of power and rescue Ukraine and let's cut a deal that's in America's interest uh and is in Ukraine's interest now whether that can be done remains to be seen so so
I want to come to the part where you said this might be good news for India and I'm also curious to know your thoughts on you know Prime Minister Modi enjoys good relations with both President Putin of Russia and president zalinski of Ukraine he's in fact one of the few world leaders who's visited both countries uh since this War Began do you think president Trump might you know weigh in on him perhaps lean on his sort of council if not mediation to try and find a middle ground between Russia and Ukraine I wouldn't be surprised
to be honest this is why I was saying that I think from India's point of view this is good news because the Trump Administration will want to work with India it will see India as an ally on this issue and if Modi has good relations with sansky and with Putin and he can talk to both of them and do something to help kajo the ukrainians into accepting uh the peace settlement that the Americans want that would be all for the good from America's point of view uh I I don't know that uh in the end
Modi would be successful or anybody would be successful at convincing the ukrainians to go along with this deal excuse me I think it's very hard to imagine uh Ukraine uh uh accepting the deal but who knows all right come to the final part of this conversation and I want to talk about Gaza because Trump has been saying quite a few uh uh you know really outrageous things about Gaza about making it into the Riviera of the Middle East Palestinians have no right to return Egypt and Jordan should take more Palestinians so on and so forth
you know if you can if you can sort of separate all the Sound and Fury of of the stuff that he's been saying from if there is a method in the madness to what he's trying to achieve uh ultimately he wants to end that war too but in terms which uh which seem quite quite bizarre at least on the face of it yeah I think uh your word outrageous is the right word to use to describe what uh Trump is proposing I I think it's morally reprehensible to talk about ethnically cleansing the Palestinians from Gaza
uh and furthermore from a practical point of view I don't see how that's possible the Israelis have just spent 15 to 16 months pounding the uh Palestinians in Gaza for purposes of trying to drive them out and they failed the Palestinians are still there Hamas is still there so how is the United States going to get them out and then who's going to take them this makes no sense at all uh and to take it a step further you want to remember that the ceasefire between the Palestinians and the Israelis uh came into effect on
January 19th the day before President Trump moved into the White House he moved in on January 20th and president Trump basically told the Israelis he wanted that ceasefire before he moved into the White House so president Trump played an important role in making the ceasefire happen and that looked like a good deal to almost everybody everybody's except maybe Benjamin Netanyahu uh and people on his right were happy about a ceasefire then Trump starts talking about turning Gaza into the Riviera in the Middle East and if anything that undermines this ceasefire which he had gotten credit
for helping put into place so in a very important way it didn't make sense so I can't give you a good explanation for what he's thinking here I mean what he did was he put forth an outrageous and impractical idea that if anything undermined the policy that he appeared to be pushing uh as he moved into the White House all right and I want to get one final question in I want to know your thoughts on this whole uh relationship between Elon Musk and Donald Trump the Democrats are saying you know Elon is the real
president uh the Time Magazine had a had a cover photograph of Elon Musk sitting behind the Resolute desk uh again help our viewers try and make sense of this is Trump using musk as some kind of a wrecking ball to shake up the federal government in the bureaucracy and when do you think this honeymoon is going to end because it looks like I mean both men have pretty big egos so it has to end at some point yeah I mean there's no question that Trump has a huge ego and when they put Elon Musk you
know on a magazine cover and he's portrayed as the real president you would think that this would drive Donald Trump crazy uh apparently it's not done that uh I think that Trump understands that if he's going to do a wrecking ball operation both on the foreign policy front and on the domestic policy front he can't do it all by himself uh and he has to delegate responsibility and Elon Musk is the ideal person uh to turn to to help do the wrecking on the domestic front and musk I think it's fair to say is acting
as a wrecking ball and he doesn't care what anybody says about him so from Trump's point of view uh he is you know an ideal person to help him and I think maybe Trump feels that he is the president remember he has four more years in front of him the guy hasn't even in been in power for one month so Elon Musk over the next four years is not going to seriously undermine uh Trump's position uh as the leader of the United States so I think what's happened here is that they've come to terms all
right professor John mimer as always a pleasure speaking with you thank you very much for your time and your valuable insights thank you
