Hey, welcome to it could happen here.

This is Robert Evans, and this is a podcast about things calling apart.

Uh.

And today we definitely have a thing's well, I don't know, hopefully not falling apart, but certainly getting fucked up episode for you.

UM.

This is going to be been a part of the world that probably fairly few Americans spend much time thinking about.

UM.

It's certainly a conflict that's kind of been lost in everything that's happening in Ukraine right now.

UM.

But Armenia and Azerbaijan, their neighbor have been at a state of more or less regular war since UM, since longer than that.

But this kind of latest wave of it started in UM.

It was over a breakaway real while what's often referred to as a breakaway region that both countries claimed and that stayed kind of independent for a very long time until invasion by the Azeris in this air which is majority Armenian UM.

And it was kind of a military disaster for the Armenian side.

The war went very badly, a lot of troops were killed, a lot of territory was taken, and ever since the Azeri military has been carrying out border strikes in and around areas that are kind of near their shared border with Armenia.

UM.

Over the last ten hours, as I record this, and and I'm talking to you all on Monday, UHT September, over the last about ten hours, UM, the Azeri military has launched a fairly unprecedented set of strikes within Armenian territory.

UM.

So not just kind of hitting border areas, and not just hitting military targets, but hitting cities, hitting civilian areas, trying to move troops across the border.

There's video evidence of this.

UM.

To talk about what's happening, what's been happening in the past, over the last couple of years, and what's happening now.

UM, I'd like to welcome on Joe Kasabian.

Joe you will know from his podcast Lions Led by Donkeys, from his book The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a number of other books that I think we'll talk about a little bit at the end here from his appearances on the Behind the Bastard.

Joe, you are an American citizen, but you're also Armenian and you're currently in our media.

Yeah.

UM, I moved here a couple of months ago permanently, Um, citizenship is we kind of have like our own repatriation laws.

But I'm still waiting on that.

UM.

And so to to go off a couple of things that you said, we've been at a state of war effectively since the nineties when we first gained independence from the Soviet Union.

UM.

Without going into the incredibly complicated history of Nagano Karabach or Artsach Um Artsak still exists.

They did not take all of it in UM.

But Tony Tony was a military disaster for Armenia unequivably, so we lost over four thousand people.

UM.

Huge swaths of territory were uh.

Their population became the victim of a regional genocide.

UM.

There are no Armenians that have been confirmed to still be alive within that territory.

UM.

There's endless videos of a ZI troops beheading old men and women and and destroying homes and cemeteries and churches.

UM.

And ever since UH the war ended in a month has not gone by where UM either art Saw or Armenia itself has not been attacked.

We've probably lost over a hundred soldiers since then.

UM.

These are kids, their conscripts.

We have um military mandatory service here.

Um.

So these are eighteen nineteen year old kids doing their two years of service.

On top of the civilians that are currently being bombed.

We we don't know how many people are dead at the moment um.

And it's um, it's truly aggravating.

I mean, Armenians live with this all the time.

It's a sword hanging over our heads.

When this is going to happen.

Um happened with unpress attended, international support and not only support, but willing willingly ignoring it.

Um.

I mean NATO powers helped as or by Jean dulas Um, Turkey and Israel Israel.

Israeli drone designers literally test flew as suicide drone into Armenian soldiers to sell it.

Um.

I mean, it's it's it's honestly kind of I I don't know what what to say about it other than that's it should be another thing that the world should be united against and they never will.

No.

I mean, it's it's so frustrating.

One of the things that I have had a lot of issue with because obviously I, as as you are, I'm supportive of Ukrainian people's attempts to so far quite successful attempts to stop Russia from taking over their homes.

Um.

But one of the things that's happened alongside this is a kind of lionization of a specific kind of Turkish drone, the bractar Um, which was particularly effective in the opening stages of the war, and military technology military equipment walks can argue as to whether that was due to Russian kind of tactical failures and operational failures, or whether it was due to new realities about how drones function.

But one of the things that was ignored in all of this kind of fetishization of this drone and people raising money to buy more of them, is that the drones were really combat tested for the first time, massacring Armenians.

UM.

Yeah, and it's I try not to get too mad when I see stuff like that, because I understand whether Ukrainians are happy, of course, and like, yeah, I should point out unequivvalently I support Ukraine's fight for independence, just like I wish people um supported ours UM and and the war.

The wars effectively have the same kind of propaganda angle.

UM.

Obviously, before Russia invaded Ukraine, they're talking about you know, DENOZI vacation or demilitarization, when when you look at their speeches and the rhetoric, it's that they believe that Ukraine does not have the right to exist and that Ukrainians are either are Russian or they also should not exist.

And that's effectively what we're looking at.

Two.

UM.

This is why Armenians constantly compare what is happening now to nineteen UM asba Jean continuously says they want art Sah or the Nogana Karabak, they they want it back, but that's not what they're attacking right now.

UM.

If you look at the rhetoric of Aliev and his government going all the way back to the nineties when his dad was in charge, in a few other people, UM, their ideology is that Armenia is not a real state.

They have claims over our capital yur Ivan.

They have they have claims over the south where they're invading right now, and everywhere those soldiers go they wipe out the local poppy relation of Armenians.

There are no Armenian survivors and Hadrud or Shushi or any of these other places they took, they do not exist.

And ever since then they've been purposely going through and destroying any evidence that Armenians ever lived there, which is ridiculous.

Armenians have been living in these places since before Rome was fucking established.

Yeah, um, I mean, and this is obviously we're talking about the Armenian genocide, which occurred during kind of the concurrent to the kind of late stages of World War One.

UM, and uh was unrecognized by the United States until what was that now two years ago Joe's yeah something, finally became the first president, first US president, to recognize it.

And and this is because we we've mentioned Turkey a couple of times that there's a couple of reasons for this, but most of them boiled down to not wanting to piss up, piss off the Turkish government.

Um.

The Turkish government has strong attitude dudes that essentially everybody in Anatolia is Turkish and always yes, there were no Greeks, there were no Kurds, there were no Army.

And this has led to, I mean, it's led to ethnic cleansings and genocides against the Armenians and against the Kurds.

One of the things that was being done in Rojava, UM that I found so compelling was was an attempt to educate an attempted by the Kurds there to educate people who were joining the YPG about Kurdish complicity in the genocide against Arminia because they recognize themselves as victims of the same thing.

You know, starting I think you know all of the it's hard to say starting in right, because we're trying to talk about concurrent conference.

They all go back.

Everything's going back quite a while.

You mentioned Ali of a little bit ago, and I don't want to talk about him.

Um, we're talking about il Ham Aliev, who's the current president of Azerbaijan, the fourth UH and of course the the son of the former leader, which is always a recipe for a good functional des Also his wife is vice president.

Yeah, and his wife advice, which is nice.

It's just like it's just like house of cars.

Yeah, he's the Kevin spacey.

Um.

His his attitude and rhetoric towards Armenian in general is eliminationists at best.

Um, like he's I mean, the country's put out stamps that show Armenia being fumigated like dirt went during the height of the pandemic, which like as a genocide scholar.

You know, generally, when I see a picture of a place being gassed, I get suspicious.

Um Uh, they've taught, they've talked about how it was a good thing that in the nineties Armenians were driven from Baku and the Bukoprograms and a few other places.

Um, I mean weren't there like literally like some of those trophies at arms shows and stuff, like pieces of captured equipment with blood on it and stuff.

Yeah, and they also had, um honestly one of the weirdest, Like it's incredibly offensive and racist, h the these um caricatures of our of Armenian soldiers who like, at the same time they're like racist towards Armenians but also vaguely anti Semitic, Like they looked like a character of a Jewish person to come out of their sturmer um with like you know, and I understand how stereotypically people think Armenians look in like these racist art where we have you know, big hooked noses and big eyebrows and things like that, which admittedly I know I meet both of those personally, but that's besides the point of Like if you look at the pictures and they were taken down because like even like Israel was like, oh that's a bit much, and like they help that happen.

Um.

But like also to talk you can't talk about as by genre without talking about Turkey because they have this ideology that's like two people, one state.

They they do believe in like Pan Turranism, especially urd iwan Um.

I mean he's been ever ever since, he's gone like full fascist.

That's something he's been hammering the drum on and like this is an extension of that.

He's effectively a neo Ottomanist.

He wants to reunite the empire, which is fucking insane but also has real life things, you know, but also to bring us, you know, to the conflict that Americans are more focusing on.

As we've talked about before, this is another similarity between what Russia is doing in Ukraine and what is Ervajan and Turkey are doing in Armenia.

They're both these kind of um redemptionist dreams of people who want to bring back some sort of lost imperial splendor right and are are utilizing kind of the tactics that the technics of genocide in order to try to make that happen.

Yeah.

I think for Turkey it's a lot of this lost splendor, especially as their economy ships itself from mismanagement, and I think for Azerbaijan it's the other way around.

In the nineties, when we fought the first car Bah or Armenia UM, I mean, it wasn't from being militaries military, militarily superior, having more money.

It had to do with two largely unorganized forces in the fallout of the Soviet Union, and Armenia end up winning.

UM.

And ever since then, that loss has been something of like national It's like it's kind of like the national mythos of Azebaijan, because before then Azebaijan is a national identity simply didn't exist.

It's relatively new UM.

And that loss in that war became the defining moment.

That's where UM, the lost Armenia was internalized and like it became school curriculum that Armenians were the were at fault for everything.

We're sub human.

We've been compared to cockroaches.

Like for instance, if you have, say my last name, you cannot legally enter the country of Azebaijan, like you cannot enter that country with an Armenian last name, it's racism, and fascism is state doctrine there.

So when you know their oil production kicked back up from after the war damages and after the fallout of the Soviet Union, on top of military reforms that have been lasting for thirty years, they're the ones on the up swing now, not Turkey in my opinion, and it also helps their fighting someone like Armenia, which no Armenians that we have military history and everything, but we have no fucking money, we have no natural resources, we have no allies, we have no one's gonna air drop palettes of fucking high Mars and Yerevan like, nobody's coming to help us.

We have a k S that fought in the First War.

We have BMP ones that have probably seen more combat than most people who are still alive.

That's an armored personnel carrier.

Essentially, we we have nothing.

Um, I'm not going to speak about the cape bills of the Armenian military, but like you can imagine what a small landlocked country with a small population not a lot of money, can field.

It's not a lot.

Um, Yeah, it's not a lot.

And this kind of gets us to another topic that has to be broached with his which is kind of talking about the relationship of rush you to all this because one of the things that's very frustrating about this conflict is that Americans particularly tend to want things very simply.

So you hear you've got a Russian client state, which is how it's not what Armenia is.

I'm not saying that, Joe, obviously, but is how it's easy to course, especially like kind of in the boil out, sort of break things out as it's like, Okay, you've got this state backed by Russia and then you've got this other state fighting that that's backed by Turkey.

Well, Turkey's part of NATO, they're part of, you know, the fight against Russia, so they must be the good guys.

And none of that's accurate.

But I think it's I think it's important to explain why.

So, I mean, it's it's really hard to explain Armenia and Russia's relationship other than imperialism.

Um.

Obviously, Armenia has been conquered by countless countries throughout our fucking long history, but the most recent one being the Soviet Union, which we did not join willingly.

Um.

And then after the fall of the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation.

Um, we're solidly within Russia's fear of influences by no active choice of ours.

We're members of the cts O, we're members of the Eurasian Economic Union, and neither of those were by choice.

We were strong armed into it because there's no there's nothing else, there's no other option.

UM.

And as far as it goes, is is like the brotherly relationship or this client state.

It would be exactly like someone blaming Ukraine for what happened in Maidan, or blaming Ukraine for what happened in or what happened now because they're trying to get away from that.

I mean, we can't.

We don't have the resources to do it.

Just just for an example of how Armenia plays like tight ropes.

This ship.

Never once if we voted in favor of Russia during this war.

We like they're like our representatives to the U n our our Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Our prime minister is solidly neutral because that's the best he can do.

UM.

Right, you know, he's either voted against UH, he's voted h he's abstained.

He's never voted for to support Usha during this ward all um.

Now, obviously, back in there was a different Armenia.

UM.

We had a pro EU movement here that was quite strong.

This is before I lived here, of course, UM that voted to declare our intentions to want to join the EU.

I believe this is under President Sergisan Um.

And it passed overwhelmingly in the popular vote, because unlike the people invading us, we are a free and fair democracy with the freedom of speech and expression and everything else that people like to claim they want to defend, but they don't UM.

And after a five minute meeting with Putin, it was gone.

There's no more referendum, and we decided not to join the EU anymore.

But we I mean the president.

After that we had our Velvet Revolution which got rid of him um and distance ourselves from Russia as much as we realistically could.

So I believe, for instance, Armenia kind of slight least supported Russia when it came to annexing Crimea.

And now you can kind of see why the president was a fucking stooge.

That's not the case anymore.

We now have a parliamentary system and as much as I am not the biggest fan of Prime minister or Bashionon, He's not that guy.

That's not like and Armenia is a different world.

Um.

And I know, like like you said, people really like to simplify these things.

They want this to be a team sport.

They want this to be NATO versus Russia, and you know, people like Belarus or whoever else.

But there's a there's a pretty big fucking difference here.

We have not actively supported this war.

There has been anti war protests outside my fucking windows since the war has started.

Ukrainians have flooded here by the thousands and they have met nothing but Armenians who have welcomed them with open arms.

Russians have come too, and we're not the biggest fans of them.

But what can you do about it?

Um?

You know, like, yeah, we're we're solidly neutral in this.

And it's one of the things that fucking and I mean granted neutral government wise, people wise.

Absolutely, we're not neutral.

Um.

And one of the things that pisces me off the most is that people can see the realities of the war in Ukraine where they can see right through Russian propaganda when it's like demilitarization, denoification, whatever, and they can see on its face that's complete and utter bullshit.

But like when because you know, Ukraine is fighting for their sovereignty, their independence and the right to exist that we all have um, and when it comes to us, we don't get that, like, oh, well, we're calling for both sides a de escalate and maybe our Menia shouldn't have started this.

We haven't done anything.

It was fucking midnight last night and the South started being bombed.

What the fund is there to be de escalated.

You can't de escalate self defense, So you have what is a really uncomfortable situation.

From that, a lot of people don't like talking about the reality of it because essentially, when you have a country like Azerbaijan that is insisting on repeatedly violating the territory of its neighbor um and that has proven not just a willingness but an eagerness to engage and engage in acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide, you have two options for dealing with that other than let them do it right.

Option one is send in peacekeepers to stop the aggression.

Now Russia has troops that were called peacekeepers in the area.

Um, you know, there's you could debate prior to the invasion of Ukraine how good they were at that job.

Um, but they certainly are not capable of doing it now.

Um.

So then the question is, Okay, who else?

Who?

What?

Who else is peacekeepers are gonna come in?

Right?

And if that's not a realistic solution, and you don't want to let Azerbaijan just do a genocide, then what you do issue give them weapons Armenia weapons, not as people already doing that part unfortunately the US.

And yeah, indeed, um, And again there's this we're all kind of in terms of like the discourse around this in the United States, living in the shadow of the War on Terror, in which an irresponsible quantity of weapons were handed out to an irresponsible variety of groups.

Um, and many of them went to bad ends in bad places.

Um.

The reality is that you know, we're sitting on a fucking stockpile of weapons here in the United States as tall as the sky and handing over a tiny percent of that.

When people talk about like that we're giving this much aid Ukraine, We're not spending that much cash straight on a d Ukraine.

We're picking up ship we have in mothballs, and well, we're handing it to them because we've spent all of our treasure on on a pile of guns larger than you can conceive of in terms of its actual size and weight.

UM.

And I don't know, like when when I think about what is to be fucking done here realistically, UM, I would like for Ourmnia to have access to javelins and send some stingers.

Even One of the things that pisses me off is like, like you said, there's two options here, you do nothing and you're complicit in a genocide.

That's what this hits like.

It's it's like being silent and you know, um and in nineteen it's being silent.

In nineteen fifteen, it's being silent Rwanda.

We were silent during most of those things, and we saw how they all were.

Like, there's only one way this fucking ends if we don't get guns, and that's with a lot of dead Armenians.

That that that by supporting Ajerbaijan or sitting out, that is what you explicitly support is thousands and thousands of dead civilians.

Like that's the only way this ends.

And it is again and I hate keep that we keep going back to Ukraine but it's relevant because it's the the the it's the conflict that people are actually focusing on the people who are counter on on anti side, providing weapons to the Ukrainian military and make claims about corruption, which they could also make about the Armenian government, um, and claims about you know, arms trafficking and all that stuff.

But so far, and Ukraine, by the way, is a country with a deeper history of corruption, significantly in the Armenian government even um, we haven't seen government is less corrupt than Ukraine's.

Yeah, um, you haven't seen a ton of that happening.

What you have seen is the weapons that have been handed to them, blowing up invaders, tanks and aircraft.

Um.

And the sheer quantity that has been destroyed is evidence that that weaponry has been used pretty responsibly.

And when you were talking about a group of people facing annihilation, I'm simply not worried that they're going to sell their stingers to fucking Isis or wherever that who are going to have turkey in one side the Georgia.

That's actually fine, Like you know, and that's why I think people are fucking gutless.

Um, you saw this happen in February, before they're in January, before the war in Ukraine started, when people like, oh, weapons are only gonna make it worse.

No, they're fucking not.

You know what's worse than than an armed population defending itself is an unarmed one being murdered anyway.

And we in case nobody has paid attention, because they probably didn't, you can go back and look at the video footage of what happens to unarmed Armenians, and it's the same fucking ship Isis did to yuzd S.

It's the same fucking ship they did occurreds, and it's the same fucking ship that will happen again if we do not get what we need to defend ourselves.

And I don't give a funk if you don't like Russia.

I don't fucking like Russia either.

But it's the reality that we live in.

If you're if you're fucking intelligent enough to realize the diplomacy and geopolitics of how Ukraine ended up in the war that they're in now, you should understand why we are in the situation that we are into.

You cannot realistically believe we deserve what is happening unless you also believe Ukraine deserves what's happening to them.

It's impossible.

I don't know.

This is obviously how could this not be like emotional and it is just feeling like I can't and it must be so much worse.

Obviously you just being there, but like this, this feeling of a fucking train coming at you, and people aren't gonna do ship because there's this fucking problem with optic and it's more complicated when we talk about I'm talking about we're gonna talk about optics.

I guess we're talking about discourse.

When it comes about like why politically the United States is unlikely to do anything like what we suggested, It's more complicated than that, and a decent amount of it comes down to the fact that we have what is it, thirteen nuclear weapons stationed in Turkey right now, land stolen from Armenians from the genocide.

Great stuff America we really knock out of the park.

What is it that people can do to help outside of trying to become informed about the conflict, which I think we can talk about some sources at the end of this.

Are there places, you know, Red Cross style things that people can donate to to help to the extent that that's kind of a thing is helpful.

Yeah, Um, I mean, you know, generally crowdfunding for weapons systems is illegal unless you're Ukraine nowadays, so I'm thinking more about medical.

Um.

The Armenian Red Cross is always a good option.

They helped a lot in they still help now, we still have a ton of internally displaced people.

Um.

There's also the hind drum In Fund, which directly funds wounded servicemen because we really don't have a v A exactly here.

Um.

There's quite a few other ones, but the the Armenian Red Crosses of course the most reliable and easy to donate if you're in the West.

For sure.

You don't have to navigate any confusing Armenian language websites because it's it's hard and isn't great with the internet, so like most of them don't have translations.

Um.

But you know it's yeah, I understand, I'm a little bit more emotional than most people.

Probably hear me on podcasts, but like, um, I'm mad, I'm mad, I'm fucking frustrated.

Um.

I don't know how much longer people can let this kind of thing happen.

Um.

I hope the e use gas this winter is fucking worth it, because this is what you've got.

This is what that deal got us.

So I hope you're nice and warm in the fucking winter because we probably won't have power or we'll have more dead or whatever.

But real glad you pivoted away from Russian gas and sign a deal.

Fucking ashby Jean, you spineless fox.

And it's a I mean, it goes the spinelessness is deeper than that, right, because the reason why the fucking gas crunch that led to that deal happened in the first place was among a number of things, years of seeding to Russian government aggression in places like Georgia, in places like Ukraine.

And you've got that, you know, here you have the invasion by a Zerbaijan almost like two years ago now and then and and no pushback right when you this is this is the thing is And this is not a popular kind of thing to go to talk about on the left, but but it's true.

If you want to pay attention to why why that whole World War two situation got so goddamn bad, A big part of it is they're not being any kind of effective rules based international order to stop bigger countries or at least more aggressive ones, from fucking with their neighbors.

And one of the things we were supposed to have learned from that war is that you don't let people do that.

It's bad, yea that when a mother shows up, Yeah, like it shouldn't be that hard.

Tis I don't care what your politics is.

I mean, everybody knows that we're both very left wing.

But when someone comes continuously fox with you, the only way to make them stop is by hitting them in the goddamn face until they realize it's not a good idea like this, Like diplomacy doesn't work when one side only wants you dead.

You can't debate my right to live, or my neighbor's right to live, or these kids right to live wherever they're fucking schools bombed right now, there's no debate to be had.

You have to hit them until they fucking stop.

There's like, I'm sorry, there's not gonna be any de escalation of fucking genocide.

Like that's not how this works.

People tend to get this in the immediate sense when you're talking about, you know, some fucking bigot in front of you, everybody, everybody loves, you know, cheering on a video of some guy, you know, dropping a racial slur and getting knocked to the ground.

Obviously those are a lot of um.

But the the the moral is that if you let assholes.

The actual moral of like why it's important to punch Nazis in the face when they're doing Nazi ship is that if you just let them do Nazi ship and you try to like appease them and calm them down, you'll often calm them down here and there, and they're like, back off, but they'll have gotten a little bit more, They'll have gotten a little bit of what they want, they'll have gotten a little bit further, and they just keep making ship worse until somebody actually does fucking drop them.

And it's the same with you know.

And again I I we just talked about with the great lesson of World War two should have been and the thing that actually happens the generation that took power in the United States and in a lot of other Western countries after that, not exclusively the West, but I think we're talking about our our our people here.

Um immediately went and fucked around and carried out acts of aggression all over the world.

Um, but that doesn't mean the basic lesson is bad.

The lesson is don't let pete.

We should not have been allowed to do that, um, but we shouldn't like that should not be a thing that the world accepts, Like the you can't just sit back and be like, oh, well, that country's gonna go do a genocide now, but it's far away, so there's nothing to be done other than continue to buy the oil of the people doing the genocide and thereby fund the genocide, right like it's it's fucking unconscionable, man like, and even if you want to look at this as like the West also funcked around during the coldar which like, yeah, you know what, everybody did you stop them?

They didn't funk around so much in Southeast Asia after the US got punched in the fucking face in Vietnam, did that?

That's right?

Yeah, well it was a lot less.

It shouldn't be this fucking complicated.

I don't I don't care what political ideology you subscribe to, Like it's self defense, like it's collective defense, mutual self defense.

When we need help, you give us fucking help.

Like, yeah, it shouldn't be that fucking hard.

I mean to be fair for for some people who will never really matter because they don't see countries like Armenia or countries like Azerbaijan is having agency to do their own things and want their own things.

Um.

And if that is you, I hope to see your house on sn end one day.

Um.

But like you know that does there should be like that sounds like, um, like an old Russian curse, like me, your house beyond the sea, and I believe it's from the Balkans.

Yeah, yeah, but I can imagine yes, a little old ladies saying that to you.

We we have the right to freedom as much as anyone else.

And um, not only that we've achieved it, Like Armenia is a is a moderately progressive place.

I mean we're still working on some things.

We have the freest democracy in the region.

Um.

We have great standard of living for most people.

Um, and it was only getting better.

This is a place as freer and fairer elections and virtually anyone else over here, to include Russia, to include fucking Ukraine, to include Turkey, to include all these places that people insists are worth defending.

I'm just curious why we're not like, why are like, why are Armenians less than?

What did we ever fucking do to deserve this?

It's it's incredibly depressing, um.

And maybe we're not the right shade of white.

I don't.

I don't fucking know anymore man Like it's it's it's really weird to me.

Um.

Even like internationally geopolitically, you know, the Secretary of State blinken urged both sides of de escalate, Suck my fucking dick.

What are we de escalating?

They're invading us?

I would like to ask al Qaeda would really like to ask the city of New York to de escalate.

When planes flew into the World Trade cent are like, get the funk out of here, Like, how do you de escalate this?

They're bombing cities like it's it's maddening, um, and it's not gonna end.

It's not gonna end until someone fucking ends it.

We can't.

We we just had a generationally destroying war two years ago that we have not recovered from.

We have an entire society that's dealing with various different forms of PTSD.

UM.

We don't have the the institutions to take care of all of the victims from two years ago.

Um, we didn't get any help that either, and we're not gonna get any help now.

I uh yeah, you know.

I think again, there's this, there's this tendency towards isolationism and the left brought on by the Iraq War.

But none of this, if nothing is done, if there's no international response to this, and if these areas aren't aren't stopped by you know, in auto cathonic resistance, Um, then it won't stop with Armenia, because violence of this sort never does.

There's a there's a book I'm interested in your thoughts on it, actually, Joe, but I found it quite eliminating a number of years ago, An Inconvenient gen Aside by Adam Hosschild, which is about the Armenian genocide and its influence on Hitler, making the point that even though Hitler never was anywhere close to Armenia, neither were any fucking German troops for that matter, particularly close Imperial German troops were Oh yeah, we're we're very much in charge of a lot of different death squads.

It's it's a it's a weird story.

Hitler's Hitler's gerofe of course I apologize, I meant, I meant THEE.

But the point that host Child was making was that Hitler was not engaged in the Armenian genocide, but he paid attention to it and the fact that the young Turks got away with it, um and and got to take that let take land that, as you pointed out, is currently occupied by some US nuclear war heads.

Um was was part of what emboldened him to do not just the Holocaust but everything he did in Europe.

And there was a line specifically in reference the Holocaust from Hitler I but it was during this table talk that was like essentially he was saying, well, of course we'll get away with it.

Nobody remembers Armenians anymore.

Yeah, it's literally on the wall.

Yeah exactly.

And that's the thing is like it goes back right, like everybody was saying, because I mean, I understand the politics behind our sock are messy for people who are not from this region, and I'm I don't have enough time to go into them.

The majority of Armenian population that was given to Azerbaijan by the Soviet Union with absolutely no process, and they attempted to vote to join Armenia while we were still in the Soviet Union, which is well within the rights according to the Soviet Unions constitution if such rights functionally existed, which they did not.

Um, And that's what started the first war, but in every war has been about that ever since, effectively, at least politically on its surface, because internationally is recognized as part of Azerbay Sean because they go off old Soviet maps for fucking reasons.

I don't know.

I mean we can talk exactly, um, but like you know, in people were saying that, like, oh, if this will all end if Armenia simply gives up art stock, which we don't claim art so nobody, I mean, some some people do.

The government does not.

Um, we don't recognize it as an independent country either, which they themselves have declared themselves.

It's it's messy, I understand, but um, it's it's not within the Republic of Armenia to negotiate the non existence of the Republic of Artsach.

That is their right to self determination, that is politically what the government believes.

Now they were saying, well, now that these areas have been taken over by age by Jean, we can finally move towards peace.

There's fucking peace talks.

A week ago the Prime Minister pashion Yan met with Aliev.

I believe in Belgium, and I'm not entirely sure they literally met a week ago, maybe it was two weeks ago, like it was very recent.

But the thing is is every time this peace process starts again, this happens because it's not about Arsa, it's not about Naganokarla, it's not about any of these.

It's it's about our right, our fundamental right to exist.

They do not believe in it, like it's not just like it wasn't about um Jews being involved in business, so it wasn't about Jews marrying Germans.

It was about their fundamental right to exist.

Like it's it's all it is.

It's the same can be said for Palestinians.

This is this isn't about palest I mean thinking of which fucking Israelis are just just placing Armenians in Palestine as well, Like it's it's not about it's not about these these small little nibbles that they're taking.

It's not about the freedom of movement.

It's not about your right to date someone which came up recently they made some Israeli la against that you have to declare your romantic intentions before you go into the West Bank or whatever like.

It's not about those things.

Those are Maybe that'll make maybe that'll make it easier to get the the American leftists on this one.

Right, No, no, guys, it's Israel is bad.

The bad guys here.

We can do genocide.

Yea, Actually that's not entirely true.

He probably would, but m the thing is that it's not about these small nibbles.

It's not about your right to do X, or your right to do why.

It's not about art socks right, the freedom it's it's it's they don't believe you should exist, and they will take and take and take and take until you're fucking powerless and they can wipe you out.

That is their role.

I mean, you can see that in Palestine, you can see that, in Arsa, you can see that increasingly in Armenia.

You can see.

That's what Russia's goal was in Ukraine, it was Russia's goal in Georgia.

It's how imperialism fucking works.

It doesn't have to have an American flag or British flag over it.

For that to be what it's culled, it's genocidal imperialism.

And like if if you're too dumb to fucking see that, I don't know what else to tell you, Like, I don't know how else these are.

Do you need me to draw and fucking crayon?

Yeah?

And I think we're both getting angry here, primarily at groups of people who I don't believe are the primary listeners that will have on this.

Not necessarily but but but I get it.

Like no, it's it's this constant fucking thing you have whenever there's a war anywhere, and you are like, well, what is the solution, Well, the people who are the victims need to have access to weapons?

Um.

Yeah.

And if you're and if you're saying, which I agree with, sending in US or whatever troops to ex country usually it doesn't work out, then what are what is the option give them fucking weapons?

Yeah?

And honestly, like what would make the situation worse if we had American soldiers here?

Like yeah, I mean I just don't.

I just don't think that's a thing that logistically the US military can do.

Well.

Um, but like yeah, like there's some situations where Yes, military assistance could make a situation worse.

Bad things will happen.

You cannot deploy large amounts of weapons or soldiers to a specific area without there being some kind of negative effects.

However, you have to realistically weigh the good and the bad.

Yeah, the world military the Allies bombed Germany flat, but they stopped the fucking holocaust.

Yeah, we blew up a fair amount of people in the nineties.

We stopped a genocide, like we blew up the ship out of Isis, and there was also some civilian casualties, which fucking sucked quite a few.

You stop the Aziti genocide with the assistance of the PKK and and the YPG and the y PG, like, you cannot unleash military power without the acceptance that innocent people are going to die.

The way that you weigh that is more fucking people are going to die if you don't.

That's that's I think the key of it, and probably the point to close on is that it's not a decision do we do we bring violence to this situation or not the situation.

The question is how how lopsided will the violence be?

Will the violence be one state armed by its allies massacring an under you know, equipped military and then civilians until there's no one left of the people who inhabited that area.

Um or will those people have the equipment to defend themselves?

Like that?

That's the question.

There's no, there's no the situation.

The only way for the situation to not be violent is for Zerbaijan to not do what they're doing right now.

Um And hey, if if some sort of fucking diplomatic pressure works, I will I will be unbelievably psyched to eat both of our words in this if the fucking blinken manages to I don't.

I don't.

Yeah, I have no idea, like how how you actually have an impact here, but that would be lovely.

I just don't think it's likely.

Yeah, there's I mean, don't be wrong.

There's a time for diplomacy, and that time ends when troops attempt across the border or they start cluster bombing our cities.

Like there's there's a time for diplomacy and not that you can do two things at once.

And and to be completely clear, I'm not calling for like the hundred and first to fucking land in Yovan or whatever, Like I don't want the American military to come here.

We'll take care of ourselves, but we need the tools to do so.

And the fact remains is like you can be vehemently against war.

I know I am.

I fought in them.

They fucking suck.

I do not want war to happen to anybody, But when they when it comes, talking is over, or at least it it hits the back burner.

Like there's negotiations going on in Ukraine and Russia that we don't hear about.

But at the same time, Ukraine knows they have to continue doing violence in the meantime, Like you can't.

You can't just like whoa, guys, let's just hit the brakes and let's like have a fucking peace conference in Belgium or whatever.

Like soon it is being bombed, glorious is being bought, like our Meenians are dying.

Like there's no words that will fix that, but we'll fix it.

Is fucking artillery systems, high mars, GPS, guided weapons, fucking body armor.

We don't even have first aid kits, like there's there's there's things that we need that can happen in addition to political pressure, because political pressure is great.

If we ever have it, but there needs to be something in the meantime.

Like the director of Doctors Without Borders one time said, um, something that was incredibly controversial when he said, because he's a doctor and he runs, you know, a charity, he said, you can't stop at genocide of doctors.

And he meant that you need to give people fucking weapons because you know there's like like we already said, and then I'll promise they'll stop talking.

Um, there's two ways that this ends.

We defend ourselves and we survive, or you sit by and you do nothing, and uh, there's thousands of more graves full of Armenians by the end of this.

That's it.

I mean, once upon a time the world said never again, and that ship has had a big fucking asterix next to it ever since.

And people need to prove themselves.

You need to fucking prove the words actually mean things.

If you want to defend democracies and ship like you do in Ukraine.

I have a fucking democracy for you to defend, and we need weapons.

Yeah.

I think that's as good a note as I need to end on.

Jok a sabian Um host of Lions led by Donkeys, author of The Hooligans of Kandahar.

You've got other bunch of other books that have come out now.

Yeah, I have the Victory of Death series out if you enjoy military sci fi.

Uh, and I have another one coming out in October called The Frontier Corps.

You can preorder it now.

Um.

If you look on my Twitter, um, you can find a link to preorder it.

It's free if you have UM Kindle unlimited, so you know if for the book, um so yeah.

Also if you don't feel like giving me money, that's that's great to donate to the Armenian Red Cross.

They need more than I do.

Yeah.

Um, all right, everybody, that's the episode.

Um.

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