00:00All right, we've been covering some breaking news that has just developed.
00:03President Vladimir Putin of Russia has put his nuclear deterrent forces on high alert.
00:10Now, the U.S., as you know, maintains with Russia a balance of power of nuclear missiles
00:17that would mutually assure the destruction of either one if one of them were to launch it.
00:23This is interesting because a few moments ago I was telling you about the SWIFT system
00:26and removing Russia from the SWIFT system.
00:28One of the reasons it hasn't been used is because it would be such a strong sanction
00:32that people have referred to it as the nuclear option, except that it's not.
00:37It doesn't have any nuclear weapons associated with it.
00:39It's just that serious.
00:41It does seem that under pressure, Vladimir Putin is considering the idea that his nuclear option
00:46is worth reminding the world about in the face of growing sanctions in opposition to the invasion of Ukraine.
00:53Joining me now is Ruth Ben-Ghiat.
00:54She's a professor of history at New York University.
00:56She's the author of the book Strong Men, Mussolini to the Present.
01:01Professor, this is brand new news.
01:05There have been people who, over the last few days, have talked about the things,
01:08the lines that the U.S. and NATO will not cross so as not to trip into, accidentally, World War III,
01:16particularly a war between nuclear powers.
01:18Vladimir Putin mentioned his nuclear arsenal the other day in declaring the invasion of Ukraine,
01:25which surprised some people.
01:26And now he has done something in which he said, we're putting them on high alert.
01:30What do you make of this news?
01:31It's interesting how quickly he got this out.
01:37He did warn about it.
01:38But, you know, this is a perfect storm for Putin.
01:41And if you know autocrat psychology, none of this is, excuse me, none of this is surprising
01:49because he badly miscalculated.
01:52He didn't expect, he's elevated Zelensky to a world figure leader of democracy.
01:59He's given new prestige and resolve to NATO.
02:03And two words, Ali, elite defection.
02:08So his oligarchs have started to speak out against him, Abramovich and Friedman.
02:16And this is a huge deal.
02:18Those people are just as transactional as he is.
02:20But this shows that his power, what he feared secretly and why he did this invasion, is not as stable.
02:28You have reports of Russian functionaries, state functionaries resigning.
02:33And, of course, the protests in St. Petersburg and elsewhere.
02:37So the nuclear card is showing it's very logical that autocrats become highly destructive and desperate.
02:46And we saw this with Gaddafi.
02:48But I think that there might be some intervention at the highest level if this nuclear posturing goes on.
02:59The White House has issued a response to this immediately, saying at every step of this conflict,
03:03Putin has manufactured threats to justify more aggressive actions.
03:08He was never under threat from Ukraine or from NATO, which is a defensive alliance that will not fight in Ukraine.
03:14The only reason his forces face a threat today is because they invaded a sovereign country and one without nuclear weapons.
03:22This is yet another escalatory and totally unnecessary step.
03:26This is true.
03:28There was no threat to the United—to the Soviet Union or to Russia from Ukraine.
03:33There was never any threat.
03:34Russia invented at various times—you and I have been talking about it for weeks—a threat that NATO has been encroaching upon them,
03:41a threat that there are Nazis running Ukraine, the idea that there's a genocide of Russian-speaking people in Donetsk and Luhansk, none of which is true.
03:53But bottom line is, is this strategy or should we be worried about Vladimir Putin and his state of mind right now because he does have nuclear weapons?
04:02We should be very worried because we're living through this cycle in history, and this—Putin is in my book, and I identified him as vulnerable in the paperback version that came out in October
04:18because he—you know, when you've been in power so long and you wield this kind of absolute power, you lose track with reality.
04:27And we saw these recent meetings where he was at these absurdly large tables with a lot of distance between himself and his security council.
04:36And this showed me he was very isolated, perhaps not getting good intelligence.
04:40Nobody wants to, you know, to say things he doesn't want to hear.
04:45And this is an autocrat syndrome.
04:47And it's then that they do these things out of vanity, out of, you know, delusions of grandeur.
04:53And this is what Ukraine was.
04:55But then if it backfires, they—the worst thing for an autocrat is to be humiliated.
05:00And between the response of the economic sanctions, there are things directed at Putin personally.
05:06All of these are lived as humiliations.
05:09And so they get into a very bad state of mind.
05:12And you can only hope that those around him who have power recognize that.
05:17And many times in autocratic history, starting with Mussolini, who was removed by his own grand council,
05:26there are solutions to when an autocrat gets too deranged.
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