Episode Details

This data set of 10,000 propaganda items, which I collected in Russia-occupied Ukraine between 2015 and 2018, is the basis of Disinfolklore. It is the basis of my insight about archetypes. I had not really systematically gone through it to take out all of the main archetypes and sub-archetypes from this corpus, as it were. I have done this now, and I have quite a number of individual papers on it, which I thought I would go through.

I suppose the first thing to address is the elephant in the room. I have three points to make on Donald at the moment. I cannot think of another orientating topic — or Iran, let us call it Iran then, to avoid Donald — and how it relates to Ukraine.

First, I think on one level, this so-called peace agreement, this so-called ceasefire, if it is real, if it was real, would be an appropriate acceptance by the United States, by Donald, and by Vance of their position in this mess that they got involved in. They had one option of escalating and losing a million American soldiers and treasure beyond all comprehension in a war that was impossible to win, given the hundreds of thousands of drones — which we must assume, if not millions — we must assume that Iran has ready for this, and the plans. In a position like that, I would analyse this as an honourable retreat from a situation they obviously should never have gotten into.

That is one point.

I am quite happy about that because I did not want a war. I understand there are a lot of people now who did not want the war who are kind of quite rightfully trolling Donald with the humiliation of this deal. The humiliation, in my analysis, is not this deal. It is the situation our country found itself in. This retreat is the most honourable thing that could happen.

What This Means for Ukraine

The second thing is what this means for Ukraine. If — and obviously this is all in fantasy land and total fairy land — if this peace agreement came to fruition and there was peace in our time and Iran had the sanctions lifted, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, then the example for Russia would be: cut your losses and leave Ukraine. There is no dishonour in realising you have made a terrible error.

Look at America. Look what it has done. It has the strength, the capacity to admit this was an absolute disaster. The entire Middle East was about to be depopulated and Iran was going to eviscerate millions of lives, perhaps. Therefore, unlike Russia in early March 2022, when the dogs on the street could have and did understand — and many of us did and many of us wrote about it at the time — we understood the true enormity of the error that Russia had made within a few days. The reverse Napoleon attack, as I archetyped it at the time on the 1st of March: invading Ukraine with too few resources to achieve its goals.

Ukraine’s dominant strategy was as Field Marshal Kutuzov’s strategy is described so brilliantly, with such pathos, such mythos — and it is part of the creation of this archetype of Russia as unbeatable — that all he had to do was draw the French further and further and further in, and that would take care of them. It has gone the same way for Ukraine.

Now we have an example of a superpower which realised that it overreached and has done what hopefully most of us manage to do in our personal lives. When we realise we have made a terrible mistake, we just get out of the situation. We understand the sunk cost fallacy, which the Russians clearly do not and just have no conception of: that at any single point in time, everything that you have invested into pursuing a particular strategy is lost anyway. It should not form any part of your decision about whether or not at this moment in time it is the right thing to continue.

If this peace agreement held and if the situation stays as it is now for more than the next five minutes — which, frankly, I doubt it will — in an ideal world, this would be a f