Brandon Weichert discusses Ukraine and how Russia desires to be its own civilizational state or empire (as opposed to being under Western hegemony). Because of demographics, Moscow doesn’t have much time so Putin is plugging the strategic gaps on his western border now. He believes the threat of escalation is greater now than during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He discusses the unconventional and asymmetric threats of cyber and space warfare….the ‘shadow war’. We are not reading the Russian signals very well, they are less afraid of unintended consequences. For Putin, this is his go-for-broke Peter the Great moment. We discuss the decline of the dollar’s status as world reserve, how other countries have seen the writing on the wall, and how the nightmare scenario of an Eurasian axis has come to be. He also discusses his forthcoming book on Iran’s quest for supremacy: https://geopoliticsandempire.com/2022/03/17/weichert-russia-civilizational-state-putins-moment