The US Is at War With Russia: 4 Scenarios From Here | Quick Take | GZERO Media

What'll happen next in the war in Ukraine? Ian Bremmer lays out four broad scenarios. Subscribe to GZERO on YouTube: http://bit.ly/2TxCVnY Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and a world at war over Ukraine. A lot to talk about. I think the first thing which is really important is to recognize that we are at war right now with Russia. We do not have American troops fighting on the ground in Ukraine and will not. That is true also for all of NATO, but there is an enormous amount of military equipment being sent to help the Ukrainians defend themselves. And that is of course being used against Russia, which has invaded Ukraine and also the wide and deep sanctions that have now been taken by the Americans and by the Europeans against Russia, particularly in terms of freezing a big piece of their sovereign debt, as well as actions to remove their top banks from SWIFT and the financial transaction system. This is meant to cripple the Russian economy. It is meant to force the Russians towards capitulation on Ukraine and borrowing that to undermine the Russian government. Now that's what the Americans did with the Iranians when those sanctions were imposed as well. And I'm sure the Iranians saw the Americans at war with them, but the Iranians didn't have any ability to really threaten the Americans. The Russians of course, that's different. And so I do think it's important to understand that from Putin's perspective, his interest in lashing out, not just in consolidating control over Ukraine, but also in causing damage to the West, I think is now something that is serious, is significant. We should be thinking about. Potentially in terms of cutting off energy supply for a period of time in the winter, even though that would cause further economic damage in Russia, certainly in terms of cyberattacks and disinformation attacks against the United States, against the Europe more broadly. And potentially in terms of harassing NATO ships, aircrafts, on borders, "accidents", I say. These sorts of things that are indeed very deeply dangerous and potentially escalatory. So it's important to understand that when you are bringing this kind of a fight with a country that is, okay, not the biggest economy, I guess the 11th largest economy roughly the size of Texas, but from a military capability, from a technological capability, is actually vastly greater. That when President Putin says, "I'm going to increase the alerts on our nuclear weapons," he's sending a message that this is not just about Ukraine. And I think that it is important to take him seriously. Not in the sense that forces the West to capitulate, but rather that you have to plan to manage what could be a Cuban Missile Crisis. And none of us want that. None of us want that. Now, looking at where we are going forward, I think I put forward four broad scenarios and I'll talk briefly about all of them. I'm not very optimistic here. The thing to be optimistic about is the fact that the United States and Europe are much more aligned. The EU today is stronger than it was two weeks ago in almost an unspeakable fashion. NATO is stronger today than two weeks ago in almost an unspeakable fashion. That will continue. Germany is much more committed to the European and the trans-Atlantic security order than they were before. That's all the positive news. But the negative news, when you look at the scenarios is where we go. Read the full transcript: https://www.gzeromedia.com/quick-take... Sign up for GZERO’s free newsletter on global politics, Signal: http://bit.ly/gzerosignal Subscribe to the GZERO podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Like GZERO on Facebook:   / gzeromedia   Follow GZERO on Twitter:   / gzeromedia   Follow GZERO on LinkedIn:   / 18385722   GZERO Media is a multimedia publisher providing news, insights and commentary on the events shaping our world. Our properties include GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, our newsletter Signal, Puppet Regime, the GZERO World Podcast, In 60 Seconds and GZEROMedia.com #QuickTake #UkraineWar #Putin