Never march on Moscow Europe never learns

Aug 2, 2026

Chapters

00:00 Europe Never Learns 01:15 The "Never March on Moscow" Lesson 02:08 Charles XII of Sweden's Failure 02:50 Napoleon's Disastrous Invasion 03:40 Hitler's Operation Barbarossa Catastrophe 04:25 Crimean War and Ottoman Failure 04:55 NATO's Proxy War in Ukraine 06:10 The US Stepping Back from NATO 07:20 Toxic NATO Relationships 08:40 Europe's Pride and Hypocrisy 10:05 Russia's Geography: The Ultimate Defense 11:05 The Power of Winter and Scorched Earth 12:20 War of Attrition: The Russian Strategy 13:35 Moscow: Never Easy to Take or Hold 14:45 Underestimating Russia's Vastness 16:00 The Cost of Repeating History 17:05 Pride, Ideology, and Overconfidence 18:00 Charles XII's Disaster at Poltava 18:40 Napoleon's Grande Armée Destroyed 19:30 Hitler's Fatal Error Repeated 20:15 Crimean War Coalition Fails 20:45 The Goal: Vulcanizing Russia 22:00 Bush Sr.'s Wise Pragmatism 23:10 NATO Expansion and Ignored Lessons 24:15 Europe's Ego and Sunk Cost Fallacy 25:05 Economic Pain: Soaring Energy Costs 26:30 Russia Adapts: Ties with China, India, Iran 27:35 Ukraine's Reckless Gamble with Iran 29:00 The Salami Slicing Strategy 30:45 Munich Security Conference 2007 32:00 The Neocon Push and Versailles Treaty 33:15 Why Understanding History Matters 35:15 The Verdict: Marching on Moscow is Dumb 36:30 Russia's Resilience and Geography 37:20 Bush Sr.'s Approach: Saving Face 38:00 Europe Has Forgotten the Lessons 39:00 Tragic Repetition of History 39:45 Outro and Subscribe

Transcript

History's expensive lesson that Europe just doesn't seem to learn so what is it it's called never march on Moscow That's the lesson that they keep failing to learn And I'm gonna take you through exactly what that means because a lot of history is bloody interesting stuff It starts off with King Charles the twelfth of Sweden Sweden tried and failed he marched on Moscow and got badly beaten Napoleon, little Napoleon, even he had a crack Largest army that Europe at the time had ever seen marched on Moscow failed A little moustache man from Germany in World War II He even tried he literally had the might, the full power of the Third Reich Absolutely phenomenal military force at the time Without fear really And also failed catastrophically The British, the French, the Ottomans They all tried and Crimea They also got badly beaten so now NATO I mean you know 2026 in NATO Even NATO has effectively tried via proxy in Ukraine in my opinion team The United States is stepping right back from that they've gone Wow this is toxic you guys This has gone far enough we're getting out We're going as far away from you lot as we can And that's basically the danger for NATO is right because they've essentially pushed US The US so hard that the US I don't know if the US is ever gonna go back to NATO I know I know You could say that's hyperbolic Then you know maybe that's right but as far as I can tell It's pretty toxic now the relationship between the US and the European NATO partners I guess they used to be called partners but now I don't think they are I think the Europeans are trying to put the boot into the US They say every chance they can get and yet they get on their hands and these crawl up to Trump and call them daddy So gross man, so gross come on Europe You know have some pride in yourself They're fake like hell, you can't stop and let them fake for about two or three minutes Then it's easier to stop them And then daddy has stopped Sometimes you're a strong language He called you daddy earlier Do you regard your NATO allies as kind of children? No he likes me, I think he likes me If he doesn't I'll let you know I'll come back and I'll hit him hard He did a very affection, he's daddy, you're my daddy History keeps teaching us the same brutal lesson Invading or trying to break Russia strategically to feed Russia on its home turf Is one of the, probably the costless strategic mistakes that a power can make Great or not, doesn't really matter This is a massive mistake, a blunder, a total blunder Today we're going to look at that white act pattern repeats and why Bush senior He understood what many seem to have completely missed in history So Russia's greatest defense has always been, it has always been and probably always will be its geography Vast distances, brutal winters like you cannot believe our brutal the winter is up there Scorched earth tactics, this is their favourite tactic in my opinion And the ability to trade space for time as we're seeing in Ukraine They're quite happy to undertake a war of attrition that goes for 10 years No problem, 10 years, okay that's fine, we'll just do 10 years and we'll we you down We'll keep on fighting until you literally run out of munitions We will run you dry, we've got bigger, this is there with the Russians speaking We've got bigger factories than you and we've still got the ability to make stuff We don't have a shortage of rare earths or and we don't rely on these things to the same degree as everyone else So I mean look, Moscow, just as simple as this, Moscow has never been easy to take And it's never been easy to hold So forget about it, the city itself is symbolic But the real challenge is the endless territory, it literally is Look at the map, it's like holy shit's a big country, bloody hell, it's a time and time again European powers have underestimated this reality, this basic reality Yeah, and they've paid with blood and treasure and they just continue to do this It's like, Jesus Christ didn't you learn last time, all the time before, all the time before How many times do you have to loom? How many times do you have to be badly beaten by Russia, the Soviet Union, by Russians? How many times does this need to happen? How many people have lost their lives in this stupid ideology? I don't know, millions and millions and millions It's bloody stupid, the whole thing too Yeah, pride, ideology, overconfidence, hubris, repeatedly clouds the cold calculation That Russia is extremely difficult to conquer impossible with my view And even harder to occupy successfully Yeah, the problem is those are Russians, those are Russians Yeah, bloody Russians Yeah, so the recurring pattern of failure Yeah, let's go and have a look at it, so Charles the 12th's campaign in early 1700s So this goes back to the 1700s, ended in a disaster in Poltava And then in a little in a poem, 1812 Invasion saw his Grande Army, the Grand Army, destroyed by winter disease And Russian resistance disease, oh that doesn't sound good Yeah, by winter basically, winter is their great defense If you front up there, they'll just play for time And that means you've got to sit it out in the snow with no supply chain This is what happened to the Nazis, with no supply chain You've got no way to support your troops and they're stuck in the most miserable conditions ever That's their game, right? That's what they can play every single time Hitler's Operation Barbarossa in 1941 repeated the same fatal error on an even larger scale I don't often say that name, I normally refer to Mr. Ashman But I'm saying it now, I think that in this context, YouTube should give me a pass But we'll find out, the Crimean War showed even a coalition of Britain, France and the Ottomans, the Turks, could not deliver a decisive blow Deep into Russian territory Amazing, oh, just amazing And in the current Ukraine conflict with basically NATO, NATO doing all the support It's been framed by many as a way to, we can at least weaken Russia decisively But ideally impose a strategic defeat on Russia and vulcanize Russia, break it up This is what the leading diplomat of the European Union has openly stated, Kaya Carlos She is advocated for the vulcanization of the Russian federation The defeat of Russia is not so bad, because maybe it will really cause a change in society if such a case happens And you know, now there are many different nations in addition to Russia I think that if there were more small nations, it's not so bad, if a large state in fact is much less And hand them out basically, they want to better control those, control all the resources in Russia Everybody has, for many, many years, they've looked at the territory, the landmass of Russia and they've been like, oh, geez, we could do with that And they all suffer the same humiliating loss Ah, here we go, after the George Bush seniors, quite a serious discussion this one And very interesting, and parallels with the society treaty So, yeah, after the Soviet collapse, Bush senior deliberately chose a path of pragmatic engagement rather than humiliation Not a lot of people realize this, I didn't, it's bloody interesting He understood that a wounded, humiliated Russia with nothing to lose was far more dangerous than a Russia That was allowed to preserve its pride and to rebuild its nation NATO expansion and attempts to pull Ukraine, fully into the Western orbit, ignored this historical lesson Europe's current stance looks increasingly driven by ego, by ideology And by the sunk cost, sort of theory, rather than cold strategic realism, I'm up for the latter strategic realism and pragmatism Now the private sector and European economies are already feeling the pain through dramatic increases in energy costs Just like an order of magnitude, at least an order of magnitude increase in costs That's a 10X team of energy costs for like a gas bill or your car, your petrol bill or your diesel or whatever it is These costs are going crazy in Europe right now And that's got an impact on everything, everything is going up like, well food and yeah, talk about inflation We've had an inflation shock, but look out, that's all I've got to say, look out, watch out for what's happening Specifically in Europe, not in the USA, they have a very different structure in the USA, but in Europe Western Europe, it's got a lot of pain heading its way Meanwhile, Russia basically just adapts, you know, stronger ties with China, stronger ties with India Yeah, stronger ties with basically everybody in the global South And Iran, for example, stronger ties with Iran A ship from heading across the Kaspian from Russia to Iran was struck I think yesterday, it was reported yesterday by a Ukrainian drone or missile So, yeah, you've got, you've got, you know, these relationships between Russia and people like Iran And then you've got, you know, the Ukraine pitching in, taking a massive gamble, I mean, it's crazy, it's totally crazy doing that Because Iran can strike back into Ukraine with their missiles, easily, they can strike it to Ukraine, so it is a reckless in my view A reckless game that Ukraine is playing probably on behalf of NATO, but just totally reckless But, you know, pulling a start like that, very, very dangerous The issue for Ukraine and anyone else who wants to try that is reciprocity from Iran They don't moderate, like Russia has been extremely moderate They have, they call it the Salami Salis strategy, it's basically the west love to creep closer to Russia And they take their time and they slice the Salami basically So, every slice, they take a little bit more from Russia's strategy So, they might, you know, they'll bring one of the Balkans into NATO and then they'll bring another one in They'll bring in closer ties with Denmark and Finland, and then they'll bring those guys into NATO And then they'll, they'll just basically keep on doing these little incremental steps that, in and of themselves, they're not enough to trigger Russia Russia is not going to go to nuclear war over, you know, Lithuania joining NATO, NATO Not that event in and of itself, not that So, that's the approach of the west since, I mean, it's sort of early 2000s, as far as I'm concerned It goes all the way back to early 2000s when all this kicked off It was definitely presented blatantly in the security conference in Germany and Munich in 2007 There was in the audience, I think, if I can find the clip, I'll chuck it up there But it's quite, it's quite an interesting clip because you can see the people in the audience You've got McCain and you've got, you know, I'll see if I can rattle through the names, if I can find them But essentially you've got these really pivotal names in US foreign relations And yeah, they're basically right back then in 2007 So, you know, obviously, before 2007, you know, maybe, maybe five, six, seven years before that There've been a massive push by, we'll call it the neocombs in the US to start the Islamic slicing And, yeah, and that's what they've been doing, but George Bush senior Yeah, he was of the review that that was a very dangerous game to play It was obviously a stated guy because he knew about his side, what happened with the Versailles Treaty So, his bloody idiots from, it was a French guy, I think He basically said, oh, no, we need to put our boot on the throat of Germany And we'll strangle them because, you know, because of World War I And they did that and that resulted in the massage man basically in World War II So, Versailles Treaty was an arse of failure of one of the biggest failures in history really Because it caused World War II Yeah, I mean, interesting, this is so interesting I mean, I think this whole thing is bloody interesting Really good for us to understand it because by understanding it, you know, normal people like you Normal people like me, if we can talk about this with some knowledge Then I think we've got a better chance of managing our politicians who are acting on our behalf To actually avoid crazy shit, you know, basically That's why I do this show is to sort of talk about at least some of the stuff that I'm finding Because I've got time, right over the time to research the stuff and get a camera and talk about it So, you've got a lot of a bit of time to listen to it and maybe to learn a bit about what I'm saying And, you know, take that into your life and hopefully carry that forward So, the verdict and looking forward, speaking and looking forward, let's have a look So, history is clear, marching on Moscow, dumb idea, don't do it You can't break Russia on its own terms It's repeatedly ended in failure, utter humiliation and failure, geography It's all about geography team, resilience and the ability to endure hardship That's Russians know how to, they know how to take an absolute pounding of note They will take our pounding, bush seniors approach after the Cold War was wise And it definitely allowed Russia to save face and to stabilize But Europe have forgotten, I think they've just forgotten the lessons of history They've been overwhelmed by their ideology and by their cubress And that's the situation that we find ourselves in Yeah, I mean, I just think the whole thing is bloody interesting And also, it's super tragic to have to talk about this Because we're basically repeating the same mistakes of history So, yeah, well, I hope you've enjoyed the show today If you're not subscribed to the channel, then do as a big solid and subscribe to the channel And like this episode, wherever you are, teammates, amazing world of ours I hope you have a great day, cheers, bye

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